I'm Glad I Didn't Pay For That!

I got an offer today for a free tarot reading from Astrology.com. As it was free and I am fond of these kind of things, I decided to look into it. After a brief argument about the necessity of having Flash 7.0 (which I don't have), I convinced the site to email me the reading in text format.

Honestly, I could have gotten a better reading from a goldfish.

First off, because I opted for the free instead of paid reading, it only showed me one card. How can one possibly be expected to get a proper feel for the reading with only one card? Astrology.com says, "Only your full reading can give you the information you need to fully understand, and improve, your situation. Upgrade to your full tarot reading today and discover what the future may hold." Which would cost two dollars. Ummm, no thanks. I'd rather use that $2 for something useful, like Tylenol for the headache I got trying to get the damn half-assed report sent to my email.

Second, it said the card was reversed, which was significant, and then proceeded to give me a detailed description of what it would mean if the card weren't reversed. Having some familiarity with the card, I knew what it meant anyway, but for a beginner or someone who didn't know anything about it that would have been highly unhelpful.

All in all, I was quite disappointed. But I dunno what I really expected. The quality of their horoscopes has been going downhill over the last couple of years as well.

Anyway, for those who are interested* a good site for horoscopes is The Future Minders. For free (and complete) tarot readings I like Lotus Tarot, World of Froud, and Facade.

Lotus tarot is nice because she tailors the card descriptions to the specific readings and the position the card is in rather than a generic description that you have to decipher yourself. She doesn't, however, allow reversals.

The World of Froud isn't properly tarot. It's oracle, so the names and symbols are quite different from regular tarot (as well as there being a different number of cards) but it covers the same scope of things.

Facade is just fun (and I have a permanent link to them on the sidebar). It allows reversals, lets you choose your deck, has a large selection of readings, and there are also several other diversions on the site as well ranging from I Ching to a coin flip.

*They're fun diversions when you have nothing better to do than waste lots of time, and if you get your horoscope emailed to you it means that every morning you'll have at least one email (for some reason this makes me feel loved and happy)