relationship between cards and questions asked...

[rainbow]

Hi I'm a tarot beginner and though I already have 6 tarot decks, I still haven't done any readings yet. I'm taking my time to study the cards before doing any reading. (i'm just more of a shopping compulsive person :p)

Anyway, I'm interested in tarot since I wanna communicate with my subconscious. I see them as a set of projective test cards. I believe that each individual would project his/her own subconscious ideas onto cards, thus making tarot readings insightful.

However, I'm constantly troubled by a question. Since I believe nuthing/nobody is having control of my tarot deck, then the cards that appear on a particular reading would just be there by chance. Pure chance. (it is difficult to believe that my subconscious would pick the cards....ummmm)

If it's just pure chance, then why would the picked out cards have any relevance to the question I ask?

Please don't take me wrong, I am not questioning the value of tarots. I gained a lot insight when studying the individual cards, but I just can't think of how they should work on a question/answer reading..... i need some enlightenment....

Any advice/ sharing would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

[jmd]

Jung also noticed this in what he termed the mantic arts (in which he also classified the Tarot). Specifically, he noted that meaningful synchronistic events occured - all this means, really, is that meaningful correlated events occur at the same time, without really explaining why or how this happens...

Still, it already provides, possibly, a step towards answering your question: the card is meaningfully synchronous to your question - ie, it is meaningful in terms of the question or query a person has at a particular time.

[Trogon]

Howdy Rainbow & welcome to Aeclectic Tarot...

There's probably several ways of looking at this matter. One is that, yes, the cards do appear by "mere" happenstance, coming up in a purely random fashion. If that is the case, then the value is in what you get out of what you see in the cards. In other words, it wouldn't really matter which cards came up in a particular reading - the value would be in you subconscious realting the images and meanings to the question at hand.

Another common school of thought is that things around us (including Tarot) do not occur by mere randomness. There are powers outside of ourselves which have an affect on our lives. These outside energies (or spirits, or powers, or goddesses... etc) will help to push the cards into the positions they need to be in during the shuffling, cutting and dealing processes.

Personally I subscribe to a little bit of a blending of both of these. There are energies & spirits that one taps into and that guide us during the Tarot readings, ensuring that appropriate cards come to the top of the deck. Then it is still up to me to make the appropriate connections and say the right things during the reading.

Hope this helps to stir up your thoughts...

[lunalafey]

rainbow.....your question causes me to giggle, only because of the experienes I have had regarding cards and situtions. Your question is relted to the one I get asked alot. 'with all those cards, how come only the ones that fit the subject come up?'....small example: a reading on '1st date' card 'jumped' out of the deck....6 Lovers, which has the astrological tie to Gemini...and that was this persons sign....now out of all those cards???? HOW??? It just happens. I'm one who feels the sychronicity, most things appear random....but are not, somethings{not this particularly} are just beyond our understanding, rather than ignore/disbelieve, if these things are accepted without explination, a wonderful world is opened up. As we learn the cards, we begin to associate them with our life. Your sub-con is already at work the minute you turn over a card, sometimes even before!...there have been times that a particular issue has been asked, and from the nature of the Q, I can 'guess' some of the cards that will appear.

[Mojo]

Originally posted by rainbow
Since I believe nuthing/nobody is having control of my tarot deck, then the cards that appear on a particular reading would just be there by chance. Pure chance. (it is difficult to believe that my subconscious would pick the cards....ummmm)

If it's just pure chance, then why would the picked out cards have any relevance to the question I ask?

rainbow,

I believe exactly as you do. There are no outside forces which guide the cards. Synchronicity sure sounds impressive, but at its best, it's pseudoscience and unprovable.

I've always maintained that Tarot is a card game. In card games, your probability of winning comes down to percentages: what are the odds that a certain combination of cards will come up in a given layout. The same logic can be applied to Tarot.

Let's take the CC spread (10 cards) and choose "relationships" as the subject.

There are 78 cards in the deck. Of these, lets say there are 12 which can universally be applied to relationships (there are obviously more, but for the sake of argument, lets say: Lovers, Sun, Star, Ace of Cups, 2 Cups, 3 Cups, 6 Cups, 10 Cups, 10 Pentacles, 4 Wands, 6 Wands and 3 Swords).

There are also 16 Court cards which can represent potential relationship subjects (again, there are more if you include the Majors, but lets keep it conservative).

Math is not really a strong point for me, but let's look at the odds.

In a one-card draw, the odds are 12 out of 78 (or 2 out of 13) that a "relationship" card will appear. Not bad odds at all. So in a 10 card draw, the odds are 10 times better than that, or roughly a 3 out of 4 chance, which any betting person would surely put their money on.

The odds for a Court Card showing up are even better, an almost 4 out of 5 chance of happening. Obviously if you include more cards as potential answers for relationships and/or partners the odds get even better.

Hence, in any given CC spread, you are more likely than not to have at least one card speaking to the relationship and at least one card speaking to the object of that relationship.

From here, your intuition takes over. A reader with a decently trained sense of intuition can surely apply these two (or more) cards to the relationship question that was posed.

Voila! It's a card game!

[Alex]

Very often the cards bear no direct relevance to the question asked.

We are the ones who make the connection between the cards and the question asked; and then we give these connections back to the querrent in the form of an "interpretation". When we are tunned with the person's needs and personalities, the interpretations are helful. When we are not, the interpretations are just a waste of time.

A good game is to ask a question and pull a card, then pull another and another, so you can feel how different cards will give you very similar answers. Different in the form but similar in the context/message.

Anyway, my unpopular oppinion once more.

Take care

Alex.

Originally posted by rainbow
If it's just pure chance, then why would the picked out cards have any relevance to the question I ask?

[goddessof1967]

Actually it is the unconcious that is linked to the Tarot when we do readings. Our unconcious is also known as higher self/universe.

The sub concious is ego.

[Flavio]

Originally Posted by Mojo

Math is not really a strong point for me, but let's look at the odds.

In a one-card draw, the odds are 12 out of 78 (or 2 out of 13) that a "relationship" card will appear. Not bad odds at all. So in a 10 card draw, the odds are 10 times better than that, or roughly a 3 out of 4 chance, which any betting person would surely put their money on.

Neither I am an MIT genius but I think the odds for a 10 card draw are not as high as you think because when you pick up the first card the odds are 12/78 which is roughly a 15.38% then 11/77, 10/76 and so on by the time we reach the last card (assuming all the relationship cards will appear) the odds are 1/67 which is a 1.49% and that low probability is what makes most of us wonder how we can get the "right" cards. For example in this thread was calculated that the chances to get 5 Trumps in a 10 card draw is between 0.0799 and 8%.

Anyway I totally agree with you that a talented reader can get an insightful relationship interpretation with 1 or 2 relationship cards in the spread (maybe even without relationship cards!)

[Thirteen]

Originally Posted by rainbow

Since I believe nuthing/nobody is having control of my tarot deck, then the cards that appear on a particular reading would just be there by chance. Pure chance.

If it's just pure chance, then why would the picked out cards have any relevance to the question I ask?

Because each and every one of the cards have to do with universal human experiences. And you, I presume, are a human being. This is what makes the tarot so wonderful, universal and lasting. We all have had, or will have experiences that we see in the cards. We've all known moments of boredom shown in the 4/cups, moments of destitution shown in 5/pentacles, moments of feeling stabbed in the back as 10/swords. We all know and Emperor or Emperess or Devil. We've all been the Hanged man, suspended in our lives, or the Fool, ready to begin afresh though we know not where we're going.

The Tarot is life, human life. Any card you pick out will have some relevance to any question about human life that you ask.

[Abrac]

Hi rainbow

I understand where you're coming from, I've been there, so let me just say, the art of divination has nothing to with your beliefs about the universe, or a higher power, fate, or chancce. Some people incorporate these concepts into it successfully, and it helps them, but it insn't required and it may even be a hindrance. As an artist, I'm more interested in the flavor of my creations than why they taste the way they do. To make it work you don't really need to know why, but how. Thinking about it too much gets in the way. I know nothing about the inner workings of my computer but I do know if I want a certain result, I do A, B, and C and I get the result I'm after. IMO, you're doing the right thing by studying different decks and learning their meanings.(A) Another important thing is focused attention.(B) Also, a strong need or desire to receive guidance from the cards.(C)

I know this may sound oversimplistic but it really isn't. The "why" is the domain of philosophers, priests, and academics. The "how" is the domain of artists, mystics, and soothsayers. Not to say there's anything wrong with philosophy and academics, just that by themselves they don't really do anything to increase divinatory abilities.

Take care...

fools_fool