About

Mystic Bow is a set of guides to tarot, astrology and numerology that tries to be useful rather than breathless: clear about what each tradition says, honest about what it does not, and easy to try for yourself.

What this site is for

Tarot, astrology and numerology are old traditions of symbolism. People use them to reflect, to start conversations and to see a question from a different angle. This site explains the ideas, shows the pictures, and lets you shuffle a spread, find a birth card or light up the zodiac without signing up for anything.

How the pages are written

Every page says what the tradition associates with its subject, in those words, and keeps that apart from plain fact. The astronomy on a planet page, such as how long it takes to orbit the Sun, is checked against standard astronomical references. The symbolism is presented as symbolism. Where traditions disagree, for example over the modern and older rulers of a sign, both answers are given. Statements that could be mistaken for medical, legal or financial advice, dated predictions and claims about what will happen to you are left out.

What it does not do

Nothing here predicts anything, and nothing here is advice. A tarot draw is a prompt for thinking, not a forecast. The yes-or-no and birth-card tools follow common conventions, which are explained on their pages, and they are not official rules, because tarot has none.

Privacy

The tools run in your browser. Questions you type, dates you enter and cards you draw are not sent anywhere and are not stored on a server. There are no accounts, advertising or tracking scripts, and the fonts are served from this site.

Pictures

The tarot cards are the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, painted by Pamela Colman Smith (1878 to 1951) to Arthur Edward Waite's scheme and published in London in 1909. They are in the public domain, and each card page links to its scan on Wikimedia Commons. The engravings, star charts and woodcuts are also public domain or CC0 and come from Wikimedia Commons, with credits at the foot of every page.

Sources and further reading

• Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), text online at Sacred Texts.
• Rider-Waite tarot and Pamela Colman Smith on Wikipedia, for the deck's history and its artist.
• Tarot and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn on Wikipedia, for the history of the cards and the astrological correspondences most decks use.
• The Rider-Waite-Smith scans on Wikimedia Commons.
• NASA's solar system guide and the definition of a planet, for the astronomy on the planet pages, including why Pluto is now a dwarf planet.

Corrections and contact

If you spot an error, or something unclear, write to info@mysticbow.com. Corrections are made to the page itself.

Tarot, astrology and numerology are traditions of symbolism. This page says what the tradition associates with its subject. It does not predict anything and it is not advice.