I spent decades wrestling with ways to translate Temperance into practical interpretive terms, never once realizing that the Hierophant posed just as big a puzzle for me. I was content thinking of the latter as showing traditional values and conventional wisdom of a practical sort, primarily due to its correspondence to the conservative fixed sign, … Continue reading Not Your Daddy’s Clergyman After All
Trumps
Rota Fortunae: Ticket to Ride
In my unpublished book on tarot spreads, I made the following statement about the Wheel of Fortune: It sits in the eleventh position of the sequence, mid-way between Key 0 (the Fool) and Key 21 (the World), bringing to closure the first half of the Fool's journey of self-discovery and stimulating a fresh start with … Continue reading Rota Fortunae: Ticket to Ride
Simple Keyword Lists
Somewhere along the way I gathered these useful lists of basic keywords for the Major and Minor Arcana of the Thoth deck. I may have condensed them myself into this particular form, but more likely they came from the Aeclectic Tarot forum or an on-line blog. If I could recall from whom, I would credit … Continue reading Simple Keyword Lists
Court and Minor Cards as Allies to the Major Arcana
The appeal of systematically aligning the cards of the Minor Arcana with the Major Arcana has engaged many thinkers on the tarot, and a number of schemes have been proposed, most with a numerical or hierarchical root. Attempts along these lines have been made by James Wanless (Voyager Tarot) and Elizabeth Hazel (The Tarot Decoded). … Continue reading Court and Minor Cards as Allies to the Major Arcana
The “Aha!” Card
Ever wonder why most tarot decks at one time contained 80 cards and not 78? Modern printing practices seem to have changed, but not so long ago tarot decks were printed on sheets of card stock that produced 40 cards per sheet. So the deck creator - or more often the publisher - had two … Continue reading The “Aha!” Card
Astro-Tarot Decanate Tableau and Spread
It's probably obvious that I'm a tireless tinkerer. In the present case, I took the round zodiacal presentation of the Chaldean decans aligned with the cards of the tarot and turned it into a tabular structure. This arranges all of the decan cards, the court cards and the Major Arcana in an easy-to-read format that … Continue reading Astro-Tarot Decanate Tableau and Spread
Yes, No and Maybe Cards
A widely-held conviction among modern tarot readers is that there are no categorically "good" or "bad" cards in the deck, therefore no single card can give a "yes" or "no" answer via a one-card pull. I often quote James Wanless, who said "There are no negative cards, only opportunities." As a working hypothesis, this seems … Continue reading Yes, No and Maybe Cards
Fortitude and the TdM Master Layout
Before anyone flees for the exit, this 78-card extravaganza is NOT a spread for divination, it's a systematic way to assign interpretive meaning to the suit cards of the Tarot de Marseille (TdM) by “borrowing” it from the “trump” cards of the same number (up to a point). Finding meaning in the numbered small (or … Continue reading Fortitude and the TdM Master Layout
The Crosstown Traffic Series
Here is something that will be of absolutely no practical use to anybody except those of us who think deep, convoluted thoughts about tarot as a "system" (and maybe not even then). It falls off the far edge of theoretical thinking even for me, but I do like the visuals. (And I always did admire … Continue reading The Crosstown Traffic Series
Trump Cards for Timing
In the temporal scheme of all things tarot, the card suits and numbers work reasonably well together to create a model for estimating the timing of future events. Although it is deeply flawed (for example, no reply to a job application is likely to take "years;" the more practical answer is probably "never"), the rule-of-thumb … Continue reading Trump Cards for Timing
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 