Is Tarot Random?

My boyfriend is a poker player and he says that if i did enough readings, i would find an even distribution of all the cards coming out and that the cards that are drawn on any reading are totally random and not connected to the question asked.

He doesn't claim that tarrot doesn't work however, he believes it to be a tool that people can use to explore their inner thoughts.

Do you agree that the cards drawn are random or are they influenced by the question asked or energy of a person?


I would appreciate if you would give me some feedback on this.

Thanks,
Love Janey x

I think tarot is random, just as life is random.

I also agree with your boyfriend that tarot is a tool for me to explore my inner thoughts. I would add that it is the reader, not the cards, that make the reading.

I would agree with your boyfriend there. Tarot cards aren't driven by any sort of mysticism to get you the answer you're looking for. The cards are simply tools used to help you find out more on a problem than you might be consciously seeing. I think your energy effects it in a way that the more negativity you're experiencing, the more negativity will turn up. I don't really see this as any kind of magic, as I feel like this is true for any other aspect of life (ever notice when you're in a particularly bad mood, everything else seems to go wrong and hit the fan?). The more clear headed you are, the more open to different answers you become.

It's got to be random, as the poker cards are random, cos the cards are just cards...

Having said that, with my Angel cards, I do find that one will stick out of the deck as I've shuffled, and that card is 99% of the time very very accurate...

So although I say they are random, there just might be something that I can't explain...
Ang x

I've found it to be less than random, pulling the same card several times for the same question asked on different days and different decks.

Now for people looking for a more mundane explanation than some sort of divine ordering of the cards, it could well be that our subconscious knows exactly what order the cards are in, picks up on the order of the shuffle at some deep level.

As for other questions, it does seem completely random, but that's often when I'm just looking for an alternate perspective to something, a way to jumpstart my thinking with other connections.

Sometimes I find that questioning the mechanics of Tarot damages its effectiveness for a while.

The suggestion put by someone's partner above that they should do enough readings to find an even spread of cards coming out would be an example - if you are doing something to test for randomness, you will get randomness. However, if you are doing a reading to provide information, you will get information.

Ambience said:

My boyfriend is a poker player and he says that if i did enough readings, i would find an even distribution of all the cards coming out and that the cards that are drawn on any reading are totally random and not connected to the question asked.

Love Janey x

Click to expand...

I think if he actually kept records of all the hands he had over the course of a year, they wouldn't be distributed evenly.
I've kept records of my daily draw for nearly 4 years, there are a number of cards that have only come up a couple of times and a number that have come up more than 2 dozen times.

My draws are certainly random; shuffle shuffle shuffle, cut, shuffle, fan and draw from anywhere in that fan.

Someone should actually try an experiment to see which is true.

The very fact of starting up an experiment will change the results. THAT is science, too.

This isn't quantum mechanics, at least at the level of the question involved: over time, will the cards drawn conform to expectations of randomness? It's fairly easy to design a valid experiment to investigate this--if you can measure the effects of reiki (they can), this is a breeze.