Waite’s Celtic Cross: A Critical Analysis

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Imagine that you're an experienced diviner at the beginning of the 20th Century when you first encounter Arthur Edward Waite's "Ancient Celtic Method of Divination" in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. What would a critical assessment of its advantages and shortcomings suggest to you? (The obviously hand-drawn image below is from the …

The Color of Wisdom

In The Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky describes the color violet (one of the least prominent colors in his version of the Tarot de Marseille) as the "color of wisdom." As a graphic artist I consider violet a "secondary" color that is a blend of the primary colors red and blue. In esoteric color theory, …

The Hierophant: Theocratic Frontman or Harbinger of a Higher Purpose?

The Hierophant is another card of the Major Arcana with which I take issue, primarily because I'm highly skeptical of the arguments and orthodoxy of all religious faiths of the monotheistic, patriarchal (specifically Abrahamic) type. I don't believe spirituality can or should be put in a dogmatic "box" of any kind, it flows freely through …

The King of Swords: A Study in Impartiality

Once upon a time I was doing a deep dive into the subject of the "facing" (aka "gaze" or "regard") of the human figures on the tarot cards. Facing is often seen as showing where the focus or attention of a card falls outside of its normal span of control, usually conveying an impulse to …

The Eights: Concentrated Fulfillment or Adaptation and Adjustment?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This essay is a reprise of more than one prior post, but I recently came across Alejandro Jodorowsky's extremely favorable assessment of the number 8 in its role as tarot symbolism and felt compelled to restate my case. While some esoteric thinkers consider the number 8 to be the ultimate "perfection" of the …

The Lenormand “Mystery Story” Spread & Example Reading

An online conversation about the use of tarot for exploring real-life "crime stories" brought out the observation that Lenormand cards can be used for this purpose too. Since my Lenormand work has been slacking lately, I decided to create a spread for the occasion. This layout could probably be used with Kipper cards and tarot …

Cheating the Hitman: Musings on Death (the Card)

"And when the hitman comesHe knows damn well he has been cheated" - from Twilight Zone by Golden Earring I was listening to the Golden Earring song this morning and thinking about its implications for the traditional Death card of the tarot, in which the skeleton seems to be harvesting human heads. The modern assumption …

Turkey-Day Football, 2022: Buffalo Bills at Detroit Lions

UPDATE: The game was closer than expected: Bills 28, Lions 25. I didn't watch the game but reviewed the final statistics. As far as I can tell from the numbers, the Bills moved the ball more effectively than the Lions, especially on the ground, even though they suffered more sacks, penalties, punt turnovers and interceptions. …

The “Falling Into Conclusions” 3-Phase Process Development Spread

Here's some more fallout from my study of Etteilla; in his reading examples he talks about one card in a spread "falling into" another, and the meaning of both being modified by their interaction. This spread looks suspiciously like "Production Management 101," but I can see it being used for complex personal or group projects.

A Single-Event Predictive Approach

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was recently answering a question on one of the tarot forums about the best way to cover pragmatic topics in a "predictive" type of tarot reading. I've always been partial to the "Five W's" of effective creative writing that were drilled into me in high school: "Who, What, Why, Where and When?" …