The Art and Science of Precise Tarot Reading

AUTHOR’S NOTE: It’s no secret that I’m both an esoteric theorist and a conceptual minimalist in my approach to tarot card interpretation, although as a reader I consider myself first-and-foremost a creative storyteller with a flair for inspiration, imagination and ingenuity in my narrative output. The purpose of this essay is to explore ways to avoid “sloppy approximations” in our reading practices.

I’ve known for a long time that there is a groundswell of resistance to the knowledge-based style of tarot reading among modern practitioners of the art. This may come down to the fact that many younger people no longer read the published literature, preferring to view YouTube videos and listen to podcasts for their information. (I consider it part of the “instant gratification” mindset of that demographic, for whom grasping the classical rules of engagement can be an onerous undertaking, as well as the prevailing skepticism about anything that feels “outdated.”) First-hand exposure to the established canon is almost entirely a missed opportunity for them since they eagerly consume any convenient offering of “ready-to-eat” tarot wisdom served up from some “influencer’s” trendy perspective, with no personal benchmarks against which to judge the quality of what they’re absorbing. In other words, if it sounds convincing it must be valid, so they run with it. (In one of my unkinder moments I’ve called it “the blind leading the blind,” but to be fair I did manage to find a couple of decent ones before I stopped looking, like Balthazar at https://www.balthazarconjure.com/.)

The predilection for entirely intuitive experiences when reading the cards is another lop-sided sentiment that derives no benefit from a more principled outlook. As a critical observer in all matters of divination, I have my doubts that such instances are anything more than subjective self-persuasion; once again, “if it feels right, it must be right.” This is a mystical notion that has no room for a more serious, structured viewpoint, and some self-styled experts advise shelving the books altogether and just “going with your gut.” To my way of thinking, this insular fixation risks becoming a myopic “opinion-mill” rooted in the diviner’s private microcosm — whether empirical or purely conjectural — with no clear connection to the seeker’s awareness of his or her personal reality, particularly that of a paying client who may swallow the poor provender we feed them without knowing any better and react accordingly, perhaps to their detriment. We can try to protect ourselves from their displeasure with “for entertainment only” clauses, but in the end it comes down to a matter of professional integrity and good will. Are we providing value or merely going through the motions for our own satisfaction? (“Look at me! I’m a professional tarot reader!”)

A better approach would be to find a few good books (they don’t have to be “historical”), read them with a discerning eye for what makes sense to you and what doesn’t, and then build their most valuable insights into your own personal system of key concepts and correspondences. This foundation in the fundamentals will then always be available to you when your intuition falters. Think of it as a “safety net” that will keep you from over-reliance on self-referential channeling at the expense of the more impartial, even-handed assessment of circumstances that a studious slant on them can furnish. Not every vision we receive unbidden from the Universe is going to be a miracle of accuracy and precision, and we should get used to the idea of augmenting those faint glimpses of exalted intuition with a deeper understanding of “first principles” in the art of interpretation. We owe it to ourselves and our sitters to be as well-rounded as possible.

But I feel that I should offer a little more than my usual rant on the subject, so here is something else to chew on. The First Hermetic Principle is “The ALL is MIND; the Universe is Mental.” This can be applied to the premise that every apparently incomprehensible event in the Cosmos, no matter how vast or minute, has a rational explanation, and the goal of the esoteric knowledge base is to impart some sense of order to this sprawling profusion. The portion of it that underlies the practice of tarot reading goes back to the 18th Century with the seminal work of Etteilla, since superseded by the more metaphysical pondering of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Ignoring this immense cornucopia of ideas is tantamount to cutting oneself off from the wellspring of nearly all tarot thinking from the end of the 19th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century. (If you’re a Tarot de Marseille enthusiast you can disregard that statement.) Nobody should be that ignorant even if they deny the authority of its founders. It seems to be hubris to assume that our tiny window on the overall scheme of things qualifies us to offer legitimate life-coaching to anyone based on our assumed pipeline to universal or divine wisdom. For me, it falls into “Gimme a break!” territory; better to err on the side of conservative understatement (for which the sitter will gladly correct us) than to step into the “deep doo-doo” of unfounded misconception all on our own.

The challenge in all of this is to maintain a storyteller’s fluidity and economy of expression; knowing the “big” words and concepts doesn’t mean they are the “right” words and concepts for the situation. The danger in “book learning” becomes one of overthinking as the mind tries to organize and prioritize the unwieldy mass of detail into useful narrative form. I often think it is most productive to approach the tarot in the same way that Lenormand cards are read: select no more than one or two keywords that capture the core meaning of each card and then build sparingly on that foundation to suit the context of the question while holding the line on more fanciful suppositions. There will be plenty of time for such imaginative hunches if the sitter’s response to our more literal observations takes the reading there, so it’s advisable to hold them in reserve even if we think they’re the most compelling ideas we ever came up with. I always say that querents knows best what works for them, so we should follow their lead at every turn; after all, it’s their reading, not ours.

Here is a previous essay on tarot learning techniques that deserves reposting:

https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/dont-memorize-internalize/

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 5, 2023.