AUTHOR’S NOTE: Those who have been following this blog for the past nine years know that I take a dim view of overly impressionistic tarot reading because it banks on unalloyed intuition and poses the risk of subjective bias that can overshadow more objective interpretation, derailing the literal point-of-view and leaving it without a voice.
I’ve frequently billed myself as 70% analytical and 30% mystical in my approach to divination, but in truth I try to take it right down the middle when it comes to inspiration, opening up to intuition while officially delegating it to serve more as a “side dish” to the “main course” of rational elucidation.
The “insight” of the title is rooted in a clear-eyed view of the often-subtle details underlying the matter at hand while the “instinct” is based more on “gut feeling” that may be on-point but doesn’t lend itself to a logical rendering of the cards’ less-obvious sentiments. “Touchy-feely” is fine as long as it doesn’t degenerate into masturbatory excess that spews non-sequiturs rather than calmly infusing the answer with its inseminating spark.
Still, I find that the two must work hand-in-hand to support a well-rounded reading with strong bones and firm flesh. My intent is to build the architecture of the story and let the “fatty tissue” of imagination fill in the vacant spaces prepared for it. Don’t take that as a pejorative; figurative proteins and fats are both essential nutrients in an effective tarot reading, but I hold the line on the “empty calories” of carbohydrates in the form of mystical conjecture that is typically presented as “spiritual” or “psychic.” My twin reactions are almost always “Gimme a break!” and “Where’s the beef?”
I realized not long ago that my assumptions about intuitive input go all the way back to my late-teenage days as a graphic-art student with an overpowering esoteric bent, even though at that time I had yet to read any occult literature beyond that found in Paul Krassner’s magazine, The Realist (something of a misnomer since it once featured a multipart essay on Aleister Crowley by Robert Anton Wilson).
I received unbidden mental images like Athena springing from the forehead of Zeus and I rendered them in an artistic style that was predominantly surrealistic. This was ramped up when I went to Germany in 1968 and was exposed to certain, shall we say, “psychoactive” substances that opened the floodgates to this peculiar creativity. (The military psychologists would probably have labeled it “psychosis” if they only knew.)
The act of fixing my ethereal experiences in concrete form as works of art trained me in the practice of capturing those flashes of arcane awareness for further contemplation. (My opinion at the time was that the fleeting glimpses of “otherness” came through me but not from me.) I have slides of my output from that era but the plastic frames were damaged in a friend’s slide projector and I never had them restored, but they epitomized what might be called my “hashish period,” and I often sat and meditated on them.
The high point (no pun intended) of that three-year stretch was encountering the newly-released Aquarian Tarot, which showed me how metaphysical stimuli could be anchored in both psychological and pragmatic verbiage. This set me on the path of the occult student and tarot reader when I returned to the US in 1972.
Although I no longer dwell on the card faces when I read and therefore don’t free-associate from the pictures because I’ve thoroughly internalized them, the art of collating their unrelated messages into a coherent narrative is not that different from turning random figments of the imagination into visual art. Translating this motley missive into reliable information must occur if it is to be communicated to those seeking tarot’s knowledge and wisdom.
This segue requires intelligent insight but also benefits from irrational instinct that “lubricates” the drier aspects of logical interpretation. By “irrational” I mean what Enrique Enriquez intended when he called tarot-reading an “irrational act.” The literal must be infused with the poetic to bind them together into a compelling whole. But I have to admit that in my own practice I subordinate “mood” to “mind” and tap into the former only after I have a firm grip on the testimony of the latter, which allows me to outmaneuver the “woo” of intuitive speculation. Not that I’m entirely boneheaded about it, I’m just concerned that the spontaneous is too often specious and must be propped up with a little sober deliberation before we spring it on a client.
