I Tried Every Major Divination System Before Committing to Tarot… Here’s Why I Came Back

Astrology was the first system I took seriously, and for good reason — it’s rich, layered, and has thousands of years of history behind it. Learning to read a natal chart felt like being handed a blueprint for someone’s psyche. The depth is genuinely staggering.

And I mean that as both a compliment and a warning.

Let me give you a small taste of what “depth” actually means here. Most people have heard of a natal chart — the snapshot of the sky at the moment of your birth. But that’s just the front door. There are also synastry charts, which overlay two people’s natal charts to examine compatibility and the dynamics between them. Composite charts take that further, mathematically combining two charts into a single new one that represents the relationship itself as its own living entity. Horary charts are cast for the exact moment a specific question is asked, and read solely to answer that question — an entirely separate discipline with its own complex rules. Return charts — solar, lunar, and others — are cast for the moment the Sun or Moon returns to its exact natal position, used to forecast the year or month ahead. And that’s before we even get into progressions, transits, solar arc directions, house systems, asteroids, Arabic parts…

I have been studying astrology for close to twenty years. Twenty years. And I still only consider myself an intermediate practitioner. There are concepts I understand in theory that I still have genuine difficulty applying in a live reading. The layers don’t stop. You don’t arrive. You just keep going deeper.

So let me be blunt: if someone is advertising themselves as a professional astrologer, using astrology as their sole system, and they’ve been studying for a few years? I’d think carefully before booking that session. I’m just saying. Astrology rewards decades of study, and there’s a real difference between someone who knows the keywords and someone who can actually read a chart in motion for a real human being sitting in front of them.

That said, astrology found its rightful place in my practice — not as the foundation, but as context. When I can see a Saturn return or a Pluto transit running in the background of a client’s situation, it changes everything about how I read for them. I reach for it regularly, just not as the primary tool.

Best for: Analytical thinkers who love pattern recognition and are prepared for a lifetime of study. As a supporting layer to another system — absolutely invaluable. As a solo practice — respect the depth it requires.

I’ve been reading tarot for about 26 years. It was the system I found first, wandered away from, and kept coming back to — and at this point I’ve stopped questioning why. I know why. Tarot simply does things no other system can.

The structure alone sets it apart. A traditional tarot deck contains 78 cards divided into two sections: the Major Arcana — 22 cards representing the big archetypal forces, life’s major themes and turning points — and the Minor Arcana, 56 cards across four suits that cover the texture of everyday life: relationships, work, conflict, creativity, loss, joy. Together they form a complete symbolic language for the human experience. That’s not an accident. That’s centuries of refinement.

This is also where tarot fundamentally differs from oracle cards, which I’ll cover later. Oracle decks are created by individual artists and authors with their own systems and meanings — beautiful, often powerful, but ultimately personal creations. Tarot has a framework. A foundation. You can sit down with someone who learned from a completely different teacher, using a completely different deck, and speak the same language. That shared structure matters.

My personal decks tell their own story. My everyday workhorse is the Hanson-Roberts — soft, warm, deeply intuitive imagery that I’ve worked with for years and trust completely. The Original Rider Waite is the foundational text of modern tarot; if you want to understand where almost every contemporary deck comes from, this is it. The Golden Rider Waite brings a richness and vibrancy to that same classic imagery that I find beautiful for certain readings. And the Mystical Manga — a deck that surprises people when I mention it — brings a completely different visual energy that sometimes unlocks things the traditional imagery doesn’t. Different decks for different moments, different clients, different moods.

What tarot does better than anything else is meet you exactly where you are. It can be blunt when you need blunt and gentle when you need gentle. It handles a quick one-card daily pull as gracefully as a complex ten-card spread. It speaks to the conscious and unconscious mind at the same time — the imagery bypasses your defenses in a way that words alone rarely do. And it grows with you across decades in a way that still surprises me. Cards I once found confusing are now the ones I find most fascinating. After 26 years, I’m still learning.

That’s rare. That’s why I stayed.

Best for: Anyone and everyone — beginners through advanced practitioners. If you’re drawn to it, trust that. Tarot has a way of finding the people who need it.

I’ll be honest with you in a way I’m not sure every divination blogger will be: I think numerology is the most powerful system on this entire list. It’s also one of the quickest to learn, and genuinely fun to use — which is a combination you don’t often find in serious metaphysical study.

Here’s what surprises most people: numerology isn’t limited to birth dates and names. Everything with a numerical correspondence can be read — your home address, your phone number, your bank account number. Any number that’s consistently present in your life is potentially influencing it, and numerology gives you a lens to understand how. Once you start seeing it that way, you can’t unsee it.

I once taught a friend how to read numerology in a single afternoon. He came back the next day looking like a mad scientist, practically cackling — “my house number means this, my brother’s house number means that, my mom’s birth date is such-and-such and she is EXACTLY like that—” and on and on. That’s numerology doing what it does. It clicks fast and then it’s everywhere.

In my own practice, I keep my numerology focus tight rather than sprawling. I work primarily with the birth date — the life path, the personal year, and the birthday number. But the one I find most profound, and that very few practitioners actually use, is something my own mentor taught me: the critical year. It identifies the specific year in a person’s life when a major event occurred — or will occur — that shifts everything from that point forward. Not just a hard year. The year the story changed. When I bring this into a first session, the recognition on a client’s face is unlike anything else in my practice.

Best for: Everyone, honestly. It’s accessible enough for beginners and deep enough for serious practitioners. And for readers: use it as your intake system — you’ll know your client before the first card hits the table.

The I-Ching is ancient, elegant, and carries a philosophical depth that I have genuine respect for. What’s interesting is that it hasn’t disappeared from my practice entirely — it just found an unexpected home inside my numerology work.

Double digit numbers in numerology carry their own layered meanings, and those meanings often connect directly to the I-Ching’s numerical symbolism. Take 10 as an example: in my readings, a person with a 10 life path is someone learning to step into leadership while also developing real discipline — both threads live in that number, and the I-Ching adds texture to why. So in that sense, the I-Ching quietly informs how I read compound numbers without ever being the star of the session.

As a standalone practice though — the casting of lots, the reading of lines, sitting with the hexagrams — it never fully caught on for me. I appreciate the philosophy enormously. I just have trouble trusting it as my only tool in a session. It speaks in metaphor and asks you to meet it halfway, which is beautiful in a contemplative setting and genuinely frustrating when someone needs practical guidance.

Best for: Philosophical types, people drawn to Eastern traditions, and deep contemplative practice. Also quietly useful for numerologists willing to let the two systems talk to each other.

I want to be upfront here: I love Norse theology and mythology deeply. The runes carry a weight and a history that I find genuinely compelling, and I have enormous respect for practitioners who use them as a divination system.

But that’s not how they show up in my life. I use runes occasionally as a magick system — for intention setting, energetic work, and the older runic applications rooted in their origins — not for divination. I never pull them for a reading. For me, they belong to a different category of practice entirely, and trying to force them into a divination role always felt like putting them in the wrong room.

If rune divination calls to you, I’d encourage you to explore it seriously. Just know it’s a system that asks for real study of the cultural and historical context — these symbols carry centuries of meaning that deserve respect.

Best for: People drawn to Norse traditions and earth-based practice. As divination: those who want direct, no-nonsense guidance. As magick: a whole other conversation worth having.

Oracle cards are the feeling systems, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. Unlike tarot, oracle decks have no fixed structure — each one is its own universe. I worked with angel cards, medicine cards, and a few general oracle decks, and each brought something different.

Angel cards felt soft and reassuring — beautiful for moments when someone needs comfort and encouragement over hard truths.
Medicine cards, drawing on animal symbolism, brought a grounded, earthy wisdom that I found surprisingly nuanced.
General oracle decks vary wildly depending on the creator’s intent, which is both their freedom and their limitation.

The common thread? Oracle cards are intuitive and accessible, but they lean heavily on your own interpretive ability. There’s no firm structure to catch you if your intuition wobbles.

Best for: Beginners, people in emotional healing, or as a complement to a more structured system.

The pendulum was a humbling experience. At its best, it’s a beautifully direct tool for yes/no questions — and for some practitioners it’s their most reliable system. But it is deeply personal and highly sensitive to the reader’s own energy and subconscious biases.

I’ll be honest: beyond the technical limitations, the pendulum just never felt right to me energetically. Something about the way it operates — an object swinging to indicate yes or no from an unseen source — hits the same nerve as a spirit board. That’s entirely a personal thing, and I have nothing against practitioners who work with it powerfully and responsibly. It’s simply not a tool I’m comfortable inviting into my space.

Best for: Highly intuitive people who work well with energy, and for quick yes/no questions when used with honest self-awareness.

Speaking of which — yes, I tried one. Twice, actually. And I’ll tell you exactly what happened both times, because I think it illustrates everything you need to know about why these are not casual tools.

The first time, I was young, visiting cousins in Colorado. We got our hands on a spirit board and did what most people do: we played with it. No intention, no protection, no respect. We made contact with something — and whatever it was, it was angry. I’ll spare the full details, but I’ll say this: by the end of the night, a hanging sword had swung off the wall and nearly taken off the cat’s tail. We closed the session fast and didn’t touch the board again.

The second time, I was older and should have known better. My mom had bought a board, and again — we treated it like a game. I won’t claim I can prove causation, but I will tell you that some time later, the house caught fire. The kind of fire that destroyed nearly everything.

The board was found untouched. Not charred. Not warped. Completely unaffected by the flames.

Make of that what you will.

Here’s what I believe: spirit boards are not inherently evil, despite what every horror movie would have you believe. They’re a tool, and like any tool, the experience depends enormously on the intention and awareness of the person using it. But they operate differently from every other system on this list. Most divination systems are conversations with your own higher self, your intuition, or the field of information around you. A spirit board explicitly invites external contact — and that requires conscious use, real awareness, and solid energetic protection before you even sit down.

I don’t use them in my practice, and I don’t recommend them casually. Not out of fear, but out of hard-won respect.

Best for: Experienced practitioners with strong energetic boundaries and a clear protective practice. Not for beginners. Not for game night.

Palmistry surprised me with how much I enjoyed studying it. Reading hands is intimate and immediate — there’s something profound about finding story written into the lines of a person’s palm.

But I want to make an important distinction here, because this one gets muddied constantly: true palmistry is not the same as psychometry. You’ll see many practitioners take a client’s hand, close their eyes, and begin receiving impressions and intuitive information. That’s psychometry — reading the energy of a person through touch. It’s a valid and often powerful practice, but it has nothing to do with the actual lines, mounts, and markings of the hand. Real palmistry means you are looking at the palm — studying the life line, the heart line, the shape of the fingers, the mounts beneath them — and interpreting what’s physically there according to a studied system.

They’re two different skills, and conflating them does a disservice to both.

As for me personally — I studied palmistry but it’s not part of my active practice. I appreciate the system, but my energy is in my three core tools. I’d rather do those well than spread thin.

Best for: Practitioners who do in-person work and are willing to put in serious study time. If someone tells you they’re reading your palm but never actually looks at it — now you know what’s really happening.

I’ll cover these together because they live in the same energetic neighborhood, though they work differently.

Crystal scrying — gazing into a sphere or reflective surface to receive images and impressions — is a deeply receptive, right-brain practice. It asks you to soften your focus and trust what arises. When it works, it’s almost otherworldly. When it doesn’t, you’re just staring at a rock.

Crystal divination (working with the meanings and properties of specific stones, drawing them intuitively) is more structured and easier to learn, though less widely codified. I found both practices most powerful as amplifiers — they deepen and sensitize your intuition rather than replace a reading system.

Best for: Highly visual, intuitive people who connect with earth energy and aren’t attached to structured frameworks.

Every system I tried taught me something real. But after years of exploring, I stopped thinking about this as a competition — and started thinking about it as a practice.

Today, my sessions are built around three systems working together.

Tarot is always the foundation. The 78-card structure is vast enough to hold almost any human situation, but specific enough to give you something real to work with. The imagery speaks to both the conscious and unconscious mind simultaneously. It scales — a one-card pull works as well as a ten-card spread. And it grows with you in a way few systems do; the cards I once found confusing are now the ones I find most fascinating.

Numerology opens the door, especially with new clients. Before a single card is pulled, it gives me — and them — a fast, grounded sense of who they are and what they’re working through. It creates trust and connection before the reading even begins.

Astrology moves through sessions like a quiet undercurrent. I don’t always bring it to the surface, but when a transit or placement is clearly relevant to what a client is experiencing, it changes the depth of what we can explore together.

And underneath all of it runs something that no system can fully contain: spiritual counseling. The cards, the numbers, the planets — they’re all doorways. What actually happens in a session is a conversation between a person and their own truth, with me as a guide. That part doesn’t belong to any one tradition.

The journey through every system wasn’t a detour. It was the education. I needed to understand what each tool could and couldn’t do before I could use any of them well. That’s still true today.