There’s something to be said about the process of divination itself. Divination can be done also using astrology, as well as other different means, but here my latest experience is with tarot specifically.

In astrology the main focus has been for me throughout the years to analyze the past events, personal and collective, as well as to delve into the intricacies of the characters of people that surround me, including close and distant, as well as myself obviously, analyzing current events, and sometimes also trying to predict the possible future developments, personal as well as collective, based on past developments, among other factors. So from all this one can say that there exists an element of divination here, though not all of it can be attributed to divination.

In tarot on the other hand, everything done with it is a pure form of divination. That is trying to uncover that which is hidden, either in the present or in the future, while the future can also be described as a hidden element, or unknown to some degree. And it can be applied also to the past, to understand developments that led to the present. Traditionally, tarot has been used for future predictions on the personal level, which is a pure form of divination. 

Astrological analysis, on the other hand, is in many ways exactly that – an analysis and synthesis, that can give a detailed picture of the analyzed subject – be it an event, a person, an organization, etc. It basically doesn’t require intuition or psychic abilities because everything is in the data, that is derived from the astrological charts, which are based on the planetary movements, aspects and placements, as is very well known. There are differences of opinion between astrologers, obviously, because this isn’t an exact science (though very heavily data based) mainly because of the interpretive part of the data, that can vary between astrologers, to some degree. But the interpretive process doesn’t require intuition, though it sure can make use of it sometimes. 

Tarot, on the other hand, is all about intuition and even psychism. Even though the tarot deck has a given system and rules of meaning and interpretation, it’s still very much open to the individual reader’s input from his/her own perceptions. 

To some this makes the tarot reading easier than astrology, for others on the contrary, it would make it trickier, all depending on how intuitive and/or analytical the person is. Of corse these two traits can be combined and can compliment each other, that would even be the ideal situation, but traditionally it seems to me that these two traits are perceived as two ends of a spectrum. That is, very analytical people tend to lack in intuition, and very intuitive people tend to lack in the analytical department. It’s rather stereotypical, to the point that historically men and women were seen, again – very stereotypically – as being collectively on those spectrum ends: men are analytical and women are intuitive. Obviously there are endless exceptions to this rule all around, if at all this stereotype has any validity at all. 

So is divination intuitive or analytical? Most will say very intuitive, and therefore sits well with the tarot practice. But if astrology is also used for divination, it’s surely being used also in it’s analytical capacity for that, therefore divination can use also some of the not so typical tools. For sure the best situation would be the combination of the two, both intuition and analysis.

As for myself, I discover some interesting manifestations of intuition, or even psychism, while using tarot. Like the numerous instances while shuffling the cards thinking about a question for a spread, the clear picture of the answer to that question suddenly pops onto my mind, accompanied by a feeling of certainty, making the subsequent drawing of the cards and their spread kind of redundant. It probably can be explained otherwise too, but still.