The Cartomancer is a glossy, elegant, high-quality and high-caliber quarterly international journal for the card-reading enthusiast, mainly focusing on Tarot, Lenormand and Oracle deck study and practice. After a distinguished turn at the helm by Jadzia deForest, the publication has now been purchased and is being published by Arwen Lynch-Poe. This is Arwen's inaugural effort, … Continue reading Cutting-Edge Cartomancy
Professional
Cheap Shots #26: The Slippery Slope
One thing that can be said with certainty about divination is that predicting the future in a "yes-or-no" fashion using any of the currently popular methods of inquiry is at best a 50-50 proposition: one percentage point either way spells the difference between success and failure. In short, despite our fascination with the details of the … Continue reading Cheap Shots #26: The Slippery Slope
They Loves Me, They Loves Me Not*
*My grammatically absurd title is an intentional poke at the current practice of substituting a plural pronoun in situations demanding a singular one as a way to avoid gender specificity. While there may be a place for gender-neutral pronouns in the English language, this clumsy abomination most definitely ain't it; we clearly need a new … Continue reading They Loves Me, They Loves Me Not*
“Cheap Shots” #24: A Herd By Any Other Name
Preponderance: A fancy word that simply means "lots more of one thing than another." A herd of mostly-brown horses. The consensus among my tarot forum-mates is split as to whether it's best to look for dominant "signatures" in a reading first - for example, many more cards of one suit, number, rank or orientation than … Continue reading “Cheap Shots” #24: A Herd By Any Other Name
“Cheap Shots” #22: Tough Talk
I've written on the topic of tarot professionalism before (see Volume 3 - Issue 2 of The Cartomancer), but recent forum exchanges bring me back to the subject. What might be termed the "journeyman class" of tarot readers- those who have been reading for family and friends for some time - is strongly tempted to … Continue reading “Cheap Shots” #22: Tough Talk
Professional Ethics
The assurance of ethical conduct during tarot readings is a persistent source of anxiety for readers just starting out in professional practice. Government jurisdictions that have anti-fortune-telling laws on the books make it that much more stressful. When I began reading publicly in a professional setting, I crafted a set of ground-rules for myself that … Continue reading Professional Ethics
A Question of Accuracy
I recently participated in a forum discussion involving ways to increase one's accuracy when reading for others. Many readers experience occasional lapses in querent satisfaction after a long string of successful attempts, and are puzzled why this should be the case since nothing has changed in their approach. My thought on this is that they … Continue reading A Question of Accuracy
Court Cards as Scapegoats
It can probably be said with some confidence that a good many people, when finding themselves in difficulty, first cast about for some other person on whom to fix the blame. Human nature seems to crave a salve for the troubled conscience, and woe to anyone who is careless enough to look even marginally culpable. … Continue reading Court Cards as Scapegoats
The Professional’s Toolbox
I returned to professional public reading around a year ago, after many years away. The first thing that struck me is the number of new decks that are available now, mostly Waite-Smith (aka "RWS") clones. As a long-time student and reader of Aleister Crowley's esoterically profound Thoth deck, I wasn't entirely comfortable using it across … Continue reading The Professional’s Toolbox
The Art of Reading
Cartomancy is fundamentally a story-tellers art, in which each card in a spread forms a scene in a narrative that logically advances the story from the preceding card and segues neatly into the next. The true test of the raconteur's skill occurs when facing what at first appears to be a hopeless jumble of mismatched … Continue reading The Art of Reading
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 