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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…...
Tarot and Astrology: Convergence or Collision?
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I was already a natal astrologer of the “psychological” school and had been for a couple of years before I began pursuing tarot study and practice in a systematic (primarily esoteric) way. So I have an abiding appreciation for astrological principles even though…...
The Horary Difference: Pragmatic Economy
Horary astrology is different, and its distinction – as well as its charm – lies in its economy of expression. As a psychological astrologer doing natal horoscopes back in the ’70s, I prided myself on the thoroughness of my chart delineation. I didn’t have a computer early on and it was not unusual for a…...
Departing the “Goldilocks Zone”: A Multi-Path Situational Development Spread
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a teenage science-fiction fan in the mid-60s I was fascinated by rocketry and the theory of space-flight in general. Here is a spread that uses some of that terminology to show three potential paths that a situational-development reading might take: short-range, long-range or open-ended. It will take some study for the user…...
Rethinking the Three-Card “Timeline” Spread
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In a recent post I gave a brief nod to the idea of scrapping the venerable “Past/Present/Future” three-card, left-to-right, timeline spread and replacing it with a more relevant sequence: “Present/Immediate Future/Extended Future.” While examining prior events may be admissible in a large spread like the Celtic Cross where most of the emphasis is…...
A Horary Slam-Dunk
I recently lost the gemstone out of one of my rings. First, I’ll pass on what I know about the situation: I had just finished shaving, had let the water out of the sink and was washing my hands when I noticed that the setting of the ring was empty, although the stone had been…...
Active and Passive Dynamics
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The next major milestone on the road to mastery for the neophyte tarot reader after internalizing the card meanings (as opposed to merely memorizing or looking them up) is to begin synthesizing the interpretation of all the cards in a spread to form a seamless narrative. (I often describe early efforts in this…...
Oriental Appearance: A Case Study
AUTHOR’S NOTE: For the moment I’m going to drop back from my current fascination with traditional astrology and revert to my previous incarnation as a New Age psychological astrologer. For the record, although most people only know Dr. Marc Edmund Jones as the chronicler of the psychically-channeled Sabian Symbols, he was a profound psychological astrologer…...
A Question of Houses
AUTHOR’S NOTE: There is apparently an ongoing controversy among the upper echelon of professional astrologers regarding which system of house division came first, the “quadrant” system later popularized by Placidus de Titis or the Whole Sign system. In the time-based method of Placidus, the Ascendant is coincident with the 1st House cusp and the intermediary…...