The Arrow and the Song

All images copyright U.S. Games Systems, Inc, Stamford, CT I haven't done one of these in a while, but recently I was performing a decision-making spread and the 8 of Wands came up as the "resolution" card in one of the decision  chains; I judged it as reflecting an open-ended (inconclusive) outcome and was strongly …

The Fortune Teller Speaks

UPDATE: I've received comments that $50 is way under-priced for a reading. It reminds me of the Austin Powers scene where Dr. Evil tries to extort the world's leaders for "One MILLION dollars!" and everyone present laughs. Here is another short scrap of doggerel for today. The Fortune Teller Speaks   The cards fall Impaling …

More Than a Blog, Not Quite a Book

For several years now I've been encouraged by my online forum-mates to compile all of my original 200-plus tarot spreads (most of which are scattered throughout the nearly 1,150 posts of this blog) into a book for public purchase. I did in fact make an attempt to interest a couple of metaphysical publishing houses, to …

“Lucky You!” – A Tarot Board Game

UPDATE: I just tweaked some of the rules for the trump cards. Also, I've been playing around with this and found that, since I skewed the population of cards to the lower end, it's very difficult to get a +5 card in order to get out of jail (especially factoring in reversals); so I changed …

Tarot and Talking Heads

This will be a controversial topic and I may offend a few of the more experienced purveyors of wisdom in the online divination community, but they aren't my target here. My goal is to encourage improvements for everyone in the overall effectiveness of  knowledge transfer and not just to criticize its shortcomings. For the less …

Call Them “TINOs”

I was just reading a fascinating wiki article about Canadian cultural philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase "the medium is the message" while analyzing the impact of media sources like television on society, and who concluded that the delivery system is more revealing of modern collective values than the contents. In commenting on his …

“Mixed-Media” Reading

"Mixed-media" technique is a concept usually limited to the visual arts; a good example would be combining paste-up photo-collage and manual deposition of some kind (brush, pen, pencil, crayon, stick, etc.) to create an integrated and aesthetically pleasing image. (Before anyone asks, presentation technology often relies on "multi-media" delivery, a different animal.) I'll get to …

Jodo’s New-Age “Art” Films

Before he became a tarot star (of sorts), Alejandro Jodorowsky was a maker of exquisitely (or excruciatingly) surrealistic experimental films. I was 24 in 1972 when I first saw El Topo at a midnight drive-in theater screening in Connecticut, and it left a lasting impression (or stain?) on me. A couple of years ago, I …

Enlightened Folly?

More musings on "how tarot works," with a new twist or two (but I will spare you a few of my overused personal aphorisms and axiomatic bromides). I've long believed that the Age of Enlightenment (aka the Age of Reason) that arose out of Renaissance "humanism" between the 17th and early 19th Centuries did more …

DAS: A Joyful Scourge

Around the end of every year there seems to be a flood of new-deck announcements and glossy (albeit online for most of us) catalogs from Lo Scarabeo, U.S. Games Systems and a few smaller publishing houses. These feed the pernicious addiction many of us share: "Deck Acquisition Syndrome." Every tarot forum I've participated in (I'm …