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astrology, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Occultism and Esoterism, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot, Uncategorized, Vera Sibilla

Intuition – Do You Need The Gift of Prophecy?

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I received a really sweet message from a fledgling occultist who wants to pick up some form of divination, but has been put off so far because they have been convinced that they don’t have “the gift”, as they put it, by which I think they meant intuition.

It is a fact of life that a certain predisposition can give you a head start. My high school chemistry teacher could explain to me every single step of how to balance a formula, and I would sort of understand it, but then, left to my own devices, I would still get it wrong. I certainly didn’t have the gift for it. But that doesn’t make chemistry hoplessly outside of my reach. If I had persevered instead of throwing my hands up and saying “oh well, at least I can read Plato in Greek” I would have definitely made some progress. It’s just that in life you’ve got to pick your battles, and I knew I wasn’t the next Marie Curie, and I did like Plato, so Plato it was.

The same holds true for the various esoteric disciplines. The kind of gift that is required to practice them is not different from the predisposition toward high school subjects. Yet there is this widespread belief something more is needed. Well, it isn’t needed.

Oracles, i.e., the various forms of divinations, are languages, and like all languages they require study and practice. The idea that all it takes is intuition is a result of the loss of understanding for occult practices that resulted from the scientific revolution, which confined anything that wasn’t understandable in terms of the rising empiricism to the realm of irrational superstition.

This new designation was either consciously or unconsciously accepted by those practicing divination, so divination became something irrational that requires non-rational tools to be practiced. This, in spite of the fact that, wherever you look around the world, and even in the West before the Enlightenment, divination is considered to be primarily made of rules to be studied and applied with intelligence.

True divination, like all parts of magic, is hopelessly technical. It has nothing to do with following your heart, much less your intuition. Speaking of which, actual intuition is a much more sacred thing than the “I can’t prove it but I know it’s true” that many make it out to be. “I just feel this is how it is” is how cults get started, which is probably why so many people who describe themselves as intuitive are so up their own asses and so full of unconscious prejudices.

That is not intuition: it is personal bias subtracting itself from scrutiny. Actual intuition is the prerogative of the great saints, and only to a lesser extent of people who are on a spiritual/esoteric path. It is rare and cannot be commanded. It is the result of brief moments of perfect union with the source of all, and for that reason it comes from outside the limitations of the individual vessel. What many call intuition are simply personal hunches that they cannot trace back to any line of reasoning.

And mind you: hunches ARE a thing. They can work, and sometimes they can help. They can also fail. Many people seem to believe that ‘intuition’ is never wrong. And fair enough, the intuition I talked about is in fact never wrong. But personal hunches CAN indeed be wrong, in the same way that a logical inference can be wrong: hunches, like reason, the senses and all other channels humans use to gather information, are fallible. The fact that many think their hunches are never wrong is simply the result of confirmation bias: if they concentrated on how often their hunches let them down on a daily basis they’d be crushed.

Another use of the term intuition is simply a cooler way of describing the facility that comes from experience. The experienced doctor comes in, eyeballs you, listens to a couple of your complaints and knows with a high degree of probability what is wrong with you. The experienced mechanic listens to the purr of your car and knows immediately it will break down in two weeks if you don’t do something about it.

That’s also not intuition, although it is far more valuable than what average psychics do. It is simply the result of having gone through the same process so often that you can skip some of the steps, at least consciously. It is the intellectual version of muscle memory.

So, can anyone become a diviner? Let me answer with a question: can anyone become a chemist? Well, no. If we all could, the human race would go extinct. But the only thing keeping you from studying chemistry is your decision and perseverance. So is with divination.

MQS

astrology, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Geomancy, I Ching / Yi Jing, Occultism and Esoterism, Philosophy, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot, Uncategorized, Vera Sibilla

Calling Other People’s Demons By Name

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In many supernatural movies about exorcism, the priest trying to free the victim needs to discover the demon’s name. This is actually founded in (part of) the real practice of exorcism and does have its roots in the magical belief of the power of names. For instance, there are certain practices in folk magic in Italy that require the magician to go to the christening of a child whose name translates to the effect he or she wants to achieve.

But belief in the power of names is not just found in Italy and it probably goes back to the most ancient and elemental relationship that humans established with the things around them in their attempt to dominate them. Traces of this fact are found in the doctrines of many Greek philosophers, sophists, poets and playwrights, and I have also found some similarities with Chinese Daoist literature. A wonderful fictionalized account of this belief is found in Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea saga, which anyone interested in magic should read, in my humble opinion.

I am not one who seeks to psychologize occultism, although I believe that psychology is not at all a useless discovery and can be part of a modern magus’ training. I think that the attempt to reduce occultism to psychology is just as misguided as the attept to condemn anything that modernity has brought us as a deviation from an ancient splendor.

That being said, as someone who practices divination for others, there is also a certain sense in which naming works in a cathartic way. Most of the people that consult me are rather upfront about their problems, especially since I don’t ask for money and therefore feel no guilt in telling them to go sit on a cactus if they are trying to waste my time.

But people can be reticent about their issues for a variety of reasons, and malice is not always the motivation. Among the many possible reasons is the fact that people sometimes feel the need to have their demons driven out of them by someone outside of their regular field of experience.

Having someone discover our particular demon’s name without us feeding it to them can be a powerful and cathartic experience, because it smokes the demon out of the dark recesses of our subjective experience and into the light of objectivity, where it can be addressed as a definite and therefore limited issue, rather than being consumed by its overwhelming lack of contours.

Not every divination session calls forth such existential experiences, nor should we as diviners try to turn each session into a catharsis. We are not therapists and our duty is not to give people advice, although advice can certainly be given if required. Our role is to provide information, whatever that may mean in the context of each particular reading. For this reason, our language and that of our divination tool needs to be earthly, concrete and objective.

But sometimes informing the querent can mean gathering the diffuse knowledge that they already have festering inside of them and turning it into useable information by giving it its proper name.

MQS

Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Playing Cards, Uncategorized

Where the Court Cards Look

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I was asked by a visitor if I take into account the direction court cards look. The idea that the direction faced by court cards gives us important details is ingrained in several strands of card divination. In recent decades it has even been appropriated by certain scam artists (like Jodorowsky and his various imitators) when trying to sell the Tarot of Marseille as a deep metaphysical tool rather than for what it has always been–a cheap gaming deck, which, like all tarot decks, is as good for divination as it is for playing at the local inn.

But directionality does have its place in certain legitimate divination traditions. It just happens not to be part of mine. I do not take into account the way court cards face when reading playing cards, as I have never found it useful or revealing.

To me, each card is a place-holder for a cluster of certain ideas that are called to mind when the card appears: the Ace of Hearts is a place-holder of a cluster of ideas relating to the home or family, and similarly the Queen of Spades is a place-holder for a cluster of ideas relating to problematic women or issues traditionally associated with the negative side of womanhood. In this cluster of ideas there is nothing inherently left-looking or right-looking. That’s just the fantasy of whoever drew the picture.

What matters most to me is not so much where the card looks, but in what relationship it is with respect to the other cards. Suppose we have:

Q♣️ – 3♣️ – K♣️

Here we have a typical sequence of marriage. Even if the two court cards were swapped, it would change nothing. Now let’s take:

3♣️ – K♣️ – Q♣️

This positioning of the cards may or may not be the same as the previous one. In itself it is just another sequence of marriage. But if it makes sense within the context of the spread, it could indicate that he is the one who is more attached to the marriage, because he falls closer to the card that symbolizes union. However, let’s now look at this:

Q♦️ – 3♣️ – K♣️ – Q♣️

Here it is very important that the King of Clubs fell next to the union, because through it he is united to another woman. This sequence shows that the female querent is the lover (it would be even more clear if the 10♠️ fell between the two Club court cards, as it would show that the married man sees the female querent in secret).

In all this, where the court cards face is of no consequence, because what truly matters is their dynamic interplay. That being said, I know of playing card traditions where directionality is taken into account and I have nothing against it. It just happens not to be part of my toolkit.

MQS

Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Reading Example, Tarot, Uncategorized

What’s the Bird Thinking? (Example Reading)

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My two cockatiels couldn’t be more different from one another. Ciuffy, the white one, is a sweet cuddlebug who’ll do anything for a head scratch. He’s never nipped me, let alone bitten me. The only time he hurts me a little is when he tries to preen my ear.

“I’m the guy you want your daughter to bring home”

Zazu, the gray one, is a beaky, bossy, overbearing prick. He does have his sweet side, and considering I’ve had him for only a little over a month we’ve made huge progress, but when I have him on my shoulder I KNOW I’m going to get hurt at some point, and when he bites he really means it.

“I’m the guy your daughter brings home”

Now that I’ve set the scene and used the excuse to show you a couple of pics of my cutie pies, let’s get to the point. A couple of days ago, while Zazu was on my shoulder, he bit my earlobe incredibly hard out of nowhere (maybe he saw me move my head and didn’t like it).

I shooed him away with my hand, but he spooked and flew against a wall. Although he wasn’t hurt, he spent the day avoiding me and hissing (for those who don’t know, cockatiels can hiss, like cats).

I knew that the accident set some of that hard-won progress back, but I wanted to know Zazu’s perspective and how it would likely evolve. Here’s what the Bolognese Tarot had to say:

What’s the featherball thinking? Tarot reading

One thing that surprised me is the first row, where we have happiness (Ten of Cups) in the house (Ace of Cups) with me (King of Wands). I know I try to care for the two little balls of feathers as best I can, but Zazu is always grumpy and old-farty in his behavior, so I assumed he didn’t like me very much. Apparently that’s just his character.

The second row is interesting, since we have unexpected (Stranger) betrayal (Hanged Man) leading to negative emotions (Eight of Swords). Clearly his good vibes were somewhat disrupted by the incident.

The third has a path (Eight of Wands) toward Love with harmony or small satisfactions (Ten of Coins). So even though there was a setback, there is room for moving toward love. Obviously we should be very careful when projecting human sentimentalism onto animals, but then again, divination is a language understandable to humans, so the tarot is probably translating Zazu’s reality in terms that are understandable to me.

I have some doubts about the last line. The King of Swords might be Zazu himself (it could represent my husband, but my husband isn’t particularly involved). Technically, pets are represented by the Juggler, but then again, the King of Swords does have some characteristics of the Juggler, so it’s a possibility. At any rate, the King is next to the sickbed. There are no combinations talking explicitly about sickness, so I believe this just shows his being cranky or a bit uncertain, but the World card at the end of the row indicates that this uncertainty doesn’t cause breaks: the situation remains open and moving.

The Temperance card at the end simply shows that patience and time are needed. I expected no less.

For now, the reading seems to be accurate. The day after the little bastard had gone back to his old behavior, being just a little more shy than usual, and the day following that he was back to normal.

MQS

Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot, Uncategorized

Tarot Is Not Deep (and Its Limits as a Tool for Self-Reflection)

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I always bring up poor Rachel Pollack whenever I need to give a paradigmatic example of someone who utterly ruined tarot divination by turning it into a heap of psychobabble, though in reality the list is quite long. At some point, it was decided that 1) divination could not be a serious undertaking in an age of reason, and 2) we still wanted to think our illustrious predecessors who bought into it were not poor saps. The compromise therefore was that there was something deeper to divination, and so divination had to be reassessed and purged in accordance to this new ideology of ‘depth’ or *shudders* ‘wisdom’.

The reality is that in the “I’m too special for religion but wouldn’t it be fun if there was something more to life” community, where most people tend to think exactly alike in spite of how different they think they are, depth is a misunderstood concept.

Something is considered deep if it will allow them to talk themselves or others silly while giving them plenty of safe thrills and predictable a-ha moments by hurling around the latest buzzwords (try finding a tarot reader who doesn’t talk about narcissists, gaslighting or inner truth).

Thankfully, the tarot is not deep, just like playing cards–and tarot cards ARE playing cards–or tea leaves or dice or geomantic figures are not deep, which is what makes them marvellous divination tools. Even astrology is not deep by today’s standards, if by astrology we mean astrology in its traditional forms (Hellenistic, medieval, Chinese, etc.)

But the depth that is found in divination, just like the depth that is found in all other branches of magic, has nothing to do with finding abstract meanings or deep doctrines that move us beyond real life. Although there can be space of deep philosophy, the real depth is found in the shift in our consciousness of existence and of our place in it as we practice it concretely and see its concrete impact on real life.

I will forever be grateful to my GD supervisor, who always insisted that I practice tarot in real life and not as a mere metaphysical plaything (people will be surprised by how concrete the GD tarot system is, in spite of its metaphysical underpinnings). Traditionally, in magical practice, people are advised on how to recognize when they have established contact with an entity other than themselves.

The risk is sometimes that of contacting parasites masquerading as great beings, but the even higher (and more common) risk is that of simply contacting one’s ego. Psychic onanism IS a thing, and a much worse vice than the physical counterpart.

This is what limits, in my view, the potential for tarot as a tool for self-reflection or meditation or scrying. Granted, most symbols can be used as doorways for these aims, and therefore also the tarot. There is some value to it, especially when done under supervision or with the proper frame of mind. There is also some value in allowing symbols to bring certain aspects of oneself to the surface, if one has the necessary detachment.

Wisdom is a great thing, and it is something that can be pursued on the path of magic, including divination. But more often than not, those who are too good for simple divination and want to discover the “deeper layers” of the tool simply end up massaging the shallower parts of their own psyche without realizing it, and often even thinking they are making some kind of psychological or occult progress when in fact they are simply digging themselves a deeper hole in their own ego.

MQS

Card Meanings, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot, Uncategorized

Tarot Encyclopedia – The Seven of Swords

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(Note: this is a collection of the meanings attributed to the cards by some occultists in the past centuries. It does not reflect my own study or opinion of the cards. It is only meant as a quick comparative reference as I develop my own take.)

The Seven of Swords from the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) tarot deck

Paul Foster Case (and Ann Davies)

The time period is the third decanate of Aquarius, February 9 to 18, under the rulership of Venus.
Well-Dignified: partial success; the Querent is too easy-going or does not draw sufficiently on his reserve force; he has good opportunities but may not make the most of them; he is likely to compromise too easily.
Ill-Dignified: love of ease and display cause loss; the Querent suffers from the insolence of others and may be insolent himself; there is danger that his own confidence may be betrayed, or that he may be led into betraying the confidence of others.
Keyword: Instability.
(From the Oracle of Tarot course)

A. E. Waite

A man in the act of carrying away five swords rapidly; the two others of the card remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand. Divinatory Meanings: Design, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also quarrelling, a plan that may fail, annoyance. The design is uncertain in its import, because the significations are widely at variance with each other. Reversed: Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling.
(From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot)

The Seven of Swords from the Rider Waite Smith tarot

Aleister Crowley

The Seven of Swords is called Futility. This is a yet weaker card than the Seven of Wands. It has a passive sign instead of an active one, a passive planet instead of an active one. It is like a rheumatic boxer trying to “come back” after being out of the ring for years. Its ruler is the Moon. The little energy that it possesses is no more than dream-work; it is quite incapable of the sustained labour which alone, bar miracles, can bring any endeavour to fruition. The comparison with the Seven of Wands is most instructive.

[…]

Netzach, in the suit of Swords, does not represent such catastrophe as in the other suits, for Netzach, the Sephira of Venus, means victory. There is, therefore, a modifying influence; and this is accentuated by the celestial rule of the Moon in Aquarius.

The intellectual wreckage of the card is thus not so vehement as in the Five. There is vacillation, a wish to compromise, a certain toleration. But, in certain circumstances, the results may be more disastrous than ever. This naturally depends upon the success of the policy. This is always in doubt as long as there exist violent, uncompromising forces which take it as a natural prey.

This card, like the Four, suggests the policy of appeasement. The symbol shows six Swords with their hilts in crescent formation. Their points meet below the centre of the card, impinging upon a blade of a much larger up-thrusting sword, as if there were a contest between the many feeble and the one strong. He strives in vain.
(From the Book of Thoth)

The Seven of Swords from the Thoth tarot deck

Golden Dawn’s Book T

TWO Angelic Radiating Hands as before, each holding three swords. A third hand holds up a single sword in the centre. The points of all the swords “just touch” each other, the central sword not altogether dividing them.
The Rose of the previous symbols of this suit is held up by the same hand which holds the central sword: as if the victory were at its disposal. Symbols of Moon and Aquarius.

Partial success. Yielding when victory is within grasp, as if the last reserves of strength were used up. Inclination to lose when on the point of gaining, through not continuing the effort. Love of abundance, fascinated by display, given to compliments, affronts and insolences, and to spy upon others. Inclined to betray confidences, not always intentionally. Rather vacillatory and unreliable.
Netzach of HB:V (Journey by land: in character untrustworthy).
Herein rule the Great Angels HB:HHHAL and HB:Ma’aKAL.

Etteilla

Hope
Upright. This card, as far as the medicine of the spirit is concerned, means, in its natural position: Hope, Expectation, Expectation, Pretending, Founding, Overestimating, Founding, Designing, Willing, Wanting, Wishing, Vowing, Wanting, Taste, Fantasy.
Reversed. Wise opinion, Good advice, Salutary warnings, Instruction, Lesson. – Observation, Reflection, Note, Caution, Thoughtfulness. – Reprehension, Reprimand. – News, Announcement, Posting. – Consultation, Admonition.

MQS

Occultism and Esoterism, Spirituality and Psychology, Uncategorized

Stuff You Don’t HAVE to Believe: Karma

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I talked about manifestation, now let’s tackle karma. This is one of those things that grind my gears about the spiritual community, largely because it unveils how derivative, unoriginal and moralistic it often is.

To understand this we need to remind ourselves of one of Nietzsche’s criticisms of his philosophical predecessors, who, according to him, were trying to safeguard religious morality even after doing away (overtly or covertly) with the concept of God.

This exact same thing happened to the spiritual community, which often reacts allergically to Christianity, yet seeks to safeguard the moralistic notion of hell (“if you do X you will be metaphysically punished”) by transfering its role to a vaguely defined “universe” whose task is, somehow, to uphold the believer’s social, political and spiritual views and punishing those who contravene them by causing bad things to happen to them.

Let us grant that this is somewhat of a misunderstanding of the original concept of karma found in some Eastern philosophies, even though it is not THAT much of a misunderstanding. The fact remains that, as used by most Western “alternative” thinkers (who somehow always end up believing the exact same crap), karma is just a lazy excuse for maintaining the holier-than-thou attitude they accuse traditional religion of: hey, enough with the badly understood Christian superstition! Time for the badly understood Oriental superstition!

Except that at least traditional religion has something grandiose and awe-inspiring about it (some passages from the Bible could be turned into a cool metal opera). The alternative spirituality of many girlypops has a way of pettifying everything: wow you left your girlfriend via message? That’s bad karma! What? You acted like a douche your whole life and suffered no consequences for it? That’s for another life then! If this is not the epitome of bitchy passive aggression I don’t know what is.

As many silly beliefs, this, too, has its glimmer of truth hidden in it. The Platonic myth of the soul, according to which our soul chooses what to incarnate as, offers much food for thought and meditation on the nature of our choices and how we must then live with the traces that those choices invite into our soul. There is no need to add metaphysical burdens on top of it.

MQS

Spirituality and Psychology, Uncategorized

Same Behavior, Different Motivations

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In Enneagram work, what matters is not so much what we do, but why we do it. Each type is characterized by a core motivation, and even though each core motivation tends to produce, on occasion, similar behaviors across different individuals, relying too much on the what instead of the why can lead us astray.

A Type Two, for instance, might very well be constantly distracted by ideas on how to make themselves useful to others as a way of eliciting love, affection or appreciation. Fives may also try to make themselves useful, but this is usually done in order to boost their sense of being intelligent or capable, that is, of proving to themselves that they are not inept. Of course, the style in which the help is delivered also varies: Twos tend to be personable and warm, while Fives are generally concentrated on giving others facts or conceptual tools.

In many Enneagram groups, a useful exercise is simply that of settling into a meditation, with one’s attention kept on a short leash, and then becoming aware of where the attention naturally drifts to. Our core mechanism is so ingrained in us that it often takes conscious effort to act contrary to it, and even then, the mechanism that we push out of the door comes back through the window (the typical example is that of a Two who consciously tries not to be helpful, and ends up justifying it to himself or herself by saying “so I can catch my breath to be more helpful in the future”).

This exercise is very useful, but we need, again, not to concentrate too much on the what. Sometimes our attention is caught by thoughts that appear random, but once the motivation behind those thoughts is questioned, the Enneatype becomes clear. For instance, a Three’s attention during meditation may drift toward some kind of task that they need to complete, or even simply to what they are going to eat for lunch. There is nothing inherently specific in any of these thoughts, but often the Three will have these thoughts as a reflection of their mechanism, e.g., they may think about what to have for lunch so they can cross that item off their mental to-do list and optimize their schedule.

That being said, there is also another risk, and that is of becoming so fixated on catching ourselves in the act that we forget to live life. Our character is not a curse. It can become one if we wrap it too tightly around our life, but as long as we learn to wear it loosely and see it with some irony, it actually affords us gifts, tools and opportunities.

MQS

astrology, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, I Ching / Yi Jing, Occultism and Esoterism, Playing Cards, Spirituality and Psychology, Tarot, Uncategorized, Vera Sibilla

Exploring the Present Or Scrying the Future?

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As a diviner, I have no objection to making predictions about what is likely to happen. I see the current taboo about the future as a mix of delusion and ignorance. Our current culture comes at the tail-end of the myth of the self-made man that has animated much of our recent (and even not-so-recent) past. This myth has strongly influenced the Zeitgeist of the current occult wave, which started at the end of the XVIII century and continues, though declining–putrefying, even–to this day.

The occult developments have in turn trickled down into pop spirituality and have fostered the belief, now extremely popular, that all it takes to change one’s reality is to tune into the wavelength where one’s delusion corresponds to objective facts, and that nothing about one’s identity is more than a socially-conditioned self-identification that can be simply deconstructed and cast off like a cloak in favor of something else as the whim of the day dictates.

This implies the idea that the future is a completely blank slate and that therefore divination can only be used as a tool for self-reflection on the present to facilitate this process of self-making and self-remaking. Unfortunately, the self-reflection in question regularly resolves itself into simply telling the querent what they already think or would like to think of themselves, but packaged in empowering language within a context in which they assume they are communing with divinity. “Wow, the Gods think exactly the same as I do! How wise!”

Anyone who lives in actual reality and has spent five minutes reflecting on it know that this view of existence is demonstrably false (although, like many false things, it contains faint traces of truth). Each of us has a path in life that is unique, containing specific challenges and opportunities, possibilities and impossibilities. Divination is good at detecting these patterns and their likely outcome in the near future.

Still, I find that there is value in employing traditional divination in exploring the present. The language of traditional divination is frank, crisp and concrete, as it comes from a deep understanding of the fact that, if what is above is as what is below and what is within is as what is without, then what is above or within cannot be a metaphysical soup of saccarine inanities, but must correspond to the complex interplay of pleasure and sorrow of the below and without.

In other words, if a tiktok psychic might tell you that you always end up with the wrong guy because you have a soul contract that stipulates that you need to come into contact with your inner queen, traditional divination is more than happy to let you know that it’s because you are a basic harlot who chooses basic idiots.

This is not to say that there is a god or a spirit judging the querent through us or through the oracle: it is merely a dispassionate look at your life from a dispassionate observer on a simple example of causality. It also does not imply that we, as diviners, shouldn’t learn to speak with tact and diplomacy. However, the employment of actual divination techniques allows us to shed light on the querent’s present in terms that might actually be helpful to them.

We never leave a divination session unaltered. The knowledge we gain changes us necessarily: me knowing about X is not the same as me not knowing about it. If X is in my hands, then knowing about it can give me some power over it. If it isn’t in my hands, then knowing about it gives me awareness of the limits that define my unique path through life. That’s growth, too.

MQS

Card Combinations, Card Meanings, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot, Uncategorized

Bolognese Tarot – How to Tackle Combinations

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Life is a recipe, and the art of living consists in large part in detecting the ingredients to know if and how to mix them differently. Divination is a mirror of life, and oracular systems usually have some kind of vocabulary to create descriptions of life.

In traditional divination by cards, each card carries small bits of meaning that must be mixed together to form coherent pictures. If divination mirrors life, then it stands to reason that the recipe for something in real life should be mirrored by a recipe for that same thing in the divinatory language. This is how all card reading systems I know work, and that’s how the Bolognese tarot works, with the exception of a couple of universal combinations with odd meanings (Angel + Devil = Good news or satisfaction; Sun + Moon = sorrow; Angel + Death = yes, confirmed).

Let us make an example. What are the ingredients of an inheritance in real life? I would say the ingredients are: death (no inheritance without someone croaking); family ties (usually we inherit from someone whom we are related to, though not always); the law (inheritances are generally regulated by the law and require a bureaucratic mechanism to be set in motion); material possessions (the things we inherit).

In the language of the Bolognese tarot, these ingredients correspond to the following cards: Death: Death; Family ties: Ace of Cups and/or Seven of Cups; The Law: Justice and/or King of Coins; Material Possessions: The Star and/or a money card.

Do we need all the cards to be present? It much depends on the context. If the question is directly about an inheritance, then we could do without many of these cards, while if it is a general reading then the more cards, the clearer the message. But we might also find other cards to flavor the basic recipe: the Moon is also connected with death (the realm of shadows); tears may sometimes be expected, so the Seven of Coins could come up; the court card of the deceased person could show up, etc.

Let us make another example. Let’s take surgery. What’s the recipe for surgery in real life? I would say: a hospital, a bed, a doctor, a cutting instrument. In the Bolognese tarot these same ingredients are: Hospital: The Tower; Bed: The Chariot; Doctor: King of Coins; Cutting instrument: Knight of Swords.

Again, there can be additions and variations. The doctor or the bed might be absent, while the Ten of Cups (blood) or the Moon (unpleasantness) or the Eight of Swords (suffering) might be present. A King or Queen of Swords may take the doctor’s place to show someone holding the knife. Just like my lasagne recipe might differ from yours, but it would still be recognized as lasagne, so the way the deck mixes the ingredients might vary slightly from time to time, but the broad picture remains the same.

One last example. Let’s take marriage. In many situations, a marriage requires the following ingredients: a commitment; love (let’s assume the best intentions in this case); a celebrant. The same ingredients are, in the language of the Bolognese tarot: Love: Love; Commitment: Ace of Wands or Ace of Swords; Celebrant: The Stranger. This is the basic recipe. But we might also expect the main significators to show up. A marriage is a celebration, so the Ten of Cups (fun) might be expected; the family life is certainly impacted, so some Cup cards could be there.

Once we start recognizing that life is made up of ingredients mixed together, it becomes easy (or at least easier) to see how the tarot might mix its own ingredients, the cards, to match the recipe. In many cases, while it is useful to reason out the combinations handed down by tradition, it is much easier to understand the basic principles and be flexible in our observations.

Ultimately, divination starts with logic, not with psychic powers, even though psychic abilities may occasionally be of help. The more we immerse ourselves in the logic of divination, the easier it becomes to decode its messages.

MQS