Mission Impossible?
AUTHOR’S NOTE: “Can tarot really tell the future?”
Tarot readers gnaw on this question endlessly the way a dog worries a well-chewed bone, and it frequently comes up in online discussion groups. Judging from the number of comments I’ve seen, it often feels like there are as many contentious opinions about it as there are examples of that ubiquitous anatomical feature to which opinions are compared.
I spent my first forty years with the cards convinced that I had no use for them in predicting events and circumstances. Tarot was an adjunct to my practice of natal astrology, a psychological tool for self-examination from a philosophical rather than a mundane perspective. I wanted to know more about why I might react in a particular way than about the potential consequences of my reaction; armed with self-awareness, I could anticipate the most likely outcome of my response to any unforeseen occurrence without having to perform a reading on it. This was coupled with a strong focus on the Hermetic and Qabalistic traditions underlying the cards, which for the most part were abstract and esoteric.
But I took a long break from tarot while practicing other occult disciplines, and when I returned I discovered that the social-media feeding frenzy over all things mystical was in full swing. New readers far outnumbered more seasoned diviners, and all of them wanted to know whether they were on the right track. Amid the clamor of those strenuously insisting “Tarot should never be used to tell fortunes, it is only for self-development” (and some, without bothering to learn its history, even said “It was originally intended to promote personal growth”), there were a few quieter voices acknowledging its 18th-Centruty roots (long before Jung) as a method of divination.
By that time in my voyage of self-discovery I had pretty much run the psychological well dry after nearly 50 years of tapping it, so I made a decision to thoroughly explore predictive uses of the cards. I had long ago taken the position that there is no empirical basis for believing that they can detect exactly what is going to happen because nobody has been keeping objective records of successes and failures in the same way it was done for astrological horoscope interpretation. The vast majority of tarot results were (and are) anecdotal and private, shared only between the seeker and the reader, and many times the latter never sees or hears from the former again. Without hard data, the scientific method flies out the window.
I chose to adopt more of a “soft-focus” approach that looks at what we can reasonably expect to learn about the future from a tarot reading without putting too fine a point on it. Not long after I resumed reading professionally in 2014, I had a sitter who said as soon as she sat down, “Don’t tell me anything bad!” I advised her that the cards don’t do that directly, they highlight tendencies, trends, possibilities and potentials that will probably not amount to much unless we put intention and initiative behind them. Whether we acknowledge and nurture a positive outlook or fail to actively suppress a negative one will have a lot to say about whether it will “come true” as proposed by the narrative.
It’s all about “forewarned is forearmed” and encouraging a situational atmosphere that supports the outcome we want. The cards are only an aid in figuring out where we can put our foreknowledge of trending events to best use. We can almost always redirect their energy through timely and well-chosen action, or at least alter how it is experienced by adjusting our stance. (If you are customarily defensive, try going on the offensive at least once; you might surprise yourself).
Since that watershed session I’ve continued down the same path with every reading, focusing mainly on action-and-event-oriented prognostication while keeping a close eye on the broad environmental conditions promised by the cards and a less attentive one on the minute details of the matter, which too often are not in evidence anyway unless I “make them up” using intuition (and as you must know by now, I take a dim view of intuitive guesswork as a stop-gap measure for inadequate knowledge of the cards and lack of experience in using them).
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on May 10, 2024.
