“Wishing Won’t Make It So” — The Scholarly vs The Colloquial Tarot

“Your dream. It fades
But truth. It stays
And with truth you must live on
From deep inside
Your heart. It cries
I wish that dreams lived on
But wishing won’t make it so
I proved it long ago”
- from Wishing Won’t Make It So by the Everly Brothers

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a result of my constant study of esoteric topics and daily online interaction with the tarot community, the complexion of this blog has been taking on a much more scholarly cast in recent months. In many ways it comes down to pondering the question “What is the proper use of the tarot?” I still delve into the more colloquial side of the subject with new spreads and commentary on modern tarot culture and practices, but my heart lies with serious scrutiny of the question “What makes the tarot reader tick?”

There is obviously a sharp divide in current opinion regarding how tarot reading should be approached, almost but not quite a “culture war.” At one extreme are the vocal Jungian enthusiasts who loudly insist “Tarot is unsuitable for prediction, it is only good for psychological self-improvement,” with the dedicated fortune-tellers firmly entrenched at the other end. (Oddly, the former are quick to point out that increased self-awareness is what “tarot was originally designed for,” conveniently ignoring the fact that it began in Italy as a popular card game and was eventually enlisted for divination in 18th-Century France.)

Just yesterday, in a postmortem dissection of the numerous failed attempts to correctly divine the outcome of the 2024 election in the US, I came upon this disparity once more as many opinions ran strongly against trying to “tell the future” with the tarot, the gist of which was that attempting to do so is doomed to failure. Out of all this hand-wringing and second-guessing came the realization that, above all, we must get out of our own way when reading the cards by observing the Wu Wei principle of Chinese mysticism that “we don’t force a situation, we allow it.” Or, as the Everly Brothers sang so long ago, “Wishing won’t make it so.”

There was considerable debate over whether all of the incorrect readings were merely due to “confirmation bias” in that people were seeing only what they wanted to see in the cards and therefore totally misread the signs (which the more thoughtful among them admitted). I also saw tarot described as a “coping mechanism for self-soothing,” which in this case was a perfect analogy for the rampant anxiety attending this election. (As an aside, does anyone actually believe that “copium” is a legitimate word? It was used twice in the thread.) This impression was offset by all of the readers who suddenly “came out” by saying that they got it right but didn’t want to post their conclusions for fear of being crucified by the overconfident majority.

Probably the harshest indictment of the perceived utility of event prediction was this one, which characterized the whole conversation as “a cesspool of delirium.” (Although I refrained from doing so, I wanted to tell this individual to move on over to the r/seculartarot sub-reddit where his attitude would be more welcome.) I do think he missed the point about the magic not being in the cards themselves, but in the reader.

“They believe the cards they purchase from a cookie-cutter factory made by a machine and overworked employees in a third-world country hold powerful divination properties to guide their lives in a favorable direction. Cards which are made with a human byproduct, cardboard, instead of naturally occurring earthly materials which is what divination is rooted in.”

My take-away is that too many people are overstating the ad-hoc psychotherapeutic value attributed to self-analysis with the cards. While I don’t disagree that tarot can be a valuable tool for informally unpacking one’s psyche, we might well paraphrase the old platitude: “All subjective navel-gazing and no substantiation makes Jack a dull boy.” Many of the arguments insisting that self-betterment is the only useful purpose for reading the cards come across as sanctimonious and specious; I tend to point people toward natal astrology if that’s what they’re after. This whole election flap generated a tremendous amount of soul-searching among those who were convinced they were right in their forecasts but were ultimately proved wrong.

Here was my response to the overall thrust of the thread:

“I feel I should weigh in on all the ‘tarot is not meant for prediction’ comments. Except for its esoteric uses since the time of the Golden Dawn, divination was pretty much ALL it was used for beginning with Etteilla (late 1700s) up until the New Age fascination with Jung kicked in during the late 1960s. I was involved in that near its very beginning. Psychological astrology was first out of the gate, and then tarot joined the party. Anyway, I’ve used it quite successfully to predict world events like Brexit, and also for major sporting events such as the US Super Bowl and World Series. Now it has correctly predicted the 2024 election in tandem with horary astrology.”

A great deal can be learned about the nature and virtue of tarot by applying it to the course of future events and circumstances without demanding too rigorous a demonstration of accuracy from it. Tarot reading is a fluid and impressionistic art that can excel at picking up hints of emerging conditions but shouldn’t be pressed too hard for “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” I think this assumption holds water regardless of whether tarot is used in divination or for psychological self-interrogation. In line with historical precedent over the last two centuries, it is largely a mystical medium of exploration, not a clinical one with scientific aspirations like astrology, although I think it is reasonable to try nudging it toward empiricism by analyzing our successes and failures without getting too anal about either one. I find it rewarding from both a metaphysical and practical perspective, and invest a great deal of my intellectual capital in its contemplation and application. (Since retiring after a lengthy technological career, I have to park all of my idle mental horsepower somewhere.)

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on November 9, 2024.