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
Gematrial Heraldry
Gematria is a numerological technique whereby the letters in a Hebrew word are converted into their numerical equivalents and the resulting string of numbers is used to find other Hebrew words with the same numerical value, thus drawing symbolic parallels between them. A text like Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia is invaluable in locating meaningful matches. An … Continue reading Gematrial Heraldry
The “Flavor of the Month” Spread
This monthly forecast spread is segmented into four weekly lines and involves using at least two decks: one that is reassembled and reshuffled between pulls and one that is used to populate the spread positions (more decks may be needed to do this if the same card keeps appearing during the weekly pulls). It makes … Continue reading The “Flavor of the Month” Spread
The “Waypoint” Life-Reading Spread
This is the first spread I created when I returned to the full-time pursuit of tarot and other esoteric studies upon retirement in 2010. I was looking for a more comprehensive and organized life-reading spread to substitute for the "messier" Celtic Cross, one that also brought in astrological (planetary) correspondences. I developed this long before … Continue reading The “Waypoint” Life-Reading Spread
“Cheap Shots” #6
Now don't get your back up here, but . . . Who comes up with these crazy notions? First it's "You should leave each and every card in a spread face-down until you're ready to read it," apparently so you don't contaminate your fragile intuitive apparatus with undigested premature details or derail your narrative train-of-thought … Continue reading “Cheap Shots” #6
The Voyager Tarot – An Appreciation
Tarot decks come and go - or in my case stay, but the effect is the same. Entirely (or at least largely) new systems are encountered more rarely. One such system, the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless and collage artist Ken Knutson, first appeared in 1984 and has been in print ever since. It is … Continue reading The Voyager Tarot – An Appreciation
The “5 W’s + 1” Decision Spread
Those of us who went through the US school system in the middle of the 20th Century were taught the "5 W's" as a device for writing effective narrative, both fact and fiction. According to Wikipedia, the Five W's are questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering or problem solving. They are often … Continue reading The “5 W’s + 1” Decision Spread
“Enemy at the Gates” Vulnerability Spread
This spread was developed specifically to examine confrontations between two antagonists in any kind of contest (politics and sports come to mind). I've used it twice so far for major political situations, once to analyze the Macron and Le Pen face-off for French President, and again to explore the adversarial relationship between the Trump Administration … Continue reading “Enemy at the Gates” Vulnerability Spread
The Significance of Reversed Cards
The appearance of reversed (“upside-down”) cards in a tarot reading is a source of endless confusion for novice readers who are still struggling to understand the upright meanings. Many simply throw in the towel and avoid dealing reversed cards, which is often recommended by tarot teachers and books, at least until more experience has been … Continue reading The Significance of Reversed Cards
Octile House Divisions in Astrology
In the mid-1970s, my brother and I were involved in the Hartford, CT astrological community, and we were also deeply absorbed in exploring the work of Reinhold Ebertin and the German Cosmobiologists. The German astrologers held that only the eight "hard aspects" show any outward manifestation in the life of a native, those defined by … Continue reading Octile House Divisions in Astrology
