AUTHOR'S NOTE: Recently I was digging through my old posts looking for a specific piece of information and came across this amusing and instructive bit of whimsy that first appeared in a slightly different form. (I've linked the original post below, but be aware that it gets deep!) The essay involved numerological correspondences between pairs … Continue reading A Drama of Threes
RWS Material
“Three Sizes Too Small:” My RWS Apostasy
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've worked with the Thoth deck for over 50 years because I think it cuts much deeper than the rest. I'm also fond of the Tarot de Marseille (TdM) and the Lenormand cards, and I'm chipping away at playing-card divination, the I Ching and geomancy. The Waite-Smith (RWS) deck is far down in … Continue reading “Three Sizes Too Small:” My RWS Apostasy
The Eight of Swords as “Interference”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Anyone who grew up in the 1950s with a tiny black-and-white CRT (cathode ray tube) television and a "rabbit-ear" antenna knows what video "snow" is: the grainy, flickering gray haze that all but obscured the transmitted images due to poor reception. Although the main culprits were distance from the transmitter and occasional electrical … Continue reading The Eight of Swords as “Interference”
The Ten of Swords: Success by a Thousand Cuts
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The title is a riff on ling chi, the ancient Chinese method of torture and execution that bled the victim to death over an extended period of time using myriad small cuts (technically, the methodical removal of body parts). In English it is variously called "slow slicing," "lingering death," or "death by a … Continue reading The Ten of Swords: Success by a Thousand Cuts
The Approximate Tarot Reader
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Those tarot readers who use decks with non-scenic or semi-scenic minor cards are already masters of approximation since they aren't being steered by someone else's vision. They had to come up with a personal set of definitions that is not dependent on prosaic scenes, so their divination is often fresher, more extemporaneous and … Continue reading The Approximate Tarot Reader
The 6 of Swords: Steering by Troubled Waters
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In an old post of several years ago I mentioned a sidelight to the RWS version of this card that views the choppy surface to the right of the boat as driving it toward the calmer waters to its left and thus uneventfully on to the far shore. An interlude of "smooth sailing … Continue reading The 6 of Swords: Steering by Troubled Waters
The Reversed Hanged Man: Transcending Forced Idleness
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've just encountered another instance of the reversed Hanged Man in a tarot reading, and decided to revisit my past assumptions about it. There are three ways to approach it: practical, psychological and spiritual. In divination I usually consider its practical implications first and its psychological impact next, while spiritual consequences are not … Continue reading The Reversed Hanged Man: Transcending Forced Idleness
The Fives and Sevens as “Discord”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've written in the past about the relationship between the tarot Fives, Sixes and Sevens (linked below), but my recent introduction to the art of playing-card divination brought a fresh perspective to my take on the subject. In standard cartomancy, the Fives and Sevens are eight of the most dissonant "pip" cards in … Continue reading The Fives and Sevens as “Discord”
The Suit of Pentacles: “Plan the Work and Work the Plan”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been following the drama surrounding the proposed White House ballroom. Statements made by the administration that the court only prohibited ground-breaking and that planning would still proceed reminded me of my current thinking on the tarot suit of Pentacles (aka Coins and Disks). A few years ago I developed a set of … Continue reading The Suit of Pentacles: “Plan the Work and Work the Plan”
The Nines and Tens: Perfection and Postscript
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As evident in the online tarot community, current practice reflects the general agreement that "if Nine is good, Ten must be better" (with the obvious exception of the suit of Swords). The genesis of this idea most likely goes back to the assertion of Pythagoras that Ten is the "perfect" number, as symbolized … Continue reading The Nines and Tens: Perfection and Postscript
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 