I stayed up all night playing Poker with Tarot cards.

 I got a full house and four people died.

--Stephen Wright

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the craft of Tarot reading in so far as ever memorizing and referencing or even however readily discerning the action symbols in the images of the 78 interpretations is entirely automated for us online, but the art, creativity and imagination of Cartomancy remains in synthesis of several cards together into a whole story.

Indeed, that old fortune telling scam appeals to the mark's keen love of melodrama! The yearning to discern passionately involving adventure in even the most ill advised and pedestrian of personal foibles. For the Tarot system deals in the universals of human nature and experience, with easy interpretive application to the individual particulars. 

A popular and capable fortune teller, however, is not one who is accurate in prediction, but rather one who is incisive in telling the mark exactly all they yearn to hear. For even though ministration to the soul of one sort or another has long predated inclusion into medicine as psychotherapy, alas the fortune teller specifically, is but a living tool of denial and self-harm, validating irresponsible fatalistic passivity.

Indeed, all too often, a fortune teller yielding to an attack of conscience and seeking to actually help a client, truthfully, will frequently loose customers very quickly and learns better by conditioning from the experience.

And so, beware, as it will be good advice if any one may heed it, to eschew the vicissitudes of melodrama and not to attempt prediction or divination of the actions or feelings of others as however off stage from ones own role, completely out of ones own control, and hence entirely disconnected from ones own responsible interactions. Instead, to remain flexible and seek better insight, ask the cards all what you may already know full well deep down or at least begin to suspect, all of the dramatic and karmic questions as to what you may expect in your dealings and relationships with particular individuals, and what may be called upon of you in turn.

Guide to Cold Readings

Sly, cynical Charlatan fortune tellers and the self deluded believers alike, make their Cold Readings even to complete strangers by ordinary detective work and good listening, shrewd observation combined with affirmation and flattery pandering to wishful thinking. Beyond that, while themselves exercising all caution with vague and complex questions ever put to them, fortune tellers speak in stock phrases and generalities, knowledge-driven Epistemology regarding entirely predictable crises of adult life, fishing for clues, allowing the mark to interpret into their own specific context, then giving the Cold Reader far more credit than due. Then the Cold Reader simply allows the mark to ramble on giving everything away, and bluffs as though they understood all along. Indeed, in a "good" session, the reader typically involves the querant in the reading by simply coming out and asking what the cards suggest, to illicit even projected free association response much as with the standard Rorschach inkblot test (cheat sheet!). Hence, inevitably, the Tarot has, similarly, even found it's way into application towards psychotherapeutic soul-searching and clinical treatment. 

Nevertheless, surely there can be no malice or falsehood in laying the Tarot, say, for story plotting or Improvisational scenework with entirely fictional characters, or, indeed, in their creation, purely as a fiction writing aid, without any exploitative misrepresentation or salutary claims whatsoever. 

Divinations such as the Tarot symbolically reflect the unpremeditation of magical realism, ideations of the collective unconscious including logical fallacies of argument by analogy are anti-rationally projected in Fairy Tale magical thinking uncritically and at face value, hence without distinction from the truest external reality. Indeed, the esoteric law of correspondence as exposited in the often plagiarized 'The Golden Bough' A Study in Magic and Religion by the noted Anthropologist Sir James George Frazer in 1922, and as applied spatially in the laying of the cards — as above so below — correlates also temporally, in sheer predictability, allegedly by way of the esoteric law of similarity, as in the future unto the past. Because certain symbolic arrangements in the laying of the Tarot are meant to signify the dimension of time frame. In the material embodiment of the Tarot, the mythic coexistence of past, present and future, are spatially represented and distributed in the spread of the cards.

The Tell Me a Story Spread provides, in sequential order, the basic elements of simple linear plotting.

Or apply these templates.                  

Whereas, in the Story Teller's Spread, the branching right hand path of three cards in succession at positions 2, 3 and 4, represent the expected plot scenario, either of chronological events, past background ("act zero"), dramatic obstacles to overcome, then the future or climax, or else some other progression of states of being, all branching from and disrupted by the inciting or precipitating incident or event in the opening scene for the querant or protagonist as represented by a single first card at position 1. While the left hand branching path of another three cards at positions 5, 6 and 7, represent change, complications, the new progression or plot scenario, either of events, dramatic obstacles to overcome, or of states of being, unfolding. Lastly, a final center card at position 8 represents some third option, resolution, themes, moral or world view.

	Celtic Cross Layout
	Circle of Life Layout
	Three by Three Layout
	Quick Three Layout

    Most simply, just brainstorm questioning for prompts in a single card meditation, either drawn at random, or let the querent stand the test of the Oracle! 

 -Before moving on to progressively larger and ever more elaborate card spreads:

Then pair or group any adjacent cards, seeking balance or imbalance of tendencies or relating the themes of one image to another, to creatively imagine story conditions more broadly.

 For example, perhaps the figure depicted in the 4 of Pentacles sitting fast in the Tower basement even as lightening shatters the battlements above, deadly debris falling all about him, yet he guards his treasure, even to the last.

Or seek for themes in common, and yea shall find, for they are always there to be found!

And the associative system of reciprocal influence among categorized Elemental Dignities may also be utilized for gleaning further inspiration in relating paired or grouped cards, narratively.

For interpretation of the classic Celtic Cross Layout, from left to right, analyze the cards laid across the x axis at random, to derive a plotline, much as in shuffling the deck and laying out the Three Card Spread, beginning from a premise and "Act Zero" background information in the past, the rising action upon central issues in the present and confronting some dramatic obstacle represented by the overlaying card, all in turn giving rise to conflict within and without on every level, imminent in the present (represented by the center card), ending in whatever desirable motivating goals ever put forth, or future (purportedly) foretold (and as represented by the right most card). 

Above and beneath position one, which is the location of the center card, come the base and the crown, respectively. The base or root is thought to represent deeper, truer causes or reasons for whatever problem situation at hand, and is purported to derive from the past in issuance of the the querant's core motivation to his or her central question, whereas the crown purportedly reveals whatever the best possible outcome, alternative or achievement.

Indeed, the tarot figures of the base and crown along the y axis, no less than the chronological elements along the x axis, conjure up any range of archetypes personifying different motivations as friendly guides or malevolent misleading tricksters and in turn suggesting people coming into ones life or handy fictional supporting characters, friends and allies advancing the plot or malevolent or dysfunctional deceivers restraining the plot.

And all such archetypical characters making their entrances into ones life just as revealed in the cards. For, after all, no less than real people, characters are defined not only introspectively or in motivated action and free choice, but by their particular relationships and by their unique role or  karma, the operant nature of their associations and influence within setting and milieu.

Also likewise regarding the column to the right of the cross, of four additional cards, influences no less personifiable as supporting characters all helping to flesh out plot and motivation by revealing in further detail, all manner of other factors and even thematic hints, traditionally, describing one's own nascent character development of either the impressionable mark or scam victim undergoing the Cold Reading, or for our own more innocent purposes, that of the fictional protagonist. 

 

The Circle of Life Layout even encourages ongoing further queries for deeper plot development in ever further detail.

 

Or, utilizing the open method of spreading the cards, after setting the significator, pairs of cards drawn at random are viewed in sequence like unto a comic strip.

 

Differing viewpoints upon relationships parallel not only the objective and subjective persons of narrative but also communication and the character interaction of plot and growth, systematically.

 

After all, In drama, the conflict on every level that is inherent to situation, there are four elements of motivation:

What do characters want, goals ever put forth, and why, what motivates them? And what aids or hinders whatever their quest? In dramatizing controversy, good motivated and dramatic dialogue makes it hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. "In a good play, everyone is right." But how far would they go? Or will they change and grow?

Rich and complex fiction often turns upon complications, often classic reversals as in the estrangement of the bullied idealistic whistle blower. And likewise, in the Yin/Yang of the Tarot, if one pays attention, traditionally the reversed or upside down card caries special mythic significance, perhaps diminished or simply opposite to that card's standard significance, or all too easy to DIS-MIS, with 12 ways that cards reversed may be reinterpreted, plus a clever 13th, in the ways the direction the characters are gazing or pointing etc., will be different with the card inverted, signifying, thereby, a different other card position affected, related to or modified than when upright.

Hence, indeed, the automated pnTarot™ even takes into account which way the figure in the card you choose as the Significator is facing, and adjusts the spread accordingly. And there are complex and novel special card combinations, no less than in any of the currently popular fad card combat games, all with bearing upon the more standard interpretations. Or there are variants more ominous and darker negation.

Gnostica

 

Indeed, an automated Celtic Cross Divination Tarot Online, such as the excellently basic, clear, easy and fully functional Free Tarot Application Reading - Mellinetti Inc. might prove both entertaining and helpful for fiction writers. 

Which is, of course, the basic idea behind the lavish

 

Though by contrast to the former, the graphics for the Sacred Texts card reading are all somewhat stark black and white line drawings, as befitting to such a bare bones automated Tarot, with hyperlink click reference bookmark tags to the significance of each card and it's position in the spread, some of which even seem redundant, and leaving whatever plot or narrative entirely to one's own devising, as best appropriate for story tellers compelled to shun all computerized assistance, desirous of no prompting whatsoever! Indeed, no supporting characters or interactions are evidenced, but only various abiding personal motivations and static situational influences are at all suggested.

 

Infinite Plot Generator Template • Character Generation Template
Answer Mining Template • What Would the Trumps Do? Template

 

And while the attractive and usable, the gnu WebTarot by Michael Tracey, free for download to use on your own website! actually seems somewhat focused upon narrative of epic events, it still comes out somewhat weak on the motivated influential character interaction required for good drama. -A challenge for the long awaited Version two.

 

download an impressive range of divination applications from Mystic Softwares with co-branding options to interested parties.

            And then there is the Dreampower Tarot and original spread. The positions of the cards are explicitly and specifically significant as to the role of the themes, motivation or character and the nature of their relationships and persuasive influence, represented or read into the card randomly occupied thereby, however the cards themselves may prove enigmatic enough to challenge the writer's imagination.

                                   A propitiously arcane Zen / I Ching sort of a glitch in Cyberspace, to be sure, never

                                   the less perhaps somewhat vexing none the less... !

No less comprehensive than the offerings of the NewAgeStore, the sheer range and scope of the

FACADE divinations are fairly impressive. And browse at leisure, to sift through the full Open Directory listing of automated Tarot. 

and the offer splendid background resources in the fraudulent occult lore of the Tarot, all roundly debunked in an extensive, accurately truthful and serious history:

 

               Period Appropriate Tarot Decks

                                               

                                                    Michael’s Tarot Notebook