How magic works
So I'm reading a Zine about tarot, as most adults find themselves doing at least bi-yearly. (Pause, allow time for discussion of the ambiguity of the prefix. Breathe. Continue.)
It covers the usually incorrect history, or rather I should say the mythic history, the one where tarot comes from Egypt and has been used for thousands of secret years despite it being quite clear that divination tarot begins in the 18th century.
Being reasonable, I remind myself that this is a small publication, is printing a story and a mytho-poesy rather than a historical truth, and so on. Even as the usual melange of magical thought is mixed up in the argument of the zine. There could be a checklist of the things that are said, and you can go down the list. Check off the box for a reference to the Emerald Tablets for one.
As I'm thinking through the piece I say to myself out loud, "I hope this doesn't say anything about reversals, they are not useful nor meaningful as ying is within yang or the khu is in the khabs".
A few pages later, in the section on tarot spreads there's a note that says not to use reversals because the good and the bad are both in the cards.
Well, now you got me: That's literally how I've explained why reversal aren't a thing to freinds and querents before.
Here I thought I knew more than the source I was reading. Seems I knew just as much.
"My shrink used to have a sign on his wall to make you laugh. It said that a paranoiac is a person who has some idea what is really going on." -- Liner Notes to the Who's Quadrophenia