AUTHOR’S NOTE: A question frequently asked of professional tarot readers in the online community is “How do you psychically prepare and protect yourself before and during a reading? By some form of ‘clearing’ like meditation? Invocation? Prayer? Candles, incense and crystals?” The answers typically run the gamut of all of these with the addition of “No preparation at all.”

At one time I performed a silent invocation of the “white light” kind that was taught to me by a cousin who was a Spiritualist Church pastor in Connecticut, just because it “felt right.” But I gradually moved away from the practice and only rarely remember to do it. Now I just quiet my mind as the querent shuffles the deck (direct client interaction with the cards is my preferred “alignment” method, although I will sometimes shuffle and have them cut) and prepare for a conversation with the ethereal energies investing the process. Decades ago I took to heart Aleister Crowley’s observation that the cards are “living beings” with which we must integrate our consciousness if we are to realize their maximum potential. He called it “living with them” and I’ve tried to do that on a daily basis to the point that they (or at least those of the Thoth deck) have become old and trusted friends who respond when called.

Although I acknowledge that every tarot reading has a psychic element that puts us in touch with what Lon Milo DuQuette calls the “universal spiritual force” in each card, I’ve never felt a strong compulsion to intentionally extrapolate in a purely intuitive way from the images in the Thoth deck as one is invited to do by the “canned narrative vignettes” of the Waite-Smith tarot. If I exert myself at all in the direction of free-association, it’s to capture some storytelling trope (e.g. metaphor or analogy) that helps to make my point. I use intuition sparingly and instead rely primarily on experience and knowledge augmented by the raconteur’s best friends: inspiration, imagination and ingenuity.

The symbolism in the Thoth cards speaks “loud and clear” in an eminently evocative way, and I like to think that after more than fifty years of frequent use they have been imprinted with my own perception of what they are trying to say, as always informed and steered by the context of the current reading. They open themselves to a dialogue that cuts straight across or dances nimbly around the common assumptions of “what tarot should be” as defined for the masses by Pamela Colman Smith’s prosaic pictures. I’ve reached the point where I mainly use Thoth insights when working with the RWS tarot in public settings, and I very seldom look at the cards in a spread once I recognize what they are.

Those tarot enthusiasts who were weaned on the RWS deck are often baffled or intimidated by the Thoth, and even more so by its companion book, Crowley’s Book of Thoth. It goes without saying that part of the essential preparation for reading with it is to become thoroughly attuned to each card’s unique esoteric vibration. Crowley advised that the ideal way to “blend their life” with ours is “that of contemplation,” but he believed that it was beyond the reach of the uninitiated intellect, so he proposed divination as the “practical every-day commonplace way” to do so. As a self-initiated student of the occult arts, I’ve never found philosophical contemplation of this caliber to be unattainable, and I encourage anyone with a similar mindset to undertake it in conjunction with their exploration of the deck.

The premise behind all “clearing” exercises is that the cards or the physical space in which they are employed can become tainted with “negative energies” that can overwhelm a reading and spoil the session. I’ve never accepted that cards can become contaminated in this sense because cardboard and ink are unable to hold onto any kind of psychic residue from previous readings or present circumstances. They don’t exhibit an “attitude” toward us unless we impose it on them in an animistic way. However, the querent or the reader can harbor discordant thoughts or suppositions that can compromise the proceeding since the alignment produced by the shuffle can pick up on them, and in my own case I try to scrub any subjective preconceptions or biases through the act of “blanking” my mind in a Zen manner as the shuffle progresses. I realize that querents’ subconscious awareness of their own situation “is what it is” so I don’t attempt to coach them on adopting a state of mind that is more conducive to a cordial response from the cards. This unguided self-confession or unburdening via the act of concentrating while shuffling can get messy as shown by the cards drawn, but navigating the morass is something that tarot excels at in the hands of a skilled practitioner.

I’m also partial to the idea that “the oracular moment is sacrosanct” in that only those cards pulled for the reading are spiritually empowered to provide the answer at the instant the question is asked. Other cards of a similar nature may “stand in” but none will be exactly congruous. The entities who inhabit the subliminal world of the tarot (which some consider to be formally-named Angels, Spirits and Intelligences and many more think of as personal “spirit guides” of a more approachable demeanor) most likely issue from the Astral Plane or sublunar region of the Medieval philosophers, so the “zone” of the title can seem more like the Twilight Zone, and it takes an esoterically experienced and metaphysically disciplined interpreter to keep things on the straight-and-narrow. Not every communication we receive from such sources is going to be sympathetic to the seeker despite popular opinion about the benevolence of spirit guides, so a measure of caution is prudent. It may well be that the proper role of the diviner is to protect the querent from untoward influences by wisely fine-tuning the message for maximum sensitivity since most seasoned readers have made peace with their own exposure to psychic interference. An expansive vocabulary and a judicious handle on “just the right words” are the reader’s most potent resources in this regard.

I’m almost always successful in “entering the zone” at will through a calm detachment from the querent’s presumed state of agitation, normally achieved by not asking for the specific question and having the individual commune silently with the cards while I maintain passive equanimity. The cards will have their say regardless of how much or how little speculation is brought to the table by either participant, and I’ve learned to simply read them as they lay with little editorializing until the sitter chimes in with personal observations about their significance. Then we have a discussion about the projected outcome. This “mutual voyage of discovery” is the main benefit of face-to-face reading, and it casts remote reading with no direct client-reader contact in a decidedly inferior light. Tarot as an interactive art guarantees immediacy in the delivery of the message and opens the door to psycho-spiritual epiphanies that add value to the activity while also exposing it to intrusion by random forces that must be effectively managed by the diviner through appropriate moderation or “filtering.” I find it to be a noble calling that at its best offers some truly remarkable guidance.