History or Story? — Descriptive or Discursive Tarot Reading
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I never know where I’m going to find inspiration for a new essay. Recently I was following a dialogue in the r/scotch sub-reddit that debated which Scottish whisky distillery is best to visit on an informational tour, and one suggestion was to decide what you want from the experience, history or story (one is fact-oriented and the other is more anecdotal). This resembles the difference between a descriptive, knowledge-based tarot reading and a discursive, intuition-based presentation: one is infused with traditional lore that is superimposed upon and molded around the querent’s circumstances and the other is more imaginative and visionary in style, relying on creative leaps of insight to advance the story. (I think of the former as analytical and latter as mystical, and in my own practice I always try to strike a balance between the two.)
These distinctions require a bit of elaboration. I’m taking my cue from the two different ways a three-card Lenormand sequence can be read. The descriptive approach furnishes a static picture in which one card (usually the first card but sometimes the middle one) becomes the key feature that is modified by the influence of the surrounding cards, and the whole is intended to be a “snapshot” of the current moment; this is the so-called “sentence” structure in that one card serves as the subject of the reading and the others act as qualifiers to further describe it. The narrative method generates a progressive story-line that is typically read from left-to-right, and it allows for a developmental arc that produces an “outcome.” (While intuition is used only sparingly in Lenormand divination, it does have a place in deciding how much emphasis to give the various factors.) Think of one as a Breugel still-life and the other as a Winslow Homer nautical epic. As an action-and-event-based diviner I know which one I prefer.
I’ve written in the past about the various ways a three-card tarot pull can be analyzed, and I’m pretty sure both of these ideas were encompassed in principle if not in their particulars (see the link below, and others). I like to say that querents don’t need to be told where they’ve been (the “history” side of the equation), they want an opinion from the cards on where they’re going (in the form of an unfolding “story”). While there are spreads like the Celtic Cross that benefit from having a couple of “back-story” positions to assist in explaining why things are the way they are in the present (especially if the past is unresolved and has been “swept under the rug”), I have recently taken to casting my brief “timeline” readings in “present/near future/distant future” terms.
As a storyteller I have little interest in being a “miniaturist” of the type that creates jewel-like portraits by dwelling on every past, present and future detail; I would rather be an Impressionist who paints in bold strokes and vivid colors. Instead of clinically dissecting why something happened, I much prefer to explore what might become of it in a more urgent sense. The former may engage the mind, but the latter draws the eye and inspires the heart. Once again, it depends upon the nature of the question and what the seeker wants from the reading, so it becomes a matter of listening to my instincts and following the clues presented during our interaction.
https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2022/10/23/the-three-card-draw/
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on March 31, 2024.
