AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was recently cautioned against performing the kind of investigative tarot-reading that operates in the same algorithmic space as probabilistic number-crunching (specifically for odds-making in sports betting). The critic’s presumptuous attitude was that I’m tarnishing my credentials as a diviner (which I assume means my standing as an enlightened mystic).

I’m not so sure. Tarot is just another tool that parallels more analytical methods. I’ve been doing it for over 50 years now and all my mystical assumptions about its “magic” have pretty much faded (although not completely vanished). Since 2011, I’ve pursued a more “action-and-event-oriented” approach to my reading after spending almost four decades chasing psychological self-awareness and self-development with the cards. Any prediction that carries a 70% probability of being accurate (as in my recent NFL football readings) aligns well with my own track-record for finding lost items and identifying the location and condition of missing people, so I submit that it can be done with some confidence.

The romantic “world of woo” holds little appeal for me since I don’t believe divination works that way, nor does the Universe-at-large that it attempts to explain. I’m an “intellectual-gone-astray,” (long-lapsed Mensan and one-time follower of Ayn Rand’s “Objectivist” philosophy), and I can’t deny that a lukewarm romanticism (residing mainly in classical poetry) has been an enduring trait of mine for many years, but I’ve retained enough skepticism of the more spiritual modes of inquiry to keep me from enthusiastically embracing what I see going on in the tarot community today. If something doesn’t make metaphysical sense, I shall remain an outlier by not blindly accepting it, and I’m too old and thick-skinned (not to mention curmudgeonly) to let criticism of that stance bother me. Whether or not it succeeds in practice is all I care about.

This doesn’t mean I’m convinced that divination can’t tap into a higher authority when seeking wisdom, just that I’m suspicious of anything that “floats in on the psychic tide” (excuse me for reusing that metaphor, but I’m kinda taken with it). Although my purpose in even trying is dismissed by the “spirit-guide” crowd, I see no reasonable way to validate the numinous source and therefore I’m not going to take its output at face value. It goes without saying that I’m much more impressed with the principles of astrology in this regard, and more attuned to the literal methods of the Lenormand system than I am with popular assumptions about tarot’s proper use.

As the saying goes, “You do your thing, I’ll do mine” but I seriously doubt the twain shall ever meet. The gulf between the esoteric philosopher and the populist cheerleader is simply too wide for more than a nodding agreement that we’re after the same thing. I’m too much of a pragmatist to bend very far toward intuitive guesswork, and it seems that many of my tarot peers are entirely too unstructured (as well as too credulous) in their approach. I’m a living example of the truth that the techniques of divination can work effectively at both ends of the extrasensory spectrum (i.e. from occult exploration to fortune-telling), but when it comes to results, the only rational answer is “your mileage may vary.”