Tea Leaves And Tarot Cards

Lenore often says that Psychological Type is not science, it's just "tea leaves and Tarot cards". That includes her own stuff. What does she mean by that?

It's not descriptive, it's an attentiveness-tickler

If you do a Tarot reading, you'll see a bunch of strange images (on the cards) and get a bunch of vague statements about your life and things you need to attend to. For example, if you get the Ace of Cups, you'll see this weird picture of a cup being held out by a hand that extends from a cloud, with water sprouting out and a white bird flying in. Tarot-interpretation books say that this card heralds the beginning of something new in the emotional or spiritual realm.

You can read that as a prediction. Aha! Maybe I'm about to find a new love interest, or perhaps a new vocation or artistic outlet. Or maybe I will soon go on a trip where I will have a religious experience. Indeed you're traveling to the American Midwest on business the next week. Inspired by the seemingly pure water emanating from the cup, seeming to wash away impurities of the soul, you notice and appreciate the simplicity and genuineness of the people you meet on your trip. You empathize with them and absorb some of that simplicity for yourself. You return home on the plane like the bird on the card: cleansed, free of the cynicism of your past.

Wait a minute. Did the card make a successful prediction, or did your attempt to earnestly interpret the card lead you to experience events differently? The imagery and conventional meaning of the card tapped into a potential within yourself to use the events of your life to make exactly the kind of discovery that the card "predicted". The card triggered a change in the way you see things. It enabled you to access potential in yourself that you had been drowning out without being aware of it.

Tarot cards, then, provide a sort of random vocabulary to bring to the world. If you hold the category "a new beginning in the emotional or spiritual realm" as a sort of lens through which to experience things, sure enough, you will find all sorts of ways to trigger exactly that sort of experience. Whatever category you pick, it "primes" you so that events affect you in ways consonant with that category.

Some people see this as a debunking of Tarot cards. The predictions are not "true" in the way scientific predictions are true. But this is only a debunking of one interpretation of Tarot reading. Certainly the Tarot fails as science. But another interpretation is that the Tarot, and indeed all forms of divination, are a sort of "random tickler" for your capacity to experience the world differently.

A regular tickler file reminds you of tasks that you want to do and can easily forget about, like doing your taxes or sending someone a birthday card. Divination draws upon random and bizarre elements in order to "remind" you of things that you can't think of or describe in advance: other ways to experience life, capacities that you've neglected unknowingly. By doing the Tarot regularly, you enter into a practice that continually guides you to awaken dormant but valuable parts of yourself.

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Now does that illustrate Lenore's concept of Introverted Intuition or what?