Why Tarot? A rationale of divination

https://x.com/_SageFreke_/status/1880312125723406418

A couple of days ago, I happened upon this post by X user @_SageFreke_. It made me wonder. What are we actually doing to our brains when we use AI? Certainly there are tremendous benefits to using it, but we are also outsourcing an important part of our learning by doing so, namely the synthesis of information.

When you write your own sentences, you have to figure out how pieces of information are related to other pieces of information. As you do so, the resulting insights will be colored by your own idiosyncrasies and unique ways of thinking. This is what makes an insight yours.

In tarot, you are presented with discrete pieces of information in the form of cards and you have to invent the connection between them. Tarot, then, is similar to creative writing. I will show you how.

Tarot cards depict archetypes. They symbolize universal human experiences. Upheaval, human connection, energy reserves, authority, naivite, the inexplicable urge to follow something that seems important to you, temptation and so on.

Now we will see how these cards can be read to give a person a new perspective on their life. I will show how tarot is both exciting and useful, while avoiding all the spiritual and supernatural aspects of it. This is a guide to tarot for self-insight and self-development.

The person who will have the cards read for them pick the cards. Let's say we pick The Sun, The Hierophant and The Fool.

The Sun represents positivity, enlightenment, and a sense of fulfillment. It signifies happiness, confidence, and the achievement of goals. It encourages embracing life's joys with childlike wonder.

The Hierophant represents established systems, spiritual wisdom, and moral guidance. He often indicates seeking knowledge from a teacher or mentor, adhering to traditions, or connecting with spiritual practices or institutions.

The Fool represents fresh starts, taking leaps of faith, and embracing the unknown. He encourages open-mindedness, curiosity, and trusting the journey, even when the path ahead is unclear.

We now place these cards into a pre-determined structure. An example of such a structure is the classic 3-card spread where each card represents the past, the present and the future respectively.

Past

Present

Future

By 1) understanding the symbolism and 2) understanding the structure, the diviner makes up an archetypal story in the spur of the moment – so general that you can read whatever you want into it, yet believable as a possible human experience with cause and effect.

One possible story we could make up with this draw is:

"So far you have approached your career with an abundance of creative energy, but as you rose through the ranks, it is now being stifled by rigid hierarchies and conservative rules. The time may have come to start over somewhere else."

This story will be colored by the intuitive impression the diviner gets from the divinee, adding some subjectivity to the story. This is an important ingredient!

The divinee now, having this pretty universal human story read to them, gets to read into that story exactly what they want.

On one hand: Because the story is ambiguous, the divinee will instantly recognize parts of the story as relevant to their own life.

On the other hand: Because the story is not of their own invention, they may be surprised by the twists in this story. This unearths associations and memories in the divinee's mind. Maybe they overlooked something in their life, maybe they forgot something, maybe they repressed a negative aspect of what they were doing that they didn't want to acknowledge.

"I thought I was working toward my goals triumphantly, but you're saying I'm becoming blind to the people close to me in the process?"

The unique blend of 1) universal human experience, 2) randomness, 3) subjectivity in the diviner and 4) subjectivity in the divinee creates a story that is both surprising yet relevant.

And so, the divinee gets a unique opportunity to look at their life with some clarity. There's nothing supernatural or spritual about this process.

Furthermore, the Barnum effect often brought up when criticizing divination practices is actually desired and essential for the process to work. Not because you are trying to trick the divinee into believing that the diviner has special insight into their mind, but because it is important that the divinee recognizes themselves in the story, so that it can trigger the previously mentioned associations. Just like the audience needs to relate to the characters in a novel or movie. In other words, the Barnum Effect is a feature, not a bug!

This effect can be enhanced by the use of special clothing, surroundings and scents to create a special atmosphere. This puts the divinee in an emotionally disarmed position, so that the story hits them all the harder.

Part of my motivation for writing this is that I want to dispel the myth that divination is about seeing the future and that those who practice it have supernatural abilities. This is not true. In this sense, the word "divination" is also misleading and misunderstood. It's rather intuition, creativity and storytelling that are the forces that drive the process. Tarot is not magic, but it is an artform.

The cards empower you, by letting your imagination run wild and allowing you to dream, to ponder the beauty of your freedom. They also undercut and complicate this feeling. You make your choices on the stage of life, but so does everyone else, and the result is cacophony. Somehow, the tarot seems to contain both sides of this contradiction: they reflect both the gravity of each individual's fate as well as the dizzying number of possible permutations that make up the world.

Even if the cards can paint a bleak picture of your life, the feeling you're ultimately left with is strangely still one of empowerment. These patterns have occured before in the lives of countless others. A crisis feels devastating, but it's comforting to know that crises are natural in the ebb and flow of life. You can't help but feel that even if your actions didn't lead to the results you wanted, the chaos that ensued was somehow beautiful and true.