AUTHOR’S NOTE: First a disclaimer. I’m no fan of the word “intuition” as universally applied to tarot reading because I think of it as a “one-size-fits-all” mystical answer-generator that encourages over-reliance on subjective bias, as in “If it feels true it must be true.” I’m far too cautious (not to mention too skeptical) to swallow that assumption. I much prefer the other storyteller’s “I-words,” inspiration, imagination and ingenuity,” which arrive at the same destination without the veneer of transcendental navel-gazing.

In my own work I shoot first for the kernel of objective truth as intimated by the traditional meaning of the cards, then I shade that with nuances from a more speculative angle. Quite often I go there because the more common interpretation doesn’t elicit a nod of recognition from the seeker and I’m thrown back on more imaginative options. Although I can usually get what I need from literal analysis 70% of the time, for the other 30% I resort to inspired conjecture that supports a more compelling (and more entertaining) narrative and will ideally strike an elusive chord or two in the querent’s subconscious awareness of the situation. This improvisation is often the source of the vaunted “Aha! moment.”

Just so I don’t give the wrong impression, I love extemporizing with the cards, typically in the form of creative metaphors and analogies. I haven’t looked closely, but my personal vocabulary of tarot words and phrases should be roughly half core knowledge and half pithy euphemisms that I’ve turned into revealing tropes. If the cards aren’t altogether somber, I may season these verbal snippets with a little mild humor to lighten the mood. I’ve relaxed considerably from my early days of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” to the point that enjoyment of the reading by both participants is a close second.

All things considered, though, I draw the line at guesswork derived entirely from the images via free-association, mainly because of the sheer volume of folkloric innuendo that has grown up around them since the tarot’s previous cultural heyday in the waning decades of the 20^th Century. This has the unfortunate consequence of transforming cards that once had a reasonably solid empirical track-record into what I think of as “TINOs” (tarot in name only) when put into practice. They become private oracles for which every diviner has a cache of “intuitive” interpretations, and there can be little common ground when everything is a matter of personal preference under the umbrella of “there is no right way, so just do it your way.”

For this reason, when reading for other people I always begin by stating the “classical” meaning of a card even if it doesn’t immediately ring true as a perfect fit, then ad-lib from there toward a more persuasive description, all the while checking it against the querent’s inner sense of reality. There is no point in creating a story that I’m really proud of if it fails utterly to connect with the sitter’s understanding of circumstances. I like to think they deserve more credit than to accept everything that comes out of my mouth as incontestable truth, but to be safe I make sure they realize that tarot doesn’t typically work that way. I will once again quote Joseph Maxwell on the subject:

“Intuition is a good guide, but in the interest of making a full and helpful divination, it is necessary to verify with the enquirer at each step if the intuition is taking the right path.”

This is the “build-it-as-you-go” mindset that I have always brought to the art of professional divination, banking on dialogue with the client to fashion a credible future scenario from the testimony provided by the cards. I even employ it in remote readings where I try to personalize the experience to the extent possible through email exchanges. One analogy I’ve used to describe my approach is “peeling an onion” by drilling down from the outside in; another more macabre vision is of a buzzard circling a dying animal, waiting patiently to swoop in for the feast. Of course I never mention the second one to my sitter in so many words, I just give the impression that I’m starting from a “40,000-foot” vantage point and gravitating toward a more “dialed-in” perspective. Then, rather than subsisting entirely on the overcooked scraps of a hyperactive imagination, we can savor the juicy taste of “raw meat.”