Here is a link to my most recent thoughts regarding “how tarot works.”

https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2019/11/03/the-role-of-psychism/

An effective tarot reading succeeds in anchoring the metaphysical abstractions shown in the images to a plausibly coherent vision of reality, usually through some form of imaginative storytelling; my personal approach is to convert the mystical, the philosophical, the psychological and the spiritual into the metaphorical and the emblematic.

This happens in three phases: first I gather inspiration from the cards drawn in the form of insights (I like the phrase “environmental stimulus”); next I use discrimination to decide which of those revelations are most relevant to the subject of the reading; and finally I look at practical ways in which my observations might experience application within a possible outcome scenario.