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Dr. James Wanless Transforms Tarot from Medieval Fortune Telling to Progressive Wisdom Practice
To mainstream Americans, predisposed to cynicism and further jaded by cheesy psychic infomercials, this may be no great revelation. But to Cultural Creatives open to exploring inner guidance, Dr. Wanless’ perspective may sound at first like a challenge. A popular teacher and author (Intuition@Work), Wanless is best known as the man behind Voyager Tarot, the instantly recognizable deck of motley (and breathtaking) collage art he co-created with artist Ken Knutson. For more than 20 years, intuition has been James Wanless’ career and personal path through life. Along the way, he’s become an expert at coaching others to listen to that still, small voice. But unlike many intuition advocates – whose easy answers and pie-in-the-sky promises have often put them on the bestseller lists – Wanless is forthright about the rewards and risks of working with intuitive information. At a recent workshop, after an hour or so of extolling the virtues of acting on intuitive "hits," Wanless opened up the floor to questions, and one man came up with this doozey: "Does acting on intuition always lead to success?" A simple question, on the face of it, but the implications run deep. "Hey buddy," the guy in the audience seemed to say, "you’re telling me I should go with my gut. Can you promise me that, if I do, I’ll get what I want?" After all, isn’t that what intuition is for? Isn’t that why people consult psychics, astrologers and tarot readers? Isn’t it why so many of us are interested in cultivating our own intuitive gifts? We want to know. I know I do. What’s going to happen if I take that new job? What’s going to happen if I ask that cute new acquaintance to dinner? And what’s going to happen if I don’t? It’s a security thing. If I know, then I can make the best choice -- the right choice. I feel a little safer, and maybe I stand a better chance of obtaining a desired outcome. More often than not, that’s what we hope intuitive information will do for us – and sometimes it does. But, says Wanless, this may not be the best use of intuition. That’s why, back at the workshop, he chooses realism over empty platitudes. "No," he answers unapologetically, "intuition won’t always lead to success, not as the world defines it. Sometimes it will lead to worldly setback. That’s part of the journey, for all of us. Making safe choices isn’t what the intuitive path is all about. Often, following your heart isn’t the safe thing, isn’t the conventional thing. It’s the thing that scares the hell out of you. And the point is, it’s worth doing, whether it leads to the result you hoped for or not. That’s the intuitive path – the life lived with passion, openness, integrity – and its rewards are inherent." James Wanless’ own life is a study in risk and reward. After obtaining a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, he taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. But, feeling unfulfilled, he soon left that secure life behind to travel to India and Nepal. "I did it primarily out of curiosity," Wanless explains. "When you get a Ph.D., you think, I’m really special. The truth is, you may have a great deal of knowledge about a subject, but that’s not wisdom. So I remember thinking, is this it? Is that all there is? Going to India and sitting with mystics was my way to satisfy that curiosity and explore the deeper aspects of consciousness. "I basically took off. I didn’t really have any money, and I didn’t have a clear plan. Some people thought I was a fool for doing that, throwing away six years of graduate work to pursue some kind of spiritual impulse. I wasn’t into the Tarot at that time, so I wasn’t aware of the Fool’s journey as the basis of the Tarot. But I certainly was a living Fool! I had my curiosity and I had my trust. When you put those two qualities together, that’s when the greatest things happen to you. Instead of falling, you fly." In Wanless’ case, his pilgrimage to India ultimately took him through many of the great spiritual centers of the East and brought him back to his native California a changed man. "That was when I had my first real Tarot reading, and I was on fire! The power of those symbols was magic. It was the perfect way for me to express both my intuition and my intellect." Another leap of faith led Wanless to turn this new avocation into a full-time career, something he considered a "wild and improbable" idea at the time. Today, Tarot is still his livelihood, and the revolutionary deck he created and published in 1984 is still one of the most popular. Tarot is perhaps the quintessential fortune-telling tool. Comprised of 78 cards with endless possible combinations, the Tarot can be arranged in dozens of different patterns to produce symbolic pictures of the past, present or future. But when James Wanless created his Voyager Tarot, fortune-telling wasn’t what he had in mind. "I wanted to do something that was representative of the evolution of consciousness and the changes that have occurred in society since the popularization of Tarot in the Middle Ages. I didn’t want to do fortune-telling; I was more interested in fortune creation, which is what happens when we realize that our choices shape our fortunes in life. "Fortune-telling is really a product of the medieval worldview. In that era, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to live your dreams. If you were born a peasant, in all likelihood, you were going to die a peasant. Your choices in life weren’t going to have much impact on that. In that kind of milieu, it was much more possible to predict the future in a simple, static way. In today’s world, anything goes! There’s so much diversity and rapid change and so much more opportunity for the average person. The choices we make really can change our lives completely, instantly. Predicting the future isn’t such a simple matter any more." And there’s the rub if we’re inclined to look to Tarot and other intuitive tools for easy answers. We’ve evolved, and flashy but fatalistic psychic predictions are, for many of us, losing their luster as we embrace more choice-centered perspectives. Once amazing, such portents increasingly feel disempowering and out of sync with modern sensibilities. "It’s human nature," though, says Wanless. "It’s our curiosity again, our nature as explorers to want to discover and understand. That’s a healthy, positive impulse. But what we’re seeing today in many areas is the shadow side of that impulse, which is a movement toward scientism and rationalism. We want to understand everything, understand how everything works, so we can predict, so we can control. If we can understand how the weather works, we can predict it, and then we can have more control. If we know it’s going to rain, we can decide what to wear." While that may sound reasonable enough, any Washingtonian who’s ever turned to the weather report for wardrobe advice already understands the first problem with prediction: It doesn’t always work. "What’s great about the scientific paradigm," Wanless explains, "is what the new physicists are discovering: that reality defies description. We don’t know what it is. When we really begin to look at what’s going on, there’s an element of chaos at the quantum level. And chaos defies prediction." And the second problem is bigger than the first: Predictability isn’t necessarily desirable. "What I love about chaos is that it means there’s a place for mysticism. There’s a place for not knowing. I don’t think any of us would really want to live in a world that was ultimately predictable, because without spontaneity and mystery, everything is dead. I’m a great believer in the value of surprise and wonder. It’s astonishment that reminds us we’re alive." So we abandon the notion of Tarot as fortune-telling, of static prediction as safety net. What’s left? Why bother with intuition at all? Maybe it’s a waste of time. That’s the mistake of the cynic – throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Many a skeptic, drunk on "debunking" the excessive (and unnecessary) claims of old-fashioned fortune-tellers, has gone that route and thereby missed the real rewards of intuitive thinking. What’s needed, says Wanless, is a shift in expectation and approach. "Intuition is an amazing tool for strategic planning. You really see this clearly in the business world, where the most successful people are those who trust their hunches. There’s so much information to process, and it changes so quickly, that intuition is the only way to go. How do you know what decision to make? You have to go with your gut. Great business people are risk-takers, and the higher you go in management, the more intuition is displayed. "Tarot is a fantastic strategy tool, because every reading is essentially an action map. One area I’ve been exploring for years now is using Tarot as a coaching tool. In traditional Tarot, you read the cards for information and insight. In a coaching situation, you take that insight to the next level, which is action. The reading becomes a strategic plan, with tangible goals that can be evaluated in terms of progress." Even prediction, understood in a balanced way, has its place. "You can still explore possible futures, possible scenarios, and that can be very important and very effective. You can ask your intuition anything – who, what, why, when, should I, will I – as long as you understand that the answers are possibilities and nothing is locked in. Then you have the opportunity to identify different alternatives and explore them. I’m a great proponent of the self-fulfilling prophesy, where you look at the kind of fortune you want to create and then explore how to create that, to the best of your ability. "One of my favorite words in the English language is and. The Tarot is the Fool’s path, the path of not knowing and therefore trusting and letting go. And, it’s also the Magician’s path of having some inkling about the future and how to create it to be what you want. And, at the same time, knowing that it isn’t completely yours to control, which takes you right back to the Fool. "That seems contradictory, but, again, intuition doesn’t necessarily give you safe, easy answers. It gives you authentic answers, so that you can begin to truly author your life by being who you really are. Otherwise, you’re just living someone else’s story." That’s perhaps the most important truth Tarot and other intuitive tools have to offer – a profound, symbolic reminder of the totality of who we are. By helping us get in touch with all our potential talents, emotions and inner resources, these tools inspire us to expand our choices, rather than narrowing our options through fixed predictions. James Wanless "created Voyager Tarot to be a map of consciousness. These 78 cards reflect the many facets of the psyche. When you engage in a dialogue with the Tarot, you’re reminded of the archetypal qualities that are inside of you. They’re all in you: the Fool, the Magician, the Priestess, the Emperor. It may be that some of them are more accessible to you right now and others are more unconscious, but they’re all in there. "That’s why a Tarot reading can never be wrong, because every single card is true for each of us, all the time. When you pick a card from a facedown deck, it’s an act of certainty, because you know that no matter which card you choose, it’ll be true for you. And, at the same time, it’s an act of faith, because you’re acknowledging parts of yourself that you might ordinarily ignore, and you’re trusting that those particular qualities you’ve selected have some special meaning for you in that moment." That kind of trust, says Wanless, is the key to transcending the safety-and-control issues that inform fortune-telling and instead embracing a more seasoned intuitive practice. "Taking the risk, knowing that sometimes you’ll stumble, and having faith that the universe will be there to catch you – that’s one of the biggest lessons of all. From my own experience, I know that by far the greatest magic happens when you let go of control and follow where curiosity leads." James Wanless will offer a Certified Voyager Tarot Coaching intensive in the Seattle area June 21-22. For more information, contact Bill or Linda at (425) 702-6301. |
Intuition is risky
business, says professor-turned-mystic James Wanless.