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.” …

“My Publications” Listing

I just added a new page to the sidebar on my home page showing the tarot e-books I've published on the Lulu self-publishing platform, along with links to the Lulu Bookstore if you're interested in purchasing any of them. They include a Tarot de Marseille book; a large book of full-color spreads and guidance for …

Tarot Hermetica – Basics and Beyond

I finally completed compiling all of my blog posts on the subject of divination with the esoteric tarot. It's 265 pages, published as an e-book in PDF format, and available on the Lulu bookstore.

Pleasure and Fun, On The Double

This morning I was thinking abut the old Doublemint gum jingle and how it might be applied to the elemental dignities between the Minor Arcana in two-card sets. "Double your pleasure, double your fun!" But I switched it up a bit to create four "opportunities:" "Double your pleasure, double your pain;Double your money, double your …

The Curmudgeon’s Tarot

In this volume I've compiled 180 not-particularly-worshipful essays on the state of the divinatory arts culled from the more than 1,400 posts I've written since 2017. It's only available as an e-book on Lulu, and it won't work on Kindle. My next project will be "Hermetic Tarot Fundamentals" drawn from my Tarot 101 esoteric beginner's …

An Embarrassment of Riches (or Not)

I've been exploring the Facebook "Tarot Marketplace" since I've been shilling for my two recent EBooks, and noticed just how many tarot decks have been published over the past few years and are now being sold off by their unimpressed buyers. The very existence of some of them is a mystery since I can't imagine …

“And the Winner Is . . .” – 2022 “Run for the Roses”

UPDATE: It turned out that the only thing accurate about this reading was that Epicenter would make a strong showing. The problem was that I limited the population of likely winners to horses with short odds, and the actual winner, Rich Strike, was a long shot at 80-1 and one of the least likely contenders. …