TAROT TWIST
A Tarosophy KickStart Book
78 Totally New Ways of Using Your Tarot Deck
Cover: ‘The Sun’, Tyldwick Tarot © by Neil Lovell
http://www.malpertuis.co.uk/tyldwick/
By Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz
Copyright © Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz, 2013
Published by Forge Press, Keswick
Paperback, 2010, Kindle Version 2013
All rights reserved.
About the Authors
“How many purists can there be? It’s like Dawn of the Dead out there. They just keep on coming.”
Katz to Goodwin, Typical Conversation.
Tali Goodwin is the co-author of award-winning and #1 best-selling Tarot books, including Around the Tarot in 78 Days, Tarot Face to Face, and Learning Lenormand. She is also a leading Tarot researcher and is credited with the discovery of A. E. Waite’s second tarot deck, kept secret for a century, published as Abiding in the Sanctuary. She has also uncovered and published the Original Lenormand deck, and with co-author Derek Bain, the original Golden Dawn Tarot images in A New Dawn for Tarot. Her research into the life of Pamela Colman-Smith with new photographs will be published as The Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot by Llewellyn Worldwide in Spring 2014. She is co-Director of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide) and organizes the international tarot conventions, TarotCon.
Marcus Katz is author of the ground-breaking Tarot book and teaching system, Tarosophy, and is the co-founder of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide). In addition to Tarot books with Tali Goodwin, he is the author of The Magister, an 11-volume opus on the Western Esoteric Initiatory System, The Magician’s Kabbalah, and the forthcoming Path of the Seasons. He teaches students privately in the Crucible Club, available by application.
Dedications
This Tarosophy Kickstart Reference Book is dedicated to those brave and daring souls who engaged with us during the recent Tarosophy Diploma Tarot course, in particular:
Nadine, Shannon, Tali, Bernie & Janine (Diploma Teacher)
We would like to credit Nadine Roberts for her insightful suggestion as to the NLP secret of the Three Monkeys spread. Her reading site can be discovered at http://www.nadine-roberts.co.uk/.
Contents
About the Authors
Contents
The Settler, Warrior, Nomad Spread
The What to Do Spread (Next Step Method)
The Time Capsule Method
Climb Inside Your Spread!
The Negative Confessions Spread
The Leaves Upon the Wind Method
The 4MAT® Spread
The GO Method
The Stairway to Heaven Spread [Narrative Method]
The Cards of the Goddess [Narrative Spread]
The One Year to Live Spread
Branching Spread Method
The Dice Man Method
Anima/Animus Spread
Buffers & Shocks (4th Way Method)
Nine Swords Spread (Way of Grief)
Signal to Noise Method (Clarification Spread)
Stages of Alchemy Spreads
Yellow Brick Road Spread [Pulled Spread Method]
Infinity Method (Hebrew One-Card Spread)
Radiance Method
The Mason’s Spread
SNAP Method
SUNSET SPREAD
THE ALCHEMISTS SPREAD
THE IAO METHOD
NAME SPREAD METHOD
Pandora’s Box Shuffle System
THE DIG
Blind Man’s Bluff Method
Sing Song Method
Sun Meets Moon Spread
The Victoria’s Secret Spread
House on the Borderlands Method
My Mythic Story
Rings of Atlantis Spread
Ancient Echoes Spread
Candle Burning Method
Synchronicities Method
See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil (3 Monkeys Spread)
Pit and Pendulum Method
In Two Minds Spread
Second Opinion Method
Golden Dawn Temple Spread
Rose Cross Spread
Tao Tarot Method
Your Spread
Toppling Pennies Spread (Push Method)
Light /Dark Spread
The Night Train
Sherlock Holmes Spread (Investigative Spread)
Spread of the Ninth Arch (Typhonian Spread)
Dream Spread
ABRAHADABRA Method/Spread
The Road Less Travelled (Unusual option spread)
My Secret Garden (Feminine Mysteries Working)
Strong Like Bull (Masculine Power Working)
5 Stages of the Soul Spread
LOL Spread
The Muses Spread
The 4 Faces Method
Egyptian Soul Spread
Mistake Spread
The Alphabet of Desire Method
Emerald Tablet Spread
Turning a Question into a Spread with Clean Language
The Bull in a China Shop Spread
Turning a Word into a Spread
The Parents Response Spread
How to Have a Conversation with the Cards
Bonus Method 1: The Sign of Paracelsus
Bonus Method 2: Pooh Sticks Method
Master Method: The Grand Quadrangle
Conclusion
Websites & Resources
The Tyldwick Tarot
Kindle Tarot Books & Series
Preface
Before you begin, you may wish to join thousands of other tarot students, readers, authors, artists, and enthusiasts in our free Facebook group if you have any questions about Tarot, and also download our free 22—page keyword guide to tarot cards and 12 standard spreads from our site:
www.mytarotcardmeanings.com
Our tarotcardmeanings site can also act as a reference for individual card meanings as you play with some of the methods and spreads within this book.
Introduction
In this second Kickstart book of exclusive and innovative Tarosophy teaching, you will take your knowledge from the first keywords and concepts of Tarot in Flip and now Twist them into whole new ways of reading and engaging with Tarot!
This book is also a standalone title in that it encourages you to play with Tarot methods and spreads until you become confident to create your own in response to the question being presented to you. This is one of the hallmarks of an excellent reader and a skill we encourage our intermediate Tarot students to develop.
We have had a lot of creative fun in bringing you this book, which draws on three decades of Tarot practice and teaching experience. We look forwards to seeing you on the journey ahead!
Marcus Katz, The Tarosophist
&
Tali Goodwin, TaliTarot
The Layout of this Kickstart Book
This book provides a compendium of original ideas in Tarot. We have provided a subtitle for each method presented in this book to indicate one possible usage of the spread or application. These are not to be taken as anything other than a general guideline, as the whole purpose of Twist is to demonstrate how anything may be twisted into service of divination through the Tarot. However, some of these methods have been used over many years and have demonstrated their power in particular circumstances which are given here as a good starting-point.
The methods range from standard spreads for beginners to more intermediate and advanced methods best suited for experienced readers. We have not indicated which level we believe a method to be best suited to encourage your exploration of as many methods as possible.
Some of these methods are for self-discovery work a
nd others are straightforward divination and prediction. A few of the methods given here begin to demonstrate how Tarot may be used as a proactive key back into the Universe to effect change though their magick. That particular approach is explored further in our following KickStart book, Tarot Uplift.
For selected methods and approaches we have given further reading suggestions to deepen your appreciation of the inspiration for the methods. You can also develop that method or approach further by referring to the source material and designing your own spread variations.
Who knows, you may even come to have a spread or method named after you, and then a variant, such as the McCord Variant (Marcia’s Loop) of Rachel’s Game.[1]
A Brief note on Attunement
In Tarosophy we consider a decks attunement to a reading or divinatory question. We choose particular decks for specific readings or methods. That is not to say a gifted reader cannot attune a deck outside its normal range – We have seen profound spiritual readings performed with the Hello (Kitty) Tarot deck and patently ridiculous questions answered with good humor by the Thoth Tarot of Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris.
In Tarot Twist we provide some ideas for which decks might be attuned to some of the methods given here, for example, a method involving layers is best performed with Emily Carding’s Transparent Tarot or Transparent Oracle. A method involving outdoor work is best performed with an appropriate pagan deck whose symbols reflect the environment, such as Twilight Realm deck by Beth Wilder – very appropriate if outdoors at night by candle-light.
We deal with issues of attunement and the power of performing deliberately discordant readings in Tarosophy. In this present guide, we will give some ideas for attuned decks where appropriate for specific methods, such as the Negative Confessions method and spread.
The Tarot Twist
Whilst many books speak of the Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana of the Tarot, which is inevitably a form of the archetypal Hero’s Journey observed by Campbell, in Tarot Twist we see how each card twists into its successor. This perspective can assist you see the Majors through a novel perspective, allowing for powerful one-card readings, or new ways of seeing these cards when they appear in a reading.
The Tarot Twist with Majors can be demonstrated by seeing aspects of the Fool card, reversed. These include logic instead of chaos, control instead of freedom, and guile instead of innocence. At a deeper level, we also see in the Fool reversed a twist of the essential silence of the Fool into the spoken word, the Logos. All of these twisted meanings are of course embodied by the upright Magician, the first card in the sequence of the Majors. They also accord with the attributes of Mercury, corresponding to this card.
So if we twist the Fool, he mutates into the Magician. This rule holds true throughout the entire sequence of the Majors. The Magician, with his “show and tell” on the table, twists into the High Priestess, who hides her secrets behind the veil; the virgin High Priestess then twists into the pregnant Empress … this might also be termed the Tarot Topple, as one card falls inevitably into the next when taken to its extreme.
Firstly, we will play Tarot Twist with the Majors in our own way, and then we would encourage you to sit for a while and perhaps consider your own twists between two cards in sequence, for example how might the Wheel twist into Justice? Imagine the Wheel turning; consider perhaps the meanings of fate and karma. Take these to their logical extension, blow them out of proportion, and twist them as if you were twisting the card, morphing it into the next card, Justice. What do you feel or see happening – what tensions exist between the cards, where do they neatly overlap?
In the course of doing this exercise, you may experience deeper meanings of the individual cards as your unconscious processes are forced into deep comparative activity – a sort of brain-training for your intuition, like a spiritual Sudoku.
So you might feel the Wheel spinning, then consider the axle, then look at Justice and see how still that card image looks (on the RWS deck) and feel the pull between constant motion and absolute stillness and balance.
You might be thinking of the axle and scales, how they both balance forces. In doing this, you might begin to feel the twist as the Wheel Twists into Justice, expressed as “Regularity twists into Law”. You might even suddenly get the idea that “habit twists into a rule” or other similar expressions. You now have a new meaning and insight into the Wheel, as “habit”, if you didn’t already consider the Wheel to represent that concept.
So here are our Tarot Twists, for your initial consideration and as an example of the game in play.
Illus. The Snake That Twists.
… twists everything into nothing …
0 : FOOL
Twists innocence into guile
I : MAGICIAN
Twists communication into concealment
II : PRIESTESS
Twists seeding into fertility
III : EMPRESS
Twists nature into nurture
IV : EMPORER
Twists power into control
V : HIEROPHANT
Twists regulation into choice
VI : LOVERS
Twists contentment into drive
VII : CHARIOT
Twists rhythm into rhyme
VIII : STRENGTH
Twists relationship into self-awareness
IX : HERMIT
Twists the journeyer into the journey
X : WHEEL
Twists the revolution into the law
XI : JUSTICE
Twists peace into stillness
XII : HANGED MAN
Twists sacrifice into reward
XIII : DEATH
Twists renewal into change
XIV : TEMPERANCE
Twists connection into attachment
XV : DEVIL
Twists contraction into explosion
XVI : TOWER
Twists confusion into vision
XVII : STAR
Twists light into reflection
XVIII : MOON
Twists identity into awareness
XIX : SUN
Twists fuel into creation
XX : LAST JUDGEMENT
Twists noise into signal
XXI : UNIVERSE
Twists everything into nothing
0: FOOL
… Twists nothing into everything …
Illus. The Snake That Twists Again.
You will see that we have created this Twist as a loop, which indicates how the twists return back around the cycle in an endless sequence. The Majors are a revolutionary process, through which the Fool tumbles, turns and twists in an endless and timeless journey – perhaps because the Fool is an image of that endless and timeless journey.
You might also consider placing the Major cards on a Möbius Strip, with the twist being where the Fool and the Universe coincide. If you follow that route, you might develop an Escher-type Tarot deck, which would be fascinating but somewhat difficult to shuffle!
The keywords one can derive for the cards are the first word which applies to the preceding card, and the second word which applies to the following card. This means that each card has two keywords, one from the twist before, one going into the twist following. Thus, the Sun is both Awareness and Fuel. The Hanged Man is Stillness and Sacrifice, the Death card is reward and renewal.
This builds further from our simple keywords in Tarot Flip and gives a slightly different perspective. Now you can also see how a card can mutate its meaning based on the cards before and after it – or around it – in a reading.
Using the Twists in a Reading
To perform a Twist Tarot reading, simply take the Majors out of your deck. Shuffling these twenty-two cards, ask your question and select one card. Lay that card on the table and read the appropriate twist phrase.
For example, my question is “How will I get the most from my visit to a client tonight. Will it be a successful visit?”
I draw THE STAR.
T
he twist for this is “light into reflection”. This suggests that I should take whatever light (information) is given to me in the session and twist it into self-reflection. I may learn more about myself than my client.
You can further follow the twist strip by then simply following the next twists, so we can then see with the next twist, THE MOON, I should see from that reflection of the upcoming visit an opportunity to define myself more fully and become aware more of my own abilities and skills.
The Twist will work for all questions and turn a one-card reading into a powerful sequence of interpretation. It can also work well for analyzing previous events where the learning outcome is unclear.
Tarot Timings
Whilst you practiced your first readings using Tarot Flip, you may have already encountered a common question asked of readers, which is simply “When?” So whilst the reading may have predicted success in employment, travel, a move, a relationship (or not), the Querent will equally be interested in the timing of the events or changes.
Tarot is not an exact science. It is a divinatory art of interpretation. If we could all make an exact mapping system of the Universe, accurate to the exact moment and event in all its detail, we would create this Universe!
On Exactitude in Science . . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.