A Masonic friend submitted this question: when a tarot reading is accurate, what do I believe is actually happening? Is the reader accessing psychic perception, interpreting symbolic patterns, entering a heightened intuitive state, reading the client psychologically, or participating in some kind of synchronicity — and how do I distinguish between those in practice? I'll only speak for myself and what my mentors passed down, and I'm not discounting anything else. Do I believe real psychic ability exists? Absolutely — I see no evidence it doesn't. I've watched readers talk about channeling their ancestors or building up psychic energy, maybe a kundalini thing. But the system I work in doesn't require any of that. It doesn't require me to have psychic skill or to be in communication with anyone.
A living, intelligent cosmos
The system I was taught comes from the Western esoteric tradition — of which Freemasonry is a part — where creation is alive and intelligent. Nothing happens purely by accident; there's an intellect to everything, the macrocosm and the microcosm reflecting one another. Whether you come at it from a hermetic or a gnostic point of view — and let's put no moral judgment on the intent of creation either way — you believe that everything is alive and brimming with intelligence.
The reading is a prompt
So when I'm shuffling the cards, I think of it a lot like putting a question into a chatbot. The better you formulate the prompt, the better the response. Your answer doesn't sit somewhere whole inside the system; it's pulled together in response to the prompt. A tarot reading — and ritual itself — is a prompt.
Since this question came from Freemasons: a tarot reading and a Masonic ritual are, in this sense, the same — both prompts toward a transformative outcome. That's what gives meaning to the circumambulation, the stopping at the gates, all of it. You're doing something almost exactly the same every time; you can't circumambulate the other way or make up your own words. If two systems prepare their candidate differently, that doesn't make one illegitimate — they're just prompting differently, perhaps toward the same answer. And you can't become a Freemason by reading about it at home; when the technology stops being practiced, it's gone.
So when I shuffle, I'm focusing the prompt — "this position is my significator for today; what is my energy?" — and the flip is the large language model of the universe answering. It doesn't require anyone to suspend belief. Is psychic skill involved? Yes, in the sense that each card has several interpretations, and you use intuition — based on the question and what the person has told you — to read exactly how the card is answering the prompt. I keep my morning reading on my desk all day and note how each card expressed itself by evening. So it isn't a zero-sum thing.
Who this is for
I don't make these videos for materialist atheists — we don't share a worldview, and I'm not trying to change anyone's mind; I wouldn't know how. If you believe creation is just dead molecules with no intelligence behind it, how could I talk you out of that? But if you do believe in an intelligent universe, I don't see why tarot or scrying wouldn't make sense. Every culture we can think of had its divinatory methods. The modern assumption that everyone throughout history was an idiot is, frankly, arrogant — and about what you'd expect from modern people.