The “IF/THEN/ELSE” Decision-Making Spread

In my last essay I discussed the virtues of the three-card tarot spread as the minimum effective layout for divining any substantive issue (personally, I prefer five cards). I mentioned the typical "past/present/future" line spread and the Hegelian "thesis/antithesis/synthesis" array, but the one that piqued my interest is an approach that uses the data-routing logic …

The Threshold of Effectiveness

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This isn't a new topic for me, but I think it deserves revisiting given the ongoing influx of younger people into the art who may not be well-served by the current "anything goes" mentality among some modern tarot writers and practitioners. Having worked with the tarot for almost 50 years now, I've come …

Maura Murray: Third Time’s the Charm?

Maura Murray is (or more likely was at this late date) a young Massachusetts woman who went missing in 2004. I made two previous attempts to ascertain her fate and possible whereabouts using the tarot, one in 2018 and another in 2019. Neither led to any remarkable discovery, and I let the matter drop. I …

The “Flipside” Decision-Making Spread

I've decided to post new tarot spreads both here and in Medium, although my text contributions will be limited to the latter. This is the first new spread I've created in almost a year. I hope you find it useful. It is built upon some of my previous reflections on the nature of reversed cards.

A New Address: Parsifal the Scribe

UPDATE: You can now follow me at this link. What I'm doing right now is culling my old posts for those that are the most thought-provoking and reposting them on Medium. This will give a more concentrated picture of my overall stance on divination as an esoteric art, without having to wade through the more …

End of an Era

I've decided that I will no longer be updating this blog, and will let it go when my subscription runs out next June. I can't deal with the Gutenburg block editor that WP has forced on its users when all I need is a simple text editor, and will be moving shop to another platform …

Garbage In, Garbage Out

This is likely to be a controversial subject. There is an old tenet from computer science that goes: "Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is the concept that flawed, or nonsense input data produces nonsense output or 'garbage.' The principle also applies more generally to all analysis and logic, in that arguments are unsound if their …

The “12 Modes of Consciousness” Spread

Although I'm no fan of using tarot for psychological profiling (which is better served by natal astrology), preferring instead a more action-and-event-oriented approach, here is a spread that adopts a creative spin on the four cognitive functions  of Carl Jung. Reversals may be used to show a further elaboration of the inner landscape.

The Virtue of Simplicity

As time goes on I find myself drawn more and more to working with only the 56 Minor Arcana cards in divination. Granted, the 22 Major Arcana are where most of the philosophical "meat" lies in the tarot, but very few of my readings rise to that level of metaphysical complexity and intensity. Most of …

TURN OFF THE CAPS! (Majors-Only Tarot Reading)

It seems to be popular in Europe to read with only the 22 trump cards and leave the pip and court cards aside. This is surely a pre-20th-Century form of cartomancy that antedates the lofty assumptions of Jungian thought and its psychological archetypes. I'm not familiar enough with Joseph Campbell to say so conclusively, but …