AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the category of “A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing” for the mystical tarot reader, parapsychologist Dean Radin (in Supernormal, his 2013 study of yoga) had a few critical things to say about the lack of scientific confidence in online testimony.

Dr. Radin made a tossed-off remark about the fact that the psionic experiments conducted by Cornell University psychologist Daryl Bem and published in 2011 intentionally avoided using internet participants because of the “uncontrolled variables” this method of data-gathering can introduce. Radin didn’t elaborate on what those are, but we can surmise that the most limiting of them is an inability to directly assess the subjects’ reactions to stimuli, thus forcing the researcher to take their word for it (never a good idea in fact-based investigations that shun anecdotal evidence for obvious reasons).

When it comes to tarot readings performed via online platforms, the main bone of contention regarding uncontrolled variables – after not being able to look the sitter in the eye – is the inevitability of reader bias in the form of intuitive guesswork. Unless we accept the legitimacy of mind-reading in the telepathic sending-and-receiving sense or the intervention of spiritual messengers, attempting to answer a question for a person on the other side of the world could have everything to do with the reader’s own inspired conjecture and nothing to do with the seeker’s subconscious awareness of his or her private reality that the reading is supposed to plumb. (Don’t tell me that “Everything is psychic energy that can be tapped by anyone” since that energy may have no interest in communicating honestly, if at all, so we could wind up talking to ourselves and be none the wiser.)

Diviners may pull a card and immediately recognize it as something they’ve seen many times before in a similar context and pass that impression on to the querent as the correct response to the query without a second thought. It just “feels right so it must be right.” The main ingredient that is lacking in these remote scenarios is the sitter’s instant acknowledgement of the observation, ideally in an emphatic “Aha! I know exactly what you mean!” affirmation. This “Aha! moment” is the prize that every tarot reader pursues when dealing with clients in-person.

When reading face-to-face, this prompt realization is the single most important factor in demonstrating that the narrative is on the right track. If I’m operating in a vacuum without the timely confirmation of a distant client, I have nothing more than my knowledge and experience to fall back on. This will take me only so far and also be vulnerable to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s objection that every reading is tainted by the reader’s projection of idiomatic hunches into its performance. Jodorowsky believes that there is no way we can be free of subjective prejudice when divining. I don’t entirely agree with him, but the risk is always there if we aren’t diligent in suppressing it by adopting a properly nonjudgmental mindset and sticking with it to “just read the cards” for their impersonal perspective, then letting the sitter “personalize” the testimony during the subsequent dialogue.

During remote sessions where the reader shuffles the deck for the seeker, this validation can only be accomplished at arms’ length and after-the-fact once the verdict has been delivered by some form of written message. It can be argued that “live” video connections solve this problem but, as has been famously asserted, we should “believe none of what we hear and only half of what we see.” In a face-to-face environment there are other clues to support it, such as facial expression, body language, eye contact, etc, all of which are more reliable than a reply by text, email or the “talking head” caricature that is visible in a Zoom video.

In his chapter on telepathy, Dr. Radin labels Jodorowsky’s unacknowledged viewpoint “analytical projection” on the part of the experiment’s online participants, and cautions that “this sort of projection is usually wrong, and tends to override telepathic impressions” (as opposed to a local tarot client’s subconscious induction through direct interface with the cards) that he calls “perceptual primitives” but that I would rename “predictive precursors” for divination purposes. It’s a matter of the reader’s experiential prejudgment trumping the sitter’s speculative presentiment, but to me it seems like the greater of two evils when we are trying to be as objective as possible in our assessment.