AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've just begun reading Donald Tyson's book, Tarot Magic, one that I've wanted to own for a long time under its original title, Portable Magic. Its premise is that tarot cards can stand in for the elaborate trappings of full-blown ceremonial magic, and we can just box up the deck and put it … Continue reading Portable Magic by Another Name
The “Eclipsed Priorities” Spread: Competing Agendas, Solutions and Consequences
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is an elegant conflict-resolution spread that explores the overlapping consequences of optimistic and pessimistic trajectories converging in a tarot reading. It's a further experiment with using a "grim" deck to suggest the less-desirable scenario and an "upbeat" deck to convey the more-auspicious outlook. The design shows the two on an intersecting "collision … Continue reading The “Eclipsed Priorities” Spread: Competing Agendas, Solutions and Consequences
The Map and the Territory: Precision in Tarot Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: "The map is not the territory" is a celebrated statement by semanticist Alfred Korzybski that points out the cognitive disconnect between viewing a printed map and physically walking the land it represents. I've used it often to convey the idea that a tarot prediction is only an approximation of one possible future, and … Continue reading The Map and the Territory: Precision in Tarot Reading
“Passing Through Zero:” Transcending the Victim Archetype (A Tarot Spread)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As an astrologer I've long been familiar with the "victim mentality" as revealed in the natal horoscope. (I once called it the "doormat syndrome" exemplified by the Virgo-Pisces axis: people who become accustomed to being walked on.) Now I see that it has been elevated to the status of an "archetype" and decided … Continue reading “Passing Through Zero:” Transcending the Victim Archetype (A Tarot Spread)
Tarot del Toro New-Deck Profile
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This recent deck acquisition has an interesting back-story. I was gifted the Lord of the Rings Tarot that was created by the same artist (Tomas Hijo) but I already own it, so I took the second one back to the store to exchange it and was pleased to find another Hijo work purely … Continue reading Tarot del Toro New-Deck Profile
An Unsentimental Look at the Lenormand Lilies
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here I'm taking a stand against the non-traditional* view that the Lenormand Lilies is the "sex" card of the pack. In my opinion, this belief leans too heavily on a whimsical Freudian assumption that touts as its basis the reproductive organs of the lily blossom, a premise that relies more on "free-association" from … Continue reading An Unsentimental Look at the Lenormand Lilies
Lenormand: Wisdom In A Cup
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As Mary K. Greer has pointed out, the original source for many of the Lenormand card descriptions was not solely the German Game of Hope (although that added to the vocabulary), but rather the practice of "coffee-ground" divination that predated it, at first in the Middle East and later in Europe. Among the … Continue reading Lenormand: Wisdom In A Cup
Lenormand and Astrology: Strange Bedfellows?
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I prefer to keep my Lenormand practice free of entanglement with other modes of divination: that means no mingling with tarot or astrology and no psychic conjecture based on free-association from the images. I'm more practical and literal than eclectic and improvisational in my interpretation, and my use of intuition in Lenormand reading … Continue reading Lenormand and Astrology: Strange Bedfellows?
Airing Out the Tradition: When “Organic” Trumps “Scientific”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Although he was addressing Medieval poetry and poets in The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis made several observations that can be directly applied to the diviner's approach to cartomantic tradition.* He mentioned that many literary works of that era were an amalgam and synthesis (or at worst a pastiche) of contributions by a host … Continue reading Airing Out the Tradition: When “Organic” Trumps “Scientific”
Into the Mystic: The Triangular Grand Tableau
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Very little about the Lenormand system of divination can be called metaphysical or psychological, and as a nominal traditionalist I believe this is appropriate despite efforts by tarot transplants to hijack it with their intuitive and psychic sensibilities. But I've been re-reading the Lenormand Symbols e-book by Anthony Louis and decided to take … Continue reading Into the Mystic: The Triangular Grand Tableau
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 