our craft by inheriting a body of

knowledge and wisdom accrued through the ages,

by renowned occultists who transformed

tarot from an entertaining card game for

the nobles to an indispensable tool for

exercising intuition, for divination, and

for connecting to your Higher Self,

or higher consciousness. When we honor legacy,

we learn facets of tarot symbolism we might

not have arrived at on our own. The Fool, we

are told, carries with him the tools of

the Magician. The Wheel of Fortune

depicts the four Fixed signs of the Western

zodiac, the signs symbolic of the four

seasons, four elements, four directions, and

also that of the Divine Order. Speaking of

the Divine, we’ve got the four Hebrew

letters YHVH for Yahweh, God, inscribed

into the wheel. Temperance is the “Time” card.

The name of the angel is Time. Who is

that pictured on The World card? Is it

relevant that masters of old tell us

that the person featured is a

hermaphrodite? And there we have

symbolism for the four fixed zodiac

signs again. How might background

knowledge of Hermetic symbolism inform

the way you read the cards? Leaves from

the Kabbalistic Tree of Life are a

recurring imagery in the Rider-Waite

Smith tarot, the deck my book focuses on.

Here I’m only showing four examples. Sift

through your cards to see if you can

spot them all. Leaves from the Tree of

Life are for the healing of nations.

The leaves collect strength. How might that

inform the omens prognosticated by cards

that show up in a reading featuring

these leaves? Here are the tombstones of

royalty and the religiously pious from

medieval Europe. They’re exhibited at

the Louvre in Paris. The symbolism here

connects with the imagery on the Four of

Swords. My appreciation for the card’s

undertone of seeking faith, despite

overtones of physical challenges, gives

me much more to draw on as a tarot

reader. By the way fun fact: in 1911

around the time this tarot deck was

published, its artist, Pamela Colman

Smith, converted to Catholicism. Knowing

historic and cultural context gives me,

the tarot reader, a much stronger, more

powerful connection with the collective

consciousness, to the metaphysical

compendium of space-time.

In the mundane physical world, education

advances innovation. It’s the same in the

metaphysical and spirit world. Education

advances your ability to operate

esoteric technologies. The more you know

about history, the cultural context for

the tarot deck you’re working with,

science, religious mythos, human

psychology, and the hierarchies of spirit

realms, the more patterns and divine

omens you can spot in the cards. Every

single form of divination is about

spotting patterns and knowing how to

interpret those patterns. I can teach you

how to spot patterns, but the knowing

part comes from wisdom and experience.

For instance, let's spot the Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse among the

four knights in tarot. The Knight of Swords

rides a white horse and he is Conquest;

Victory; Pestilence. The Knight of Wands

rides a red horse and he is War;

Slaughter; Sacrifice. The Knight of

Pentacles rides of black horse and he

is Famine; Oppression. The Knight of Cups

rides a pale horse and he is Death. Does

the Knight of Cups remind you a bit of

another Horseman, say, Key 13: The Death

Card? 13…1 plus 3 is 4…4

horsemen…sorry, nevermind. Back to tarot.

Do you need to be a history buff to

read tarot competently? No. When you walk

into the Louvre, the National Gallery, or

the Metropolitan Museum, you don’t need a

degree in art history to appreciate the

masterpieces. But just a little

background on those works of art can

take you to new depths of appreciation.

In John Waterhouse’s 1902 painting “The

Crystal Ball,” the original work features

a skull. However, when the painting was

sold, its owner was unnerved by the skull,

so had another painter paint over that

skull to conceal it within the blue

curtain. Calling upon a common theme from

the Pre-Raphaelite era, Waterhouse

depicts a woman in an enclosed space,

physically able to see the world only

through a small window, but that doesn't

limit her experiences. As we see from her

crystal ball gazing, presumably able to

see all the world through scrying and

her psychic connections. We also see what

appears to be a grimoire and magician's

wand before her. The dark trees in the

background

suggests a sinister or supernatural tone,

but if you didn't know the origins of

the painting and looked upon the revised

work without the skull, that sinister or

supernatural tone might not have been as

apparent. With the skull, now the complete

range of symbolism the artist intended,

we get a much stronger sense of who this

woman is... and what she is capable of. In

William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s 1891 painting

“The Broken Pitcher,” we see a young

pre-pubescent girl and by her feet is a

cracked pitcher hearkening to the title

of the painting. What does it mean? You

don't need a background in art history

to appreciate the mastery of this work, to

find it evocative, to appreciate the

emotional value of Bouguereau’s art. But

just a little bit of knowledge and the

implications of this painting go to

very different depths. The cracked

pitcher was a familiar trope in

Bougeareau’s historic era, symbolic of taking a

young girl's virginity. This painting

references the hyper-sexualization of an

underage peasant girl. Wait a minute, are

we still talking about tarot? Yes, we are

still talking about tarot. Bear with me

here. Ride out my train of thought. I'm

going somewhere with all of this. Here in

this painting, we see a sensual woman,

most likely celestial in nature, given

the way she leans on clouds and the

cherubs around her, gazing down

lovingly, at a nude man. Do you need to

know the Greek myths that inspired this

painting? Selene, the goddess of the moon,

fell in love with and Endymion and more

specifically, loved the way he looked

when he was asleep, so she asked Zeus to

grant Endymion eternal sleep, that way

she could visit every night and admire

him. Do you need to know the allegory of

the dog? How the Greeks believed the dog

symbolized faith and love? Perhaps the

emotions of love and admiration are

evident to all who study this Sebastiano

Ricci painting, titled “Endymion and

Selene” and you don’t need to know the

artist’s intent, or popular cultural

symbolism at that time, or history, or

mythology to derive meaning from the

work. But for some of us, that

mythological background and the study of art

history helps deepen our love and

understanding of art. We can be more

attuned to the nuances, the undertones,

and the subtext. The tarot, especially as

tarot is often presented today and the

many deck productions availed to us, is 78

works of art. Its art. Stripping away all

of the esoteric, divinatory, or even

psychological mumbo jumbo, a tarot

reading is interpretation of art. And

just a bit of background knowledge will

deepen your appreciation of tarot. What is

that background knowledge? It's

understanding of the four elements,

numerology, astrology, it's Hermetic

symbolism, and even the intentions of the

tarot deck creators. The personal alchemy

of science, religion, history, philosophy,

and culture that drive your perceptions

of tarot symbolism is how you develop

wisdom, insight, and how intuition becomes

psychic ability. Tarot analytics, then, is

how you deepen prophetic technology.

Logic does not hinder intuition, not if

you're doing it right. Logic unveils

intuition.