The more I explore the history of tarot and use it in my everyday life, the more I am convinced it is anything but a pseudo-science. Firstly, we must understand that tarot as we see it today is a product of 19th and early 20th-century occultism. The two founders of modern tarot, Arthur Edward Waite and Aleister Crowley, were both members of the same hermetic order, and were rigorously educated in multiple related systems, namely the Qabbalah, alchemy, astrology, geomancy, and mythology. Each of these systems possesses its own language of symbols that must be assimilated by the occult student. Thus, the tarot operates on an intricate, symbiotic network of symbols and myths from various religions and philosophies, and by doing so professes to divulge a general universal truth. It is literally a deck of hieroglyphics. Secondly, its intended use was for communication with divine powers and to ascertain the nature of one's unique life purpose. The deck is therefore designed with this lofty spiritual purpose in mind, and the original spreads created by orders such as the Golden Dawn were not intended for minor, mundane things, but for deeply important matters. Thirdly, my experience in only a little under two years has proved to me that the system is far from faulty. The tarot, when used properly, will tell you or your querent exactly what you need to know. I only do cold readings for querents, rarely asking them questions so that they will be as unsettled as I am by the cards' accuracy. This unnerving moment is absolutely crucial! It suggests to us that all is not entirely as it seems, and that perhaps there truly is something out there that knows better than we do what's best for us in a given situation. Disputing the reading becomes far more difficult this way, and the querent comes to trust your abilities far more, albeit with a bit of quiet uneasiness.
Therefore, how can we call tarot a pseudo-science? Like science, it is based on a coherent linguistic system; it strives for accuracy; and operates on the assumption of the existence of some pre-existing truth that awaits discovery. However, there is an entire breed of tarot readers out there who create this unfortunate stigma for the art. Here I must entirely blame the so-called "New Age movement," which, at its worst, is a vaguely lucid, barely coherent, hodge-podge amalgam of dreamy, semi-formed ideas, wholly ignorant of effective methodology and solely interested in the touchy-feely gift of intuition. Now, I warrant that self-discovery and individual perspective are wonderful virtues, but there is a fine line between these and ineffectual day-dreaming about auras and crystal healing. While these too are also systematic in scope and effective for certain people, this whole mindset of the new age individual is poisonous. I have met or heard of far too many tarot readers who claim one can read tarot without needing to understand Qabbalah. This would be like suggesting that one can properly evaluate the quality of a house without knowing a thing about architecture and design, as the Qabbalah is literally the framework of the tarot. Sure, I can superficially guess that the quality of said house is good based on its general aesthetics, or by whether or not I "feel good" in that space, but I cannot, without a doubt, make any truly profound or knowledgeable statements about the house's identity or essence as a unique structure.
The decks created today are infused with this same sort of bland understanding of the tarot, and their artists are motivated by new age demands for absurd themes such as fairies, paganism, and vampires. Half of these decks, mind you, have little to no long-term aesthetic appeal. After their novelty wears off, one is left grasping for their original reason for buying such a toy in the first place. This is not the sort of relationship one should have with their deck. One look at the top ten decks of 2010 on aeclectic.net (http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/topten.shtml), plainly demonstrates this trend.
The top-selling deck, the Shadowscapes Tarot, contains a set of soft, fluid, effeminate
images of fairies (surprise, surprise). The cards have no obvious label, nor do they remotely seem to depict anything one could possibly divine from, but I guess they sure are pretty! A deck should be able to speak to both genders simultaneously, as legitimate tarot can help us come to find that we have both genders within our personalities. A deck of all feminine or all masculine images is relatively useless for real introspection.
The Tarot of Vampyres is second on the list, and this too lacks any
coherent language system. This image of IX The Sun from this deck, here on the left, has actually left me stumped. No definition of the Sun I have ever read includes the fusion of opposites like this - that is usually depicted by XIV Art. Why is there a skull on the sun when the sun represents rebirth, not death? Even the mundane definition of love and relationships is rarely, if ever, associated with this card. The four of wands from this pack is
also largely irrelevant. How this naked woman covering herself before a set of four candles is supposed to represent the celebratory and governmental nature of the four of wands is beyond me. The deck's creator, Ian Daniels, writes that, "The vampyre legend is rooted in darkness and seduction, but its enduring message is one of spiritual hunger - to drink the everlasting divine." Right. This sounds like a really poor attempt to fuse the new-age appreciation for mythical creatures like vampires with its misguided quest for accessing God. Vampires are creatures that drink the blood of mortals, usually virginal young women. It is not as if they traditionally do so in order to try and replicate the blood of Christ, or any other sacrificial god. It is to perpetuate their own survival and sexual lust - not much else.
Tarot readers who buy into this sort of nonsense greatly concern me. Recently I had my cards read by a woman in San Francisco, mainly for S & G, as I was curious what "professional" and "psychic" readers were like. I probably should have asked for my money back as soon as I saw she was using only half of poor Arthur Edward Waite's deck, the other half despondently remaining on her coffee table. This is another bit of self-determining bull that compromises the validity of the system. Some readers read only with the majors... To those readers, I would like to ask, "Does the universe often give you a choice to tell it how to constitute itself?" To return to my story, the woman began by placing half-pack of cards against my forehead and invoking the Goddess and the light, and a slew of other stuff. Her selected spread was unique but her reading method was entirely positional. She proved to be a good story teller, but not a good advice giver, asking as she did incorrect questions, or suggesting the exact opposite of things I'd been feeling or thinking in the same day. I knew I was entirely sunk when she told me my chakras were dark and that I needed to have her light a big white pillar candle in order to remedy this. I declined her "generous" offer and instead offered to read her cards, as I had brought my own with me. My reader became immediately concerned and defensive and hastily said, "No, I'm going to say no to that because I've put energy into you and I don't want that energy coming back to me." Indeed. Let me tell you, the ENERGY I felt upon leaving that woman! My goodness, it was exhilarating... Not in the least, my friends. The only energy I felt was the vibes of frugality leaving my wallet, as I was then out $20 dollars.
Ultimately, this is a difficult issue to solve. I'm a strong proponent of using whatever means necessary in order to discover one's personal Truth. But at the same time, Westerners want to believe that beatification can be achieved without methodology, without structure. We want to believe in "spirituality," not religion, as the latter term implies restriction, bigotry, and difficulty. We must remember that the Great Work, or whatever you'd like to call it, is difficult, and requires patient struggle. It's not as if systems such as monasticism, hermetic orders, and priestly hierarchies were invented out of the blue. Humanity needs some sort of structure, even if it's only to understand that God isn't a being who particularly cares for such boring things like structure. Therefore, in order to better use the tarot - truly one of God's many gifts to mankind, and one of the best tools we have in helping the Great Work along - we must accept that the tarot's connotations and defining attributes are deeply, inherently, crucially important. Even if we as a community begin to pay more attention to these things in order to stave off skeptical criticism of non-believers, it will be an improvement. And I also believe that it's perfectly possible to maintain individual perspective while working within a particular guiding framework. The new age movement with its utter diffuse and unfocused nature cannot get us anywhere, and it will only continue to generate meaningless tarot decks, fueled by the whims of capitalism.
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