“Don’t Break Your Head”
“Think about this but don’t break your head, have fun.”
- Jean-Baptiste Alliette, Etteilla or the Only Way to Draw the Cards
The above quote comes from “Etteilla’s” meticulous coverage of the diverse combinations and correspondences that exist between the cards of the tarot (or in his case, those of the “Grand Etteilla” deck). So far in my reading of the book, there have been several mentions of the “fun” of divination and I don’t know whether this was merely a convention favored by the translator or whether Alliette actually used this expression in the French-language edition. But I fully agree with it since one of my longest-held and firmest opinions about tarot reading is that it can (and should) be an enjoyable experience for both the reader and the sitter.
My sense of the joy in reading the cards comes from a storyteller’s perspective. It requires the fullest application of inspiration, imagination and ingenuity to come up with a compelling narrative that both instructs and entertains, and the emotional payback for both participants can be rousing. While I like to say that tarot reading is a “performance art” and that much of what we do amounts to the “theater of tarot,” this kind of easygoing approach can put an anxious querent at ease and open a stimulating dialogue in ways that a purely informational delivery can’t. This is primarily why I find online reading so sterile; there isn’t much engagement until the post-reading Q&A email that I offer all my clients, where the exchange can get more lively. There is little fun (and not much of an hourly wage) to be had in sitting at a computer for two or three hours, typing up a Celtic Cross reading. I’d rather sit here and write this blog for free.
I’ve found the most enjoyment when doing psychic fairs with their brief readings and steady flow of walk-in sitters. It really helped me sharpen my skills and learn to manage my time while also letting me meet some interesting people, a couple of whom became repeat clients. But that’s in the past now, unless and until I can find a similar gig in my local area; it’s been over three years since we moved here and I’m not optimistic. I’ve done a few professional one-on-one sessions but most of the opportunities came during presentations where I performed example readings for the audience. Once word got out, though, it became an expectation and those who left without receiving a reading became disgruntled. This was all done gratis, and I decided I no longer wanted to put up with the drama while at the same time being taken advantage of by opportunistic freeloaders. Tarot is mainly a hobby for me, not a significant source of income, but I don’t feel obligated to give away my time on someone else’s terms. Covid didn’t help, of course (I even had a mild case of it not too long ago), and the “fun factor” has dropped off considerably since the beginning of the pandemic, even though people are no longer as nervous about it as they once were.
I tend to live in my own mind a lot, where — although it’s not exactly an amusement park — I get enough pleasure from thinking and writing about these subjects that I don’t really feel disadvantaged by the lack of face-to-face exposure of the metaphysical kind. I’ve become something of an “armchair philosopher” of the divinatory arts and the self-bestowed title suits me just fine. Since I retired from industry I’ve had tons of idle mental horsepower on my hands with nowhere else to put it, so here you have me warts and all. There is plenty of ground to cover and enough online conversation to keep it fresh and interesting. Complex ideas like Alliette’s are “meat-and-potatoes” for me; the challenge is invigorating while at the same time offering seemingly new insights, many of which it turns out were the inspiration for things I’ve already learned from more recent writers. All I have to do is put it all together, and if I were going to “break my head” doing that it would have happened long before now with the works of Aleister Crowley, Joseph Maxwell, Paul Foster Case, MacGregor Mathers, et al.
Keep it fun and don’t break yours!
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 21, 2022.
