AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lately my head has been crammed with ideas from my informal study of Taoism as presented by Benebell Wen in I Ching The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes and Ethan Indigo Smith in The Tao of Thoth. (The former is polished and intelligent while the latter is much more convoluted despite remaining mostly on-point; I can recommend Wen without reservation, but Smith is more challenging in his rambling discourse.)

Smith observes that the martial art of Taiji is not so much about the actual combat as about practicing and honing our situational awareness skills by anticipating what our opponent will do next after we make our opening move, thus becoming less reactive in our subsequent response. (It reminds me of the game of chess, in which we try to think two or three moves ahead.) He also discusses the premise that “we are the effect of our own causation,” meaning that we are the sum product of the causes we put in motion through our voluntary action or inaction, even if it only means that we carelessly step into the path of an oncoming train.

It is the conscious “act of doing” on our own behalf rather than blindly “being done to” by the world that dignifies us. He goes on to propose that we should not try to do what we perceive to be right in the hope that it will turn out well, but instead strive not to do what we know to be wrong, thereby avoiding the possibility of unexpected resistance. The latter derives from knowledge while the former is based on assumption.

Although I haven’t heard it much in recent years, it used to be common in child-rearing to impatiently answer a toddler who endless asked “Why?” with “Because . . .” meaning “Because I said so.” Perhaps due to his extreme distaste for Christian authoritarianism, in The Book of the Law Aleister Crowley condemned the lame excuse of “because” as a “damned dog” when it is used to explain the mystical operation of the Will (essentially offering a circular argument and an a priori conclusion). The modern aphorism “it is what it is” has the unspoken coda “because that’s what it is,” suggesting that it could not be otherwise and still be true to its purpose. (As Popeye famously said “I yam what I yam and dat’s what I yam.”) On the other hand, I would submit that “assume” is the greater demon. What we assume to be true could be anything other than the presumptive truth, leading us into a blind alley.

The goal of improved situational awareness is not to win at the expense of someone else but to avoid succumbing to their coercion, and its applicability goes far beyond martial arts. Smith notes that this focus on self-preservation requires that we adopt “right thinking (or mindset), right direction and right timing” in order to optimize our position and minimize our vulnerability. It has a stoic feel to it that capitalizes on restraint and foregoes the reckless attack since aggressively overextending and being drawn off-balance is the bane of the martial-arts novice (or, for that matter, of any unprepared tyro who mounts an ill-conceived and ill-timed venture).

In tarot terms (you knew I would get here sooner or later), we take on our adversary by “bearding the Unseen in its den.” We apply our subconscious discernment to the cards as we shuffle while consciously posing our question to the Universe, then trust that our intentions are pure and our timing is impeccable in pursuing the answer. There is no metaphysical “heavy lifting” involved, just honest and humble supplication. Awareness enters the picture when we set out to decode the message in the cards and isolate the “Aha! moment,” whether or not it delivers the advice we would have preferred. Our subliminal exchange with the ethereal realm is not for us to nitpick rationally but to comprehend as fully as we can through the agency of the tarot.

I believe the Minor Arcana and the court cards of the deck are a perfect vehicle for fostering an awareness of the past, present and future dimensions in any pragmatic matter – situational, personal and social. They also provide guidance on how to conduct ourselves in relation to the development and denouement of predicted events and, to a lesser extent, their timing. (Before anyone suggests it, psychological self-development with the tarot is something I no longer do much of after chasing it for over four decades.)

In practice, I have very seldom seen the appearance of Major Arcana in a reading to generate significant occurrences; although they can create the environment for such excitement, they don’t often pull the trigger. As archetypes they can be much more philosophical than practical, so I interpret them as setting the stage and establishing the background theme for the mundane developments shown by the other cards. While they might facilitate a certain type of activity, from a day-to-day perspective they very rarely instigate it.

The awareness they serve up is frequently of an abstract or visionary kind that can be puzzling because it doesn’t seem to be immediately relevant to our circumstances or useful in any utilitarian sense (which, after all, is what many seekers are looking for). They might just as well be left out of the deck, which is something I will occasionally do depending on the nature of the question or topic. I think this is the fallacy in traditional lore regarding the trump cards: because (there’s that word again) they are a big deal in esoteric space, they must be important in our routine affairs. Don’t count on it, particularly if your life is otherwise under control.

Full Disclosure: No AI was abused in the writing of this essay.