Thoughts on Tarot. Superstition or a useful tool?

Sorry, I got nothing.

I get what you're saying. I sometimes read tarot cards. Usually it's part of a halloween costume or at a house party. sometimes the readings are down-right freaky. It's not because I am psychic or the cards are mystical. It's because of coincidence and an interaction of non-verbal cues.

Maybe it is something akin to the recognition of our own situation that we sometimes find in songs and poems.

Sure. And, the more experience you have, the more you can atune to what's going on with other people.

We was playing 5 card Tarot just this last sat nite, it was the regular group of theosophists raising the devil (we got him over 5 ft in the air) anyway we were playing pentacles wild and i hit the big 8 Ba gua on the Feng Shui map and found meself at 3 in the a.m. painting my front door red. My neighbors are curious.

<snort>

lambs blood aside..


a cold tarot reading can bring you lots of money...


' questioner- Will I be rich?'


reader- Yes.. when you earn a lot of money, you will be very rich!

will I be famous?

As soon as everyone knows who you are, you will be very famous . Wealth may follow that..

Will I have a long life?

Yes so long as you avoid strange accidents and stay healthy!



45.00 dollars please..

You mean they weren't before?





:wink:

His neighbors are down-right odd.

Cyracuz, could i interest you in a slightly-used but potentially very lucrative bridge? I can let you have a substantial discount if you act now.

You guys better be glad you dont live near me.

screaming, yelling , bells, lots of smoke, candles, feathers.. the occasional missing baby. .

I'm not scared of you.

I got those red chalk lines over all my thresholds and you can't get in.

thats ok ...

I got an air can

im'ma blow em away...

A bridge you say? Is it big and red and dancing?

To answer the question as such - superstition. It's a clearcut case between the charlatans, and the kindof people that dig it, it's just not in the nature of non-bullshit.

The term superstition gets misused tho. People think true/false like its a light switch, but to my mind true is the default state and false is context dependent. In this case - true that it's old images that come down to us in a non-canonical fashion, true that there were tangible meanings - not to say any of that makes it more than a historical curiosity - but in the case of the Greeks with the Zeus-makes-lightning idea wasn't just folklore, it was an attempt at determining truth, stemming, albeit crudely from other truisms, like how people get pissed and start shit in a manner analogous to weather patterns.

I never took philosophy and I don't care to - I say all that to say this - people always think they've got the right idea, like 'let's address global warming' 'it's time to end children's suffering in this or that manner' - there's always assumptions to be made, and that's fine, but how many of these jokers know, even as well as the Greeks and whoever made the tarot did, to keep an eye on the context? I mean there's always free cheese in a mousetrap...

Any superstition can be useful in the sense that it may lead one to view a situation in a way which had not previously occurred to one. But superstition becomes positively harmful when one thinks that there is any inherent merit in the superstition itself, as opposed to being simply a thought exercise.

Damn, Setanta beat me to it.

Ditto what he said.

farmerman said

Indeed, niether do Tarot Cards..maybe an Old Maid deck in combination with a regular deck of 52 cards. It certainly would allow more possibilities and therefore, perhaps, more specificity in the infomation so gleened.

JM

Hello Cyracuz. I have been reading my cards for over 20 years and I find it's usefulness to come from what I believe my favorite, Carl Jung, would call the "collective unconscious". Essentially I choose the exact cards I end up choosing because in an unconscious way, I know what I am choosing. And what I choose is what's pertinent to me, because the choosing comes not from me,so much as from my connection to the collective unconscious. In this way, how useful Tarot card reading may be depends mostly on the degree of connection the reader is able to maintain with this collective unconscious, and has nothing to do with any mystical or magical ability on my part at all.

Agree with Set et al. Waves eyes.

Unfortunately for some kind of exploration by me of what Cyracuz is on about, I lived through an era of tarot berserkness.. so I'm not even amused enough to consider it.

Go ahead, say I'm closed minded.