Intuitive interpretation · Symbolic perception
Tides of Knowing is for people who sense that more is present than surface information can explain. Through reflective tarot readings, practical resources, and The COMPASS Method™, it helps you recognise patterns, interpret what you perceive in context, and communicate that understanding with greater clarity.
Find clarity for a personal question Develop your intuitive practice Explore articles and practical resources
Human-led interpretation grounded in more than 40 years of tarot and intuitive practice.
You may recognise this
Intuition rarely presents itself as a complete answer. It may arrive through a card, image, bodily response, pattern, phrase, contradiction, or quiet sense that something does not fit. The challenge is learning how to interpret what you receive without reducing it to a formula or confusing it with fear, hope, or assumption.
Begin where you are
You may be looking for perspective on something personal, trying to understand the cards or impressions you receive, or ready to develop your intuitive practice more seriously. Tides of Knowing supports personal seekers, informal learners, emerging and established practitioners, and professionals who work with intuitive perception in coaching, writing, facilitation, leadership, and creative fields.
Personal guidance
You may already have pulled cards around the situation, or simply know you need an experienced perspective. Ask Leilia readings help you step back from emotional proximity, identify the wider pattern, and understand what the cards are showing in context. The aim is not prediction for its own sake, but clearer insight into what matters and what deserves your attention now.
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Self-directed exploration
Explore practical articles, repeating-card meanings, interpretive tools, and Practice Commons if you read for yourself, are learning informally, or want a stronger way to understand what keeps emerging. These resources help you move beyond isolated card definitions, recognise patterns across a reading, and develop greater confidence in how you interpret and apply what you receive.
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Practitioner development
The COMPASS Method™ provides a structured way to recognise, organise, test, and communicate intuitive perception. Developed through tarot and oracle practice, it also supports coaching, writing, facilitation, leadership, creative work, and other intuition-led fields. It is designed for practitioners who want to deepen discernment, strengthen their language, and make intuitive insight more grounded, coherent, and useful.
Discover The COMPASS Method™A different way of working with intuition
Meaning emerges through relationship. A card changes according to the question, the cards around it, the position it occupies, the movement within the spread, the emotional field, and what is already known or not yet acknowledged.
The same principle applies beyond cards. Intuitive perception becomes useful when it can be understood in context, examined with discernment, and translated into language that another person can recognise and use. The difference between intuitive perception and interpretation is the disciplined work of turning what is sensed into coherent, grounded understanding.
The framework
The COMPASS Method™ was developed by Leigh Spencer through more than four decades of tarot, symbolic, and intuitive practice. It addresses a common problem: many people perceive more than they can reliably interpret, organise, or communicate.
Rather than teaching people to become “more intuitive” in an undefined way, The COMPASS Method™ develops their ability to work carefully with what they already perceive. It is not limited to tarot or oracle reading, though those remain central teaching fields because they make symbolic relationships visible.
The same interpretive capability can also support coaching, facilitation, writing, leadership, creative practice, animal communication, and other fields in which pattern, subtext, and non-linear perception matter.
Personal tarot readings
Ask Leilia is the personal tarot-reading service of Tides of Knowing. It is often hardest to read clearly when the question matters most. You may be emotionally involved, searching for a particular answer, or working with cards that appear contradictory.
Ask Leilia readings bring an experienced external perspective to the question. Each reading is completed personally by Leilia and interprets the cards as a connected field rather than as a sequence of isolated meanings. Ask Leilia does not use AI to create reading interpretations.
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Read for yourself? A professional reading can also help you recognise where context, emotional proximity, or unconscious assumptions may be shaping your interpretation.
Experience of the work
Ask Leilia client
“Leilia offered a thoughtful, nuanced, and beautifully presented reading. What impressed me most was how clearly she identified the central themes surrounding my rebrand despite having far less context than she might have received during an in-person session. Her interpretation felt specific to both the question and the imagery of the cards, rather than broad or generic.
She wove together the individual cards, repeated numbers, visual details, and overall structure of the spread into a coherent narrative about discernment, refinement, value, and intentional growth. I especially appreciated that she did not simply predict success or difficulty. She translated the cards into practical guidance I could genuinely apply to my branding, messaging, and use of resources.
Her insight that “the potency lies in the reduction” was particularly resonant and gave me a clear lens through which to evaluate the rebrand. The reading felt grounded, encouraging, and actionable while still leaving room for my own intuition and interpretation. Overall, I felt Leilia did an excellent job of understanding the deeper energy of the project and communicating it with care, intelligence, and clarity.”
The COMPASS Method™ training
“Working with Leigh has been a game changer for me.
I’ve worked with tarot and oracle in my practice for many years, but I had a wall around trusting my intuition and knowing what to do with the intuitive information I was receiving. As a business and life coach, I often receive messages that do not come from the material directly in front of me, and I did not know how to ground that information practically or communicate it clearly to clients.
Leigh’s training reflects the real depth of her experience and goes far beyond the topic on the surface. For me, as an adult student wanting to tighten my practice, that breadth was pure gold. I cannot speak highly enough of her skill as a trainer or the depth of knowledge she brings to this work.
I am deeply grateful for what I have learned. I will continue applying these skills and will return for any training Leigh offers next. I highly recommend her training to anyone who has reached the point in their practice where they want to go deeper but are unsure how to develop their skills and offerings.”
The person behind the work
I am Leigh Spencer, a fourth-generation Matakite, tarot practitioner of more than 40 years, professional journalist of more than 30 years, and founder of The COMPASS Method™ and Tides of Knowing.
My work sits at the meeting point between intuitive perception and clear communication. Tarot has been one of my longest and most exacting teachers, but the deeper subject has always been how people recognise what lies beneath surface information and turn that recognition into understanding.
I use the name Leilia for personal readings and within the practitioner community. Whether I am reading, teaching, or writing, the standard remains the same: depth without obscurity, intuition without overstatement, and insight that remains useful in real life.
From the Field Notes
Manually curated essays from the Tides of Knowing article library—chosen for interpretive practice, discernment, and application beyond card memorisation.
Practical interpretation
The hardest shift in tarot practice: understanding that meaning emerges from context, position, question, and relationship, not from the card itself. Most readers know this intellectually. Few have restructured their practice around it.
Intuition & discernment
Static in a tarot reading is not always a skill failure. Often it means the question being read is not the one the seeker actually needed answered.
Wider application
The edge is not more card meanings or fluent interpretation, both are increasingly automatable. It is perceptual readiness: receiving signal before it becomes language, then translating with accuracy.
Continue the exploration
The Discernment Checklist gives tarot and oracle readers 21 practical questions to use before, during, and at the close of a reading. It helps you recognise the real question, identify which cards are carrying the answer, and know when further cards or explanation are adding noise rather than clarity.
Free checklist
21 Questions to Ask Before Pulling Another Card
Use this reader’s checklist to test the question, recognise the cards carrying the answer, decide whether another card is needed, and close the reading cleanly when the answer has landed.
