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Origins of Cartomancy: The 15th Century
1414 Barcelona – Joch de nayps moreschs Two Barcelona inventories have entries for “joch de nayps (or ‘nahyps’) moreschs”. The Instituto Municipal de Historia in Barcelona formerly held several sheets of uncut woodblock cards of the Moorish design from around this period. Their similarity to the late 15th or early 16th century Mamluk playing cards is…...
Prediction or Insight?
Is prediction what tarot reading is all about? What if it is not to learn that a particular thing is going to happen but, rather, to explore later what those cards can teach us about what does happen? What if the reading is simply to make us spiritually or psychologically aware of what’s really important…...
Oswald Wirth’s Tarot Spread
Here’s a classic “reclaimed spread” in the form of a five-card cross that is most often found in French and continental Tarot books. The version I offer here is from Oswald Wirth’s Tarot of the Magicians, with an introduction by me (originally published as Le Tarot, des imagiers du moyen-age, 1926). Wirth claims to have learned…...
Translating Images in a Tarot Reading
Much is made of how tarot cards can be interpreted through their images or symbols—especially modern decks that feature pictorial scenes with lots of images on all the cards. This post is about how to combine and translate the language of imagery into statements, such that these statements can be more easily interpreted than the…...
Moving On With the Six of Swords
In preparation for the July 2026 Omega Institute tarot workshop, “Wisdom of the Tarot,” I have been posting on Facebook multiple versions of Minor Arcana cards from 21st century tarot decks for comparison. I ask if any keywords or phrases work equally well for all the different decks – one of the themes for the…...
Chiron: The Planet of Tarot Readers
Chiron, the planet of tarot readers. The asteroid Chiron was first recorded in mid-October 1977. Its orbit marks a liminal and erratic path between Saturn (structure, limits, karma) and Uranus (liberation, awakening, shock). It’s literally a bridge between the known and the unknown. This was the period when home computing first took off and the…...
What Every Newbie Should Know about Integrating Card Meanings
I asked a group of tarot readers on Facebook to give their top advice for how to combine and integrate card meanings in a spread. It’s one of the things that beginners find most bewildering, but we can all learn more about. Forty-nine people responded (see list of contributors at the end). I combined, edited…...
Alchemy in the Thoth Tarot “Art” Card
This is an adaptation of an article I wrote quite a few years ago while in the midst of my studies of alchemy in the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck. Aleister Crowley wrote little directly about alchemy, but his Thoth deck is full of alchemical symbolism. Alchemy is the transformation of base matter into gold, whether physically…...
The Golden Dawn Minor Arcana
Tree of Life on the Tarot in the Four Worlds I am delighted to provide this previously unpublished text, which is from a hand-copied manuscript of Sub Spe [John Brodie Innes] I apologize to those who will find many of the references difficult, but the information can help greatly in understanding the Golden Dawn approach…...
1969: The Tarot Renaissance
When did the modern tarot renaissance actually begin? It’s always hard to pinpoint the beginning of a movement but here are some events worth noting that lead up to the breaking of the dam in 1969. I’m looking for corrections and additions to the information below, plus tarot stories from the 60s and early 70s…....