Off-Topic Tarot Readings: Crossing the Conceptual Divide
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here I’m tackling the evasive defense (OK, it’s a convenient excuse) that is often trotted out to justify why tarot readings yield advice that seems valid while not even remotely addressing the question we asked: “They’re responding to a different issue that may be more important but that wasn’t recognized by the querent.” In this obliging view the tarot deck is a sensitive instrument that won’t always behave by staying on-script, so we must apologize for its defiance.
I agree, at least in principle, that the most productive approach to this conundrum is to treat the “non-answer” as a riddle that is supposed to explain something that we didn’t request and didn’t realize we needed to know. The challenge lies in figuring out exactly what that is and deciding whether or not it’s a subject with which we must engage in the foreseeable future. For example, suppose we are seeking a private interlude of peace and quiet that would be most favorably expressed by the High Priestess or another calm card and instead we pull the Tower. Putting the best possible face on it, we might conclude that there will be a thunderstorm that clears the air before we can retire to our safe haven, or that we may have to run a few psychological “squatters” off the premises before we can settle in. It doesn’t have to be what the British call a “spanner in the works” that derails our plans, it could just mean that a little preliminary “house-cleaning” is needed (note that, despite appearances, I didn’t say “house-razing”).
One of the best ways to deal with the apparent inconsistency is to follow Eden Gray’s suggestion that we can proceed with a reading without having to know the exact question that is on the querent’s mind. The sitter silently concentrates on the topic of interest while shuffling the deck and we (the reader) meticulously keep our mind blank. This removes our own subconscious impressions from the process of induction that “imprints” the querent’s subliminal awareness on the arrangement of the cards, which then “speak their piece” in a way that communicates only with that individual’s focused intent (even if that intent was unknown to their conscious faculties during the shuffle). This, of course, only works in face-to-face settings with “live” clients; remote readings are a whole different matter, as are self-readings where a blank mind is inappropriate.
The difficulty remains that we must still reconcile any messy misalignment in order for the sitter to be able to puzzle out its purpose. I see any gap between the nature of the question asked and that of the answer received as a “conceptual divide” in which the cards are on a different wavelength than the querent’s overt mental grasp of the situation. (I like to think their mystical source knows a little more about the matter than it is prepared to simply hand over, and we must work for it.) The reading “is what it us,” so it’s the seeker’s duty to find a meaningful “real-life” connection with the veiled significance of the divergent cards. I try to help by using instructive storytelling “tropes” (conventional inferences) that speak to the issue in a metaphorical or allegorical sense. I characterize this as a “soft focus” approach that doesn’t try to turn every glimmer of insight into a hard fact. But of course all of this may just be mental gymnastics to dodge the implication that the cards are in fact merely wrong; stranger things have happened in the world of divination.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on June 5, 2024.
