AUTHOR’S NOTE: In Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson presents semanticist Alfred Korzybski’s principle of “time-binding” by which the passing of signals from one generation to the next assures that informational coherence is maintained in perpetuity (or at least until a major paradigm-shift disrupts the order of things, which used to happen once a century but with the evolutionary acceleration of human consciousness now occurs every few years, assuming AI doesn’t take over and transform the landscape tomorrow).
As a general rule, when the sustaining signal is lost the affected entity collapses into disorganization and incoherence as a result of degenerative entropy. (This is symptomatic of the deadening positive entropy that is held in check by the enlivening negative entropy – or “anti-entropy” – of constant information transfer that keeps the system “tuned-up.”) Continuity is therefore the linchpin of survival for worthwhile ideas, although Wilson acknowledges that, while Korzybski was correct in his reasoning, his archaic mathematics of exponential change ultimately failed.
From what I’ve seen of the stereotypical “New Tarot” championed by Rachel Pollack (i.e. the non-binary, non-colonial, non-exclusive, non-standard, non-everything-traditional, tarot-in-name-only decks), it looks to me like the link to the past has definitely been severed. The impression I get is that nearly everyone “of a certain age” receives their insights from online video presentations and they wouldn’t be willing (or, for that matter, able) to read a book full of complex metaphysical ideas (much less absorb its concepts) even if it were shoved under their nose. Thank the dumbing-down of secondary education for that.
The prevailing attitude I encountered back in 2011 when I rejoined the public tarot population was the Blazing-Saddles-inspired scoff “Books? We don’t need no steenking books.” The danger in this smugness is that if the YouTube purveyors of “instant” wisdom haven’t read any books either, it becomes a case of “the blind leading the blind” and it’s a downward spiral into mediocrity from there.
There is a conspicuous aura of “there-are-no-rules-so-just-do-whatever-you-want” solipsism to the whole thing (i.e. the “self is the only safe starting point to build knowledge”). Couple this with the onrush of purely intuitive interpretation that purposely devalues “book-learning” and we wind up with a perfectly insular society of blissful illiterates. As long as they never look beyond their exclusionary wall of willful ignorance, they will be happy to remain that way forever.
The approach is almost entirely emotional, mystical and psychic, with very little intellectual and analytical substance to it. I was an astrologer and Qabalistic occultist before I was a tarot practitioner, and I can’t abide that kind of superficiality in my own card-reading. There is much more to it than social-media cheerleading.
As an esoteric experimenter I’m not irredeemably bound to the strictures of historical convention, but in my blog writing I try to keep the baseline content front-and-center in my thinking as the only reliable source we have that is relatively untainted by the subjective free-for-all that strives to be all things to all people. I was just thinking of The Youngblood’s 1969 hippie anthem “Beautiful” that urges the social misfit to:
“Do what you will
Pay no attention to the small minds
Yeah, do what you will
Or laugh at convention, it’s not a crime, no”
When it comes to tarot reading, it may be “beautiful” in its mythical freedom from the burden of proof, but the true test of its value is whether it is helpful to individuals seeking its guidance. I won’t flatter myself by believing that my best work is anything more than utilitarian when my main goal is to assist with problem-solving, decision-making, conflict-resolution, situational-awareness and dysfunctional-relationship scenarios. I don’t read the cards to impress my peers, I do it to aid my clients who may have found no other way to obtain the details I’m able to impart. Counseling with the tarot is a serious matter that benefits from years of contemplation and experience, not a facile, app-based, random-number-generated sham that short-changes the querent even at $5 or $10 a pop.
There is an informal pecking-order for practical divination that begins with published literature and ends with speculative guesswork; between the two extremes lies a creative blend of empiricism and conjecture that I jokingly call the SWAG (“scientific wild-ass guess”) method of prediction that I attempt to make the benchmark of my practice. Providing my followers with annotated access to the information I acquire from my studies is my primary contribution to “negative entropy,” and maybe it will encourage them to read the material for themselves. (But I wouldn’t recommend starting with Robert Anton Wilson, he was an outspoken iconoclast even by 1983 standards.)
