A Mixed-Media Situational Posture Spread

Here is a spread that uses dominoes and tarot cards to project the best posture to adopt in any situation. It is based on the assumption that odd numbers are "active" while even numbers are "passive."

“Reading by Intention”

There is a common belief that "good intentions" are all that is necessary to obtain constructive insights from a tarot reading. Learning and experience are optional as long as the reader's heart is in the right place, a manifestation of what I think of as the "It's all good" mode of prophecy in which no …

The “War or Peace” Conflict-Resolution Spread

Here is a spread that can serve as a "first cut" to assess the advisability of taking a contemplated course of action in a conflict scenario. It's one of my "mixed-media" spreads that uses both tarot cards and dice. The outcome will either strengthen or weaken the initial urge to adopt a particular stance in …

Best Served Cold

"Two Ways to Ask the Question: The first way of proceeding is to let the Seeker state his question aloud. In this case I feel that the Reader may be influenced in his interpretation by the knowledge of what he has been asked, and is therefore less likely to give an impartial reading. The second …

The “Flying Wedge” Redirection Spread

I've created spreads in the past based on the idea that the appearance of reversed cards in the sequence will cause a shift in the overall focus of the reading from an overt perspective to a more covert or indirect one. But the draw always proceeded from the top of the deck, which meant that …

A Storyteller’s Perspective

I'm fond of saying that I much prefer face-to-face sessions to online tarot reading and have written a number of essays about it in the past, but I haven't fully explained why I feel that way. Obviously, it's about the stimulus of spoken communication and the need to think on my feet as I do …

The “Blame Game” Spread

The idea of assigning accountability (or more bluntly, "blame") for challenges encountered in a situation being addressed in a tarot reading continues to fascinate me. Not that I think we need to do it, or that it's even productive, just that it's often on a sitter's mind when the matter at hand is particularly elusive …

A Different Take on the “Past/Present/Future” Outlook

One of my "pet" notions is that people seeking a tarot reading who are experiencing difficulties in their lives love to identify someone or something else to blame for their troubles, whether or not they choose to admit it. The usual "past/present/future" spread design is somewhat imprecise in pinning down the likely "drivers" for these …

Left or Right? A Matter of Orientation

There is a tradition in tarot reading that visually scanning from the left to the right in a linear spread presents a past-to-future panorama of circumstances signifying an urge to move forward, while looking from right to left suggests a need to first deal with past events in the situation that may still be unresolved …

A “Psychometric” Yes-or-No Reading Approach

The dilemma of how to handle "yes-or-no" questions (or whether to even attempt answering them) is one that all tarot readers must confront sooner or later. I've tried numerous ways, both simple and complicated, to solve the problem and a few years ago I created a table of what I dubbed "Yes-Leaning," "No-Leaning" and "Maybe" …