A word from the author

I’ve been working on this piece for a few weeks now (which explains the extended silence on this blog). It is going to be a long, ever-expanding read, so kick back, and enjoy.

Introduction

Broadly speaking, a Tarot deck is composed of 78 semi-standardized cards subdivided into the Major Arcana (22 cards containing universal archetypes and symbols) and the Minor Arcana (56 numbered and court cards symbolizing daily situations).

Often associated with divination and fortune-telling in our social collective unconscious, their historical rise to fame is in fact quite different.

A little bit of history

Historically, Tarot cards were closely related to the traditional playing cards that were imported from Egypt into Europe during the Renaissance. In fact, Tarot cards are an adaptation of these playing cards by Italian aristocrats, most notably the Visconti-Sforza family, to reflect significant events of their lives (e.g.: The Tower card represents the Visconti’s conflicts with the La Torre family etc). As is common in European history, this creation traveled a lot and was adapted locally depending on the region, leading over time to the creation of four broad families of Tarot decks: the Viconti-Sforza (Italy of the Renaissance), Marseille (Italy/France of the 17th century), Rider-Smith-Waite (UK of the early 20th century) and Thoth (UK during WW2) Tarots.

From the Renaissance until the 18th century, Tarot cards were mainly used for playing games, a use that still survives in Western Europe to this day. Now, why is Tarot so often linked to divination? Well, a few reasons played into this: The rules of the Tarot game are pretty complex, giving it a certain level of mystery and ”occultism” in the literal sense of the term. The images are also significantly archetypal and striking, so people usually relate, or at least react, to them at a relatively intuitive level. People then have a tendency to link these reactions to their own reality.

But since playing cards initially came from Egypt, European occultists from the 18th to the early 20th century (Antoine Court de Gébelin, Eliphas Levi, Papus, Aleister Crowley, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn etc. ) tended to leverage the Egyptomania of the times to erroneously link the Tarot de Marseille to mystical Egyptian traditions, that were said to be encoded into images to be saved by the Roma people (who were also erroneously thought to come from Egypt). Some popularized this story for personal gain (selling books and lectures), whereas others were simply misinformed or overly excited to uncover potential mysteries that connect them to a timeless mystical tradition. This is not to dismiss their respective contributions, but simply to bring some transparency to this issue. After-all, a lot of occult knowledge is based on symbolic correspondences, not casual or empirical relationships.

My Tarot philosophy

I have presented this historical overview to set the stage, to present some context to my philosophy about Tarot. At the core of my approach is the historical reality that the cards are not imbued with a divine or occult power, but are human-made artistic creations that can offer, when approached with imagination and correspondent thinking, a symbolic and potentially insightful reflection of our lives.

Here is an overview of my philosophy related to Tarot, which I have developed over the past 15 years through personal practice and experimentation. I am not presenting this as tHe oNe tRVe VVaY of reading Tarot, but just as my own style. The Nikodemus of Psykeon Style.

Down with divination

I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t use Tarot as a tool for divination. I simply don’t, and I have a few reasons for that.

First, I don’t believe in divination (anymore). Life has shown me that yes, a big part of our reality is deterministic, but we do have, can, and should cultivate the agency to break instinctive patterns of reactions, and control our behaviors, beliefs and thoughts, at least to some extent.

So whether we truly have free-will or not, the result is the same; we have the potential, or dare I say, the duty, to choose our reactions to life’s changing circumstances, and break the cycle of determinism. As such, divination, to me, restricts human’s potential and agency in the face of the chaos of life, and also potentially impacts the overall credibility and meaning of Tarot cards, limiting its applications to other domains. 

Secondly, divination, based in human-based interpretations, can be used by diviners to manipulate or force the seekers into specific directions, consciously or unconsciously, taking away their agency and creating a need for more services. I find this very worrisome and unethical.

Thirdly and finally, the place of Tarot as a divination tool is, as I have already stated in the introduction, a product of the imagination of the occult figures of the 18th century, and not a traditional use of the cards. Continuing to use Tarot as a divination tool would amount, in my mind, to blindly follow beliefs that I know to be erroneous.

I therefore use Tarot cards for other, non-divinatory purposes, mainly as a tool for general introspection and practical guidance. After all, Visconti, amongst others, did mirror his own life and that of his region in the cards. Some of my other favorite areas of application are to help prepare, navigate and integrate experiences of altered states of consciousness (psychonautics), as archetypal supports for meditation and magickal work, and as a source of creative and artistic inspiration. These uses will be the focus of a future post.

Archetypal symbols

Archetypes, a term coined by psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung from the Greek words arkhe (primitive) and tupos (model), are symbolic representations and personifications of universal human potentials and instinctual behaviors present in world religions, literature, and our collective unconscious. For example, most people, no matter their culture and age, would feel a sense of solitude and introspection from the Hermit, and nurture and care from the Empress.

This universal intuitive understanding is not a magical or supernatural phenomenon, but an effect of humans all having a generally similar neurobiology, leading to relatively universal responses to certain stimuli and symbols. Most humans, no matter their background, react to the cold by shivering because the body wants to generate heat; most humans, no matter their background, will feel some form of authority emanating from the Emperor, because of a built-in and socially reinforced neurobiological understanding of hierarchies and figures of authority. Although Jung coined the term in 1919 in his paper Instinct and the Unconscious, humans have had an intuitive understanding of these universal images since Antiquity.

Talking about Jung, an important part of his analytical psychology is the principium individuationis (i.e.: Individuation Process), or the process of uncovering and integrating one’s unconscious into the Self, with the objective of becoming who one authentically is. It is often said that this process is represented through the Fool’s Journey across the 22 cards of the Major Arcana, each symbolizing a step of Individuation, and culminating with his Death, rebirth, and eventual authentic unity.

These universal symbols therefore offer us direct sources of meaning from which we can establish correspondences, or symbolic links, with our daily lives. The goal being of taking new perspectives and broadening the scope of our reflections.

Polarity of meanings

One of the most contested topics in the Tarot community is the use of reversals during readings. Should we use them? And if so, how? As I have discussed in a previous blog post, one of the determining factors in reading reversals or not is whether the deck in question has a scenic, or a pip-based Minor Arcana (the latter being almost indistinguishable upright or reversed).

I nevertheless think a better question would be, do you believe in a single meaning for each card, or a flexible meaning depending on its context? I am in the latter camp; I believe Tarot cards have a continuum of meanings present between two polarities; one positive, one negative, that changes depending on multiple factors (the type of deck, the card’s orientation, the presence of other cards, external indicators etc.) that can each have more or less importance for different readers.

As such, the question of reading reversals varies from deck to deck, and is not necessarily at the core of my philosophy. What is, though, is that the archetypal images of Tarot cards have to be understood as containing a polarity of meanings that are susceptible to variations from a reading to another and in relation to other cards and positions in different spreads.

Check out my Psykeon Chaotic Tarot Reversal Technique to learn how I sometimes “inject” numerological chaos into my readings to determine the polarity of the cards from any Tarot deck.

The importance of shuffling

Imagine buying a new Tarot deck, and just pulling cards without even shuffling it a little bit. 

Then putting them back on top of the deck, and drawing the exact same ones again next time. How insightful THAT would be.

Shuffling is an essential part of Tarot reading. A predictable Tarot deck is an invalid Tarot deck (unless your goal is to practice reading specific cards in different ways or for different questions). I always take time to mix my cards well, so that chaos, and not order, becomes the main deciding factor of which cards come up. More chaos means more randomness and more variability, which means no readings are predictable nor the same.

A long initial wash shuffle followed by a few careful ripple shuffles (rotate a pile each time) and a final deck splits with pile rotations before recombining, will do the job. It may look like a lot, but that’s on purpose; shuffling your Tarot cards is not just about maximizing the chaos of your deck, but also about getting into a meditative and contemplative state of mind allowing you to focus on your question and surrender to your intuition. Readers are way more likely to rely on general and superficial meanings and interpretations when just jumping into a reading, than readers who take the time to reinforce their mindfulness of the question and their appreciation of the infinite possibilities held in the cards.

Spread as context

The cards meanings are not only determined by their archetypal symbols and polarity, but also by the spread used and their position in said spread.

Technically speaking, a tarot spread is composed of (1) the position of each card in relation to each other and (2) the meaning behind each position. These two factors provide a context for the card’s symbols to take meaning between each other, and in relation to the question.

The same cards might not hold the same exact meaning or polarity in different positions or in different spreads.

As such, I always make sure that the spreads I use align with the facets of the question I am trying to answer. I tend to use a simple three card spread for general readings, as the linearity of this spread is well conducive to a clear narrative interpretation. For more complex, or specific questions, I usually create my own custom spreads, based on the question or the format of the answer I am looking for.

So, be clear about your spreads, but flexible in your creativity.

Systematic interpretation

I like systematic processes, and this transpires in my tarot readings. I don’t attempt to interpret the reading and answer the seeker’s question from the get-go, I start by establishing the general meaning of each card first, then putting it in the context of its position in the spread, before weaving their respective meanings into an interrelated narrative to answer the question.

I feel like this helps me strike a balance between consistency and flexibility, and helps me really bring all parts of the reading into a cohesive whole.

If you’ve ever had one of my free tarot readings, you’ve probably noticed this systematic interpretation philosophy in practice in my mysterious Tarot Report Scrolls.

Conclusion

And that concludes the overview of my tarot philosophy. I hope some of it resonated with you, dear reader. It feels good to articulate these ideas, and I encourage every tarot reader out-there to do the same.

References

Jung, C. G. (1919). Instinct and the Unconscious. British Journal of Psychology, 1904-1920, 10(1), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1919.tb00003.x

Partridge, C., & Farley, H. (2016). Tarot. In The occult world (pp. 571–579). essay, Routledge.

Semetsky, I. (2011). Chapter 7 – Tarot and Projective Hypothesis. In Re-symbolization of the Self Human Development and Tarot Hermeneutic (pp. 73–83). essay, Sense Publishers.