instinctive: an entirely spontaneous, non-rational and automatic response to stimulus (cognitively related to “intuitive”).
stochastic: “processes in which, out of a random series, some ‘intelligence’ or something that can be metaphorically conceived as an intelligence, is selecting a final outcome.” (Robert Anton Wilson)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although I wasn’t aware of it from my previous studies in psychology, Robert Anton Wilson just brought to my attention (in Prometheus Rising) that both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung gave their full attention to only three of the four fundamental qualities of human development. (Those who know more can correct me on this.)
According to Wilson, Freud covered the “oral-fixation” phase of infancy, the “emotional dependency” of the pre-adolescent era; and the “socio-sexual” fascination of post-adolescent maturity, leaping right over the “semantic” third function (i.e.emerging conscious ideation), most likely because “as an obsessive Rationalist he was so absorbed in verbal and conceptual programs that they were invisible to him, as water may be to fishes.”
Jung, on the other hand, was apparently so dismissive of Freud’s sexual preoccupation that he addressed the first three faculties as physical sensation, emotional feeling and rational thinking but chose to “lump all the higher circuits” (including the fourth state of socio-sexual expression) “under the rubric of intuition” (both quotes are from Wilson). In my own take on Jung’s typology I view his “intuition” as a more rarefied form of unconscious (and therefore irrational) predisposition (aka “instinct”) while sexuality falls under “sensation,” leaving “tribal” social mores as instinctive “survival strategies” (such as the self-regulating “pecking order”).
The dominant opinion among modern tarot readers is that intuitive interpretation of the cards is the pinnacle of sophisticated cartomantic mysticism, and the root of its authenticity is typically found in visual free-association from the images. In other words, the reader makes a completely subjective stab at what a card might mean within the context of the matter under review and builds a narrative around it to explain the seeker’s projected future. An obvious “suspension of disbelief” is required when the two don’t mesh seamlessly, which permits the assumptions of both the sitter and the reader to coexist peacefully.
Placing myself in the shoes of an intuitive diviner, when the querent’s superior but largely subliminal awareness of the situation and my equally subconscious but necessarily inferior speculative assessment run head-on into one another, we wind up in the cynic’s definition of “assume:” it makes an “ass” of “u” and “me.” In these situations my native discretion would tell me to shut up and listen to the client before I try to press my own argument any further. I would be the last person to say that the cards hold all the answers.
At first glance, my personal approach to reading comes across as entirely “stochastic” because it is based primarily on my internalized knowledge of, and long experience with, traditional card meanings that I assemble into a logical story-line and then burnish with a little imaginative flair. But in truth my analytical style merely imposes a veneer of “local” observation on my belief that a higher order of consciousness is responsible for arranging the cards in the right order for the reading; this is Wilson’s “metaphorical conception of intelligence” since we have no idea whether our inquiry evokes ethically-motivated sentience (i.e. “spirit guides”) or just blind (and dispassionate) omniscience in a more impersonal form.
At any rate, I think the individual subconscious taps into the collective unconsciousness in an unknown manner (some call it “channeling”) that coaxes the tarot cards into alignment. It’s too subtle to be considered “tactile,” so some less concrete organizing principle must be at work. Where I draw the line is at giving my subjective impressions full authority to dominate the storytelling scenario. I treat their input as subordinate to what the cards have always told me about themselves in a more literal way.
It has long been acceptable to me that what I see in my mind’s eye doesn’t originate in my own head but is just “passing through,” and I happen to catch it in transit (a connection I’ve made since my teenage days as a visual artist). My “meat brain” (in Lon Milo DuQuette’s excellent turn-of-phrase) just receives and translates the message. The cards act only as memory-jogging “cues” for things I already know from decades of exposure, and I barely look at them in a reading after recognizing their presence.
My personal relationship with the tarot has evolved around the semi-scenic “glorifed pip” cards of the Thoth deck and the non-scenic pips of the Tarot de Marseille, which have made the folkloric sentiments that have grown up around the Waite-Smith tarot utterly irrelevant to my practice since I find Smith’s prefabricated vignettes too intrusive and often unresponsive to Waite’s text.
While the mystical fluidity of the “instinctive” mode of divination seems more representative of a fish’s experience of water, behind me I have a lifetime of dealing with visionary insights that bubble up just under the surface of my more analytical reading style. I don’t even have to think about them on-the fly, and I haven’t for many years; they are just there at the tip of my tongue whenever I need them. I would submit that this comes through loud-and-clear in the numerous posts I’ve made on card definitions and usage over the last decade. Don’t take my endless “anti-woo” rants too much to heart; the truth lies in the written record.
