AUTHOR’S NOTE: This one is just for fun! (Well, maybe there’s an uncomfortable truth or two and a little sarcasm mixed in with the merriment . . . )

Me the Inquisitor: “Why do you read the tarot cards?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “I want to get under the skin of objective reality and see what makes the Universe tick.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “Because they’re there?”

Me the Inquisitor: “How does tarot work?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “It’s a function of the subconscious mind that taps into a higher source of knowledge. Either that or it follows the SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess) principle.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “Who cares, it ‘just works.’ But if you must know, I have a hotline to the Divine, or maybe just to the Astral Plane or my own fertile imagination.”

Me the Inquisitor: “What do the cards have to do with it?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “They act as a medium that engages and is imprinted with the seeker’s subliminal awareness via concentration on the question or topic of interest while shuffling.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “They look purty!”

Me the Inquisitor: “Must the reader know the querent’s specific question before the reading begins?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Not in face-to-face settings, where the initial communion is between the sitter and the cards, not between the cards and the reader. In the interest of privacy and belaying the reader’s preconceptions, it’s best not to know too much until the sitter chooses to reveal it. The cards will ‘speak their piece’ anyway, and the diviner just ‘reads ’em as they lay.’ In remote readings, the seeker’s life-area of interest should be known as a minimum.
Me the Hedge-Mystic: It doesn’t matter under any circumstances. The mystic receives inspiration via spiritual channels and the cards are mainly “props,” vessels that capture the received wisdom for presentation to the querent.

Me the Inquisitor: “Is intuition the only ‘right’ way to read the cards?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Perhaps for self-analysis. For divination I find that it’s secondary to a more analytical approach based on knowledge and experience, to which it can add visionary inflection, often via the creative use of metaphor and analogy.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “Zzzzzzzz”

Me the Inquisitor: “Can anyone really learn to read the cards in just 10 minutes?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Are you nuts?”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “What’s to learn?”

Me the Inquisitor: “What are the most important inputs to effective storytelling?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Inspiration, imagination and ingenuity in support of extraordinary insight. Oh, and a good vocabulary.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “Huh? Whazzat? I simply answer questions based on my intuitive hunches. I play it safe by saying ‘Nothing is carved in stone.’ I can soft-peddle ‘I don’t know’ with as much finesse as the best of them. I wouldn't know a 'narrative' if it walked up and bit me.”

Me the Inquisitor: “What is the “theater of tarot?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Anything the diviner does (usually of a ‘mystical’ nature) that is not directly related to explaining the cards. In short, various manifestations of ‘woo’ that make the reader feel good, none of which is crucial for success: crystals, candles and incense; prayers and invocations; ‘knocking’ on the deck; bathing the cards in moonlight; cutting with your left hand to the left, et al.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: “Tarot-reading is a performance art, so it’s all dramatic theater.”

Me the Inquisitor: “Should a tarot reader always tell the truth exactly as the cards present it?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Only to the extent that the unvarnished truth is helpful and not harmful. There are ways to deliver it without beating the seeker over the head with its perceived inevitability. After all, I’m not a sadist.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: <looking bored> “Ommmmm.”

Me the Inquisitor: “Can the tarot answer ‘yes-or-no’ questions?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “Of course, tarot can answer any question as long as it is phrased properly.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: <superstitiously making a “warding” gesture> “Get thee behind me . . . “

Me the Inquisitor: “Can you tell me what I’m thinking right now?”
Me the Mad Scientist: “It doesn’t work that way. Go see a psychic for that.”
Me the Hedge-Mystic: ” . . . you think that I’m a fraud?”

Me the Curmudgeon: <doffing the inquisitor’s robe> “I didn’t say that, you did! But now that you mention it . . . .”