“It Just Happened . . .”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Cynics and nihilists are fond of saying (with studied indifference) “Shit happens.” Here I’m going to take a hard look at that assumption.
In a rational Universe, it can be argued that things don’t “just happen;” even if we unwittingly place ourselves in the path of a developing train-wreck (the “wrong place, wrong time” premise), there is usually some kind of causal link that brought us to that point (one that divination is often able to identify in advance and propose a detour around). In an entirely chaotic Cosmos the situation may be different, but those who practice the divinatory arts suspect that there are no unavoidable accidents, even when we become ensnared in someone else’s debacle. Lacking foresight, we may not know at the time that we made a “bad decision,” but it becomes abundantly clear in retrospect. Lives converge, situations are put in front of us with which we can either choose to interact or decline to engage, but the fact remains that the latent opportunity or misfortune is there waiting for us and just needs to be recognized for what it is. How we handle it dictates our experience of the matter.
I prefer the “potential-outcome-with-choice” model of tarot reading, in which I explore with the client those possibilities (and, in the best sense, likely conclusions), tendencies and trends that show up in the cards and offer them the insights necessary to act on their own behalf, either to precipitate the events or circumstances if favorable or prevent them from occurring exactly as forecast if less so. The popular word is “empowerment,” but I think that may be too optimistic a way to put it. “Forewarned is forearmed” is more my style, giving my clients the ammunition to make the best of the situation, or the prescience to dodge the bullet. What they do with the “power” is up to them (including shooting themselves in the foot or “zigging when they should have zagged”).
Of course there is also the opinion that the tarot is only an intuitive key that opens the door to psychic premonitions, and I won’t dispute that there is an element of psychism in every form of prognostication. Without it we would just be reading from a script, with no sensitivity to more obscure influences. The challenge as I see it is to fold our inspired insights into the overall narrative in a way that highlights them without giving them undue emphasis. After all, they may just be products of our overactive imagination, no matter how attuned to the “Divine” we may think we are. At the risk of repeating myself, I’ve always preferred Joseph Maxwell’s “pseudo-scientific” take on this:
“Coming events cast a shadow before them; each individual has a presentiment about his own destiny, which may remain latent: the normal processes of consciousness do not include such presentiments. To understand the presence in each individual of a detailed record of personal consciousness it is necessary to take into account the fact that an individual being exists, as it were, on several planes simultaneously, or is capable of so doing. What is loosely termed the subconscious is actively interleaved with the astral levels; the mental and intellectual processes, emanating from the intelligence, link themselves in a living web to the spiritual levels.”
Personally, I don’t presume to have a hotline to divinity since I think what we’re dealing with is an entirely human faculty that lies just outside our conscious grasp, a form of “mental physics” (or “mentation”) that we don’t yet have the ability to quantify, so we view it as phenomenal rather than natural. If there is in fact a Collective Unconscious as Jung proposed (or a numinous source of knowledge by any other name), I see no reason why the sensitive diviner can’t channel it without having to assume mystical intervention from gods, angels, spirit guides and the like. Such bestowal of agency strikes me as an all-too-convenient way to transfer responsibility or blame for our own unexamined shortcomings, as if by isolating and externalizing them we can deny ownership; to this I respond “Good luck with that!” Except in the credulous realm of private fantasy where self-deception is not uncommon, I’ve seen no conclusive evidence that the Universe works that way no matter how much hopeful “affirmation” we throw at it.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on August 25, 2023.
