Esoteric Baggage and the Freudian Slip*
*An unintentional error regarded as revealing subconscious feelings
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I embarked on my journey with the tarot in 1972, having already begun my exploration of the Hermetic Qabalah and natal astrology a couple of years earlier. Esoteric correspondences with psychological implications were all the rage and were applied to various “New Age” forms of divination. I studied and worked in this paradigm until roughly 2012, when I became serious about learning the Tarot de Marseille (TdM) and the Lenormand system of cartomancy, neither of which places much if any store in occult associations.
Yesterday I was commenting in a thread on one of the Facebook Lenromand sites, and was attempting to describe how, when I took up the TdM, I made a conscious decision to leave all of the “esoteric baggage” at the door upon entering, and I renewed the commitment when I approached Lenormand shortly thereafter. Most of the people I talk to on that site are of like mind, so I was “preaching to the choir.” Unfortunately, many Lenormand neophytes have set off on the wrong foot by bringing their tarot training and experience with them, particularly the practices of intuitive interpretation and free-association from the images; this essay is for them.
While doing my usual “fat-fingered” keyboarding, I first typed “esoteric gaggage,” and when I tried to correct it, I came up with “esoteric baddage,” in each case an amusing subconscious acknowledgement of the above objective. It’s a common occurrence that those who learn to read the cards with the Waite-Smith (RWS) or Thoth decks are full to overflowing with intuitive, impressionistic ideas about their meaning, and this shows up painfully in their efforts to navigate the non-occult systems of prediction. Unless they choose to blindly “kluge” (or “kludge”) their earlier learning into the new, more pragmatic mode of thought (a kluge is a configuration that is “inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together”), they have much to unlearn before they can work effectively in that vein.
Don’t misunderstand me. Esoteric connotations have their place when working with systems that were designed around them, which includes every RWS and Thoth deck ever made and their multitude of “clones.” (Even TdM interpretation takes advantage of suit-and-number theory when we’re trying to decipher the non-scenic minor, or “pip,” cards that offer few visual cues upon which to build a narrative.) Although much of it was “made up” by the Victorian mages of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn standing on the shoulders of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (aka “Etteilla”), Eliphas Levi and other Continental occultists, most of the model works after a fashion for the purposes envisioned by its creators. I’ve distanced myself somewhat from it as I pursue a more action-and-even-oriented focus in my readings and less of a psychological and mystical perspective, but I still pay attention to things like Tree of Life placement and astrological attributes.
Importing Thoth Minor Arcana meanings into the TdM is almost understandable (not so much the RWS canon), and some people have a “use whatever works for you” attitude toward it. (Personally, I created my own TdM pip definitions applying only suit-and-number symbolism and geometric considerations.) But aspiring to do something similar with the Lenormand cards falls utterly flat, despite the number of people who are diligently trying to make it happen. For example, there are many who bring numerological addition and reduction into the picture: let’s see, I have the Coffin and the Star, so 8 + 16 = 24, the Heart, or taking it further, 2+4 = 6, the Clouds, so either one of those cards can have special significance for the querent. These assumptions are largely spurious and they are entirely worthless to the traditional practitioner. Then there is the persistent nonsense that equates the Lenormand Moon with emotions and intuition, an interpretation which isn’t even especially true for its tarot counterpart and instead harks all the way back to its astrological roots for validation.
My conclusion is that humans seem to have a weakness for symbolic syncretism even when it makes little sense. While some systems work quite well together — tarot and astrology, tarot and numerology, tarot and dice, even tarot and I Ching — others (among which the tainting of Lenormand with esoteric concepts is a perfect example) are like oil and water when mixed. Those who try to do so wind up with a bastard child that serves neither the tradition nor their own objectives, although they will inevitably attempt to convince themselves otherwise since everyone likes to hear themself rationalize.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 9, 2023.
