The Uncrossed Path Blog
Welcome to The Uncrossed Path Blog, where each post delves into the art and practice of cartomancy, focusing on traditional approaches to tarot, playing cards, and Lenormand, grounded no-nonsense divination. Here, you’ll find explorations of cartomantic techniques, interpretations grounded in cultural and philosophical insight, and discussions that emphasize clarity over mystique. Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or a discerning seeker, these articles offer a rigorous approach to understanding the cards, with an eye on truth rather than trend.
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The Year’s Wheel: A Method for Yearly Forecasts
Discover how the Lenormand cards unveil the challenges and opportunities awaiting you in 2025. In The Year’s Wheel, I explore a method for creating 12-month forecasts, offering insights into each month’s key themes. Whether approached generally or with a specific focus, this reading style reveals patterns and pivotal moments, helping you navigate the year ahead with greater clarity.
The Gifts of Great Aunt Marija
What does it mean to inherit magic? Is it about traditions passed down, or is it something we must create for ourselves? Reflecting on the life and craft of my Great-Aunt Marija, this piece explores the balance between honoring ancestral legacies and forging a unique path in magic. Through her story, I delve into the power of resilience, the lessons of the cards, and the sovereignty we claim as magicians.
Love & Connection: A Relationship Spread
The card-reading community is always drawn to a good spread. As a studious teenager, I relied heavily on them. Over time, I found myself preferring simplicity: three cards can address almost any question, six cards bring out contrasts, and nine cards add depth. A straightforward 3-6-9 progression that’s easy to remember and covers most needs. That said, there’s no harm in using pre-defined spreads.
The Death Card: ‘Transformation’ and Other Convenient Theories
In card reading, clarity starts with calling things by their real names. A book is just a book before it symbolizes a ‘secret,’ and death is death before it’s ‘transformation.’ Ignoring the true function of a card in favor of convenient meanings undermines the power of a reading.
A Prediction Method Featuring Thoth Tarot
Old loves never truly fade, especially for someone as sentimental as I am. My journey into cartomancy began at fifteen, starting with playing cards and the Gypsy Fortunetelling Oracle. It wasn’t long before I ventured into Tarot, sparked by a gift from my cousin Katarina. She gave me her Ancien Tarot de Marseille by Grimaud, as she was more focused on another deck. The moment she introduced me to it, I was utterly captivated. The Thoth Tarot, with its stunning imagery, was easily the most beautiful deck I had ever laid eyes on.
The Season of Detachment
The fall is here. The vitality of summer is leaving us, as we descend deeper into the dark of winter. A season of transitions, of liminality which can be witnessed in the amber tree tops and the chill of rain on our windswept faces. It is also a season of letting go: just as we mourn the passing of summer, we mourn all the unfulfilled desires. More than ever, we are faced with time and our own temporality. But instead of embracing the nature of the season by acknowledging the losses, we cling to the empty husks of our missed opportunities, failed relationships, and all other unfulfilled dreams.
A “Snake” In Their Garden - Lenormand Love Reading
Without matters of the heart, a fortuneteller’s profession might well become obsolete. Yet, the fundamental reason for visiting one remains consistent across all aspects of life: the desire for clarity and certainty. It’s important to note, however, that these two often diverge. Many who seek divinatory guidance crave certainty, but only when it aligns with their hopes and expectations. In essence, they are looking for reassurance to support the things they hold onto, even when it might be more liberating to gain clarity, accept reality, and let go.
Grand Tableau Reading Method From The Serbian “Great Folk Dream Book”
From the vast occult knowledge circling in my mother’s family, very little was to be found in writing. There is only one incantation my grandmother has ever written down, and I still keep it, even though it is falling apart. The same went for fortunetelling. There was only one book on the subject that I can remember: The Great Folk Dream Book, or Veliki Narodni Sanovnik in Serbian.
New Work, New Path - A Lenormand Reading
A client just started a new job and is already unhappy with how things are going. He notices that everybody puts in a lot of extra hours which does not reflect efficiency. He was put into this new position to bring about some change in their operations but is afraid that he will be sucked into the overworking vortex that does not produce anything of value. He wanted to know if he would be able to beat down his path there and find a way to do satisfying work, if not for the entire team, then at least for himself.
Grandma’s Gift - Reading a Coffee Cup
Let’s take a short break from cards and discuss the most widespread fortune-telling method in the Balkans: coffee cup reading. While there are many methods for reading a coffee cup, here I lay out the method that has been passed down to me by my mother and grandmother.
The Power of Falling
A Rusalje ritual is an ecstatic dance practice from the Homolje region of Eastern Serbia, performed by the women called Rusalje (pronounced as ruh-sah-lye, “the falling women”). The practice, which is now largely extinct, used to take place on the holiday of Pentecost. It takes place on the 50th day after Orthodox Easter, colloquially known in Serbia as “Duhovi” (spirits) - a Christian holiday, dedicated to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. On this day, the people of Duboka village would gather in front of the cave, and start playing the music and dancing the traditional dances. All of a sudden, one of the women would fall to the ground in a violent trance.
Keeping a Relationship - A Gypsy Fortunetelling Cards Reading
Piatnik’s Gypsy Fortunetelling Cards have a rich and diverse history of practical use in Europe. It all began in the 19th Century Austro-Hungarian Empire, where they first appeared, alongside other similar oracle decks, under the name Aufschalgkarten, usually consisting of 32 cards. This coincides with the popularity of a reduced Piquet deck of 32 playing cards used for divination in Central Europe. But in contrast to Lenormand decks which relied on the comparison with the playing cards through the use of small insets, they are unnumbered and bear no references to other fortunetelling systems.
The Ancestral Transmission
In Serbian folk religion, Saturdays are reserved for the dead. It is the day we pay our respects to the dearly departed. For the very same reason, it is believed that people born on Saturday can peer into the Otherworld. Because of this, I pay special attention to Saturdays and my bond with my ancestors and celebrate it with simple offerings: a beeswax candle, a cup of coffee, and some incense. The very same way they respected their ancestors whenever they visited their graves.
The Magic of a Bell
Bells have a special place in my memories. Most of them relate to one of my favorite childhood holidays: The Lazarus Saturday, otherwise known as “Vrbica” (loosely translated as “The Little Willow” or “Willow Day”) in Serbian folklore. It is a holiday for which children need to don their best apparel and go to the church adorned with willow wreaths and little bells hung around their necks. As the holiday marks the resurrection of Lazarus, the willow branches are given out by a priest (in lieu of palm branches in Central Europe) to represent children greeting Jesus with palm branches, and the bells are supposed to represent the overpowering of death.
The ‘Other’ Woman’s Longing
I was always of the meaning that it is not our job as fortunetellers to pass judgment as long as it is not related to the art of card reading. Whatever question is put on the table in front of us, we need to read the cards for it. And we need to do it to the best of our ability. In any case, petty bourgeois morals never held value for me anyway.
The Uncrossed Path Manifesto
The art of cartomancy must be rooted in perfection — the perfection of words, and the perfection of the act. Everything else is not worth my time.
‘Drama Queen’ Projections and New Relationships
“I need your help, I fucked up bad!” are the words I hear regularly. And behind them usually lies a problem caused by a blind, anxiety-induced, projected reaction in the love sphere. This we often tend to label as a ‘drama queen’ response, but let us be honest, all relationships affect us greatly. Some relationships we leave as a wiser person, some we leave richer or poorer, and some we leave as downright damaged husks of a human being. It is particularly the latter kind that often tends to cause problems in all future relationships, or even prevent us from ever trusting another person again altogether.
How Does It All Work?
I have been blessed to be surrounded by magic and divination ever since I can remember. That, of course, means that my first knowledge about fortune telling and magic was formed within the context of Folk Witchcraft practiced on the territory of Former Yugoslavia. One of my first memories concerns my mother and my grandmother reading fortunes from a coffee cup – their preferred method. My grandma did it full-on traditional style, while my mom still does it with a good dose of New Age stew. That’s why my coffee reading sessions with my mom mostly consist of her making grand narratives, me rolling my eyes, her telling me to fuck off, and then getting to the point. When she gets there, she is spot on, but she says she needs to trust her process which always brings her there. So who am I to say anything?
Eyes Wide Shut - A Love Reading
If you are lucky to be in a long-standing relationship, you most probably had moments of uncertainty that called for an immediate reflection. Or in simple terms, you most probably asked yourself “How are we doing right now?” Or the old favorite: “Where will we end up?” But when these questions do pop up, experience tells me that most of us simply ignore the situation, and comfortably push any concerns under the rug, hoping to continue the smooth sail. In that case, there will come a time when you will no longer be able to ignore the situation, and you will be forced to look into the mirror of your relationship. Is it already too late?
The Agony of Choice
According to one of the greatest sociologists of the 20th century, Zygmunt Bauman, we are always confronted with a choice, and that choice is almost always agonizing (2000). Why? Because the modern society has primed us with the fear of missing out. Once we make a choice, we automatically lose the possibility of ever knowing what could have been if we went for plan B. And if this was not true, I would have to be honest and say that there would be hardly any work left for the fortune tellers.