“Playing the Victim” — Self-Inflicted Pain in RWS Imagery
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wasn’t aware that there is a modern interpretation of the Waite-Smith 8 of Swords that describes the person in the picture as “faking” the distress or intentionally “self-victimizing,” as in willingly submitting to what looks like abusive treatment. It reminds me of the hateful, misogynistic affront to rape victims and targets of domestic violence: “They asked for it.” As for the 8 of Swords, the implication is that the whole thing is “staged,” which is a patently ridiculous take on what suggests — in the words of an online opinion-piece — externally-imposed “constraints, entrapment, and humiliation.”
There are other RWS minor cards that can be viewed in a similar light, those where some kind of desperation is implied. The most obvious examples are the 9 and 10 of Swords, but there are also the 3 and 5 of Swords, the 5 and 8 of Cups and the 5, 7 and 9 of Wands. These are not happy cards; at best they show conflict and at worst desolation. I would never dream of telling my clients that they are at fault for any consequences whenever one of these cards appears in a reading. I can’t think of anything more counterproductive or disenfranchising since it discounts the impact of things that are legitimately beyond our control, effectively taking them off the table. They can’t be dealt with if their existence isn’t acknowledged.
Tarot is supposed to be a helping discipline, typically applied in the service of positive change and not used to unfairly rub a querent’s nose in an unfortunate situation. How can we guide them toward recovery if we insist that their problems are all of their own making, even if they were unwittingly complicit in creating them? We will almost certainly destroy any hope of voluntary progress, which defeats the empowerment objective of the reading. I aspire to have them feel more “whole” upon leaving than when they arrived.
The online essay goes on to observe that this attitude is rooted in the mindset that tarot-reading is only suitable for “psychological introspection,” there should be no whiff of esoteric insight or fortune-telling credibility in it. According to this paradigm, the practice should be entirely secular and literal or anti-spiritual, and as such it comes across as “just as dogmatic as the fortune-telling tradition it . . . derides.” It denies the existence of predestination or “fate,” the presence of which is woven into the traditional imagery, and “the inarguable reality of the material conditions” that people must endure, regardless of its potential for good or ill. “It is part of a larger system of thought based on internal orientation and individualistic assumptions,” and its practitioners “often fail to see how abusive it can be if taken to its logical conclusion.”
I could not have said it better myself. Enrique Enriquez once noted that “tarot-reading is an irrational act,” so we should not expect it to be unfailingly non-mystical. Those psychologically-inclined readers who treat it as a clinical window into the persona are missing out on the anecdotal flexibility that can probe the unconscious “shadow side” of the psyche with equal facility. Although I’m a dedicated fortune-teller with an abiding interest in action-and-event-oriented prediction, I’ve worked quite comfortably in the second mode from time-to-time. It can put a little imaginative “flesh on the bone” of purely analytical scrutiny, making it more art than science. I will never be mistaken for an “advocate of woo,” but I can at least give a nod in that direction when the situation encourages it.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.org on February 19, 2025.
