AUTHOR’S NOTE: Over the past five decades I’ve come full circle in my attitude toward divination with the tarot cards. What originated as a philosophical preoccupation with occult theory became an intellectual pursuit centered on experiments in prediction, soon passed through a Jungian phase in parallel with psychological astrology, and finally settled into a non-deterministic mode of action-and-event-oriented prognostication that is loosely formulated on “fortune-telling” with a results-oriented focus.

I began from a purely abstract, esoteric perspective with Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth and the Thoth tarot (my first and longest-running deck affiliation) and the tarot writing of Gareth Knight, William Gray, Paul Foster Case, Robert Wang, Israel Regardie and other, lesser lights. But along the way I picked up Eden Gray’s 1960 book The Tarot Revealed (basically a more “user-friendly” rewrite of Arthur Edward Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot that offered an oracular slant) which set my foot on the path of a life-long fascination with what I’ve termed “trying to get under the skin of objective reality to see what makes the Universe tick,” but always in human terms.

Recently I’ve encountered a minor trend among diviners to once again embrace the label of “fortune-teller,” which has long been the butt of ridicule and disrepute. The rational argument has always been that the future is too fluid to submit to being rendered immutable (i.e. “carved in stone”) via predictive analysis, so there is no point in trying. And yet, the inclination of human nature has consistently been to seek a “leg up” on emerging circumstances, and any method that provides a window into what might transpire is fair game for the investigative forecaster. The main difference between the tarot reader and the stock-market analyst is that the latter operates on the basis of historical performance data and logical assumptions about its repeatability while the former often strays into the realm of intuitive guesswork. Unlike natal astrology, tarot doesn’t have the luxury of falling back on a millennia-long track record that would provide a measure of validation.

My own position is that it doesn’t have to be that way. The tarot cards are definitive enough in their literal interpretation to furnish a blueprint or roadmap of what may come to pass in the form of future possibilities, tendencies and trends without trying to be too prescriptive but also without having to resort to imaginative conjecture of the psychic kind. As I learned from working with the Lenormand system of practical divination, it’s reasonable to “just read the cards” in forming an opinion along these lines, thereby giving the seeker the “target and the ammunition” to make informed choices in the matter of interest. The current buzzword for this objective is client “empowerment,” and I have no problem with the stated goal as long as it doesn’t degenerate into the kind of “cheerleading” that only encourages unrealistic expectations and becomes an unacceptable form of “enabling” instead of constructive coaching.

Because the quarry is usually a moving one, I prefer to keep my observations more equivocal than absolute by not putting too fine a point on their presumed accuracy. (Other useful terms that come to mind are “open-ended, conditional and impressionistic.”) This isn’t a dodge intended to deflect accusations of charlatanry but rather a sincere attempt to provide the querent sufficient “wiggle room” to come up with a self-ordained response to the testimony of the reading. My intention is not to deliver an airtight projection that is “neatly wrapped and tied with a bow” (clearly a recipe for failure), but only to outline a range of opportunities to make the most of the situation as shown in the cards. I want my clients to depart with the feeling that the road ahead is a bit clearer than when they arrived, but I refuse to take ownership of the results completely out of their hands. To that end I tell them it’s their reading, not mine, and I will help them interpret what it means so they can decide what to do. Beyond that, they’re on their own.