Once again, I decided to try getting more interpretive value out of the Golden Dawn's Chaldean correspondence wheel beyond its card-by-card significance. As an experiment I created matrices of the five cards that are "in play" at the ingress of the Sun into each of the zodiacal signs: the Ace and Princess that relate to … Continue reading The “Chalice of Earth” Taurus Ingress Matrix
Tarot Theory
Wands and Swords: Subtle Distinctions
In my recent thinking about the minor-card suits of the tarot, I recognized that there is some functional convergence (if not quite overlap) between the characteristic energies of the Wands and the Swords: as Fire and Air, both are elementally masculine, active and positive, and both strive for self-expression in a direct and unsentimental way. … Continue reading Wands and Swords: Subtle Distinctions
The Threes as “Feedback Loop”
In my reading I came across the assertion that the Two in tarot always represents an incipient action arising from the potential embodied in the Ace of its suit. (It shows the "first step" or initial outbound impulse that the static, self-absorbed Ace has only been pondering up to that point.) The imputed binary state … Continue reading The Threes as “Feedback Loop”
The Near-Sighted Tarot Reader
AUTHOR'S NOTE: No, this isn't an allegory about a cartomancer with defective vision, it's an elaboration of my previous thoughts concerning the reliable duration of a tarot reading. The title was just a clever ploy to grab your attention. It's a given that "things change," especially when more than one person is involved in a … Continue reading The Near-Sighted Tarot Reader
The Crane and The Snake: “Hard” and “Soft” Tarot Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Reading style" is a consideration that is always at the forefront of my thinking on the most effective ways to wield the tarot when divining for other people. I was just nudged a little further along the path by my study of traditional Chinese philosophy. I recently finished a thought-provoking book, The Tao … Continue reading The Crane and The Snake: “Hard” and “Soft” Tarot Reading
The “Gang of Ten”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: After reading Paul Marteau's peculiar statement that the Fool doesn't necessarily belong at either end of the Major Arcana sequence as 0 or 22, but would more properly be found after any multiple of 7 (e.g. the Chariot or Temperance), I felt I had to drive the notion from my head by tackling … Continue reading The “Gang of Ten”
Islands in the Sea: The “Gateless” Suit of Pentacles
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is one of the more intriguing and challenging mental tasks I've undertaken in a while: rethinking the numbered cards of Pentacles in line with Barbara Walker's discussion in The Secrets of the Tarot: History, Origins and Symbolism. I've long felt that the quaint, folkloric descriptions that have grown up around the Minor … Continue reading Islands in the Sea: The “Gateless” Suit of Pentacles
National Football League 2022 Season: Buffalo Bills Win-Loss Predictions
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a lengthy experiment applying the "point gap" method I developed to replace the imperfect scoring technique I've used for predicting the outcome of NFL football games over the past few years. Rather than trying to project actual scores, it focuses on the point separation between the two teams at the end … Continue reading National Football League 2022 Season: Buffalo Bills Win-Loss Predictions
A New National Football League Prediction Model
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is my substantive post for today; I like sports forecasting because it offers immediate and irrefutable proof of the accuracy of one's techniques. For several years now I've been using the tarot to attempt prediction of the winning team in sporting events, particularly National Football League and Major League Baseball games in … Continue reading A New National Football League Prediction Model
Color Me “Plaid”
The more Tarot de Marseille books I read, the more weary I become of the ubiquitous (and usually anal) attempts to parse all of the bits of local color in an image into some kind of coherent meaning; when they don't drive me crazy, these exhaustive permutations soon degenerate into a monochromatic blur in the … Continue reading Color Me “Plaid”
