Secular or Mystical: Alternate Paths in Divination
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I roam the internet seeking inspiration for my writing, I’ve become aware that the practice of divination has split into two camps, mainly along conceptual lines: one operates in the boundless realm of spontaneous conjecture while the other is more delimited in a focused and scrupulous way. There is a stark contrast between impressionistic and literal reading styles.
Front-and-center is a substantial population of self-styled “influencers” and their followers who are hosted by social-media platforms like YouTube, Tik-Tok and Instagram, and whom I think of as part of the “society of woo.” Their methods are primarily mystical and intuitive, with little traction in the core knowledge and principles that they often dismiss as irrelevant. They are almost certainly acolytes of the “New Tarot” mindset that seems to be on the rise.
A tarot author of my acquaintance once described it to me as a “free-for-all” in which there are no rules other than “do what you feel.” There are no “wrong ways” to perform a reading, so consequently there are also no strictly “right ways.” Not surprisingly, many of these diviners take a spiritual approach to the subject that is commonly pressed into service for the purpose of mind-reading; you know what I’m talking about — channeled insights into what “Joe or Mary thinks or feels” about the querent. Their approach strikes me as a form of pseudo-psychology that struts a dignified air of counseling legitimacy.
Then there is a much smaller hardcore group of people who apply more rigorous analytical methods. I’m thinking of the horary astrologers, Lenormand practitioners and empirical tarot readers of the occult world (those like me who focus on “action-and-event-oriented” uses for the cards that some naysayers consider to be fortune-telling). The catch-all term “secular” is as good as any to describe this group since they are staunchly opposed to anything that smacks of “woo.” They are looking for consequential results, not gauzy feel-good presumptions. Does anyone else appreciate that “secular divination” may be an oxymoron?
I come down somewhere in the middle, although my dominant hand firmly grasps the sword of reason while my off-hand holds the chalice of inspiration, imagination and ingenuity in a looser grip. The main problem I’ve had with the secular crowd is that they’re just too damn rigid in their outlook. They need to take Hamlet’s advice to Horatio seriously and not assume that if you can’t see, touch, taste, smell or hear something, it can’t possible be real.
I often say that the Enlightenment was the worst thing that ever happened to the magical worldview, and these rational materialists could very well be the poster children for antiseptically lucid prophesying, all rind and no juice; they’re the esoteric counterparts of the stock-market analyst. It’s a different kind of rabbit-hole than the one the typical prognosticator goes down. It’s also possible that advances in quantum physics, which are constantly upgrading our understanding of the nature of reality, will eventually leave them behind in their “enlightened” myopia.
That said, I’m slightly closer in spirit to the secularists than I am to the mystics. I’ve seen too much eye-rolling nonsense come out of the “proponents of woo” to take them seriously, and for me the study and practice of the esoteric arts is a profoundly serious one (which I would say is abundantly obvious from the contents of this blog). As a cerebral (but hopefully not “mental” in any clinical sense) advocate of divination, I think deeply about the philosophical side of these subtle skills and bring my impressions to bear on almost everything I write on the subject.
I’ll paraphrase the old aphorism by saying that anything worth doing is worth doing consciously, eyes wide open and not fumbling around in the astral dark. My mother had a testy remark about us kids being unable to find something that was right in front of us: “If it was a bear it would’ve bit you.” When my mother-in-law visited our country home for the first time, her words of greeting were “Are there bears here?” The short answer: yes.
These days I strive mightily not to tempt the bear, and I would say that any psychic wannabe venturing unprepared into the realm of clairvoyant prediction had better keep their tender backside against the wall.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 23, 2024.
