AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was just reading an online comment that stated in part “Tarot isn’t meant to give you answers (about the future) per se . . . ” I looked up the current definition of that phrase, which is “by or in itself; intrinsically.” For the purpose of this essay I decided to transmute “intrinsically” into “implicitly,” meaning that divination can allude to future conditions “in a manner of speaking” or “after a fashion” rather than explicitly or literally. Since this aligns with my own understanding of “how tarot works” (it identifies future trends, tendencies and probabilities, not absolute truths), I think I’m going to name my favorite working deck “Percy” (surname “Thoth”) due to its exceptionally succinct (“per se”) testimony.

I don’t go along with the rest of the observation that tarot should only be used for psychological self-awareness and self-improvement. That mindset came into vogue during the rise of the New Age Jungian approach to character analysis using astrology, tarot, palmistry, graphology and other pseudo scientific modes of self-examination, and it now seems to be undergoing a renaissance. But my own experience in public tarot reading is that most sitters don’t need to be told who they are, they just want to know what is going to happen and I do my best to accommodate them within the limits of how far I’m willing to go with my predictions (i.e. stick my neck out).

These days I have no problem being labeled a “fortune-teller” since I pursue an “action-and-event-oriented” focus in my readings as opposed to a more mystical or psychological point of view. I don’t downplay the presence of a little “magic” in the art of divination, but I also don’t go “all woo” over it. The cards have an established baseline of traditional meaning from which I extemporize freely or frugally depending on the context of the question. If a seeker wants to know about prospects for getting a new job, I tend to stay fairly close to the interpretive mainline, but if the inquiry is a more general one (such as “What should I do with my life?”), the door is wide-open to an impressionistic or visionary forecast. Both are fun from a reader’s standpoint, but they definitely require different skill-sets.

My opinion about reading style is that purely intuitive prognostication creeps a bit too far into “groundless guesswork” for my own comfort; it can become subjectively biased with no apparent relevance to the seeker’s private reality and must then be “force-fit” into the narrative with the subject’s cooperation (some querents will help, some won’t). I find it to be self-indulgent when there is a wealth of less-conjectural knowledge that can be brought to bear if the practitioner is willing to make the effort and take the time to study and internalize it. A similar “cut-to-fit” effort may still ensue but it will be farther along than having to first puzzle out what the diviner’s intuitive fancies mean in practical terms.

Unfortunately, this degree of commitment to learning the craft is not all that common in the present era of instant gratification. It’s far easier to just “wing it” in an unstructured way than to work through a self-imposed apprenticeship. It may feel immensely liberating in practice, but what typically suffers is the value received by the sitter. Those who want something meaningful that they can sink their teeth into are likely to be disappointed by such facile but insubstantial pronouncements, especially if they paid more than the slender advice is worth.

I know “Percy” would agree that even implicit legitimacy can evaporate in the warm glow felt by mystical diviners basking in their own self-esteem, bolstered by an unshakable conviction in the spiritual superiority of their insights. I’m not being (overly) cynical here since I acknowledge that I’m “not-quite-half” mystical in my own reading posture (although I prefer cultivating the storyteller’s assets of inspiration, imagination and ingenuity to wielding the questionable virtues of intuition), but my more-analytical “mad scientist” inclinations are firmly grounded in many years of study and practice pursuant to the conventional wisdom. I have no doubt that my readings occasionally take this “split personality” to one extreme or the other, but I’ve now spent over five decades “honing my chops” and I believe such a wide range of expression is symbolic of a well-rounded understanding of the tarot-reader’s art.