AUTHOR'S NOTE: Carol Gemmiti, a 66-year-old Florida woman with dementia, went missing from Ossipee, New Hampshire on Friday, October 27, 2024. Numerous searches were performed over the week-end but nothing was found so further efforts were temporarily suspended on Monday, October 30. I decided to tackle this case by performing a horary astrology analysis and … Continue reading Where Is Carol? – A Missing-Person Case Study
Reversed Cards
Reverse-Engineering an Alternate Outcome
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is another novel application of the Golden Dawn's system of astrological correspondences for the tarot cards as presented in the annotated figures of the "Chaldean" zodiac. (See the diagrams below.) In this model, each card has a complementary opposite across the wheel that is of the same polarity (positive or negative) and … Continue reading Reverse-Engineering an Alternate Outcome
Actions with Spirit: A Different Take on the “Cross” Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For my header I've truncated the book title Actions with Spirits (Christopher Whitby, Garland Publishing, 1988), itself a condensation of the much longer moniker for a scholarly 1659 analysis of the "actions with spirits" (purportedly conversations with angels) undertaken by Dr. John Dee with scryers Edward Kelley and Barnabas Saul between 1581 and … Continue reading Actions with Spirit: A Different Take on the “Cross” Spread
Ancestors on Call: A Spiritual Contact Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been reading about ancestor worship in Asia (which is not precisely "deification" but instead a ceremonial show of respect usually accompanied by ritual offerings and a sincere plea for assistance with one's mundane affairs). I've created a couple of spreads in the past with the goal of ancestor contact, but this knowledge … Continue reading Ancestors on Call: A Spiritual Contact Spread
The View from Shore: A Directional “Put-in” Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: First, a brief word of explanation: the title does not contain a misprint of "input." In this spread the action begins with the "putting," not the "receiving." The underlying concept takes some effort (and more than a few glib nautical metaphors) to spell out but the spread itself is of a simple alternate-path … Continue reading The View from Shore: A Directional “Put-in” Spread
Sink or Swim? – An I Ching Approach to the Tarot
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've encountered many productive parallels between the oracular character of the Chinese Book of Changes and that of the Western tarot cards, but this one seems particularly useful. (In this context I've consulted both the classic Wilhelm/Baynes English translation and Benebell Wen's recent book, I Ching, The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the … Continue reading Sink or Swim? – An I Ching Approach to the Tarot
The “Skirmish Line” Head-to-Head Conflict Resolution Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In ground combat, an expeditionary skirmish line exists when a sparse detachment of infantry faces a larger enemy force across contested terrain. This is not a pitched battle, a melee in which all available resources are thrown into the fray by both sides, but rather a "scouting, feinting, harrying or blocking" mission such … Continue reading The “Skirmish Line” Head-to-Head Conflict Resolution Spread
“Wang Hai’s Cattle”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: While contemplating the Chinese legend of Wang Hai, who lost his livestock (not once but twice!) to jealous rivals in the kingdom of Yi, I decided to create a tarot spread that addresses this possibility in present-day terms. In the past I've used the upright or reversed orientation of the cards in a … Continue reading “Wang Hai’s Cattle”
The “Chinese Menu” Tarot Timing Spread
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Recalling the raucous furor that attended the colloquial renaming of Covid-19 as "the Chinese flu" (in which many people chose to demean the source of the presumed gaffe and dismiss the mounting evidence), and the more recent rallying cry over "cultural appropriation," I might have felt some trepidation about the political correctness of … Continue reading The “Chinese Menu” Tarot Timing Spread
Devil, Devil, Who’s Got the Devil?
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sometimes you just know something fishy is going on but you can't put your finger on it where to look for it. Here is a spread that mimics the Clue motif (we recently attended the stage performance in Boston); it uses the Golden Dawn's method of deciding on a "significator" card, then dealing … Continue reading Devil, Devil, Who’s Got the Devil?
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 