None of us is inclined to take the message literally, but a smile passes around the table. It’s impossible not to smile. A pregnant woman has just been told that she’s got to be brave, because a big change is coming that will feel a lot like stepping off a cliff, but that happiness and fulfillment are coming her way. No matter what is responsible for having placed that particular combination of cards on the table, it’s hard to escape the sense that here, at least, is meaning.

Truth? Who knows? But meaning, to be sure. Part of that meaning comes from the powerful, almost elemental imagery we’re looking at: people subduing lions, dogs staring up at the moon. But while it’s useful to think of the Tarot as a set of universal archetypes (many decks draw heavily from mythological imagery), this can also imply a certain inevitability – as if despite the myriad possible combinations of cards on the table, in the end a reading can only reveal which predictable, well-trodden path a person is unconsciously following.

It also makes the cards seem designed for psychic or fortune-telling Tarot readers, giving them the power to tease from any spread bland generalized statements that each client can imagine as relating to their lives. (Are you struggling to emerge from the influence of a powerful father-figure? Are you involved in a love affair where you’re having to make a choice?)

Anya and I talk about the cards instead as triggers, and readings as complex Rorschach tests that draw out the patterns of preoccupations, motivations, and emotions characterizing the inner narratives of particular people. Anya's boyfriend Bill calls her style of reading “Jungian Tarot,” and indeed Carl Jung would probably have approved of her emphasis on having her subjects raise their own psychological and emotional interpretations.

Regina, used to self-analysis and possessed of a mind that is always seeking connections and patterns, moves easily from Anya’s explanations of the spread on the table to the pressing concerns of her life in this moment.

“Oh, that’s a big thing for me at work right now,” she says, responding to something Anya says about the conflict between two cards. Or “That one makes me think of my parents.”