“Owning the Mystery” — Personal vs. Collective Tarot
AUTHOR’S NOTE: While reading about Carl Gustav Jung’s process of individuation as it applies to the Major Arcana of the tarot, I came across this intriguing quote:
“To own a mystery gives stature, conveys uniqueness, and assures that one will not be submerged in the mass. Mystery is essential to the experience of oneself as a unique personality, distinct from others . . .”
It seems to me that social-media interaction is so vital to the emotional well-being of the majority of people in these manifestly disconnected times that individual mystery is sacrificed (unless someone is toying with us by “ghosting”). There is little room for privacy when everyone is a slave to texting and is constantly seeking contact. For me, this was brought to a head upon hearing about the proliferation of “collective” tarot readers on YouTube. These alleged diviners offer up a thin gruel of generic meanings for the cards they pull with no input other than their own subjective bias, and followers are expected to sift through it to see if they can find something that is relevant to their personal circumstances: “If you have an “ex,” he, she or they will (or won’t) come back to you. If you don’t have one, well, this part of the reading isn’t for you.”
I don’t know precisely how they are monetized, but I can’t imagine they’re doing it for free even though that seems to be about all it’s worth (for similar nonsense, think back to the vacuous daily horoscopes of the newspapers). The sad thing is that so many people believe these fakers are legitimately speaking to their private reality. I call it “Gannon Syndrome” after entrepreneur David Gannon’s snide remark about P.T. Barnum’s gullible customers: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” It’s suspiciously similar to the “prepackaged mysteries” that Christian preachers deliver to the faithful every Sunday, although the “woo quotient” of psychic posturing is typically more evident. While there are allegedly “good” collective readers out there, I can’t imagine that the bar is set very high.
Using the tarot for self-understanding, or even just for deciding what action to take, should be a personal affair that neither requires nor benefits from group involvement. Ideally, the seeker will participate in a silent communion directly with the deck and together they will produce a sequence of cards that is tailored exactly to the context of the question with no “one-size-fits-all” hurdles to jump, and the reader steps in after that is accomplished. Anything less immersive for the querent is more mind-reading than card-reading; remote readings of the one-on-one type (of which I’ve done a few by email) come down somewhere in the middle between a face-to-face session and a collective “group grope,” although landing more to the side of impersonal, intuitive guesswork.
I admit to having a mobile phone, but I have no intention of being instantly reachable at all times. I seldom keep it on me, and I check it once every couple of days to see if anyone called. The same is true of my personal tarot readings; I typically do one monthly on the New Moon to see if the Universe has left me any text messages. The perfect approach by which to engage the tarot is to learn how to read the cards and use them to examine one’s own mysterious psyche. There is no better way to explore the archetypes at an individual level, although those who follow YouTube readers are probably more interested in whether someone likes them than in the psychological depths of there own personality. This demonstrates the wide gulf between nearly all “pop metaphysics” and any serious form of mystical self-discovery. I can’t think about it too much or I’ll just go “Arrgh!” and start tearing out my hair.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 14, 2023.
