“Third Time’s the (C)harm”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: We all recognize the proverb “The third time’s the charm” when we’ve failed twice at something and are trying again with finger’s crossed. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote “The luck of the third adventure is proverbial.”) But when it comes to divination, asking the same question over-and-over again and expecting a more agreeable answer succumbs to the “definition of insanity.” It may not bring actual harm, but it can certainly produce confusion and disillusionment.
I just learned from Benebell Wen’s book, I Ching, The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes, that in the practice of traditional I Ching divination it was permissible (and forgivable) to ask the same thing twice in close succession; however, if you brought your inquiry to the oracle three times in a row you were shut out. Landing on its doorstep with an identical request after declining to do anything constructive with the first two judgments wore out your welcome. If we subscribe to the idea of Marcus Katz that “the oracular moment is sacrosanct,” it’s easy to see why I Ching sages considered three or more such ventures to be blasphemous: it shows a lack of respect for the oracle and little faith in its advice, an attitude that dishonors both it and us.
This subject is often raised by beginners in online tarot discussion groups because they’ve failed to receive favorable, or even intelligible, answers to the questions they pose to the cards. Conventional wisdom is that it is futile to keep asking the same question in hope of receiving a prediction that is more to our liking; the cards will eventually become even less helpful and will start talking nonsense. If we perform a reading and decide that the answer is unproductive but don’t attempt to figure out what it was trying to tell us or engage with it in a practical way and instead just keep on pulling cards, we will be no wiser at the end of the day than we were before we did the reading. (In other words, we wasted our time.) But, to be honest, there are occasions when a deeper, more thoughtful outlook is required than can be obtained from a single reading.
I encounter this all the time in my missing-person work. I want to know three critical things when I begin: “What happened to the person? Where (and in what condition) are they right now? Will they be found, dead or alive?” A single pull is typically not inclusive enough to cover all of these points in sufficient detail, so I’ve created three or four different spreads to address the range of questions and I use them in series. If my tarot readings generate only weak testimony, I will turn to horary astrology, which is much more robust from a pragmatic perspective.
The temptation to persist in chasing this phantom with divination is deeply rooted in wishful thinking, and the alluring solution is to keep pulling cards until they “get it right,” either by presenting the same question to a new spread or by drawing endless “clarifier” cards to give them additional opportunities to appease us. (Look up Rita Mae Brown and “the definition of insanity,” although it seems to have originated in the 19th Century.) My advice to tarot beginners is to avoid repeating your questions with the same predictive method and switch to a different technique. This will “refresh” your view of the matter. If you don’t know an alternate form of divination, learn one since it’s a good idea to have more than a single “arrow in the quiver.” Lenormand is excellent and well worth your time, as is horary astrology (and it’s simpler than natal astrology).
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on June 7, 2024.
