The Redeemed Imposter (A Tarot Confession)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: “Imposter Syndrome” is a modern psychological debility (a particularized version of the traditional “inferiority complex?”) that afflicts those — mostly females in corporate management positions according to some studies — who suspect (or have been led to assume) that they are presenting themselves as more proficient in some professional, technical or creative capacity than is truly the case, eliciting qualms about generating the illusion of competence via fraudulent posturing even though their colleagues and superiors don’t always see their contribution that way. Victims of this misapprehension may in fact be “good enough” but can’t convince themselves of it because their cultural perceptions and performance expectations are skewed. When I returned to professional tarot reading in 2011, I was so out-of-practice that I experienced just such a self-debasing suspicion of inadequacy.
Back in 1973, I informally “backed into” professional divination when I was offered payment for tarot readings by friends and acquaintances whom I had previously been accommodating for free. As a relative beginner I didn’t ask for much, so I considered myself a semi-professional at that time. Not long after, I moved to a backward area of New England that didn’t favor public demonstrations of arcane prowess, so my fledgling narration skills fell into disuse. Fast-forward to 2011, when — although I had kept my hand in over the intervening years by reading privately for myself and family members, pursuing esoteric studies, maintaining membership in the Builders of the Adytum, learning and applying geomancy and horary astrology, practicing ritual magic and delving into gematria through graphic art — I was lured back into a professional role by a local metaphysical shop-owner.
I felt that my first few sessions as an on-call reader in a face-to-face setting were a bit uneven; some sitters were well-satisfied while others seemed somewhat unimpressed. Although I much prefer in-person reading because I view tarot at its best as an interactive art, you don’t get a chance to unsay something unfortunate that you may have uttered in an unguarded moment, so all you can do is add to your initial observation or try to finesse it. It’s like attempting to saw the bottom off one leg of a wobbly table to steady it: the problem often just gets worse.
At the same time I began dipping my toes in the tenuous waters of online divination, a venture I still view with a great deal of skepticism due to its tendency to degenerate into “long-distance mind-reading with props.” On the plus side, the remote reader has all the time needed to get the narrative “just right,” so there is never a reason to confront “imposter syndrome.” I have to admit that I’ve performed some of my best work in this way, although I still think the underlying premise and its mechanics are flawed.
If I shuffle the cards for someone who isn’t present, I imprint the arrangement with my own subconscious assumptions and preconceptions that fuel intuitive guesswork, and that may have nothing to do with the querent’s private reality. (You could say that I “infect it with my bias,” and I’m not convinced that such prejudice is invariably aligned with Universal Truth; there are too many external variables that can intervene, compromising it to the point of unreliability). In that sense, the self-indulgent diviner may not feel like an imposter but could in fact be one. I’ve set out to mitigate this risk by having remote clients shuffle-and-pull their own cards or choose a set of random numbers for my use in creating a spread; they email me the list and I send them back a write-up of my reading. I recently used the second approach to good effect.
Although relocating again in 2018 — this time to a more sophisticated area — set me back in my quest for greater public exposure and COVID-imposed isolation put a further crimp in my progress, I do feel that I’ve upped my game considerably in the last six years. Generating material for this blog — including numerous example readings for my self-created spreads — has been an excellent learning experience, and I’ve also had increased opportunities to read for new friends and strangers in a social environment, so I’ve left the insidious taint of the unredeemed charlatan far behind (at least to the extent that anyone in this business can cast off the fetish of impressionistic extemporizing that may or may not be germane to the querent’s circumstances).
At least for me, if a random insight is not visible “in the cards” or directly relatable to them by metaphor or analogy, it won’t automatically make its way into the reading. (I’ve learned to choose my words carefully and keep my mouth shut when appropriate.) As tarot author Michael Snuffin has said, everything we need for interpretation is available in the on-board symbolism so we don’t have to resort to intuition as our primary approach to divination. (His blunt claim was actually “You don’t need intuition” but I was being kind.) Starting with the unadorned armature of “core knowledge” and meticulously clothing it with the garments of inspiration, imagination and ingenuity is how I prefer to operate, particularly during a “live” session where it is deceptively easy to push a narrative but almost impossible to reel it back in once it gets away from us. Trying to do so can unmask the imposter’s ugly mug, warts and all.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 14, 2025.
