AUTHOR’S NOTE: For the armchair scientists among my followers, my knowledge of quantum mechanics derives from nothing more academic than my reading of the rather quirky Robert Anton Wilson (who was not much of a believer in occult reasoning). Just so you know before you correct me.

One of the theories about “how tarot works” is that its functionality is supported by modern physics. Those who seek empirical validation for their divinatory experiences like to point out that quantum mechanics defines all matter as slowed-down energy, and everything that is physiologically quantifiable is composed of the same minute, interchangeable “bits,” so the appearance of physical separation and the effects of distance are merely illusions of perspective that can be conquered through the power of thought, or in this case psychic perception. If you want a more metaphysical take on it, look up Alan Watts and the “illusion of separateness.” (For the record, there has been some proof that pschokinesis works at the subatomic level in the observation that contemplating something at that rarefied state of impermanence can alter its quasi-physical makeup.)

Each individual might be viewed as a form of electromagnetic energy vortex that can connect with other similar vortices across time and space, so the themes “We are all one” and “It’s all energy anyway” as operative principles are considered credible. I have a couple of objections to these assumptions (and could probably come up with more).

First, I’m not convinced that this energy is infinitely expandable and interpenetrating, at least not at its original amplitude; attenuation (or “entropy”) must take its toll to the extent that the signal can become exceedingly faint (even though it was vanishingly faint to begin with). Furthermore, quantum-energy events are so staggeringly brief that they would never reach the point of moderation to begin with. The “mental eye” couldn’t blink fast enough to catch them, which is why they are purely hypothetical.

Second, unaided psychic inquiry would not seem to be sensitive enough to latch onto and hold the fugitive impressions left by transitory quarks (subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as the smallest building blocks of the atom), which have never been discerned via experimentation and are theorized to oscillate in picoseconds or even shorter intervals. This unavoidable imprecision is why I think of such questionable use of the tarot as “psychism with props.”

Third, unlike primitive tribal cultures, we have become psychologically individuated to the point that our vortices may not vibrate at the same frequency, making attunement difficult if not improbable, and the abstract events we could encounter at the quantum level are not mental-emotional constructs that can be translated into human terms in the first place. When applied to the tarot, it all sounds “fishy” to me. I can’t recall the last time I met someone in public and immediately recognized them as being “one with me” (although I married the last person of that type 46 years ago).

Material realists condemn tarot as a “pseudoscience” along with astrology and other esoteric disciplines, so I doubt they would buy into the above, and many seasoned diviners don’t believe tarot needs to be classified as an empirically-provable phenomenon. Even though Alesiter Crowley did characterize his approach as “the aim of religion, the method of science” and liked to cite Einstein, divination is an a art-form, plain and simple, and I think psychology offers a more defensible explanation for its working than physics. That’s how I’ve performed it for the last five decades, and I’ve never needed a more scientific basis for my thinking. While I’m not satisfied with the “Who cares, it just works!” argument, I don’t intend to become anal about it either.