AUTHOR’S NOTE: In a recent r/tarot sub-reddit thread there was unexpected consensus among experienced diviners that intuition works in concert with knowledge and experience but is not superior to them. It has been my opinion for a long time that all three are vital to successful divination, and I’m used to seeing it dismissed by mystical readers in the online tarot community, who rely entirely on impressions received from visual free-association and disdain more formal wisdom as too rigid.

The question asked by the OP was “How do you recognize your own intuition at work while doing readings?” My flippant answer was:

“I’m breathing, so it must be working. Seriously, though, I mainly read analytically based on five decades of study and practice, so intuition works when I invite it to do so as an adjunct to my more literal interpretation. Otherwise, it percolates quietly in the background. It was more prominent when I was a prolific graphic artist in my twenties; I used to say the images came “through” me, not “from” me. The flashes of insight were the same as those I now get from tarot cards but the output was illustrative rather than narrative.

In a tarot reading I describe what it gives me as “supplemental notation,” and it builds on a foundation of internalized learning and experience. I also read books almost every day and write blog posts about what intrigues me. My spread creations often have an open structure that allows for intuitive improvisation while still being generally positional in nature.”

This is the crux of the perennial disconnect between the thinking and feeling modes of prognostication that parapsychologist Dean Radin has termed precognition and presentiment. Although I pursued it for many years, I was never fully satisfied with the depth of information I received from purely intuitive speculation and always felt that it just skimmed the surface of what experience and knowledge could produce.

The more I worked with and learned from the cards, the more I realized that they have a history rich in practical lore that goes well beyond what can be gleaned from simply looking at the pictures. There was also subjective bias to consider, which I think can be lethal to a true understanding of the cards’ significance when reading for other people.

I had an interesting experience in the online Lenormand world. The usual approach among purists is to read the cards in a completely matter-of-fact way that involves a verbatim treatment of the traditional definitions. Any kind of inspired take-off from the standard meanings that might be derived from the artwork was vehemently criticized. Every time I tried to be even a little creative with my interpretation, I was shouted down by the group leaders and was eventually driven out.

The thing is, I consider myself a traditionalist in Lenormand practice since I adhere closely to the customary methods and seek pragmatic results with little or no imaginative conjecture. But I’m not going to turn my brain off, and the same holds true for tarot reading. As the crusty cinematic miners in the old Westerns used to say “There’s gold in them thar hills” and I’ve set myself the task of diligently digging it out whenever I read the cards. But as another cultural icon once sang, “You know it don’t come easy,” and I wouldn’t have it any other way.