Most Recent
Circular Thinking and the “Simultaneity of All Opposites”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Wheel of Fortune is a card that is passed over lightly by many tarot writers, and by most readers who think they know exactly what it means: some kind of change that can go either way, favorable or unfavorable. The reading then moves on to the next card in the spread to…...
By Any Other Name
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Current divination culture shuns as unethical any attempt to forecast the death of an individual, even when it is clearly imminent due to a terminal illness. (After all, it doesn’t make sense for amateurs to overstep the legal and professional bounds of a medical diagnosis.) The final “moment of truth” is usually the…...
The Nature of Truth (As We Know It)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: “What is the truth?” (at least in the matter at hand) is one of the “big questions” along with “What is the meaning of life?” (usually “my life” when asked by a querent) that are often put to the tarot and other modes of divination. (Of course, both questions are aimed at discovering…...
A Recipe for Timing (or “Why Did My Cake Fall?”)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This essay is not about a Betty Crocker bake-off; it discusses certain event-timing techniques used in divination. But I couldn’t resist the analogy! Modern bakers who use “fail-safe” pre-mixed aggregates (you know the hype: “just add water”) won’t have a clue what my subtitle is about and will only shoot me a blank…...
Stolen Artwork: A Horary Perspective
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m posting this with the acknowledgement and permission of the Isabella S. Gardner Museum, with whom I’ve shared it in case anyone considers trying to cash in on my work. Although I first heard about this back in 1990 when it happened, I was recently reminded that millions of dollars worth of artwork…...
The “Twitch Factor”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: During a recent online conversation I mentioned the fact that, when provoked, the element of Earth in the sign of Virgo can be fidgety, rising one notch above in “twitchy” angst from Virgo’s trademark anal fussiness. This got me thinking about how the elements of the Chaldean zodiac react with the Minor Arcana…...
Knights and Streetcars: “Coming and Going”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My wife dismisses blues music as “whining man” music (as in “My baby done left me and I’m feelin’ lowdown and mean.” But there is a bawdy old “whining woman” blues song from the early 20th Century that complains: “Men are like streetcars/They keep coming and going.” (A similar modern version would be…...
A “Method to the Madness” Multiple-Midpoint Spread
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a natal astrologer I’ve always been fascinated by the mathematical midpoints between factors (typically the planets and angles of the horoscope) that represent sensitive locations in a birth chart that will eventually be “triggered” by predictive transits and progressions. The concept (which implies “hidden symmetry” in an apparently irrational Universe) can just…...
Question Quibbles
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve just begun reading Vincent Pitisci’s first book, Genius of the Tarot: A Guide to Divination with the Tarot, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that his thinking agrees on almost all points with similar opinions I’ve formed over 50 years of study and practice. At the time he wrote it (2013) he…...
Anatomy of a Horary Failure
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Back in 2017 I wrote an essay on the subject of “strictures against judgment” in horary astrology, those conditions pertaining to a horoscope that render it unfit for interpretation (i.e. it is not considered “radical”). Although I don’t adhere rigidly to this principle, I recently cast a missing-person chart for an Oregon “cold…...
