Tarot Reading and the “Inner Wits”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My study of Medieval metaphysics has brought me into contact with the concept of the “ten wits” of the sentient but non-rational “Sensitive Soul.” Five of them — Shakespeare’s “Senses” — are outwardly focused and the other five — his “Wits” — are entirely inward in orientation. The “outer wits” are the familiar sensory experiences of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch, while the “inner wits” are the psychological functions by which we perceive and process the impressions the five mundane senses deliver to us.
The physical interface requires no comment here because its raw sensations are of little use in the practice of divination — most of what we seek arrives subliminally unless we happen to be performing some type of magical evocation. The internal “wits” are directly applicable with a little up-to-date translation. These qualities are:
Memory (No explanation necessary)
Estimation (“Instinct” or native intuition that detects the practical nature of things)
Phantasy (playing with mental images or “fantasizing” with the aim of enlightenment)
Imagination (inventive extrapolation with roots in perceived reality)
Common sense (the ability to make meaningful distinctions between sensory inputs)
Of these five, only the second and fourth have any bearing on divination as I perform it, but too often in the community-at-large the third plays an unconscionably large role in the practice of intuitive and psychic tarot reading, springing as it does from visionary free-association via the images on the cards and contrived flights of mystical fancy. (The first one is merely the faculty by which we retain and organize everything for the rest of the process, and the fifth works in concert with the first to keep us out of trouble.)
I would have no problem with ad-hoc extemporizing if were more reliable for forecasting than flipping a coin, but I believe the reading will tell the tale without the reader having to resort to such gratuitous guesswork. If we simply “read the cards” without undue editorializing driven by our prior experience, personal opinions and fallible conjecture, we will come up with an untarnished perception of the subject that needs no elaboration beyond that which emerges from the ensuing dialogue with our sitters. It’s their story, so they should help to shape it with our judicious prompting. I generally agree with Michael Snuffin, who said in The Thoth Companion that intuition is unnecessary because the cards are self-explanatory.
Too often when we don’t know what to say that makes sense within the context of the question we fall back on anecdotal “filler” that we hope will make us sound inspired but may just come across as “shooting in the dark.” I cringe inwardly whenever I find myself in this mode of “verbal tap-dancing” since I try to keep the narrative to-the-point and not let it become bloated with extraneous innuendo. It is the “above all, say something” strategy that I borrowed from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and — when overused — it is not a good place to be if we hope to preserve our credibility. I can see the doubt rising in a client’s eyes: “Uh oh, his wits have deserted him.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 22, 2024.
