AUTHOR’S NOTE: Having recognized (and suffered from) the glaring inadequacies of the second-rate teachers and administrators hired by my small rural high school back in the 1960s, I’ve never had much patience with authority figures. (With that attitude, just imagine how I fared in the US Army!) In the realm of spirituality, the recent documentary about “twin flames” (Desperately Seeking Soulmate) perfectly summed up the cynicism and greed of those who pretend to the mantle of ethical superiority.

The priesthood in particular earns my scorn because they are (or once were) touted as devout paragons of virtue whose sacred pronouncements and ritual ministrations should not be gainsaid (I mean, who are we to doubt the heavenly anointed and divinely credentialed?) while at the same time the moral woes of the Catholic Church are all over the headlines.

As I see it, they have set themselves up as intermediaries where none are needed, and it has been going on for millennia (talk about a self-perpetuating humbug!) I don’t have much of a problem with the humanistic values espoused by these institutions, but their standard-bearers are far from exemplary human beings. (Hmm, maybe AI will take care of this too, at least until robots are no longer incorruptible. I can envision the confessional now: “Beep, beep . . . That does not compute . . . whirrr . . . Three demerits. Have a nice day.”)

In the tarot world this is symbolized by several of the Major Arcana. The Emperor stands for secular dominion while the Hierophant is his spiritual “partner-in-crime;” at an earlier time in history this dynamic duo delivered a “one-two punch” of authoritarian zeal that could not be escaped either in the present or in the Hereafter (as the saying goes, they “had you coming and going”). There have always been examples of Orwell’s “Big Brother” in human culture, but these guys had reach of the “Father knows best” kind.

The Chariot and Justice are the pair’s enforcers who visit the Hanged Man on miscreants, banish the naysayers to the hinterlands along with the Hermit and dangle the Devil over the heads of the gullible who remain, while the Star is held out as a nigh-unattainable glimmer of hope for salvation that can’t be approached until Judgement grants ascendancy. Even the Sun won’t come to the rescue of the unworthy since it is emblematic of the Emperor’s absolute mundane power.

As a tarot blogger I have no aspiration to be an “influencer;” any such ambition would surely be derailed by my periodic rants that have taken to task what many modern practitioners hold near-and-dear (such as entirely intuitive interpretation). I spent some time online with the “secular tarot” enthusiasts who believe that any evidence of the legitimacy of prediction is admissible only as proof of either acausal factors at work in the matter or parallel determinism in the form of synchronicity.

I have no problem with acausality as the premise behind most predicted events since divination has never demonstrated reliable “cause-and-effect” accountability to my satisfaction, but the “affinity” angle I find too literal, presenting yet another opportunity to trot out the mystical “Hamlet defense” (“There are more things in Heaven and Earth . . . etc”). Pure serendipity seems to hold more water when it comes to forecasting the future; the cards can aid in spotting it but can’t necessarily explain the reasons for it.