The Importance of Nuance in Tarot and in Life

This week I took a deep dive into the word ‘nuance’. According to Merriam Webster, nuance is “sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value)”.

Tarotists like me will often use this word to describe a particularly thoughtful and accurate tarot reading. We also use this word to advocate for our specific tarot reading techniques. For example, we might say that reading reversals offers a more nuanced reading.

My dive into the concept of nuance began as I was contemplating cognitive dissonance and conspiracy theory. Of late, it has concerned me that many people find wild, highly unlikely and easily disproven conspiracy theories to be a comforting alternative to provable and studied facts.

I have decided that the reason this is happening is that people are comfortable in dichotomies. People want to divide everything into good or bad, like or dislike. We want to think that something is helpful, or it is not. Something is dangerous, or it is not. The ‘is/is not’ binary is easy for people to understand and embrace.

Yet, the world is full of things that are hurtful and helpful at the same time. There are things that can be dangerous to some people, and not to others.

If we are unable to think in nuances, we have no ability to understand our world as it is.

Nuanced thinking means we have to wrap our brain around difficult concepts. For example, pharmaceutical companies have done hurtful, dangerous, greedy things. At the same time, those same companies have provided products that are literally lifesaving.

Here is another one. Our history is filled with shameful violence. And, our history is full of bravery and idealism.

We cannot truly understand our world, and life itself, until we can move out of dichotomous thinking and into nuanced thinking. The same is true of tarot.

When we work with a tarot deck, read a tarot card, or perform a tarot reading, we are best when we stay away from anything that makes us say ‘always’ or ‘never’.

We need to take dichotomous questions and find nuanced answers.

For example, suppose the question is, “Will my new job be good?” You pull two cards and get the Sun and the Three of Swords.

The answer may be that the job will be great in some ways, and difficult in others. It is not only good, or bad. In a way, it is both.
To continue the reading, you can divide that into two questions and pull cards for each.

In what ways will this job be great?

In what ways will this job be difficult?

From there, you can foster proactivity by asking other questions of the cards.

What can I do to make sure I succeed at this job?

What do I need to know about this job in order to make it a good experience?

To bring nuanced thinking to tarot, we need to be nuanced about the questions we ask, as well as about the way we interpret the cards.

We need to understand that, in life, very few things are all one way or another.

A good exercise is to practice using tarot to describe a situation or a person in the following manner. Ask, “What is true about this job?” Pull several cards, maybe as many as five. Interpret each card as a specific aspect of the job. Then, see if the cards go together in a way that gives you an overall feel, or additional information.

This exercise will teach you to read qualities of a person or situation that can include authentic nuance and mixed messaging. You are not looking for an up or down, you are looking for the nuanced truth.

Here is an example. When performing this exercise about my job as a full-time tarot professional, I pulled the following five cards.

Justice reversed: My job is literally illegal in many places in the world. I am often judged unfairly because this is my job. I cannot get the same credit rates or other business privileges as most businesses do.
I often work with people who feel they are treated unfairly in their current situation. A huge part of my job is to help people heal from unfair treatment, and to seek out situations that are more favorable.

Page of Cups: I must always deliver messages that speak to the heart, from the heart. I must always be learning, and helping my clients learn. I must be a bearer of loving messages from spirit.

Judgement reversed: I always have projects to finish, and new projects to begin. There is never a feeling of being finished with something. I always have deadlines and due dates to consider, classes to plan, books to write, and clients to see.

Seven of Wands: Much like Judgement reversed, this card reminds me that my work requires a great deal of multi-tasking. There is also a sense of my services being in demand, and my need to maintain my schedule. The Seven of Wands can also speak of the boundaries that good ethics and good self-care require.

The Ten of Pentacles: I have built a strong and successful business over time. My business involves family members. My psychic skills are ancestral. Many of my clients and students feel like family. I am in an office that feels like home to me, my clients, and my students.

When I look at these five cards as a group, a few things strike me. The two Major Arcana cards, Justice and Judgement, both reversed, speak of the long and difficult journey to build a legal and legitimate business as a tarot reader. I am called to do it, I am doing it successfully, but it is an ongoing and sometimes difficult process.

The numerology of the Minor Arcana cards is Seven, Ten, and Page. As higher numbers, these cards speak of my lengthy journey, and how far I have come.

The Page and the Ten speak of my love for my work. The Seven speaks of how far I will go to defend my work, and to protect my ability to run my business successfully.

When we look at the nuances of this five-card reading, can you see how silly it is to try to determine if my job is good or bad? Clearly, there are significant challenges here, and, just as clearly, there is a significant commitment to do this work, and significant enjoyment and success.

When we move away from thinking in binaries such as good/bad and like/dislike, and move into nuanced thinking, we become better at tarot, and at life.