The “Tetractys” Decision-Making Spread

With this spread I believe I've found a satisfactory alternative to my long-standing use of the venerable and reliable Celtic Cross. I want to acknowledge that this isn't entirely original work; I found a suggested interpretive model on Wikipedia that was presented as one possibility among many. I tweaked most of the position descriptions to …

Counterparts and the Tarot de Marseille

This tableau presents the Tarot de Marseille in a matched arrangement of numerological and archetypal counterparts that provides a condensed "snapshot" of the model I've been exploring in detail with the Waite-Smith deck. This layout shows the pre-eminence of the first nine numbered trump cards (the Fool as zero is a non-participant in this model), …

Recombinant Trumps: Chariot and Devil

The fourth array of trump-card counterparts involves the Chariot and the Devil on opposite sides of Justice, and the relevant numbers for the accompanying cards are Seven, Fifteen and Six; there are no court-card counterparts for these trumps. Once again, I have inserted the Fool into this tableau without an obvious numerological derivation because the …

Recombinant Trumps: Strength and Temperance

The third array of trump-card counterparts involves Strength and Temperance on opposite sides of Justice, and the relevant numbers for the accompanying cards are Eight, Fourteen and Five. I decided to insert the Fool in all of these tableaux, even without an obvious numerological derivation. because the Fool represents the "jumping-off place" for all of …

Recombinant Trumps: Hermit and Death

The second array of trump-card counterparts involves the Hermit and Death on opposite sides of Justice, and the relevant numbers for the accompanying cards are Nine and Four. The interplay of numbers across this one is fascinating, and it will be interesting to see if it repeats with the remaining eight tableaux. The Hermit, numbered …

A Milestone Moment

I have now reached 1,000 posts on this blog since its launch in July of 2017. I've had just under 40,000 views in that time, not a lot compared to some of the blogs I follow, but it did jump more than 25% so far this year over the 2018 total. As always, I try …

Edging Up to the Runes

I've decided to take on the challenge of familiarizing myself with the Nordic runes to the point that I can successfully divine with them, at least in a non-professional way.  I bought Lisa Chamberlain's introductory book on the subject and have elected to pursue the more traditional approach of Edred Thorsson and Nigel Pennick and …

Recombinant Trumps: Rescuing Chaos from Conformity

This post brings together a few ideas I've floated in past essays: "playing both ends against the middle" when approaching the trump-card sequence; the concept of "numerological counterparts" among the trumps; the trumps as "archetypal expressions" of the "pip" cards; and the linking of certain trumps through means other than immediate proximity. I've recently been …

The “Keys to the Kingdom”

Somewhere in the dim and distant past I encountered the idea that astrology represents the "gold key" to unlocking visions of the future through divination, in that it is objective and rational (that is, based on visible phenomena), while the more subjective and intuitive tarot provides the "silver key." I can no longer find the …

Alike But Different: The Two and Three of Wands

In her book The Tarot and the Tree of Life, Isabel Kliegman goes to some length to justify why we need both the Two and Three of Wands in a pack of tarot cards when - at least in the Waite-Smith deck - they seem to be almost identical in appearance. For me there has …