AUTHOR’S NOTE: Don’t ask Edwin Starr (even if he is deceased), he’ll just tell you “Absolutely nothing, uh huh.”

In a recent post on using tarot in a business setting, I likened a card reading to a “metaphysical process-control audit” that looks beyond the physical dimensions of a client company and into its less tangible assets. In this regard it is not much different from those psychological “human-factors” initiatives that many executives assume will identify and help correct any deficiencies in their employees’ behavior or attitude that may be compromising their performance. In short, because it has “humans” within its purview, it can only be “voodoo science” or what I call the “SWAG” (scientific wild-ass guess) approach to character improvement since there are numerous analytical measures but few absolutes.

Where the two diverge most markedly is that tarot doesn’t benefit from the extensive database of therapeutic case-study observations that behavioral psychology can tap into, so it comes across as far more anecdotal and therefore less credible. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much being done by the current crop of social-media-bedazzled tarot practitioners to rectify the situation; they are more interested in honing their intuitive or psychic skills than in trying to empirically validate that the things they’re saying to their clients are in fact true. In private reading scenarios it becomes even more of a “feel-good” proposition that has the goal of leaving a sitter feeling “empowered” regardless of whether they are likely to do anything constructive with the advice they receive from the cards. That emotional affirmation is the benchmark of success for many readers, who see their role as coaching (in my opinion it’s more like “cheer-leading”) and not as being a purveyor of truths that can just as easily be harsh as pleasant.

It stands to reason that if we want clients to see us only as friendly counselors we aren’t going to unload on them with the worst we can conjure from the cards. But for me the limit of cordiality is reached if I sense that they don’t respect either the reading or my efforts to explain it to them. These aren’t always sitters who have prior experience with the tarot and think they know better; more often than not they’re people who just want to hear something other than what they’re getting from my interpretation of the cards. For them, “good” divination is that which conforms to their preconceived notions about the matter; the technical term for it is “confirmation bias.” I see this as the worst form of prognostication because it doesn’t allow for an alternative viewpoint that might produce an even more encouraging result once any initial discomfiture is dispelled. I’m not very good at “lobbing softballs” or “preaching to the choir” when the sermon is one that demands a sterner presentation and the querent doesn’t want to make the effort to work through it.

To answer the question posed in the title, my opinion is that divination is “good” for revealing as much of the truth about a situation as is ready to be divulged, and the most honest approach to it is one that delivers useful insights without being overly optimistic or pessimistic if neither one is visible in the cards. Fabricating one or the other is a ploy of the amateur who doesn’t know exactly what the cards are saying, so they “hedge” a bit by assuming there must be a little of both. The tarot is a useful tool for understanding the human condition; it is neither a sop for bruised feelings (“Of course your ex is missing you!”) nor a goad for overcoming inertia (“He’s just waiting for your text!”). I don’t cater to my clients’ irrational hopes or fears and I’m not in the business of either stroking or crushing fragile egos, I “just read the cards.” You should to.