Doug Dyment Zenermancy

Doug Dyment Zenermancy

Tarot cards dominate today’s divination landscape: a visitor to a typical “psychic fair” will find more than 80% of its readers using them. And this presents one of the reasons why tarot may not be the best choice for those who wish to do readings commercially: it’s a crowded, highly competitive field, making it difficult to differentiate oneself. Another reason is tarot’s strong identification with the occult: many people are quite frightened of these cards, and/or ascribe to beliefs that prohibit their use.

One option, of course, is for the reader to return to traditional (pre-tarot) playing cards. In addition to being a more historically accurate approach, this can be an effective solution, especially when using cards featuring older designs. Another is to seek out cards with different symbolism altogether; various types of special “fortune-telling” decks are manufactured for this purpose, though a preferable choice is one with a real-world history, yet still containing effective symbolism.

This monograph proposes instead the use of popularly-titled “ESP testing cards” (actually, Zener symbol cards) for this purpose: they carry an interesting “scientific” cachet, embody an anthropologically rich set of symbology, and can be framed in the context of a divinatory system that is steeped in both complexity and historical accuracy (dating back thousands of years). Even Hollywood has portrayed Zener symbol cards as divination tools (in the star-studded 2000 film The Gift, starring Cate Blanchett as a psychic reader).

Zenermancy offers a solid foundation for the understanding and interpretation of Zener symbolism and its use in divination. It provides not only a broad, detailed exploration of these topics, but a variety of reading methods and much helpful information for both nascent and experienced cold readers. The volume comes packaged with a set of business-card-sized Zener “flash cards”, to be used as a learning tool while mastering the system, and subsequently to deliver basic “symbological readings” (replacement sets of these colour-printed cards are available for gifting to high-value clients as a souvenir of the experience).

The book is organized as follows:

• Introduction
• Symbols: Introduction
• Symbols: Interpretation
  • The Circle
  • The Cross
  • The Wavy Lines
  • The Square
  • The Star
• Transitions: Introduction
• Transitions: Interpretation
• A Reader Prepares
  • First Steps: A Simple “Symbological Reading”
  • Mnemonic Aids for the Symbological Reading
  • Encouraging Dialogue
  • Sample Symbological Readings
• Reading Dynamics
  • Ritual
  • Suggested Card Spreads (Layouts)
  • A Cleromantic Alternative
  • Reading Styles
  • The Extended Reading
  • A Sample Extended Reading
  • On The Validity of Readings
  • On Being a Perpetual Student
  • Some Supportive Tools
• An Abecedarian Adjunct
• Coloured Symbols
• Bibliography

Even non-readers will find value here, in the form of rich patter material to inform Zener-symbol-based presentations.