Where these traditions come from
Five traditions, and the long histories behind them
Each tradition here was assembled by real people, in real places, over centuries, often for purposes quite unlike the ones we put them to now. These pages tell those stories, then explain, step by step, how a reading is actually built.
Tarot
Milan, 1440s, London, 1909
Seventy-eight painted cards that began as a card game for dukes and ended up as the most widely read symbolic language in the West.
Read the historyWestern Astrology
Alexandria, c. 150 CE, Europe, 1647
Babylonian record-keeping, Greek geometry and Renaissance printing, folded into one diagram of the sky at the moment you were born.
Read the historyChinese BaZi
Han dynasty calendars, Song dynasty, c. 1100
Eight characters, taken from a calendar that counts the sun by its terms and the years by a cycle sixty long.
Read the historyZi Wei Dou Shu
Attributed to Chen Xiyi, 10th century
A map of twelve palaces rather than a balance of elements, the imperial court of the sky, arranged around your birth.
Read the historyI Ching
Zhou China, c. 1000 BCE; Shao Yong, 1011–1077
A book of sixty-four figures, and a later numerical practice that turns two ordinary numbers into a checkable change of form.
Read the history