Incompatibility of Temperament: Recidivism in the Art of Tarot
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis observed that, when first formulated, scientific theories are almost entirely conjecture (he used the word “supposal”), perhaps shored up by a few preliminary observations that foster “educated guesses.” Later attempts to refine these suppositions amount to either trying to confirm their validity through experimentation (Lewis called it “saving the observed phenomena”) without adding to the welter of unverified assumptions that support them, or tearing them down and starting over. He went on to describe mystical, nature-based pagan cosmology and liturgical Christian theology as being “subtly out of harmony”with one another, not in direct conflict but exhibiting an “incompatibility of temperament” in their disparate worldviews. For the rational analyst, it becomes a matter of what to “save” and what to throw out in each case. But Lewis dodged the question by noting: “Comparative evaluations of essentially different excellences are in my opinion senseless. A surgeon is better than a violinist at operating and a violinist is better than a surgeon at playing the violin.”
This lengthy prologue brings me to the point of this essay. I’m quite certain that my persistent criticism of wholly psychic tarot reading (or “psychism with props”) as fundamentally unreliable due to subjective bias causes a great deal of consternation (if not outright hostility) among those intuitive mystics who happen to stumble upon my observations in this blog. As a longtime astrologer, I have an analytical mindset that spills over into my work with the tarot and that is poorly served by an excess of speculative fabrication. It’s fair to say that I tend to align with the “surgeons” rather than the “violinists:” I can play the notes well enough but I’m much more comfortable with the musical principles that underscore the composition. Let’s just say I have an “incompatibility of temperament” (not to mention a disagreement over methodology) with the “woo brigade.”
When it comes to tarot reading, which along with natal astrology received a huge boost from Jungian “pop-psychology” back in the 1970s, I see this reversion to the more impressionistic, non-literal style of divination favored by the “tall-dark-stranger” type of popular fortune-teller to be evidence of recidivism (aka “backsliding”), a decisive retreat from knowledge-based methods of interpretation. I’ve always scratched my head over this attitude. The cards should be far more than props to enliven a psychic reading session; they are repositories of profound wisdom — both metaphysical and psychological — and merely skimming the surface by using them as prompts for anecdotal story-telling via free-association from the images is a gross misapplication of their potential. In such cases they become whatever we want then to be, and reading them degenerates into a “free-for-all” of intuitive guesswork that is not particularly convincing.
Back in July of 2017 I posted an essay titled “Intuit This!” that charged those tarot readers who rely solely on the “vagrant whims” of intuition with “not reading the essence of the cards so much as foraging eyeball-deep in their own subconscious navel lint.” I’m no longer such a fire-breathing curmudgeon about it (now I’m just an ordinary mean-spirited curmudgeon), but I still firmly believe that, while introducing tarot cards into a “channeled” divination offers at least a trace of objectivity to work with, throwing ourselves wide-open to invisible sources of uncertain fidelity and honesty creates far too much exposure to misapprehension or even deception that we then unwittingly pass on to our sitters as legitimate advice. How can we be certain we’re communicating with helpful spirit guides or angels and not merely conversing with some less-sympathetic disembodied entity, or in fact engaging in dialogue with an inchoate fragment of our innermost consciousness (aka “talking to ourselves”)?
I don’t feel privileged to tell anyone what they should be doing based on my own subliminal awareness, which after all is focused inward and has absolutely nothing to do with their circumstances. It’s safer to have the querent shuffle the deck and begin the reading by describing the cards according to their historical definitions, then bestow on them a bit of inspired “spin” to better support the context of the question or topic. I usually preface each card with a thumbnail sketch of baseline meaning and then flesh out the narrative with my own extensive experience. This gives me a “backstop” that reduces the risk of letting something get by me, and I can always depend on it for further insight if the more imaginative approach goes haywire and I must recover. This way I don’t have to stick my neck out too far by flying blind into the “Land of Make-Believe” where truth can be a matter of opinion. There is no reason to invite being trashed as spectacularly wrong in our predictions when — by tamping down freestyle speculation — we can get away with simply being disciplined in our habits and temperate in our counsel.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on November 30, 2024.
