Now back to our regular programing . . . This spread is designed to examine head-on encounters between two people with potentially very different agendas and expectations. It's purpose is not so much to find common ground as to minimize negative exposure to the querent. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ty1wbq0b42ljg6t/The%20Inconvenient%20Truths%20Personal%20Encounter%20Spread.pdf?raw=1
Tarot
Window to Another World
I no longer remember where this came from, but it offers helpful advice for the unalloyed (if there is such a thing) use of intuition in reading tarot cards. Personally, I agree fully with the last sentence but find the rest just a little too ingenuous, since human mental activity - no matter how inspired, … Continue reading Window to Another World
Gerald Suster’s New Age Rant
I've already expressed my growing lack of enthusiasm for all things "New Age" (aka "the Piscean Pipe-dream" and "the False Spring") due to its slow decline into commercialism and faddish superficiality. But I'm an absolute piker compared to the vitriol of esoteric writer Gerald Suster; his rhetoric could peel paint. "The Three of Wands is … Continue reading Gerald Suster’s New Age Rant
Serena’s Tarot Light-bulb Joke
I haven't read this one in a while, but thought I would share it because it offers a lot of sound tarot wisdom in humorous form (© 1999 by Serena Powers). Q: How many Major Arcana does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: All of them: • The Fool has already started … Continue reading Serena’s Tarot Light-bulb Joke
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
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
