An All-Purpose “One-on-One” Relationship Spread

Relationship questions are the "bread-and-butter" of professional tarot reading, but most of them relate to romantic matters rather than to the more routine type of interpersonal contact. Here is a spread that examines one-on-one connections of any kind from five different perspectives: 1) the overall health of the relationship, along with its condition from 2) …

The Golden Art Nouveau Deck Interview

The Golden Art Nouveau Tarot is a gorgeous Italian rendering of the the Pamela Colman Smith designs that makes excellent use of gold-foil accents and backgrounds. I decided to put it through my "deck interview" spread to see what it will divulge about itself in the way of a pseudo-psychological "personality profile." I don't actually …

The Romany Cut “Wisdom or Folly” Situational Awareness Spread

I recently came across what was described as an "Italian Romany" method of dealing the playing cards to form a spread. That approach uses 15 cards culled from a larger set of 32 as the result of a preliminary reading. It includes the idea of three "Surprise" cards and a "Consolation" card revealing lessons learned …

The “Undoing”

I've mentioned that I've been reading Jonathan Dee's Fortune Telling Using Playing Cards. In it he describes a "Romany" method of reading that uses reversals (apparently old playing cards weren't double-ended so you could do that easily; now you have to mark them first). In his discussion of reversals he brought up a point that …

Is It . . . RWS, or RSW, or WS or SW (or How About KSW)?

As far as I can tell, the publishing house of Rider & Son hasn't been involved with the tarot deck of Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith in over a century (except perhaps as the seller of reproduction rights until US Games bought them); it is now published in something approaching its original form …

Incremental Court Cards

As I continue my study and practice of playing-card divination, I'm gaining some insights into the nature and application of the court cards that can be readily integrated into my knowledge of the tarot courts. The main idea is one of the progressive or incremental unfolding of the hierarchical and numerical energy in human terms. …

A Tale of Five Pips

As promised, here is my first serious attempt at divination with the playing cards. I used the Goldfield Nevada 1864 giant playing card deck, and I also augmented the five-card spread with the Night Sky playing cards to see if there is interpretive syncretism with any astrological fixed stars that may appear in the constellations. …

Cards of Joy and Sorrow

I believe I've reached a tipping point in my growing desire to begin working with playing cards in cartomancy. I've accumulated a number of online sources for reference material (most notably that of Kapherus and "Auntie Tarot"), and I also have a few names to explore (Regina Russell, Cecily Kent, Sepharial) although I own none …

A Further Refinement: Lunar Month Look-Ahead for July-August

All images copyright U.S. Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT The New Moon for July, 2020 occurred on the 20th of the month, 7/20/2020. After I pulled these cards for my monthly "Lunar Month Look-Ahead," I was thinking about numerologically-derived "birth cards" and "year cards," and was struck by the idea that a monthly "New Moon" …

Trump’s Fate: A “Friends-and-Enemies” Example Reading

I'm probably going to disappoint the Trump-haters again, but I try to "just read the cards" with these sociopolitical readings and not grind any axes. As a "third-party" (Libertarian) sympathizer who subscribes to the maxim "Government is not the solution, it's the problem," I like to put US politics under the tarot microscope. There is …