Tarot Taken Twice

Long before I read the chapter titled "The Tarot Two by Two" in Alejandro Jodorowsky's book The Way of Tarot (in which he examines the cards as pairs, couples and duets), I was advising beginners that - rather than trying to learn the meaning of individual cards in an interpretive vacuum - it's best to …

A Two-Tiered New Year’s Forecast Spread with Monthly Updates

AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's time once more for New Year's predictions. Here is a spread that offers a little more "meat on the bone." I've used this approach before (notably in my annual "Wheel of the Year" readings), but here I'm providing additional storytelling guidance for its use. The premise is that the yearly forecast is …

Busting Trump: A “Conditional Yes-or-No” Example Reading

It appears increasingly likely that former President Donald Trump will be charged with a criminal offense by the Department of Justice as a result of the "January 6th Commission" recommendations. I decided to test my new "yes-or-no" spread by asking whether he will be convicted. I used the Thoth deck for this reading, with "Adjustment" …

A “Conditional” Yes-or-No Outcome Spread

My experience has been that "yes-or-no" answers delivered by the tarot are seldom crystal-clear and often have "strings attached" that cloud the picture. I call such muddling factors "conditional qualifiers" and use what I describe as the "Yes, But/Maybe, If/No, Unless" paradigm to analyze their influence. In each case the caveat means that the seeker …

The Tens: A “Holding Pattern”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I won't regale you with where I got the raw material for this essay; suffice it to say that it's "of a piece" with my last dozen "sourced" ideas. The Tens of the Minor Arcana have been described as representing a "cessation of effort" while awaiting new information or a fresh impulse to …

“You Can’t Get There from Here:” Targeted Spreads and the Prepared Deck

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was recently involved in an online discussion about the uncommon practices that readers employ on a regular basis. I took this to mean those techniques I've developed over the years that are outside the mainstream as defined by standard teaching methods and the tarot literature. The following is just a snapshot of …

A “Higher Arc/Lower Arc” Developmental Forecast Spread

Typically, in reading situations where I don't know the sitter's specific question or topic of interest in advance, I begin the narrative on a practical note, looking for "action-and-event-oriented" situational-awareness details and developmental insights. If the querent doesn't connect with what I'm saying, I will change direction into a more psychological angle. Recently I wrote …

Aleister Crowley: “Hierophant” or “Devil?”

I'm now reading Alejandro Jodorowsky's commentary in The Way of Tarot about the number Five and its "decimal equivalency" in the Pope (Hierophant) and the Devil. One passage struck me as an accidental portrait of Aleister Crowley as an exemplar of what Jodo is talking about: "The Five of Wands represents two temptations: sublimating the …

The “Active Witness” and the Minor Arcana

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is another interesting observation from Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Way of Tarot. In it he notes that, when a "pip" card of the Tarot de Marseille exhibits a red dot or figurative "eye," the symbol represents an "active (that is, actively involved) witness" to the action signified by the card. This idea inspired …

The Sixes as “Solar Centerpiece”

I recently reconnected with an idea I had forgotten about from my previous studies: adding together the integers of certain sets of three consecutive numbers from One to Nine (and, if necessary, refining the sum through "Theosophical reduction") will always yield the number Six. The same is true of the double-digit trump cards, and actually …