This spread is based on the work I did with Alejandro Jodorowsky's list of trump-card questions that I posted yesterday. It is one step above a general life-reading in level of detail and is intended for use when the sitter doesn't have a more personal question to ask of the cards. The spread begins with … Continue reading The “Trump-Card Interrogation” Spread
No Question? No Problem
Most diviners have occasionally encountered sitters who are too shy, nervous or confused to come up with a single question to put to the tarot. My practice has always been to have them concentrate on what they want to know while shuffling the deck in a form of silent communion, although my goal hasn't been … Continue reading No Question? No Problem
Predicting the Future: Prescience or Self-Projection?
There is a strong sentiment among experienced diviners that "fortune-telling" of the flatly predictive variety - while it is not exactly denounced - is an impractical and unreliable pursuit, for a couple of reasons: 1) the future is a moving target and can change regularly based on intervening circumstances not always of our own making … Continue reading Predicting the Future: Prescience or Self-Projection?
The Man Behind the Curtain
In The Wizard of Oz, Frank Morgan as the Wizard thundered at Dorothy and her companions, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" If memory serves (it's been a few years since I read the book), in his "master class" material Paul Fenton-Smith mentions that he treats a reversed card in a tarot … Continue reading The Man Behind the Curtain
The Devil’s Due
A very long time ago when I first began working with the Thoth deck, I encountered the idea that the Devil card brings enormous physical energy and creativity to the subject of a reading (even if Crowley did inevitably characterize it as procreative or at any rate sexual). This seemed like a more useful take … Continue reading The Devil’s Due
Tore Down
Texas bluesman Freddie King once wrote a song titled Tore Down with the refrain "I'm tore down, almost level with the ground." This is a near-perfect expression of the customary take on the Tower card when it appears in a reading: a cautionary glimpse at some kind of calamitous "accident waiting to happen." In my … Continue reading Tore Down
A “Breaking the Chain” Example Reading
This turned out to be a provocative and entertaining spread in actual use. For the topic I chose to examine the causal chain for my admitted "sweet tooth," especially around the holiday season. I purposely selected the Empress as the "Root Card" for my dietary indiscretion: "It's not nice to say 'No' to Mother Nature!"). … Continue reading A “Breaking the Chain” Example Reading
“Breaking the Chain” Cause-and-Effect Spread
This is the spread I promised yesterday; it is built on the assumption that the sitter can best decide (based on the subconscious "hunches" that most of us harbor) which time-frame should be explored first in determining why present circumstances are the way they are and what might be done about them. Since our behavior … Continue reading “Breaking the Chain” Cause-and-Effect Spread
Spread Fatigue
I've been thinking lately that, in the creation of new layouts, I seem to have exhausted the range of geometric spread patterns commonly used in the performance of tarot readings. So far - and often more than once - I've tried circles, squares both small and large, rectangles, crosses, "X"-es, spirals, horizontal lines, vertical lines, … Continue reading Spread Fatigue
The “Pernt” and the “Cherce”
I must be getting really desperate if I'm resorting to "Archie-Bunker-isms" for my post titles; for the culturally uninitiated, it reads "The Point and the Choice." What I'm referring to, of course, is the key point (goal, not location) in our approach to divining with the tarot cards and the choices we make in their … Continue reading The “Pernt” and the “Cherce”
