AUTHOR’S NOTE: Not long ago I came across a post on one of the Facebook pages that railed against the current “state of the art” (if I may dignify it as such) in on-line tarot reading. The relevant part of the rant is worth quoting here:

“I know intuition and the client’s question/situation will influence which elements take the foreground and make the most sense, but they should still be rooted in the standard meanings that have been around for ages. Otherwise, tarot reading is about the same as 2, 5, 10, or even hundreds of people looking at clouds and coming up with something totally different: an elephant, a cheeseburger, a platypus, a hair dryer, Uncle Jake’s nose, lottery numbers, etc.

Do we really use that kind of random, carefree system of reading and interpretation to help people with questions that are often incredibly important, even life-changing? If that’s the case, then we might as well make up whatever sounds good and pass that off as wisdom from the universe, right?

I’m not trying to piss off anyone. I just need to figure out if tarot reading has become whatever we want it to be or if there is a standard we should be following. As I saw in an older post, there was an example of a person going to the hospital for a medical issue and having one doctor recommend pills, another recommend a shot and three weeks’ bed rest, and yet another recommend major surgery. And even then, if surgery is the answer, one doctor might want to use a scalpel while another prefers a butter knife, and the third typically uses a chainsaw. Do you see the point?”

In my own case, this individual is “preaching to the choir.” When I returned to active participation in 2011, internet tarot reading was in full swing and many purveyors were offering their services for $5 or $10 on platforms such as Etsy. It was clear at the time that electronic tarot apps typified by Fool’s Dog and later by Labyrinthos were being used to generate the content, which was produced almost instantly and sold as original work. Making up whatever sounded good and passing it off as wisdom was the order of the day. Now I understand that AI chatbots are doing the “heavy lifting” for these charlatans.

I’ve been actively engaged in tarot divination since 1972, and the traditional wisdom has been pretty much “baked into me” through long exposure. After such an aeonic trek, what I first encountered as the written testimony of others has taken root as personal truth that has been validated over-and-over through the act of reading. It has gone miles beyond memorization and is now thoroughly internalized to the point that I’m perfectly comfortable improvising on top of it with no head-scratching. But I still feel like I’m “standing on the shoulders of giants” when I read from this vantage point.

I typically start with a thread from my own prior experience and flesh it out with storytelling inspiration, imagination and ingenuity. (I don’t subscribe to using “intuition” because it can be too subjective no matter how vehemently we claim to be channeling universal verities.) I also attempt to relate my client’s situation and comprehension of his or her private reality to the continuum of exploratory investigation (including my own 50-years-worth) – the so-called “knowledge base” – that has grown up around the tarot since the time of Etteilla.

I’d rather begin with a creative “cut-to-fit” thumbnail (a narrative “stub” suitable for elaboration) by tailoring what I’ve already encountered in prior study and practice, and not try to gin up something completely spontaneous that seems convincing but may be apropos to nothing in the querent’s circumstances. I don’t mind being wrong, but I definitely don’t want to look foolish while doing it, and I also intend to avoid having to backpedal on my statements as much as possible.

The danger in performing remote readings is one of floating erroneous assumptions based on personal bias since there is no “live” feedback on the accuracy of one’s observations: no vibrant exchange of ideas, no observable body language, no telling “look in the eye.” This risk of miscommunication is part-and-parcel of any attempt to conduct what Joseph Maxwell called “a full and helpful divination,” but we shouldn’t have to wrestle with it while standing behind a blank wall. My professional opinion has always been “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should,” particularly since the prevailing atmosphere seems to be one of off-hand convenience rather than in-depth consultation.

More aware remote readers will use Zoom or a similar video channel that became de rigueur during the pandemic, but it still seems somewhat bogus to me since authenticity can always be simulated (aka “faked”). Where is the immediacy of the give-and-take offered by sitting across the table from a sitter? We as a community are so enamored of the technological interface that we refuse see its flaws. Old-school diviners already receive so much flak about “fortune-telling” that we don’t need to add any fuel to the fire by throwing our intuitive guesswork against the wall to see what sticks. I’m interested in having a stimulating dialogue, not just tossing off a monologue full of conjecture. If I’m going to be paid for my wisdom, I want it to strut its stuff in “real-time!”