AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve just begun reading Dean Radin’s Real Magic, and I can already see that it aligns with my own view of rational metaphysics that has evolved over the last fifty years of study and practice, both anecdotally in the public arena and experimentally in private.

As I’ve often said, I’m inclined to believe that what we’re dealing with in divination is a form of “mentation” (or cognitive physics) that we still don’t have the ability to quantify with empirical precision despite decades of trying. There is clearly something to it that defies measurement with current technology, and that must be taken at face value for the time being. French tarot author Joseph Maxwell was my inspiration for this line of thought.

Early in the book, Radin mentions that wishing fervently for unfortunate events to pass us by even as they threaten the worst is just a form of psychological coping in the face of peril (his example was experiencing almost-daily tornado warnings in the Midwest). In short, it amounts to an act of faith that makes us feel better when there is absolutely nothing we can do about our vulnerability.

Radin’s idea started me thinking that nearly everyone who consults the tarot for insight and advice is in “wish fulfillment” mode; typically, they want privileged information about liminal matters, such as what someone else “thinks or feels” about them as a smokescreen for romantic daydreams, or whether they are going to receive something they desire even if they’ve done nothing to obtain or deserve it (both of which arise from the same “coping” mentality exhibited by those who hope for salvation without being in a position to make it happen). Some hide behind the tarot in their social timidity while others are only seeking confirmation of their hunches, whether optimistic or pessimistic.

I admit to being a skeptic when it comes to the ability of divination to answer such pleas consistently and convincingly. In the first case I don’t believe the type of mind-reading I call “psychism-with-props,” as employed by tarot practitioners, is particularly reliable for the purpose, and in the second instance the approach seems like a slightly less delusional substitute for the Law of Attraction.

Neither one is based on an objective assessment of its chances for “coming true,” while both are “hoping against hope” that something good will emerge from inscrutable circumstances if we wish hard enough for it to occur. This is a “fingers-crossed” scenario that lets querents sit back and visualize success for all they’re worth without lifting a single digit to facilitate it.

As a diviner I’m more inclined toward the situational inquiry: If I do (or fail to do) “A,” will “B” or “C” result from my action (or inaction)? There is no mystical extemporizing to complicate the picture, no spirit guides, no free-association and no intuitive guesswork to jazz up my observations, only a straightforward evidentiary analysis in which the tools of divination (tarot cards in my own practice) stand in for inferred but as-yet-unproven facts. As the old platitude has it, “The proof is in the pudding.”

I should mention that, in the modern tarot worldview, cause and effect are largely overthrown in favor of an elastic spontaneity that lends itself to broad strokes of interpretation (and, as a result, fosters predictive uncertainty). Binary thinking is dismissed as benighted and replaced with a fluid relational multiplicity. This is all well-and-good if the diviner’s focus lies primarily within the psychological and spiritual realms. But the pragmatic fortune-teller in me is not ready to subscribe to Forrest Gump’s “box of chocolates” theory; if it were I would most likely abandon the practice of divination and just go fishing. As I see it, one pursuit delivers a reasonable approximation of the truth while the other sets out with a can of worms and a head full of vague notions about where to cast a line.

This dichotomy highlights my concept of “Real Tarot” as one that doesn’t lean on impressionistic speculation for its wisdom. I interpret only what the sitter’s shuffle has brought to the top of the deck, and I do so much more literally than allusively. If it’s plainly “in the cards,” I’ll say so; if it isn’t, I won’t go hunting for it.

I covered these subjects at some length in a slightly different form in my previous essay:

https://parsifalswheeldivination.org/2022/11/05/the-post-rational-diviner/