The Diviner as Sage and the Curse of “Voodoo Metaphysics”

“And if I claim to be a wise man, well/That just means that I don’t know.” — from Carry On Wayward Son, by Kansas

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I realize that I already used this quote casually in a recent essay, but I wanted to bring it front-and-center in this one as a reminder that even a self-styled savant misses the mark now and again.

In the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Chinese Book of Changes, the way of “the superior man” often denotes the most auspicious path to take in a matter; in other words, it is the one the wise would follow. However, in my recent studies I find that this exalted personage has been demoted to become “the sage,” which seems to have broader utility for the I Ching scholar while being less sexist. (Not that it ever bothered me in its original patriarchal form once I grasped its intent, but times have changed.)

I submit that the preeminent quality every tarot reader should cultivate is the modest forbearance of the Hermit, no matter how much wisdom we purport to bring to the table. (Over the years I’ve been chastened too many times by misconstruing positivity or negativity in my readings to think otherwise, so now I try to steer clear of value judgments and just “read the cards” as they lay.) I’ve begun watching the old TV police series Monk, in which Tony Shalhoub plays a hyper-neurotic version of Peter Falk’s Columbo; he is humble in a way that the sly Lieutenant Columbo only pretended to be and is dressed in similar nondescript clothing but, in a manner that is reminiscent of Columbo’s low-key but tenacious investigative style, he “knows what he knows” and won’t budge from it. (Sounds like our Hermit to me.)

I’m not proposing that we should develop the nervous insecurity and self-effacing diffidence of an Adrian Monk to supplement our divinatory acumen, but (as I’ve said before) we should recognize that our sitters know far more about their private reality in a subconscious way than we can hope to glean from our prognostication, even though their awareness is subliminal and they don’t fully perceive it just yet. Using the prompts that we summon from our storehouse of knowledge, our job is to coax that comprehension into the open with mildly leading statements that invite them to “tell their own story.” In this fashion, they can take legitimate ownership of the narrative and the projected outcome. (It is, after all, their reading and — assuming they participated in the opening ritual of the shuffle — we just observe and comment.)

I believe the absence of this cooperative interaction is the main stumbling-block in attempts to perform remote readings; without it we are left with reliance on spontaneous guesswork and may deliver more fluff than substance in our presentations. No matter how we try to dress it up with the imaginative trappings of spiritual credibility, it must still come out of our mouth, and that’s a sure sign that it is a product of our cerebral faculties and only secondarily of our emotional sensibilities. You’ve heard the snide remark: “How can you tell someone is lying? Their lips are moving.” It is, of course, an unfair presumption in this instance, but something is almost always lost in the translation between what we sense and what we’re able to articulate.

We might be able to feel it, but in many cases evocative feelings don’t translate readily into thoughts that can be put into compelling words (just ask any second-rate poet like me; we can’t all be Poe), and we’re a long way from acquiring mental telepathy despite our persistent forays into mind-reading via the techniques of divination. How many times have you heard a diviner speak in generalities and platitudes when their intuitive uptake fails to coalesce into meaningful commentary about your circumstances. I’ve seen this verbal tap-dance ridiculed as “deep fake.” It comes under the W.C. Fields theory of elocution: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” (YouTube entrepreneurs take note.)

Any seer who intends to set themselves up as a professional diviner should take a hard look at what they’re trying to sell. There is nothing “magical” about the insights we obtain from our pursuit of sapience that should command the kind of hefty fee some people are asking, so we should mainly seek compensation for our time and effort at a reasonable rate of return. (I’m not talking about electronic app-based readings with canned advice of the $5 or $10 Etsy kind, but the serious “labor of love” that is honest interpretation.) We either derive our content from the signals provided by our chosen method of divination and season it with our own learning and experience, or we fabricate it from whole cloth via intuitive conjecture. In other words, the source is more mystical than manifest, and it’s certainly not precise in any diagnostic sense; in fact, I consider it impressionistic rather than literal.

Fortune-telling is as much a performance art as it is a counseling endeavor, and the closest we may be able to approach (as Mel Brooks would put it) “soitified sage” status is to emulate a Shakespearean character whose Elizabethan grandiloquence often masks the astute perceptions of the raconteur. It’s probably reasonable to suppose that every capable diviner with an established clientele is a master storyteller first and a dispenser of emotional support second. Personally, I would opt for the savvy philosophical advice of the sage over the nebulous ministrations of the psychic or clairvoyant; the former I can do something useful with from a psychological perspective, while the latter comes across as “voodoo metaphysics.”

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 15, 2024.