Cosmic “Drop-Outs”*

*Alternate Titles: "Yet Another Screed on 'How Tarot Works' or 'The Things You Come Up With at 4:00 AM" Taking their cue from advances in astrophysics, science fiction writers at one time loved to talk about the "space-time continuum," mainly as a backdrop for their noodling over ideas like "curved space" and "worm-holes" as a …

A “Threepenny Opera” Followup Reading: Arm Surgery

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have quite a few short essays jostling for inclusion here and I've been hard-pressed to maintain my self-imposed limit of one post per day. So I won't in a few special cases, mainly new spreads and example readings that are more illustrative than profoundly informative. As mentioned in my previous post on …

The “Captains of Industry” Business Dynamic Spread

“Business Management” spreads are some of the most challenging patterns to craft since there so many dynamic variables, vested interests and external influences to consider that it can be difficult to decide where to place the focus. You can quickly wind up with a sprawling, multi-armed monstrosity. (Hint: Despite its appearance, this really isn’t one …

The “Old Moon” and Divination

In her generally excellent (but now slightly dated) 1984 book The Secrets of the Tarot: Origins, History and Symbolism, Barbara Walker describes the colors of the Hindu Gunas as white, red and black, and also relates those colors to the three primary faces of the Moon goddess: waxing New Moon is white; effulgent Full Moon …

A “Threepenny Opera” Example Reading: Arm Surgery

My wife recently fell and fractured both bones of her forearm near the wrist. They're calling it an "unstable" fracture that will require two plates to be inserted into her arm; that surgery is scheduled for today. I performed my "Threepenny Opera" multi-deck selection method to a three-card line asking about the outcome of the …

“Hey, You” – Pink Floyd Under the “Tarot-scope”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I believe I've found the ideal use for the Waite-Smith tarot deck. (All images used here are copyright of U.S. Games Systems, Stamford, CT, although I understand the RWS deck may now be in the public domain.) Roger Water's somber and occasionally morose lyrics (often about Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barret's fractured …

The “Threepenny Opera” Multi-Deck Selection Method

Although some people shuffle the packs together when using more than one tarot deck in a reading, I've never found that approach particularly easy or effective due to inconsistent card size, thickness and finish. So I have always shuffled the decks separately for any multi-deck spread, usually placing them in different rows, columns or "chains" …

Patience Is Not A Virtue (When Persistence Won’t Do)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: At the risk of "beating a dead horse," I'm going to present a few more thoughts on my uneasy, rather tepid rapport with the (Rider) Waite-Smith (RWS) Tarot and my much more robust appreciation of Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot. I come down somewhere in the middle on "pip" decks like the Tarot de …

The “Tarot-Cartography” Relocation Spread

Here's a little less-complicated fun with reversals. It's based on the "Astro-Cartography" model from the 1970s. This approach to relocation assumes that we have an urge to move but don't know exactly where we want to go to find the best "fit." It uses a process of elimination based on the appearance of reversed cards …

Lurkers on the Threshold

There is an old cliche that "a bad penny always turns up." This aphorism perfectly describes the barely civil dispute about the practice of reading reversed cards that is currently simmering on one of my more advanced tarot forums. The weary consensus is to just "pick your poison" (I'm full of platitudes today) and move …