Though I do not share thinbuddha's nor Lyric's quote of Whyte's view - basically a reductionist physicalist view of the world - a world that I consider essentially spiritual, the question posed is, contra my friend Umbrae, in my view an important one: How does Tarot work?
Of course, for someone who has a non-spiritual view of the world, any description taking as a foundation a spiritual underpinning will be viewed as flawed. Similarly, a flat-earther will likewise view any 'evidence' that the Earth is (roughly) spherical as essentially flawed.
When I go shopping, I swipe a mere bit of plastic with a magnetic strip on the back, and I can walk out with goods from any shop. Unfortunately, when I later check my bank balance, it seems to have taken a slump. Sometimes, I even type things on my keyboard, and Umbrae or Jeannette (I presume) somewhat respond to these pixels of light and send me a (nother) deck... unfortunately again this seems to cause a dip in my bank balance!
The point is that just because Tarot is 'expressed' or 'manifests' as pigment on cardboard or parchment (or plastic) does not mean that it is mere pigment on parchment - and certainly not random meaningless ink-imprints.
How does it work?
Having an essentially spiritual view of the world, I tend to see things as possibly far more interconnected in meaningful ways than some of my physicalist companions.
'Beyond' the obvious scenes are many forces at work, each, in essence, spiritual. That specific cards emerge at specific instances reflects, in my own personal view, meaningful indications.
How open and ready we each are to render this form of communication across to another person has an importance that Umbrae highlights over and over. In a reading, it is not the understanding of how it works that is important, but what one does (or say) - similarly, in entering the house, it is not my understanding of the workings of electricity that will matter, but on the ability to turn on the lights (and this computer!).
So on which 'camp' do I stand? certainly not on the one that seeks to reduce the spiritual to mere Jungian 'psychological pressures', to physical explanations, to dispositions to culturally explain - though these too may be of import. Rather, and despite the gap of understanding that arises in possibly whichever view we may have, a view of the world as essentially spiritual hints me to view the workings of a reading in essentially spiritual ways.
