Tarot is usually played by people who want to guide their thoughts – mostly about the future of their own, their family, their friends’ or their clients’ life. I am saying that Tarot is “played”, because it starts off by mixing a full deck of 78 cards, then by placing some of them on a table, then by putting them into a pattern of a certain order. Then follows an act of deriving meaning from them, which, depending on the severity of interest, will result in acceptable conclusions, subtle remote hinting, outright wrong statements or even sheer blasphemy. Tarot is not guided by any theoretical, spiritual or humanistic foundations such as world religions would be – it is a sophisticated way to shuffle soft deliberations based far more on previous assumptions and prejudice than anyone would readily admit. There is nothing sacred about Tarot.
Tarot reading equals the attempt to mix any deliberate selection of 78 newspaper articles, and trying to use them to interprete reality and to build sensible decisions for the future. It is weird that one would “mix” cards, if maybe deliberate selections would be more appropriate, particularly if guided by insight and experience?
Theoretical foundations – as well as the utter lack thereof – can be at least critically evaluated by reasonable doubt. What if an appropriate card is not in your deck? What if you need the same card twice to build a particular path into the future? What, if you would require 200 different cards for a specific problem? What if channeling your thoughts is simply wrong, and you’d need your horizon to instead open up real wide? What if the given cards hold no solution? Whatever happened to the old arabic concept of ‘null’ value? Maybe Goedel was right, and limitations of a method can not be sufficiently concluded on basis of the method itself? Would a reasonable person not be afraid of a spiritual dead end based on such simple theoretical considerations as mine?
It seems to me very clear right from the outset, that results of Tarot readings must be confusing at best and outright misleading at worst. The setup of the whole process inherently leads to wrong answers. Conversely, real life experience doesn’t get better with Tarot – unless of course one isolates oneself into a Tarot community.
If Tarot readings are obtained often enough with the same question in mind, the results must be dependent only on the frequency of specific differences in the meanings of the cards.
Further confusion arises due to the very soft wording of the consequences of card combinations, so it is probably difficult for some people to realise that they are simply being had.
If looked at as a silly play or simple attempt at chance, it is fine – as soon as it takes on serious dimensions, however, satire should be allowed to walk in with a firm step.
You eventually may come to realise that Tarot consists only of wrong cards, and try to work out situations that can not be solved by any Tarot session any more.
So there is a need for some Tarot victim support. My favorite Tarot card is “Magenta Alert”. If one’s life is scripted by the chance of anyone turning up the “Poopsmith” card for you, you will realise that non-sense in the true meaning of the word is happening.
So go to somethingawful.com and check out the tarot card selection there; I am sure you will find some cards that help you come to terms with being part of a deck-based scripted life rather than any previous normality you may have been used to.
