“Intuition Pandering” (or “The Soft Underbelly”)

Alternate Subtitle: “I Don’t Know What It Is, But I’ll Know It When I See It.”

Intuitive truth, that is. For the last few years in these essays I’ve nibbled around the edges of what it means to read the tarot cards “intuitively,” but only in the last few days has my grasp of the underlying assumptions crystallized. As applied to divination, it’s a wildly popular, semi-mystical concept that almost everyone loves to tout but that no-one seems too keen on defining precisely, as if by doing so we will strip it of its magic. I’ve begun asking myself (and anyone else who will pause to think about it), “What does it mean, really?” As a rational person with strong spiritual leanings, I’m constantly trying to reconcile the two without taking on a load of dogma (which is a private battle that is “neither-here-nor-there” for my purpose in this discussion), so these deliberations come naturally.

“Just trust your intuition” is the rallying cry of those who don’t want to ponder the “inner workings” of tarot too deeply, as if by ignoring them the inconvenient questions will go away and leave them to their own visionary devices. But it brings up a host of interesting theories. Is intuition as used with the cards an outgrowth of :

a) the power of suggestion based on visual free-association from the images?

b) psychic intimations?

c) a “hotline to the Divine?”

d) subjective reflection based on personal experience?

e) instinctive cognition and pattern-recognition?

f) a numinous form of “spirit vision?”

g) otherwise “inspired” universal wisdom of unproven origin (Collective Unconscious, Astral Plane, Akashic Record, anthropomorphic “Spirit Guides,” Plato’s “Soul of the World”, etc.)?

I acknowledge enlisting intuition in the service of a more structured approach to reading and believe that an integrated approach is best, but it can potentially become an all-purpose nostrum for an inability or unwillingness to get one’s head around the “knowledge base” (“It’s just too much work!”), something at least a few tarot authors have encouraged to the detriment of a deeper understanding of the cards.

Too often it seems to amount to ingenious but entirely unmoored, idiosyncratic hunches adrift in a sea of conjecture that may have little to do with the “outer” reality of the situation we’re dealing with, and that we strive mightily to imbue with “inner” relevance. We convince ourselves that we have an “inside track” to the heart of the matter, but if we’re not intentionally attempting to read the querent’s mind we are certainly in danger of trying to objectify and legitimize our own subjective bias as fact.

I just came across the unfashionable idea of “intuition pandering” which posits that we often formulate assumptions that we consider intuitively plausible with no justification for their legitimacy beyond this assumed plausibility (it’s a self-referential, “closed-loop” paradigm). The author argues that justifying an observation intuitively is “not any justification at all.” On the other side of the debate, here is a valuable essay that lends credence to the scientific and philosophical uses of the intuitive rationale as opposed to the informal and anecdotal uses that concern me here:

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Intuition

In the past I’ve been criticized for insisting on accuracy in my own readings (although I’ve softened my stance lately as reflected in recent essays), but it seems to me that if we’re going to perform a tarot reading we should be able to anticipate at least a reasonable approximation of demonstrable truth, whether our focus is psychological or predictive. Otherwise we are just doing it for our own amusement (and perhaps wasting our clients’ time). If our intuitive impressions are standing on the shoulders of some kind of recognized (if still not entirely objective) interpretive baseline, they have a chance of becoming “educated guesses” rather than merely a “shot in the dark.” (In my own quirky terminology, it becomes a “scientific” wild-ass guess and not merely something we pull out of our own suppositional backside).

It there is a vulnerable “soft underbelly” in our defense of the art of tarot reading (and for the record, I’m a true believer in that art), this is it. Personally, I keep a firm rein on my use of intuitive flourishes in my own work, with the goal of bringing them to bear creatively on my long-established storehouse of knowledge-and-experience-based insights. There is always room for inspiration, imagination and ingenuity in the act of reading without becoming enamored of my own cleverness and trying to “project” it onto my clients. The bottom line for me is that these glimmers of heightened comprehension should be rationally coherent and not just irrationally suggestive (although Enrique Enriquez did once say that tarot-reading — with an expectation of arriving at the truth — is an irrational act).

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on August 30, 2022.