AUTHOR’S NOTE: (tl;dr*) Tarot prediction is like “metaphysical weather forecasting.” It can hint at the trending environment or atmosphere of future circumstances but not tell you the hour-by-hour conditions at the time of arrival. It’s up to you to bring the metaphorical sunscreen or umbrella.

In a certain segment of the tarot community there is a deep-seated bias against using the cards for fortune-telling. This aversion occurs mostly among those who operate strictly from the standpoint of psychological self-awareness and adaptive personality management. I spent almost 40 years mining that particular motherlode, to the point that I’ve pretty much scraped bottom in my own psyche. So I eventually moved on to a more predictive mode of tarot use, primarily by wielding the investigative “method of science” (to borrow one-half of Aleister Crowley’s occult motto “The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion”). But, unlike my relationship with the Lenormand cards, I’m not entirely analytical in my handling of the tarot.

I just came across an observation in Sallie Nichols’ Tarot and the Archetypal Journey that puts it in perspective for me. While Nichols was devoted to the use of tarot as a tool for self-understanding, she spends some time discussing the nature of prediction. The concept of interest here is:

“Tarot . . . doesn’t predict a given future, it offers us opportunities to participate in the creation of a new and unpredictable future.”

I’m similarly elastic in my own style of interpretation, in that I believe no forecast manifests as shown in the cards without the active participation of the querent in reinforcing its likelihood. I still believe that the cards pulled describe the “environment” or “atmosphere” pertaining to future circumstances, just not the specific events in store for the seeker unless they are triggered by that individual’s direct intervention. The chance of “something” happening may be a given due to the potency of the omen (it may be “monsoon season” where you’re headed), but it’s almost impossible to deduce its precise character with any degree of certainty. About the best we can do is tell our sitter “Keep your eyes open for an opportunity (or threat) of this general size, shape and color; I don’t know exactly what it is but you’ll know it when you see it.”

I’m much taken by the statement of semanticist Alfred Korzybski that “the map is not the territory.” While I believe that an astrological birth-chart provides a close approximation of an individual’s psychological landscape, a tarot reading resembles a “metaphysical weather forecast” more than a comparable map of the psychic topography and its significant landmarks. Think of it as forming a “situational envelope” that can create a current of potential experience that we can dip into or not depending on how we align ourselves with it. (Perhaps a “perfect storm of serendipity” is a better analogy since I fancy the idea of “prevailing winds” that we can “set our sails” to catch.) We may decide with good reason to let the occasion pass us by, or we may accidentally “miss the boat.” It’s there waiting for us if we want it, but it won’t automatically pounce on us if we’re moving in a different direction. It comes down to a matter of informed choice.

At one point Nichols makes the rather naive claim that a court card appearing in a spread should never be assumed to represent another person of the client’s acquaintance, but instead reflects how the querent has “mapped” that individual’s persona onto his or her private view of reality. In other words, its qualities are not indicative of an external truth but only an internal supposition that says more about the querent than about the other person. In practice I always leave that call up to my sitter; if the “moral characteristics” (to again use Crowley’s phrase) ascribed to the card fit the individual “like a second skin,” I’m not going to be the one to tell the seeker that it’s only a coincidence arising from a psychological phantasm of their own imagination. The other person won’t necessarily behave exactly as portrayed, but it’s worth assuming that the possibility is always there when deciding what stance to take in their regard.

Putting aside all psychological apologies and excuses, some people we must deal with do in fact function at the level of brute instinct, and it does no good in practical terms to pretend that they don’t. I admit to being partial to the phrase from the old bible-thumping, “fire-and-brimstone” sermon: we must sometimes “chastise them according to their desserts” if we are to preserve our own integrity. In response to Nichols’ commentary on the Knight of Swords, do we really want to allow such people free rein to run roughshod over us on their self-appointed quest? If I were a devout Christian (or a Jungian acolyte) I might, but my “other cheek” is already well-scarred from the consequences . . . just (as you might suppose from my cautious attitude) not lately. As Ronald Reagan once said about Soviet integrity in nuclear disarmament, “Trust but verify.”

My premise here may seem a bit facile, but I believe I’ve made my point without insisting that “It’s the only way to read the cards.” To be honest, the main draw for me in the art of divination is that it’s a great deal of fun from a philosophical point-of-view. The notion that reading the cards can be thoroughly enjoyable from the reader’s perspective might stick in the craw of those solemn counselors whose sole motivation is to help clients climb inside their own head, but as a dedicated hobbyist who only occasionally makes forays into professional reading, I have both a powerful scholarly interest in the predictive power of tarot and an equally compelling desire to make the reading experience entertaining for both the seeker and myself. It really is a “labor of love.”

*tl;dr, or “too long; didn’t read” seems to be the new shorthand for “synopsis” or “teaser,” a quick bite of information for those too rushed or too mentally lazy to do more than browse.