In a sense, the whole venture was modeled after oracles like that of Delphi. People would travel from all over the world to hear what the oracle would say. Similarly, people from all over the world-wide-web come into contact with me, looking for a message.
The project is based on my concept of divination as a poetic event. The diviner crafts a metaphor for the client hoping that, as Deng Ming-Dao writes in "The Living I Ching":
"the intuitive associations that will give insight into the problem at hand become possible. Metaphor becomes the basis for spirituality."
That is, divination is seen as an action in which the artist tosses a metaphor to the client. Since the metaphor is confined to the boundaries of a reading, the client will be willing to do the necessary search for which makes the metaphor appropriate, personal and relevant. It would be more accurate to say that the diviner generates an image, and it is the client who turns that image into a metaphor by assigning a referent to it. In other words, I give them a metaphor, but I don't know what this metaphor represents. Only the participant knows this. My role is one of a catalyst in a process that is very well described by Jay Parini in "Why Poetry Matters":
"I would argue that formless poetry does not really exist, as poets inevitably create patterns in language that replicate forms of experience. Poetry in this sense becomes "useful" in that it allows consciousness itself to emerge within the grid of the poem".
I don't see divination as a practice in which the participant/client sits passively by. I don't see divination as a process in which the diviner is in power. I am not here to meet the public’s expectations, but to expand them. I see it as an event in which the diviner uses imagery to elicit unexpected thoughts, projections, and associations in the client's mind, and that these might be conductive to insight and more importantly, to inspiration. Divination is a relationship. As you may notice, my approach is totally 'secular', since I don't think that any supernatural or paranormal element is involved in divination, nor do I feel the need for it. The role of the diviner is to set the client's mind in motion through the use of metaphors-as-suggestions.
That doesn't mean that my metaphors are whimsical or capricious. They are all imaginal responses to the nonverbal impressions I get while looking at each person's photo.
For a couple of years I searched around New York for a nice place to conduct my metaphorical readings. I wanted them to be public in the sense of being brief and sharp, different from the natural setting of a tarot reading in which the clients come for a semi-extended period of time (30 to 60 minutes). I never found a viable place. Then, it occurred to me that the web could be my "stage". That's why I created a blog, originally on MySpace, and eventually, my own website.
At first, it took a little while for the project to take off, the main resistance being that some people are unwilling to have their pictures posted in a public blog. But soon I was flooded with photos from all over the world: Mexico, Germany, England, New Zealand, Belgium, France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Canada, USA, etc. Even so, the proportion is of about 10 Spanish-speaking participants to 1 English speaker. In my practice, this proportion also holds true for tarot readings.
I decided not to promote the blog in any way, but just let it expand by word of mouth. At the beginning, some friends were hoping for it to become mainstream. It didn't. On the one hand, I knew my time and energy was limited. On the other hand, in a world where the most-viewed videos are of teenage girls singing cabaret songs in their bedrooms, or of people being hit in the balls by a rodeo bull, metaphors and poetry simply don't fit.
By delivering the messages in writing I learned something: the writing word lends itself beautifully to a more open kind of reading. It has to do with the way reading (as in lecture) naturally works: we scan the page, and fill each word with our own mental depiction of the events described in the text. This process allows for the use of language patterns that are closer to traditional poetry, and different from verbal communication. Comparing my work with the tarot with my work in the blog, I learned that writing your messages allow for a simplicity that you can't reach verbally, simply because you don't need to follow your natural speech patterns when you write. At the same time, a client working with me in real time might demand an explanation that I would never volunteer online.
Why?
Because the real magic in the process occurs when my metaphor clicks in the person's mind. Explaining a metaphor is killing it. I take the realization, the moment in which the participant discerns the relevance of my metaphor, as a healing event. A moment of enlightenment. I wouldn’t take that away from the participant.
When I started the project, my messages were much longer than they are now. I tried to cover lots of terrain, giving people loads of information. I became progressively sharper: now I can simply look at someone and detect the single metaphor I feel they need. This mirrors my experience with the tarot: a few cards render a simpler, yet deeper, message than many cards.
At the same time, I have used the project to escape from the confinement of the New Age. By this I mean that it is very difficult to talk about inspirational matters today without falling into the lexicon and language patterns of the New Age. Since I believe that clichés have no healing power, it has been important for me to talk about these things with new/different words. I don't think I completely manage to accomplish this, but I try to the best of my ability.
Over time, I decided to stretch the metaphors to see how far could I take them. I am pleased to observe that the process works as long as the person is willing to engage in it, no matter how obscure or seemingly absurd my metaphor might be. The main thing I have learned from this project might be: in divination, context is more important than content. This has helped me to keep my ego in check when I do my tarot readings, since the same principles are at work: it is my client's willingness to make sense of what I say that makes my words useful. This gives me an enormous faith in the ability people have to resolve their problems, if they are provided with the right context and stimulus.
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