Schrodinger and the “Fabric of Reality”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I haven’t touched on this subject recently, but my involvement in the Reddit sub r/seculartarot brought it back around.
I once described divination in fanciful terms as “running my mental fingers through the warp-and-woof of the fabric of reality, trying to tease out threads of truth.” More recently I encountered the ideas of physicist Erwin Schrodinger, whose example of a metaphorical “cat” that can be both alive and dead at the same time seems to have sparked the abiding interest in “parallel realities” displayed by visionary science-fiction writers like Robert Anton Wilson, as well as by some theoretical physicists. The latter surmise that the apparent flow of time is an illusion of our subjective vantage point, perhaps subdivided by our individual, episodic circadian rhythm, and that all phenomena — both observable and conceivable — exist or at least “potentiate” within the Eternal Now. The “past” is only a function of sequential memory, and the “future” is the stuff of guesswork with no empirical substance. To his credit, Schrodinger managed to convince Albert Einstein of the validity of his unlikely premise.
Returning to the concept of divination, we might say that all potential occurrences reside somewhere in the seamless space/time continuum (aka the “multiverse”) at any given moment, and the task of a reading is to coax the most likely of them to the surface of our waking consciousness so we can interact with it in concrete ways, whether to facilitate its manifestation or suppress it. In that sense, I think any conjecture regarding forthcoming events and circumstances is only hypothetical, in that multiple convergences and collisions can occur between it and a host of divergent scenarios that will very likely steer it away from its projected path. The most common one is the involvement of other people who bring their own agenda to the table: whose reality will prevail? This phenomenon can be a major factor in the decreasing accuracy of predictions over the period of weeks and months following a reading.
Therefore, any forecast is at best a “crap shoot;” we roll the dice and interpret their testimony to the best of our ability on behalf of the individual we are attempting to aid. It can amount to trying to guide them through a minefield of competing possibilities, some of which may be highly-charged in terms of emotional investment. Few tarot readers are trained and licensed psychotherapists (self-appointed “life-coach” doesn’t qualify), and this can quickly become very deep water in which we are out of our depth. Personally, I restrain myself from offering actionable advice that may get me in trouble, and strive only to put the seeker in touch with any plausible trends or tendencies suggested by the series of cards; the observations I provide are to be “taken under advisement” in decision-making and not treated in any way as gospel truth.
There is a postulate in Hermetic philosophy that “The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental;” the cerebral Cosmos is therefore infinitely subtle and multi-faceted. This multiplicity is admirably embodied in the symbolism of the tarot, variously in the archetypal complexities of the trump cards, the socio-psychological “human” properties of the court cards and the mundane numerical and elemental (aka “suit”) principles of the minor or “pip” cards. This potent stew of ideas can be organized and rendered sensible through the act of vatcination,* which translates images into a meaningful narrative that ideally conveys a clear picture of what may be in store for the querent, at least in speculative terms.
*According to French tarot writer Joseph Maxwell, this is “the faculty of being able to read the information possessed by the enquirer about his past, present and future. Coming events cast a shadow before them; each individual has a presentiment about his own destiny, which may remain latent: the normal processes of consciousness do not include such presentiments.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 21, 2024.
