“I have only come here seeking knowledge/Things they would not teach me of in college” – from Wrapped Around Your Finger by the Police

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a diviner who prefers face-to-face reading but no longer has a steady clientele (the COVID pandemic and my cross-State relocation saw to that), I now pursue my esoteric interests in a more academic way by attempting (in the words of Benebell Wen describing the practice of Asian shamanism) “to acquire knowledge that is otherwise inaccessible” via the method of “bridging the gap” with mystical insights.

While I might accomplish the same thing through meditation, philosophical contemplation or magical invocation, tarot-reading and other methods of prediction offer a “pipeline to the Infinite” that is usually more immediate (and in the last case, safer), although the output must still be translated into practical guidance that we can use in furthering our agenda and accomplishing the mission that brought us to the act of divination. With my current scholarly approach I’m mainly seeking an abstract vision of Universal Truth, but I still feel compelled to pin it to something that is manifestly concrete as a way to anchor it in my private reality.

Many opinions have been floated to explain how and why all of this works, but the one I’ve settled on has both intuitive and psychological dimensions. Not everyone agrees with me, but I’ve taken to heart Joseph Maxwell’s concept of subconscious prescience (aka prophetic inklings): “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.” What is needed to extract this elusive foreknowledge is some kind of sophisticated “can-opener” or “nut-cracker” (specifically vaticination, as Maxwell terms it).

Bridging the gap between subconscious intimations and conscious awareness requires creating a link across which subliminal information can flow in a coherent manner. I’ve always found that bypassing the “inner self” and relying solely on intuitive conjecture of a more detached kind is too “squishy” for my metaphysical sensibilities; it’s a type of guesswork that I’ve characterized as a “psychic fishing expedition” with no appreciable structure and no personal connection (as lately popularized by YouTube readers). I’ve observed this at work in missing-person “cold cases,” where remote viewers and psychometrists have been brought in to attempt locating the absent individual; from what I’ve seen, results have not been spectacular while in my own experience horary astrology and tarot have a slightly better track record.

A psychic card-reader throws the faculties of ethereal perception wide open to anything that comes over the channel and then attempts to relate it to the matter at hand by squeezing it into the format (i.e. conventions or “props”) of the chosen method of cartomancy. This is not even as defensible as directly “free-associating” from the images on a tarot card or deciphering the lines on a palm; it is fabricating speculative assertions out of personal innuendo (aka “autosuggestion”) and calling them cosmic or Divine inspiration. This is typically envisioned as the counsel of “spirit guides” who are all too likely to be romanticized astral entities of uncertain integrity and intent. In other words, “if it’s too good to be true it probably isn’t.” (To be fair, truly gifted psychics can do this convincingly but my overall conclusion is that many self-proclaimed “sensitives” [aka “empaths”] in the tarot world are either posing for profit or are well-intentioned but misinformed.)

When reading the tarot cards, the subconscious induction of the title occurs through the act of handling the deck, specifically by shuffling and cutting while concentrating on the question or topic of interest (thereby “inducing” the cards to respond accordingly). I’m not so naive as to suppose that the shuffler’s fingertips individually “index” every single card for the reading, but I do believe the agencies of manual persuasion and focused intent arrange the deck in the proper order to offer an anecdotal window into the situation (even if only a partial or cloudy one that must be “dialed in” through imaginative reflection). The cards can be quite amenable to cooperation when wielded with due respect. My only requirement is that the manipulation must be performed by the sitter and not by me (unless I’m in fact the querent).

The storyteller’s art then takes over to convert an apparently random array of unrelated images into a compelling narrative. There may well be jarring lapses in continuity or perceived relevance between one card and the next, but finding the thread again is where the interpretive “magic” occurs. The best advice I can give is that, if it happens too often or too egregiously, don’t “bluff your way” through it but consider adding another card or two to the scope of your reading to span any rifts in the narration. Just be sure to apply a little finesse to the restructuring and don’t do it haphazardly by slapping “clarifiers” onto the original cards; every spread position should have a clear purpose that contributes to the whole, and chaotically swamping it with more cards may only muddy the water while also being sloppy technique.