1. The Magician
Reading Jean reading Jean
This is the first of my Tarot experiments; taking abstract cards originally used in mystic divination to see if they can help the people I know better understand themselves. View the full collection of experiments here, and try and articulate what the cards mean to you as you read, regardless of Jean’s interpretation.
When Jean walks into Absinthe I’m not expecting this to be the first of my official experiments. He and I have chatted a bit about my Tarot idea, but we’re supposed to just be having drinks and catching up. I haven’t done as much reading up on the history of the cards as I’d like, and I’m still trying to work out the best way to explain to someone with no knowledge of the cards’ history what this whole thing is all about. Jean sits down, and as I pass him the drink I ordered for him (he drinks a whiskey on the rocks) I think about how to introduce it without any bias.
“So let’s do this Tarot thing.” is the first thing he says.
Jean is a serial hustler, so I know he’ll tell a good story. He runs a social media startup, and his job demands a keen eye for what is interesting and shareable, what will ‘go viral’ — his life is a constant exercise in pitching these ideas to business executives and potential investors. He’s Jewish, foreign, and loves telling everyone both of these things. He’s loquacious, exuberant, energizing, and he worships unapologetically at the church of FOMO. Yes, I know that Jean will tell a good story, what I’m hoping is that we can learn something from this one.
I feign a protest, at the same time reaching for the deck of cards. As I’m shuffling them, and sorting them into the separate piles that Jean will choose from (a myth of choice) I try to give a potted summary of what we’re about to do — people use the cards for fortune-telling, each of the cards represents a different idea or concept, all he needs to do is pick cards, and tell me a story.
He picks the cards from one single pile, deliberately-thoughtlessly, and turns them over quickly, shooting me five-word responses to each of the cards. It’s not quite what I expected, but it’s an amazing experience. I can see the public, projected Jean begin to tell me what he thinks he should be telling me these cards mean to him.
“It’s a spoiled Jewish girl,” he says, as he draws The Empress (a blonde lady, regally seated between woodland and a cornfield; a crown of stars on her head). “It’s a spoiled Jewish girl, and that’s her Mum”. He’s pointing at the second card, which he’s already turned over; — The High Priestess, who sits in austere expression and clothing between a black and a white pillar. He turns over the third card — The Magician, a young man surrounded by arcane symbols of power — and says without any apparent irony “That’s me.”
He’s the one sharing his inner thoughts, but interestingly I’m the one feeling a lack of control. Jean is going through the cards so quickly and decisively, it’s looking like it will take us the whole deck to get a full story. I’ve not even told him when to stop (though interestingly and unknowingly, he eventually stops at 13, a portentous factor of the 78 cards I can’t help but recognize).
As he flips them over I anxiously visualize his comments written down and the tiny amount of text I’ll be able to use with each card. It turns out, though, that I needn’t worry. As he looks at The Magician (silent, authoritative) and back to me (silent, rapt and making mental notes as fast as I can) I think he becomes conscious of his studied flippancy, and how different it will look written down compared to just spoken.
The next card Jean pulls out is The Emperor, an old, proud, militant figure seated in a stone throne. He jokes to me that this guy is obviously the father, and that we’ve completed the path that fate usually lays down for young Jewish boys. It’s a clear line drawn in the sand — the inflection point in the interview. It’s the point where (maybe) Jean realizes that saying what you think you should be seeing can be more revealing than being honest about your gut reactions. Either way, he begins to open up, and draws The Hierophant, a religious leader akin to the Pope.
“Paul Graham,” Jean pokes the card and chuckles. One of the companies he advises has just been accepted into Y Combinator, a startup accelerator run by Graham, who by reputation is an idealist, a relentless proselytizer and public speaker in Silicon Valley’s hallowed conference halls. I laugh too — it’s great to see this working; to see this religious leader transformed in Jean’s head into the Venture Capital drill-Sargeant who will be indoctrinating and harassing his friends in the coming months.
Next up he draws The Lovers, one of Tarot’s most iconic cards, illustrated in this deck with a burning bush and a snake in a tree — they’re Adam and Eve, the Old Testament’s original lovers. I notice Jean is only taking cards from one of the four piles I laid out, and there’s a deep irony in the anxiety this causes me; a false sense that he is not getting an ‘unbiased’ selection of cards. Because of this, I almost miss him saying “What I’ll never be” before he swiftly moves us on.
He sees The Chariot, and an armored male being driven out of a city by two Egyptian sphinxes. Jean looks up, making eye contact, as he tells me, categorically, “Hustling”.
It’s amazing that the card has produced this reaction. He looks animated, as though he’s found his card. It’s not a meaning I’d ever have drawn, but it fits so perfectly with who he is and what he does. Dynamism and velocity, the sense of power and the crack of the whip compelling the beasts to pull him onward.
As an entrepreneur and self-confessed ‘hustler’ these are the qualities he needs people around him to feel about what he’s doing. They need to feel his energy, his mastery, and want to jump on the bandwagon of his success before it’s passed them by. In The Magician and The Chariot Jean’s recognition of himself is palpable.
The next card is The Four of Staves, the first of Tarot’s ‘minor arcana’, or suited cards (like clubs or diamonds in a regular card deck) that we have seen.
He says, “I see a wedding” and, maybe remembering that revealing comment about The Lovers says “I don’t know, that’s just what I see. Don’t you see that?” To be fair I have a hard time seeing anything else. I want to dig deeper about The Lovers, but now is not the time. Next he draws The Three of Swords, and his interpretations become more abstracted just what he sees on the cards.
He tells me, almost at the same time as he pulls the ninth card out, that The Three of Swords is “what other people get themselves into”, implying I guess heartbreak, or a love triangle — really now I’m interpreting him. The Four of Swords is a chapel scene, and he tells me “I look at this and I see depression.” We’re 10 cards into a journey that has taken less than five minutes, and we’ve moved from comedy Jewish dating stereotypes to one man telling me a picture of a chapel is the embodiment of depression. Whether what we’ve explored ‘helps’ Jean, or is even interesting to him, it’s become evident to me that just the process of using the cards like this has had a channeling effect. It’s taken us — with me saying hardly a word — from the peripheries of small talk, to a willingness to acknowledge and expose thoughts that in America we keep to ourselves. We’re looking at The Five of Swords, a card that shows one smiling man clutching three weapons; two others in the background. What I’m expecting Jean to relate to me is something about success, or competition, and what he says is not far off the mark:
“People trying to fuck me.”
I burst out laughing. He laughs too, and with that diffusion of tension I suddenly become aware that although I’ve said almost nothing this entire time, there’s been an escalating dialogue between us; a heightened and unusual power dynamic. He’s been the storyteller — there’s no doubt about that — but in being the listener who made him go through this process I’ve been passing tacit judgment on what he’s been saying — with my eye movements, my intakes of breath; any changes in expression.
He turns over two more cards, but we hardly even talk about them. I haven’t written anything down, and I’m scrambling in my mind to remember the most salient parts of his story. He notices, and asks — deadpan — if he’s supposed to keep going through the entire deck. I shake my head and it’s there, at the 13th card, that we end the first experiment.
So, what did I learn?
Well, it’s early days to be drawing any conclusions, but one thing that seems clear is that the cards are a fantastic way to help people open up, and to quickly go deeper than the surface personalities that we project in our daily lives, even to our friends. Another realization was quite how unique and personal the interpretations drawn from the cards can be. Jean’s reactions, whether considered or more freeform, may have been based in the images and archetypes, but were removed from any generic predictions I could have made about what he would have said. The third takeaway, and the one that makes me the most excited about continuing the experiment, is that the cards force a shift in perspective. Having to respond to images you’ve never seen before — with someone present as an observer — gives you a less filtered stream of your own thoughts than you would normally articulate and acknowledge as meaningful. Manually shifting that perspective, and allowing people room to ask themselves “Why did I think that?” is a powerful thing. It gives me hope that people reading themselves in future can use this tactic in the pursuit of deeper self-awareness and understanding.
And what does Jean think about the whole experience?
“I found the session interesting, but more closely related to psycho-therapy…I felt as if this was more of a socio-normative examination of individual subjects. As any person who knows the subject, you brought your previous opinion as a lens to this. I’d think of this as the ‘meme’ of the subject; a pretty established brand in your mind. All conclusions are judged through that ‘meme’ — the key here is breaking away to a new one and obtaining something different.
Traditional tarot readers don’t know the subject and therefore the narrative is somewhat vacant (and hollow??). This is a relationship very different than say a psychologist or therapist with whom a trusted companionship develops.”
Valid advice. In future maybe the key will be getting both of us to leave our preconceptions at the door, and to try to generate something new together.
In the coming weeks I’ll be running more experiments and publishing more stories. Follow the collection here if you want to read more as I do them, and if you’re interested in being part of a reading just tweet me @BANGwallace
