As a spin-off of my "House System for Tarot" post, I created a spread that draws the house cards from the bottom of the deck as shadow-card companions to the more outwardly explicit cards pulled from the top of the deck. These cards will show underlying motives or causes that affect the outer aspects of … Continue reading The “Shadow-Play” Motivational Awareness Spread
Learning
An Alternate Approach to On-line Reading
As I've said many times before, I'm suspicious of any card-reading method that doesn't involve a querent physically handling the deck. Consequently, I shy away from on-line reading except under very limited circumstances. One of my "work-arounds" is to request that remote clients shuffle and draw from their own deck of cards, then tell me … Continue reading An Alternate Approach to On-line Reading
Odd Couples
I'm still plowing my way through Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Way of Tarot and have reached the section where he proposes a few obvious (and more than a few off-beat) "duets" between the cards of the tarot. Anyone with a shred of card sense can clearly see the logical ties between the Emperor and Empress, the … Continue reading Odd Couples
A Question of Style
During my long career as a technical and legal writer, my personal goal was to explain complex matters in comprehensive but still entirely lucid language, since to do otherwise could have led to serious human error and/or regulatory exposure for my company. These objectives would seem to be at odds, since completeness and clarity may … Continue reading A Question of Style
Any Way You Slice It
I was just on Pinterest looking at tips for topical reading (that is, divination based on the general "fortune-telling" subjects of love, money, work, health, etc), which I belatedly realized are just variations on the Lost Man Spread. A card is pre-selected as "Significator" to represent the topic of interest, but it is left in … Continue reading Any Way You Slice It
The Party of the Third Part
It's time to visit the subject of "third party readings" once again. An eternal topic of discussion on the tarot forums is whether it's ethical to perform readings about someone who isn't present or who hasn't consented to examination of their affairs. There is a broad span of professional opinion on this, ranging from "it's … Continue reading The Party of the Third Part
“I Yam What I Yam . . .”
". . . and dat's all what I yam!" (In the immortal words of Popeye the Sailor Man.) I came across a neat bit of wisdom on Andy Boroveshengra's blog Fortuna's Picturebook that I'm going to borrow for the theme of this post: "Cards are never something else before they are themselves." https://abcartomancy.blogspot.com/2019/07/shall-i-compare-thee.html Andy was … Continue reading “I Yam What I Yam . . .”
What Happened to Linda? – A Missing Person Case Closure
Linda Minery had been missing from Hillsboro, NH since April of this year, and was just found deceased inside a storage unit that she rented in that town. https://www.concordmonitor.com/Hillsboro-NH-missing-woman-s-body-found-in-storage-unit-27394864 Several things stand out from the reading I did on April 9: https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/what-happened-to-linda-a-missing-person-spread/ This was the instance that caused me to consider whether the stipulation in … Continue reading What Happened to Linda? – A Missing Person Case Closure
Symbolic Triptych: A Past/Present/Future Life-Reading Snapshot
This spread is an oddity for me in that it only has three cards. But I wanted to play around with geometric symbolism and someone asked me for a small-spread recommendation. The square represents stability in past circumstances (even if only in the sense that they aren't going to change) and perfectly symbolizes the "Foundation" … Continue reading Symbolic Triptych: A Past/Present/Future Life-Reading Snapshot
Cut the Cake
My wife makes a very elegant four-layer chocolate/coconut/custard cake with different fillings between the layers. It's like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates; "You never know what you're gonna get," but it's always delightful (yes, even the jelly fillings). It's a perfect analogy for how I view the cards of the tarot. I like to say … Continue reading Cut the Cake
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 