The “Condensing and Concentrating” Cups

In his 1949 Tarot de Marseille book, Paul Marteau made frequent use of the term "condensing" when discussing the action of the suit of Cups on the emotional "vapors" (my word, not his) of the human psyche. The Cups are obviously vessels for holding liquid, and my fanciful take on Marteau's idea is that they …

Daily “Hermetic Meditation” #1

Casting around for something new to post, I decided to do a series of daily "Hermetic Meditations" using the various Golden-Dawn and Thoth-based decks I own. I have around a dozen of them now and will be rotating them in and out of the six-card pull regularly. The layout is the graphic for my "Pentagram …

What’s Up Next?

Having spent countless hours formatting my five e-books for publication. I'm at a loss where to take my daily posts next. Over the last five years I've said everything I want to say about the tarot (sometimes more than once, as I found out when compiling my essays). I'm thinking I will get back into …

“Facing the Future” – A Decision-Making Advice Spread

Thinking about a recent question on "stay or go" decisions, I created a deceptively simple spread that uses random court-card facing to choose one of four three-card decision paths to show the advice and the short and long term consequences of the decision. It uses a "prepared" deck and the quintessence method. (Note that "gaze" …

Vole! Aude! Scie! Tace!

There is an Hermetic maxim that goes "To Will, To Dare, To Know and To Keep (or Be) Silent." It parallels the observation that those who truly know don't talk about it, and those who speak as if they do don't really know. There are several variations on this theme; the one that I like …

Tarot Reading and “Psychic Vampirism”

As it frequently does, the subject of defending oneself against negative influences while reading the cards for other people came up again on one of the Facebook tarot pages. I usually approach this perceived vulnerability as Astral Plane intrusion (think "Ouija board") but it is even more likely to come from the person across the …

My Tarot Trajectory: Wondering, Wandering, Writing, Reading

Lately I've been examining my current relationship with the tarot as a subject of serious study and practice. During the nearly four decades that I lived in the woods of New Hampshire, I did a lot of thinking about the Thoth deck and working with Crowley's premises in a theoretical way (wondering about and wandering …

The Major Arcana and the “Box of Chocolates”

In previous posts I've presented the observation that, in my own experience, Major Arcana (or trump) cards appearing in a spread seldom indicate the actual arrival of significant events in everyday terms, and serve more to show the overriding tone, theme or scenic backdrop for the period covered by the reading. They may still create …

For What It’s Worth

In my book Tarot Hermetica, I made the following observation about the use of esoteric principles and practices in tarot reading: "Recent years have seen a groundswell of resistance to the theories of esoteric interpretation formulated by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its chief architect, Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, at the end …

Tarot Principles & Practices: A Deep Dive into the Tarot Reader’s Art

This is the final book in my series of blog compilations (at least until I write some more stuff). It's a book of divination principles and practices (including basic and advanced techniques, tactics, strategies and resources) for the tarot reader who intends to work publicly with the Waite-Smith deck or one of its numerous “clones.” …