Cold Reading

What cartomancy actually is is a method of cold reading — a cleverly managed illusion whereby a clever huckster can attempt to predict the past, which, generally, is considered much easier to predict than the future, on account of its having already happened.

By presenting a series of cards with seemingly-specific interpretations — but which also have loads of alternate interpretations and “outs”, cartomancy offers a powerful tool for making predictions that can seem chillingly precise.

“The Lovers” and “The Emperor” together could mean “you will fall in love with a tall, dark, handsome man within the week” (whoa, chills), but it could also mean “you will have or have had a positive interaction with any man, at some point in the future or at any point in your past” — a prediction that, if you were simply to make it without the aid of fun cards, would be so non-specific as to be laughable.

Competent readers watch their clients closely as they draw cards: if they gravitate towards specific cards, it’s likely that those are the ones that have more meaningful and specific connotations for them.

By giving the target a lot of very broad patterns and then watching and refining, readers can zero in on specific details. This is easier with a willing audience, of course — most people are happy to reinterpret vague statements into their own frame of reference and volunteer a lot of information about themselves, because it is fun.

It’s also quite a bit more memorable when someone makes a spookily accurate prediction. Whoa: “Death” came up and my grandfather just died last week. But if that hadn’t happened, Death could also have just meant “there will be or has been some kind of change in your life”, and you wouldn’t have remembered that nearly as easily.

As a fun bonus, the cards themselves are very well designed to easily dovetail into answers for people’s most common questions. Seemingly all of the cards with a woman in the art have “fertility” in their list of connotations, so that readings can converge on the enduringly popular “eventually you will have a happy family and a whole bunch of children”. The four suits of the Minor Arcana are organized around things people usually want to know about: love and emotions (cups), money (pentacles), power (swords) and adventure (wands).

This doesn’t mean that all fortunetellers are necessarily hustlers — although many of them are. Many fortunetellers are simply intuitive, empathetic people who are as invested in the accuracy of their readings as their customers are. They’ve had a few of their own whoa moments and, with a little effort they have been able to tune their own third eye.

Ultimately, it’s my impression that this is mostly harmless. Talking over your life and experiences with an empathetic stranger who’s doing their best, not just to listen, but to listen so well that it seems like a spooky magic trick, can be pleasant and even thereapeutic for folks.

The question then: if I think that Tarot is nothing but hokum, why bother to get this far in the weeds writing a book about it?

Here’s my justification: the cards are well designed. They’ve managed to produce this whole cold reading illusion by virtue of capturing a lot of oddly compelling archetypes and ideas. I just think they’re neat.