Tradition or Intuition

The question of using tradition or intuition is one I see often in various cartomancy and tarot groups. Being a traditional reader or an intuitive reader. Well, most people use these terms without even defining them.

What is tradition? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, traditions is “an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (such as a religious practice or a social custom)”, or “a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable”

In the same dictionary, intuition is defined as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference”, or “immediate apprehension or cognition”

This is quite interesting. Does that mean that the person who created a particular oracle like Lenormand or Kipper used their intuition to define a set of meanings? Meanings that were later on passed through a few generations as a tradition? Did these decks start their life through an intuitive process? We will probably never know.

I’m curious here. If we go from a traditionalist point of view, like we see a fraction of the Lenormand world, we are just repeating the meanings defined by the creator of the deck, just updated a tiny bit for the modern world.

But if we just repeat the same meanings from generation to generation, without adding value, is it worth being a traditionalist? What makes these meanings better than the ones I would come with? Traditionalists will tell you that’s how it should be read, if you use another system, that’s not really reading. I see that attitude a lot particularly  with Lenormand and the Thoth deck.

And I see a lot of traditionalists telling you that their deck should be read the traditional way, but when coming to some other systems, like the Rider Waite, they’ll tell you to throw away the little white book. Confusing.

Is intuition better? It depends. In 78 degrees of wisdom, Rachel Pollack explains that she spent a whole afternoon with a colleague going through the cards of the Rider Waite, and the meanings they found became the basis of her book. A well regarded book, considered a reference for the Rider Waite Smith tarot. Did she create a new tradition?

I prefer to simply refer to myself as a card reader. In my opinion, and the way I practice, each one feeds on the other. It is not possible to be 100% traditionalist or 100% intuitive. The best readers will use a mix of both. Sometimes I use very traditional meanings, sometimes I use meanings not described anywhere. It depends on the question, it depends on the cards around, it depends on how I feel where the reading is going. Flexibility is key.

In my opinion, using intuition only will lead to disaster. There has to be something on which we should build. Over the years, I built a main concept over each Lenormand card. I took the original instructions of the deck, and from there tried to come with a concept for each card encapsulating all the traditional definitions. This allows me to be traditional in my readings, but at the same time to be able to extend easily in new directions what a card could mean.

Let’s put a few cards and see how important tradition is.

I am always amazed by what a few random cards can say.

We get the lilies in the middle, cultivated meanings. There is your reply already. Use your wisdom, your experience. Especially with the man card on top, I am the reader, I control my experience. It helps to get through these clouds at the bottom, wisdom to fix what is unclear.

Let’s have a quick look at the corners. I like the bear, a creature that makes reserves for the winter, for the lean days. We have accumulated meanings, and once again, this relates to our experience, and that helps improve our readings. It gives beauty by its richness.

Looking at the diamond, we can see that I, the reader, is the guide, the one who has the wisdom to find solutions to what is unclear.

I don’t think there’s any need to go further into the reading, I have my response. To use my reserve of accumulated meanings with my wisdom. There’s not much place for pure intuition here.