AUTHOR’S NOTE: My Canadian forebears had a wealth of colorful Scottish and Irish folk sayings that I’ve treasured since the long-ago summers I spent in New Brunswick. Many of the best were preserved by my mother and my maternal grandparents over the decades before they passed. One was “He comes by it honestly” (i.e. “He was born to it or raised that way”), which I’ve always assumed to mean that a condition was achieved naturally and not derived via manipulating, conniving or “BS-ing” one’s way into it even though common knowledge might postulate a less wholesome origin. This is one I’ve seen in more general usage, but I’ll always associate it with my heritage.

True to my intention after a recent bout of serious illness, I’ve moved to distance myself from the spiritually-anemic online tarot community and explore other avenues of divination. One of these is prediction with playing cards. My younger brother, who is similarly inclined but less dedicated to its pursuit, said “Just like your old grandma” upon hearing of my plan.

Our grandmother was a card-reader in early life but never talked to us about it as kids growing up under her intermittent care. It was only after she died and I had embarked on a lifelong study and practice of esoteric matters that I learned belatedly of her interest in cartomancy from one of her nieces, a psychic and Spiritualist Church leader in Connecticut. I found this to be a neat bit of ancestral continuity since it was entirely unexpected.

Although I’m sure to encounter howls of protest from modern cartomancers, I realized while performing multi-deck comparisons that, while the Thoth tarot encourages the diviner to become something of an occult “gunslinger” and the Waite-Smith deck is more populist in its focus, the playing cards conjure up the image of a “maiden aunt” (or, yes, a grandmother). They seem to invite a more prosaic, homespun take on prognostication that is similar to the pragmatic approach employed with the Lenormand cards and, to a lesser extent, with the Tarot-de Marseille.

While I’ve always believed that every attempt to read the cards involves a psychic component, I’m highly resistant to the “woo” of unchecked mysticism, so much of which reminds me of W.C. Fields’ cynical take on the performer’s art: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” While the practitioner’s motives may be pure, immersion in the depths of subjective bias makes the content of any observations seem like intuitive guesswork and therefore suspect.

I’m more inclined to accept the pseudo-scientific explanation that the subconscious mind is the immediate source of our insights, which in turn draws its inspiration from a higher authority that is tapped via unforced “channeling” of its wisdom. If we open ourselves to it, we can expect that it will come to us but we must still be satisfied that it is legitimate and above reproach (see my previous essays on the hazards of the Astral Plane).

In my own case, I bring analytical awareness to the scrutiny of any impressions I receive from the images. The outcome must make sense as a logical extension of the symbolic import in its influence on real-life circumstances. To keep it from becoming too clinical or antiseptic, I infuse my commentary with a storyteller’s imagination and ingenuity while keeping intuition on a tight leash. I realize that reading the cards is an inherently irrational act, but it doesn’t have to be improbable as well. Being creatively expansive in our pronouncements may be charming and entertaining, but it is not what serious seekers expect to hear and in my opinion it does them a disservice.

My revered grandmother and respected cousin would undoubtedly have scratched their heads over this methodical mindset, but I think intuitive extrapolation should complement and support the aim of intelligent comprehension and not the other way around. I often say that the language we use should be economically concise rather than vaguely impressionistic if we are going to offer the most compelling and revealing testimony. I may consider myself “half mad-scientist and half mystic,” but the critical side usually wins out over the credulous one.