Tarot Disambiguation: “I Know You Think You Believe You Understand What You Thought I Said . . .”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Disambiguation is a great word. As I see it, the concept involves eliminating confusion in the understanding and application of language by clarifying the differences between similar terms. The various definitions and connotations that have accrued to a word are sorted and ranked according to their frequency in common usage, although the fact that not everyone will agree with the ranking could merely exacerbate the problem.
A related form of literary analysis is the sudden rise in online commentary about “words that betray the use of artificial intelligence in writing.” I love elegant language delivered with sophistication and wit; I have an extensive vocabulary that includes many of those words, and of course I will use them when they’re the best fit for the occasion. I don’t give a damn whether anyone objects to my “five-dollar words” or falsely believes that a computer chose them for me. This leads to the sarcastic postscript I’ve been adding to my recent posts: “No AI was abused in the writing of this essay.”
I sometimes think the tarot would be completely justified in throwing at us the same accusation that former President Richard Nixon leveled at hostile reporters in his barely-coherent rebuttal: “I know you think you believe you understand what you thought I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is exactly what I meant.” We have a tendency to tie ourselves up in knots trying to comprehend its symbolic content in ways that make sense to us and our situation when we could be completely missing the point due to “confirmation bias” (that is, we see only what we expect or want to see) or other subjective myopia. Not to mention that going to another equally befuddled reader could amount to “the blind leading the blind.”
I don’t have any “canned advice” regarding shortcuts that might be brought to bear on this conundrum. Being able to instantly penetrate straight to the heart of the message with accuracy and sensitivity is to enjoy a state of transparency that can only be achieved through dedicated practice over many years. Tarot cards are awash in “nuanced contrasts” (another nod of appreciation to The Tao of Thoth for that phrase), the most obvious of which appear in the realm of reversals, assuming they’re applied with adequate finesse. But — as those who refuse to acknowledge reversed orientation are quick to point out — every card contains these contrasts within its normal span of interpretation, we just have to figure out how they apply to the matter at hand. (I argue that this can take too much time and effort when reversal will swiftly bring us to the same point by highlighting those features and telling us where to look.)
Another piece of the puzzle comes from the fact that novices are being told that whatever their intuition tells them is true about a specific card in a particular setting is invariably valid, even though the established “knowledge base” might indicate otherwise. This engenders a raft of private meanings that have no commonality with what the rest of the tarot world might consider legitimate, and it can (and does) confuse querents who visit multiple readers with different belief systems.
The root cause of this blatant disregard for history seems to be that the “psychic” tarot (as distinct from the “literal” tarot) is viewed as simple in its execution, with mystical impressions taking the place of conventional wisdom. My other favorite snipe at this mindset is the old GEICO slogan: “It’s so easy a caveman could do it,” and I do believe I’ve seen a tarot troglodyte or two on the YouTube channels. I can almost hear Cheech Marin sneering “We don’t need no steenking books!”
The best way I can think of to accomplish tarot disambiguation was described in my recent post on “learning the tarot cards.” If we set ourselves a target and then persistently attack it until we can hit it with confidence every time, then set another target within the same range but perhaps a little farther afield, we will eventually have the whole “arcade” covered. Then we can factor in environmental variables on-the-fly, considerations that might be equated to physical factors in the shooter’s milieu like wind, elevation and visibility that require us to adjust our aim. These would, however, be allusive or evocative rather than scrutable, and come from our more parabolic vocabulary. (How’s that for flipping off the “AI Police?”)
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 31, 2024.
