AUTHOR’S NOTE: Reading between the lines of Robert Anton Wilson’s discussion of “neurosomatic” circuits in Prometheus Rising, he seems to be implying that the “ordinary mystic” (his phrase, not mine) does not possess the semantic wherewithal to comprehend – much less communicate – the kind of analytical detail that a more logical diviner can pick out of the tarot cards with relative ease, particularly if he or she has been exposed to the matter-of-fact Lenormand system of prediction.
Mystics tend to speak more in speculative generalities and psycho-spiritual ramifications than in the literal language of action-and-event-based prognostication (aka “fortune-telling”) that is a major strength of Lenormand reading and could become so for tarot as well. There are “hybrids,” of course – I claim to be one – but it seems to me that the tarot community is gravitating more-and-more toward intuitive conjecture and away from the firmer evidence that the pragmatic reader finds in the cards. This is great for storytelling but not so good for providing meaningful counsel and actionable advice.
This mindset frequently manifests as imaginative flights of fancy fueled by visual free-association from the images of the Waite-Smith tarot and its “clones” that have become the de facto standard of the 21st Century cartomancer. I would venture to say that there are more versions of this deck than any other, and the only diviners who escape its siren-song are those who rely entirely on the Tarot de Marseille, the Thoth tarot, the Lenormand deck, the playing cards and other unique oracle packs. With few exceptions, it’s much too folkloric in concept for me (which says more about its later interpreters than about its creators), inviting the urge to amplify and embellish that demonstrates my point.
Going back to its ancient shamanic roots, divination might be considered one of the “sacred sciences” of primitive cosmology, and the populist upsurge we see today exhibits little allegiance to that origin. Other than among Wiccans and Neopagans, there is a dismissive attitude in the culture for anything involving historical precedent, which is a senselessly myopic posture when there is much to be learned from the baseline knowledge presented in the literature of the last two centuries. I’ve encountered a smug disregard for anything found in books, and that may have as much to do with weak reading skills as it does with hubris, for which I blame both the educational system and the current “instant-gratification” mentality that thrives on social-media videos.
Part of this aversion can be attributed to the esoteric overlay that was placed on the tarot at the end of the 19th Century by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and that has become the norm for the bulk of abstract thinking on the subject. Modern mystics of the “young-girls-playing-make-believe-with-cards” variety have little patience with its arcane complexities, not least because they don’t have any hope of understanding the principles, much less applying them (and they won’t until they “grow up” metaphysically).
Although I seldom mention these correspondences to my sitters in favor of a more anecdotal approach to the narrative, I keep them handy because, as author Michael Snuffin has said bluntly, “You don’t need intuition;” everything you require for interpretation is available in the on-board symbolism (although this opinion presumes a philosophical temperament that is almost nonexistent in current practice).
I won’t go quite that far since inspiration, imagination and ingenuity, along with the storytelling tropes of metaphor and analogy, play a significant role in my own readings (to particularize Timothy Leary’s “genetic” generalization, I see them as symbolic “telegraphs” from the realm of shared cultural, social, historical, literary and educational experience). But I find the opposite extreme of relying solely on ethereal “spirit guides” for their presumed wisdom to be more than a little soft-headed.
In my estimation as both a longtime tarot practitioner and a skeptical observer, those who do so are subconsciously talking to themselves and putting words in the mouth of an imaginary entity that they regard as representing a higher order of consciousness (not quite the “invisible friend” of the very young child, but you get the idea).
A dermatologist once told me, “The mind is a wonderful thing” because it can convince us of the reality of something that has no objective basis in fact, which he was proposing as the source of the “miraculous” healing I had apparently experienced for the incurable skin condition eczema (and to rub it in, it hasn’t come back even after twenty years).
As Snuffin states, it is preferable to “just read the cards” for their encoded content and avoid too much embellishment with subjective improvisation based on free-association. As he observed in The Thoth Companion, “it is always best to let the cards do the talking rather than to offer your personal advice. You will find that the cards usually tell (querents) what they need to hear and not what they want to hear.”
We tend to fall all over ourselves in the scramble to provide “empowerment” as the main focus of our readings when it may be presumptuous to suggest that we know best what ought to be done (and at worst we might be encouraging inappropriate behavior without knowing it). Instead, we could just present the oracular testimony to our clients as we see it in the cards and then step out of the way with the disclaimer that the choice about what to do with it is theirs.
