Ep320: Divination & Tarot - Dr Ben Joffe
Dr Ben Joffe is an anthropologist, occultist, and scholar practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism.
Available on Youtube, iTunes, SoundCloud & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast’.
Dr Joffe leads a deep dive into the topic of divination, explores its underlying mechanisms and practical methods, and compares different cultural understandings of the practice.
Dr Joffe details his understanding of the tarot as a scholar and reader, shares his advice for those who wish to learn the system, and reveals how to use tarot for information gathering, sorcery, and magickal workings.
Dr Joffe also reflects on his own journey as a tarot reader, addresses criticisms that tarot and other psychic methods are exploitative, and considers the uneasy relationship between divination and licensed counselling.
00:00 - Intro
02:12 - What is divination?
06:08 - Synchronicity and randomness
09:37 - Dependent origination
14:34 - Ben’s extensive study of divination
22:13 - Mechanistic vs intuitive
29:17 - Scrying and establishing parameters
34:56 - Childhood divination
39:59 - What should divination mean for the client?
41:50 - Addiction to divination
43:50 - Cold reading and choosing a question
48:45 - Ben’s recounts his own history as a diviner
01:20:43 - Structure of the tarot
01:27:16 - How to read tarot
01:48:38 - Tarot reading mistakes
01:53:46 - Tibetan butter lamp divination
01:57:11 - Collaboration vs cold reading
02:02:10 - Studying the history of tarot
02:06:58 - 6 reasons to engage with tarot
02:09:22 - Critique of modern, inclusive decks
02:12:43 - Bad omens and gatekeeping
02:20:17 - Is tarot exploitative pseudo-counselling?
02:47:23 - Why not just become a counsellor?
02:54:19 - Is tarot over-psychologised?
02:55:25 - Ben reflects on his recurring clients
03:01:11 - The power of the right question
03:07:39 - Shaman and tarot reader as therapy-adjacent
03:13:18 - Does clairvoyance actually have value?
03:16:16 - Caution about taking life advice from Buddhist lamas
03:21:44 - Wild West of Tiktok diviners
03:22:49 - Anti-divination laws
03:29:14 - Tibetan and Buddhist divination
Previous episodes with Dr Ben Joffe:
To find out more about Dr Ben Joffe, visit:
Music ‘Deva Dasi’ by Steve James