AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yesterday I was visiting a friend who has limited knowledge of tarot but considerable curiosity, and I was explaining a theory that I believe summarizes one of the fundamental ways in which tarot-reading “works.”

I had offered to do free readings for him and his wife, and he expressed anxiety that he might hear something he doesn’t want to know. Earlier he told me that he would prefer to keep his question to himself. I decided to clear the air on both subjects.

I advised him that his silent communion with the cards while shuffling the deck would be entirely private. He would be mentally “talking to himself” and the internal dialogue would be recorded in the array of seemingly-random cards pulled for the reading. I would simply be the translator and interpreter of the self-originated message.

Although I didn’t get into the details, I mentioned that the cards will pick up on his subconscious awareness of the situation, conveying knowledge that tarot author Joseph Maxwell called the sitter’s covert “presentiment” of the future. More explicitly, Maxwell stated that “Coming events cast a shadow before them; each individual has a presentiment about his own destiny, which may remain latent: the normal processes of consciousness do not include such presentiments.”

Unless I shuffle the deck for a remote client (something I prefer not to do), my own subjective bias must stay out of the way, so I don’t want to know the specific question in advance and I don’t intend to manipulate the cards on the sitter’s behalf. After all, it’s their reading, not mine. My only task is to help them understand it.

Some mystical diviners are convinced they have a “hotline to Divine wisdom,” while others view it as an open psychic channel to the universal source of insight sustaining the premise that “We Are All One Mind,” which in their estimation underlies all human awareness. Personally, I’m inclined to see the process as a psychological function of “occult physics” that flows from the Collective Unconscious to the individual subconscious, bypassing cognitive intervention along the way.

In my opinion, the “hive-mind” concept is a charming fantasy fueled by an emotional yearning for connection and not an established fact: we may certainly feel like we’re all linked, but are we really capable of sharing our innermost thoughts at a profound level via a pervasive subliminal interface? We can argue about it all day long, but in the end it comes down to “Show me the money.” I think I’ll file it with all of those “life-after-death” assertions that in the aggregate are mainly wishful thinking.

While there may well be a vast pool of Cosmic Consciousness as envisioned by Baruch Spinoza (spiritually, I cast my lot with the “Spinozan sympathizers”), I’m not convinced it’s talking to us of its own accord; we have to go dig out its objective essence with a bit of mental sleuthing. The cards are an investigative medium that turns these elusive impressions into symbolic language carrying useful guidance for the querent.

Although I’m slightly more analytical than intuitive in my own approach to reading, I did part from my friend yesterday after the brief “Tarot 101” lesson with the observation that “There’s a little magic in it.” Other than the fact that I offered to read for them at no charge, this may be an even greater inducement for them to sit for me.