AUTHOR’S NOTE: Before the mystics and psychics among my readers get too excited, this essay is not about the participation of “spirit guides” in tarot reading, since in my estimation such entities may be nothing more than astral phantasms of subconscious origin projected by those seeking the comfort and confidence of an external spiritual authority. Instead, my thoughts are based on the writing of French tarot author Joseph Maxwell.

In his 1938 book, The Tarot, Maxwell offered a few concise words about the use of intuition in what he called “vaticination” with the tarot cards. Here is a quote from the pertinent text, followed by my commentary:

“Harnessing the restless steeds of the intuition and making them do their work properly is the seer’s primary difficulty. To do this, it is necessary to form a picture of how the sitter’s thoughts and feelings affect him, or her, in order of importance or intensity.

The sitter usually needs help to do this, and the best method is to inspect the spread of cards, and then, in the way taught by experience and inspiration, give a general outline of the probabilities. Specific orientation occurs when observation of the sitter shows some matter of importance has been touched. This is an essential procedure because the variety and complexity of ideas stemming from each arcanum are immense. Moreover, the general sense of the reading, or part of a reading, will have an overall connotation that gives it relevance; without knowing what this connotation is, the cartomant, however gifted, may be in the dark. Material concerns, family matters or career each demand their own perspective and the reading must be aligned to it.

Intuition is a good guide, but in the interest of making a full and helpful divination, it is necessary to verify with the enquirer at each step if the intuition is taking the right path.

Useful though rational perception may be to the cartomant, it is only an adjunct to the gift of vaticination, that is, the faculty of being able to read the information possessed by the enquirer about his past, present and future. Coming events cast a shadow before them; each individual has a presentiment about his own destiny, which may remain latent: the normal processes of consciousness do not include such presentiments.”

The first point of interest here is Maxwell’s statement that, when assessing the “order of importance or intensity” of the sitter’s thoughts and feelings about the subject of the divination, “Specific orientation occurs when observation of the sitter shows some matter of importance has been touched.” By “specific orientation,” Maxwell meant “zeroing in on” the querent’s latent subconscious awareness of the matter, and by “observation” – if he isn’t just referring to visual cues – he may be looking for a verbal response by the querent (which today we might call an “Aha!” reaction) to the diviner’s “general outline of probabilities” based on the cards (a summary which was to be formed around the latter’s experience and inspiration).

It’s clear that he intended to rely on the person across the table for feedback regarding the significance of the narrative to the individual’s own personal understanding of his or her reality. This is also germane to the “help” mentioned in the previous sentence: impressions that would aid the sitter in formulating the mental “connotation” for the reading and assist the reader in “knowing what this connotation is” as stated near the end of the paragraph. For Maxwell (as it is for me) the consultation was always a dialogue with the sitter, not a one-sided monologue.

The second relevant point here is that “it is necessary to verify at each step if the intuition is taking the right path.” My interpretation is that Maxwell didn’t believe that the reader’s intuition alone is a good enough “guide” to guarantee “making a full and helpful divination,” and that the continuous validation of the sitter is essential to accuracy. Once again, I share his concerns about the veracity of unaided intuition, and constantly engage my sitter in judging the legitimacy of the insights arising from my take on the cards. It is useless to try doing this in a vacuum, but that is exactly what remote (i.e. online) readers typically do; it is essentially “cold reading” that doesn’t benefit from any kind of interactive, face-to-face communication. Stand-alone intuition has become the “gold standard” of this kind of subjective guesswork, and the absolute trust it enjoys among those who spurn knowledge-based interpretation, even as a useful “adjunct to vaticination,” is nothing short of mind-boggling. (I’ve labeled it the “If it feels right, it must be right” syndrome.)

Maxwell’s “guide” to exploring the uncharted dimensions of the querent’s future was first and foremost the confirmatory input of that individual and only provisionally the “outline” supplied by the reader’s own intuition, which was never sufficient for a full assessment of the circumstances since it only satisfied one-half of a shared obligation. My metaphysical opinion is that flawless subliminal knowledge of the plot resides with the sitter and my prompting with the cards is only intended to stimulate realization of the trajectory the narrative is likely to take. I will be the master of ceremonies and raconteur, but I can’t do the tale justice without “audience participation.”