The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading
I. Introduction
Recently, Kaj Sotala (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oMqx9D9EEW9AMDsbf/taking-woo-seriously-but-not-literally) published a blogpost titled "Taking woo seriously but not literally". He argues that techniques that seem "woo" do work in a certain sense, that is, they indeed have a function. However, the woo practices do not work for the reasons their proponents claim. Instead, they tap into unconscious processes, or work because of some cultural evolutionary processes that resulted in exactly that woo technique being, in some sense, adapted to certain needs of people. (Maybe similarly to the cultural evolution explanations about caribou hunting or manioc told by Joseph Henrich that are quoted here: https://scholars-stage.org/tradition-is-smarter-than-you-are/.) For example, Kaj illustrates why he thinks that Tarot is an "intuition aid" similar to Edward de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats". And he claims that many Tarot fans acknowledge that:
"I'm saying [that] 'Tarot is basically a random concept table for evocative ways of seeing your life' because that's how it was explained to me, by various people in my life who were into Tarot.
But there tend to be several kinds of people involved in woo. There are people who go "it's all psychology”, people who go "it's genuinely supernatural”, and people who go "idk either way, I just know that it seems to work”.
Maybe functions of woo techniques like that of aiding intuition deserve a look. But this emphasis on supposedly useful, overlooked aspects of tarot may risk understating very central properties of many cultural practices usually labeled as "woo": Deception and self-deception, both based on the demand for emotional reassurance. People may want an intuition aid, fine, but even more than that, they certainly want the feeling of being in control of their life, that things will turn out well, and that their dead grandmother forgives them no matter how much they fought when she was still alive. Then they find people who tell them that they can offer all of that because of the deep insights that a supernatural system gives them. Kaj also notes that if you are trying to make money out of [tarot], you're incentivized to sell it as a thing that definitely predicts the future and isn't just a mildly interesting technique for coming up with novel ways to view your life. Which means that a lot of the public messaging about it that you'll encounter is selected for overselling its significance." However, there is more to this aspect of tarot readings than "overselling" suggests. Plausibly, the ways in which allegedly supernatural techniques are delivered are based on similar basic techniques, and they enable deception, practiced by fortunetellers, palmists, spiritists and similar professions. These "psychics" do usually not present their systems as an intuition aid but as something more special than that, for which people are willing to pay.
This raises three questions: How does it work? Do the fortunetellers consciously deceive others, or do they fall into their own trap, deceive themselves without knowing it (like the firefighter interviewed by Gary Klein that Kaj mentions in his blog post) and think they have supernatural powers? And is the "intuition aid" aspect a good justification for the woo part? Or are deceptive structures such an integral part of woo systems that you should try to separate the beneficial parts from the woo if you want to bring them to good use?
These are questions that we can tackle by reading "The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading: The definitive guide to cold reading techniques used in the psychic industry" by Ian Rowland. So let us review that book.
II. Book Review
What is the book about?
What happens during a psychic reading? On the surface, a psychic reading looks something like this:
"You go to see a psychic. She (most are female) has never met you before, yet she describes your personality with pin-point accuracy. She identifies events in your past and present. Her reading may include the names of people you know, and specific facts about your personal life, career, and plans for the future. She seems aware of your innermost thoughts and problems, and she offers glimpses into the future that have an uncanny way of coming true." When they leave the psychic, clients are enthusiastic and convinced about the psychic's abilities.
How is this possible? Are psychic powers real? Well... not necessarily. As the title of The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading indicates, it is about "cold reading", a technique that Rowland strongly suggests lies behind these "supernatural" abilities. Rowland says that he "cannot prove that psychics use cold reading" but will "give you all the information you need to decide yourself". Maybe psychics have real psychic power! And maybe not. Then the "psychic industry" is based on scam - or on self-deception; we will come back to that later on.
Who is Ian Rowland?
Ian Rowland is a speaker and trainer and you can book his magic shows. He "sadly failed to develop any genuine psychic powers" and therefore has "to rely on magic tricks, psychology, charm, lying and some not terribly good jokes--but it looks the same as the real thing". Rowland is among the stage magicians and show mentalists who contribute to enlighten the public about the tricks that make people believe in the supernatural. He remarks that if there are genuine psychics, they will welcome his exposure of the techniques used by fraud psychics.
Cold Reading
"Cold reading is a set of strategies, to do with the psychology of communication, that enable you to influence what others think, feel and believe". What enables this is "seeming to provide information when in fact there is little or none to offer". Doing that in a psychic reading means the client comes to believe that the psychic has supernatural abilities. (However, people can apply cold-reading techniques elsewhere as well, and Rowland offers seminars on "Applied Cold Reading".)
During a psychic reading, someone - the psychic - claims to have access to some technique or ability giving him or her extraordinary insights, or put differently, he or she claims, "stated or implied", the ability to "provide meaningful personal information other than information obtained via the normal human sense (...), rational thought, guesswork and luck". This can be based on a woo technique like Tarot, Astrology, or Palmistry that seem to give you insight into the workings of the universe or whatever, without a plausible mechanism. I assume you can add the ritualized prophecy techniques like reading from the way an animal bone splits when you throw it into a fire. But that could also, like crystal-ball gazing, be in the second category, namely psychic readings where the person giving the reading claims to have some personal access to the supernatural: mediumship (talking to the dead), clairvoyance, psychometry (which means "touching an object and claiming thereby to sense information about either the owner or events involving that object"), aura readings, or intuitive readings (presenting insights without giving an explanation for how the psychic gets them). The psychic reading may take place as a one-on-one reading, or remote (even in written form), as a group reading or even in front of large audiences. The clients may come for fun, or because they have a problem, and Rowland criticizes that even some companies "employ psychics to assist with recruitment and promotion decisions". The book does not deal with specific individual cases, which may be a reason why Rowland does not mention the well-known cases of powerful politicians who have consulted astrologers. After reading the book, I dare adding a different kind of person who might apply cold reading. (While Rowland defines that cold reading is applied during psychic readings to suggest that the psychic has supernatural insights, it seems to me that the opposite could also happen. Someone trying to give the impression that he is like Sherlock Holmes could use cold reading to generate exactly this impression, suggesting not to be supernatural but hyperrational and superintelligent.)
Rowland lists some "popular misconceptions" about cold reading. For example, it is not equivalent to reading body language or to "shrewd observation" as in Sherlock Holmes stories, though these may be elements of cold reading. Crucially, cold reading is not about gullibility. Even "highly intelligent and perceptive" people can become convinced that the psychic - whom they have consulted for whatever reason - has presented unexplainable, impressive insights. You can "block" it but only if you really know how it works. We still do not really know how cold reading works, right? Luckily, Rowland explains it in detail, using a tarot session as the example framework.
The set up of a psychic session
Before or when the actual reading starts, there are some factors to ensure a good start - Rowland calls this the "set up". While meeting and greeting the client, the psychic applies techniques to ensure instant sympathy; these are techniques applied by sales-people, and there are many books about them.
A more specific step is "encouraging co-operation". To do that, the "psychic takes care to mention that the tarot is not an exact science and involves some aspects of interpretation. The point is to plant the idea that she and the client are supposed to co-operate. For example, the psychic might say: 'I won't necessarily always know exactly what the cards are trying to say. Sometimes it's unclear, like looking through a mist, and the exact meaning will actually be clearer to you than it is to me! So bear that in mind, won't you?'" Thereby, the psychic encourages "the client to provide information and help the psychic to get things right. Many clients require little persuasion to do this. If the psychic offers a statement that is simply wrong, some clients actually apologise for not being able to see how it fits! ... Many clients reveal what is on their mind and what they want to hear at more or less the first opportunity." Similarly, the psychic may mention that s/he can make mistakes, and ask for indulgence.
Creating an intimate atmosphere also helps, thereby dissuading "the client from being too challenging or assertive. It also promotes the sense of participation in a ritual. Rituals are a time-honoured way of constraining normal mental responses (including the 'Wait a minute, this is all nonsense' response) and thereby conditioning behaviour." Presenting credentials is easy enough, with (fake) certificates or testimonies, or by using "Tarot cards that are well-made and beautiful".
The themes of a psychic session
A psychic could talk about many things, but usually, there are certain topics that the clients want to hear about. Rowland lists the typical themes of psychic readings as "love, romance and relationships", "money and material comforts", "career and progression", "health and well-being", and then additionally, as minor themes, "travel", "education and the pursuit of new knowledge", and "ambitions, hopes and dreams".
The "main elements" of cold reading in a psychic reading session
The core section of the book is the one in which Rownland answers the question "What does the psychic actually say to the client?".
Psychics can draw from a repertoire of "stock readings" - that is, "prepared and memorised texts" - but they usually do not yield very much. Instead, Rowland lists 38 "elements" - types of seemingly significant and meaningful "statements and questions". He sorts them into four groups, about "character", "facts and events", "extracting information", and "predicting the future".
As an example of the elements about character, consider what Rowland calls the "Rainbow Ruse". Here are examples of this kind of statement:
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"You can be a very considerate person, very quick to provide for others, but there are times, if you are honest, when you recognise a selfish streak in yourself."
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"I would say that on the whole you can be a rather quiet, self-effacing type, but when the circumstances are right, you can be quite the life and soul of the party if the mood strikes you."
What do these statements have in common? They credit "the client with both a personality trait and its opposite". For example, the first statement simultaneously credits the client with being selfless and selfish. Perhaps surprisingly, Rowland explains that the Rainbow Ruse "sounds good, seems perceptive, and wins a good response from most clients". Moreover, Rainbow Ruse statements are "wonderfully safe, since the majority of personality traits are neither static nor quantifiable. Very few people are outgoing all the time, or introverted all the time. ... What is more, there is no objective way to assess where one lies on the graduated scale between extremes of introverted or outgoing behaviour." But the client may already feel as though the psychic has deep insights about her.
There are other elements about character that seem to describe the client but also disarm her. The Fine Flattery makes people feel good by crediting them with positive character traits that many people believe themselves to possess - not in any objective or absolute sense, but relative to the people around them, or relative to what they believe to be true of “people in general”. Or consider the "Jacques Statement", named after a Shakespeare character. It exploits the fact that people tend to have similar experiences and perceptions over the course of their life. Such statements need to fit the client's age. Here is a statement for a young adult "who is still developing her career":
"If you are honest about it, you often feel a sense of frustration that your own ideas, talents and abilities aren't always fully recognised. There have been occasions when you had to fight for the chance to show people what you can do. While you are mature enough to recognise that you have plenty to learn, you often find other people too set in their ways to appreciate the contribution you could make if only they would let you."
Maybe you, the reader of this review, are also in the age which this statement is supposed to fit. As you read this, do you feel as though you are being described? Or does it seem unrealistic that this could work? Rowland admits that like "many of the elements listed here, the Jacques Statement may seem rather lame on the printed page”, but emphasizes that “in the context of a supposedly psychic reading, with the correct presentation and delivery, it can be highly effective." Delivered in the right context, people who are not prepared for this kind of deception may also accept a "Barnum Statement" - an "artfully generalised character statement" - as a "reasonably accurate" description of themselves, like "Some of your hopes and goals tend to be pretty unrealistic." (You may already have heard of Barnum Statements; for more of them, see the classic vignette from Bertram Forer's 1948 experiment in the Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum\_effect.)
These descriptions are ones that usually meet agreement, and if they don't, the psychic can employ the "forking technique". That is, if the client reacts positively to the psychic's statement, she can reaffirm it, build upon it, flesh it out further. Otherwise, she "can develop the same theme in the opposite direction". For example, if the client reacts negatively to "You tend to be quite self-critical", then the psychic says: "But this tendency is one you have learned to overcome, and these days it rarely comes to the fore. You have learned to accept yourself and your own mix of gifts and talents. You know how damaging it can be to be too self-critical, and all credits to you for having matured past the self-critical stage."
Not only character elements work by exploiting that clients misperceive general statements as specific; this also holds for elements about facts and events. The "Fuzzy Fact" is an "apparently factual statement formulated so that it (a) is quite likely to be accepted and (b) leaves plenty of scope to be developed into something more specific." The spirit with whom the psychic is talking says something about family links to "Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part." Maybe the client is already impressed, or she "can be encouraged to supply some details. For instance, she might say: 'Could that include Scotland?'" The psychic will confirm this in a way that fits the alleged source of the information.
Usefully, the client later usually remembers the reading as being more exact than it actually was. And then, "non-believers are often challenged to explain how a particular psychic could have come up with some highly accurate piece of information. Of course it is the impressively specific version that is cited for analysis, not the Fuzzy Fact that was originally given." You see that such typical mental reactions work with many kinds of elements - all of this is blended into an art. Other elements include guesses based on demographic data, cultural trends, or other commonalities of many people, for example that "most people will have been involved in some sort of childhood accident that involved water".
The person conducting the reading must package all of this in language that actually comes across as psychic or fit the alleged source of all these insights. Clients will fill the gaps as they want the reading to be a success. The psychic will need to be flexible, and turn misses into successes.
For example, among the "facts and events" elements, there is the Push Statement. Elements are usually "intended to be accepted by the client", whereas Push Statements are meant to be initially rejected by the client. "However, they can almost always be made to fit if the psychic pushes with sufficient confidence and, at the same time, subtly expands the scope for agreement." He gives the following example:
"About three months ago, I see you standing in a room of some kind. It seems a strange detail to mention, but I see a red or red-ish floor. I don't think its your home or where you work. It's somewhere else. There's this red colour around you, and this is a place of some significance to you. Now I can only tell you what I'm getting, whether or not it makes sense, and I feel you went to this place for a meeting of some kind. I don't know if there's one other person involved or a group, but someone's expecting you to be there, and you're having to wait for them."
What happens next? The client rejects this. "I then begin to push the statement and appear highly confident that the meaning will become clear eventually", -- which places upon the client the burden of finding something suitable to match it. The psychic then subtly opens ways for the client to match the meaning, for example the red floor could metaphorically mean being in danger. "Sooner or later, in a very high percentage of cases, the client will remember something that fits. The whole point of a Push Statement is that the psychic seems aware of something that the client herself had forgotten. This is devastatingly impressive when it works."
While in case of the elements about character and those about facts and events, the psychic appears to provide information to the client, the third set of elements is called "Extracting information".
The psychic asks for information, often quite directly, sometimes in a disguised way, and "the client may feel she never gave the psychic any information at all". If the client is very uncritical and longing for a good session with the psychic, the psychic may simply ask the client something like "Tell me, what is it that's on your mind?", or put it in a more prosaic form. Many clients talk very much, they are hard to stop. By contrast, "Incidental Questions" are a more subtle way of checking whether the psychic is on the right way, with questions that "prompt for feedback", like adding "...is this making sense to you?" at the end of a sentence that formulates some supposedly deep insights, or casually adding "...what might this link to in your life?" after describing some scene that people may possibly relate to. Because the spirits of your ancestors are so hard to understand, of course their messages need interpretation. A psychic can let the client do a lot of the work and let it seem like the psychic did it.
In the fourth set of elements, there are elements about the future, that is, predictions. Providing insights into the future is a core part of the services of psychics, and "so easy it is laughable (except to believers)". In the description of "Peter Pan Predictions", Rowland observes: "Whatever the client most desires to come true, the psychic makes sure she sees it happening. In this day and age, this kind of highly reassuring message is perhaps the only one people cannot readily obtain from the media or anywhere else." (Okay, Rowland wrote this before there were sycophantic kinds of AI.)
Just as statements about character avoid the quantifiable, predictions usually have the built-in feature that they cannot immediately be verified or falsified during the reading; afterwards, selective memory and selective narratives will play their part. Of course, there is no scoring, no falsification or verification. The psychic can use predictions without exact timeframes. She can make more precise predictions (for example in 50:50 situations like "will the baby be a boy or a girl") and present the successes to other clients later on, or predict events that often happen anyway, in cases where most people do not know that this is the case ("In the year ahead I foresee an accident involving you, or a member of your family, and broke or falling glass"). There are also nice tricks like self-fulfilling prophecies: The psychic predicts that the client will start behaving more positively and have a better life because of that. Great if it works because the prediction made the client more positive and friendly, and the client then indeed finds her life better!
How the cold-reading elements are presented in the session
Rowland explains the psychic's behavior during a cold-reading session. Basically, be nice, be a good listener, provide time for the client, let her do a lot of the talking. Note that this is good advice for all situations in which you have to get along with people. (Maybe even more so for people who want to hide that they do not have much of substance to offer. The success of medical quacks is certainly also often based on making people feel understood.) Rowland also explains the "Cream principle":
"When you are adding cream to coffee, it is wise to start with just a little and then add more if you want. ... Psychics generally offer weak statements to begin with, rather than strong ones, because it is by far the safest strategy."
If, for example, the psychic asks: "I think you've had a little bit of back trouble now and again, haven't you?", then the psychic has "two chances of being right. If the original, weak statement is correct, then it is a hit. On the other hand, if the client indicates that the original statement was not strong enough, the psychic makes the adjustment while sounding like she was correct all along: [Client:] 'Well, that's putting it mildly. I've had several major back operations in my life.' [Psychic:] 'Yes, I could see it was a problem area. I didn't want to dwell on it too much, but nonetheless, it's right isn't it?' The psychic triumphs again." At the end of the cold-reading session, the psychic summarises the reading in a way that emphasises "the parts that went well" and glosses "over those that were less successful. This affects how the client remembers the reading, which in turn affects how she describes it to others. ... I myself have seen clients refer enthusiastically to details in my own readings that were never actually there."
Rowland emphasizes that confidence of performers of all kinds begets confidence. Nonetheless, to be well-prepared for a psychic session, the psychic needs a way to deal with situations when "a client will say that a statement is incorrect or just doesn't mean anything to her". Yet there "are many ways in which [the psychic] can still be right, or at the very least partially right". To cite just one of these many ways, the psychic may suggest that "her statement is correct, but the client may not realise this as she isn't aware of all the facts: 'I'm sensing the name Jane or Jenna in connection with your place of work. Someone you don't necessarily know very well but you see her often. Can you place this person?' 'No, really, no, I don't think I know anyone with either of those names.' 'Actually, there's a good chance this might not be your place of work. It might be someone your husband or a friend of yours works with, at some office or something like that, and you might not know them personally.'" There are many variations of this, and in several cases this includes making statements unfalsifiable or acting as if the psychic meant something different, inviting the client to share responsibility without blaming her (maybe she will remember something that fits later on).
The impression of cold-reading psychics that emerges from Rowland's book is that they can wriggle out of any situation by reinterpretation or other maneuvers. "Cold reading tends to require the gift of the gab, modest acting ability, lack of nerves and a touch of 'stage presence'." It seems obvious that a psychic should also be quick-witted, flexible, and unscrupulous. You are unlikely to make a good psychic if it would make you terribly nervous if you get the impression that the reading does not go well. Impostor syndrome is not a helpful mindset for this job.
How does a psychic handle sceptics? When explaining how his sessions start, Rowland mentions that if "the client is suspicious or sceptical", he talks "about the reading in more rational terms. For example, I might suggest that readings are akin to the exploration of psychological tricks and archetypes, or that they constitute a form of intuitive counselling and advice in which the props (tarot cards, astrological data etc.) are just a means to an end. It is really just a case of saying whatever I feel might disarm, or diminish, the client's sceptical stance." And there are more tools to do that. If the psychic realizes that a sceptic has come to the psychic reading, she can emphasize that she does not explicitly claim that her technique really works. "All I can tell you is that many people find it a useful way of enhancing their perspective on life, and perhaps opening a window to a broader appreciation of the cycles and themes in life that affect us all one way or another. That's really all there is to it, and all I ask of you is that you keep an open mind, enjoy the reading and see how it can be of benefit to you." That is, the psychic claims it is just an intuition aid. Nonetheless, if the client is too sceptical, the psychic may just end the reading, with varying amounts of blame put on the client and his scepticism that blocks the presented system's supernatural mechanisms of action.
Sceptics are also partially disarmed by promoting the notion that one must maintain an "open mind". "The implication is that an open mind is a characteristic of the fair, the reasonable and the intelligent. By implication, anyone who does not have an open mind is unfair and unreasonable, and hence their views can be dismissed. This is nonsense." Yes, keep an open mind—provided there really is something that ought to be viewed openly. "However, it is inappropriate to keep an open mind in cases where there is already plentiful evidence backing one view as against another." Given all the research already existing about psychic powers, we should "say instead that if the believers want us to acknowledge the reality of psychic ability, the onus is on them to prove their case. Whatever proof they provide, it will have to consist of something that cannot equally be attributed to the effectiveness of cold reading." Rowland advises to have an "informed mind" instead of an "open mind".
Resisting cold reading requires you to be on your guard. To employ the necessary security mindset, you need to be able to imagine the ways the attacker can attack, namely typical cognitive biases. Rowland explains how to block cold reading in a dedicated chapter. The core message is not to provide feedback, so the psychic has nothing to build on. For example, on the typical "And I believe this is making sense to you isn't it?", "I can't really decide if I agree or not. It's hard to say. I'll think about it. Please carry on, this is fascinating." Rowland outlines a process for how to expose a psychic reader, but for this you also need a certain audacity.
Are all psychics fraudsters?
So far, we have seen that psychic readings at least can be fraud, if the person doing the reading designs it skilfully. Such readings can create the impression that the psychic has access to supernatural sources of information, while actually relying on very general statements. These statements only seem specific because the client does not know how many people could be described by them. To this, the psychic adds information provided by the client who does not even realize that, makes unfalsifiable claims that client interprets as highly specific, and so on. Cold reading works because of clients' wishful thinking, misinterpreting and misremembering what happened, and selective sharing of what happened in the reading. People don't know how it works. For example, the "fallibility of human recall is not the problem. The problem is the lack of awareness of this fallibility."
Is Rowland just an exception? A talented trickster who uses tarot cards or whatever in bad faith? If so, he is very open about it, and he questions whether other cold readers are well-meaning. Rowland explains exactly about the setup of his readings, about which parts are improvised and which ones follow a preset script.
What indications does Rowland give with respect to whether other psychics believe in what they say? The overall picture coming across from the book is that it's usually a deliberate scam. But not always, not necessarily.
For example, he explains how some psychic readers use "stock readings". We said that they usually do not yield very much. Using exactly the same reading for every client might be boring, so the psychic may learn dozens, several for each theme, varying them depending on the month the client was born in. But maybe that's not just a scam system. "Some psychics use stock readings because they believe in the divinatory system they use. For example, the psychic may believe that each tarot card has a specific meaning and that she must convey the meaning accurately (blended with her own interpretation) for the reading to be successful." As the cards don't have any magic power and could be interchanged, the client's belief that it works is crucial. Rowland compares this to "ritual magic", a term that "applies to any process or treatment where the benefit, if there is any, derives solely from the participant's belief that there will be a benefit." And probably, this is easier if the psychic also believes in the system.
"Perhaps surprisingly, it is possible to become a skilled cold reader without realising it. Anyone who starts to give readings for fun will get at least a few favourable responses just by chance. If she persists, by trial and error she will slowly develop the knack of saying things that people seem to find meaningful in one way or another. All of this can happen entirely inadvertently. Before long, she will be getting so many favourable reactions to her readings that she will feel entitled to credit herself with some sort of authentic psychic ability." Rowland refers to Susan Blackmore's book "The Adventures of a Parapsychologist", in which she tells "how she started giving readings for fun and slowly came to believe she must possess psychic ability. In time, she was able to see she was in fact cold reading without even trying."
A reason for why people even believe that there is true psychic ability is that you don't learn cold reading in a cold-reading school. "Some learn from books, some are taught, some more or less teach themselves as they go along. Some are very analytical and teach themselves cold reading by studying and practising for many years... Others more or less develop the knack without trying." I have not yet seen a similarly detailed manual for cold reading and its relation to "psychics" before, which might be a reason to believe that many psychics learn their trade by imitating a mentor who also does not exactly know why what he or she does actually works.
So you can stumble into being a cold-reading psychic without having heard of the term or being told how to trick clients, and believing that you have some genuine psychic powers. Conversely, Rowland mentions that in addition to cold reading, some psychics employ cooperative "hot reading" systems, where they exchange notes on clients to act as if they had information via supernatural means. There certainly are wilful fraudsters and manipulators out there.
And so Rowland notes that nobody "can point to a psychic and say they are intentionally deceiving their clients", but "if there is no such thing as genuine psychic ability (which happens to be my opinion), then anyone who claims to be psychic is either deceiving themselves or deceiving others." At least, I would add, if such a person does not only claim but also believe that.
III. Psychic sessions as an intuition aid
We started the review prompted by Kaj Sotala's suggestion that tarot is an intuition aid that evolved into an optimized system over the centuries, and that this is additional to "it's all psychology” and "it's genuinely supernatural". I agree that creating intuition-aid systems can be positively useful. You can certainly develop elaborate systems of ritualized brainstorming. Sure, it seems plausible that cultural evolution selects rituals as psychological tools that are optimized for something. And maybe the tools work better if you tell nice stories around them without exactly explaining the psychological mechanisms. In this case, it may even make sense for people to use Tarot cards when they are home alone, or meet in Tarot communities and discuss the cards' meaning.
That said, the deception and self-deception explanation of tarot deserves more emphasis. They are plausibly a large part of the explanation of why "psychic" systems exist and have survived over the centuries - many people just want to believe, want to hear certain things, supposed psychics know that, and people are being scammed. Even psychics that aim to manipulate people can present their psychic system as mere intuition aids. Psychics also capitalize on the fact that people respond to intuition prompting. And the "magic" around the intuition aid may make some users uncritical and manipulable. Deceptive woo practices work because people do not know - or do not intuitively grasp - how they work.
Against this background, is using a woo technique necessary for getting intuitions? Perhaps looking in the sky, and letting yourself be inspired by images in the clouds works just as well. The meaning of the clouds is flexible, and random associations may help you brainstorm. If so, we should perhaps acknowledge the useful component and separate it from the supernatural framing.