Tarot: Does it work? How?

Tarot can be a method to release the subconscious decisions that we may otherwise be reluctant to accept willingly. It also reminds us that the future has not occurred yet and you still affect the outcome. It helps strengthen bonds between reader and asker by having energies from both being involved in the same event.

If you accept the basic principle of psychology (known also before Freud of course but thrown into sharp relief by him): that we humans have mechanisms to suppress, hide, distort, circumvent knowledge which is incovenient, painful or threatening to us, then it's clear that tarot works, and how it works.

Tarot tells us what we know, but we don't know that we know it. Tarot helps us to "lift" little bundles from the sea of the unconscious onto the ship of our consciousness. There are many different tools we can use to access this knowledge, tarot is one among them. Tarot has many advantages: it's flexible, intuitive, easily connected with other tools, and since it's visual, it can access intuitive knowledge not grasped verbally - right brain stuff.

These little bundles of knowledge accessed via tarot can warn me, encourage me, force me to acknowledge uncomfortable truths or comfort me, and explain causal chains I didn't understand before. If we were a more developed species, we wouldn't need tarot cards because we'd use our intuition all the time to assess our lives, actions and choices.

I know that others see it differently and are sure that tarot can bring us knowledge from outside ourselves, but for me, tarot is a self reflective tool and that's how I use it.

I also use tarot to act on the insights it gives me - with affirmations, meditation and visualizations.

To say it with the German poet Hölderlin:

Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst das Rettende auch.

Where there is danger, there also grows the saving power.

Or in my words: where tarot indicated a problem, it also helps me to find a solution.

And it works beautifully.

Mirroring

I think the cards that come up in a reading are a reflection of your energy and so do mirror you, and the issue that you are focused upon. In the same way as events that happen to us mirror our energy. So, no I don't think the cards that appear are just random and can be interpreted how you like, I think they really are reflective of your energy and so do have the potential to assist as meaningful guidance.
I woke up this morning thinking about the order in which cards are laid out, and I thought about how the chain of events from 'situation' for example, to 'outcome' are actually reflective also of the steps in time, so in real terms, each card you lay out, picks up either a different energetic value in time, or a different layer of significance in time.
Sometimes the results of a reading are so shockingly obviously related to the question, that I cannot doubt this is not mere random.

It works like a mirror, so that we can see the parts of ourselves that we cannot see otherwise.

I think.

Someone here came up with that a couple of years ago and I really like it.

This forum is truly amazing! Such a deep discussion started 10 year ago, and the answers remain timeless.
Honestly I believe there will never be an answer to this question. The comparison to "art" above is the one which resonated with me the most.
Tarot is for different people a different thing, and like art everyone sees something different in it.
I see the cards drawn as being random, but the "magic" all happening in the interpretation. And for the interpretation to be good, there needs to be a connection with the deck! Depending on your beliefs and experiences this connection will be done in different ways, but as long as it is there, the tarot works!
I don't like reading for myself, but i've had very positive feedback reading for others, even though I come from a scientific background and am always sceptical if there's no proof behind.

nisaba said:

I think if you look too closely at *how* something works, it stops working. Scientists seem to think that observed scientific phenomena work differently under observation to when they are not under observation. Someone concentrating on muscular movements at the gym or during dance who thinks about their body very often finds their skill deserting them until they forget about it and go back into automatic mode. And how many of us actually *think* about braking, accelerating, turning or changing gear in a car? - we don't, it's all automated through the limbic system, and when it isn't yet (as an inexperienced driver) and we are thinking about what we do, we are not so good at it.

So too, Tarot. If you just go and do it, it works, If you analyse it and try and form hypotheses about its mechanics, it becomes stilted and awkward if not downright inaccurate, like a learner's driving or a suddenly-selfconscious dancer's dancing.

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I impress myself, sometimes. I didn't really remember saying this, but I like it very much and I stand by it.

nisaba said:

I impress myself, sometimes. I didn't really remember saying this, but I like it very much and I stand by it.

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I like it too! I also like the idea of tarot working as a mirror, that makes sense to me.

There are a lot of interesting thoughts in this thread, I've enjoyed reading it. But it really doesn't matter to me why it works, I just think it is really cool.

This thread again ...

nisaba said:

I think if you look too closely at *how* something works, it stops working. Scientists seem to think that observed scien tific phenomena work differently under observation to when they are not under observation. Someone concentrating on muscular movements at the gym or during dance who thinks about their body very often finds their skill deserting them until they forget about it and go back into automatic mode. And how many of us actually *think* about braking, accelerating, turning or changing gear in a car? - we don't, it's all automated through the limbic system, and when it isn't yet (as an inexperienced driver) and we are thinking about what we do, we are not so good at it.

So too, Tarot. If you just go and do it, it works, If you analyse it and try and form hypotheses about its mechanics, it becomes stilted and awkward if not downright inaccurate, like a learner's driving or a suddenly-selfconscious dancer's dancing.

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I stand by my previous answer to that (post #60) and agree with JackOfWand's answer in post #62 : By applying that logic one would expect car engineers to be bad drivers. But there is no sign that they are.

Nisaba's post as well as what others have said about deep focus, intuition instead of precise knowledge of facts and so on is fair enough when talking about the state of mind in the process of reading tarot. This thread is about our general understanding of tarot though. I normally either think about tarot in general or read tarot. Maybe this isn't as simple to separate for everybody as it seems to be for me.

If the price for being able to read tarot really would be to stay deliberatly dumb (which I don't think is the case) then I'd rather stop reading tarot.

I agree with nissy actually. Driving a car does not require one to go into the levels of intuition - which is where overthinking can break things down. Thinking "ooh nasty noise maybe I had better check the wheel bearings, and steer carefully for now" is not the same as a reading stopping dead while you think of all you have learned about the Moon card. That stops the flow. Thinking about wheel bearings does not stop you driving.

tarotbear said:

No idea what a 'reductionist physicalist' is! LOL!!

But - in every discussion of 'Why does this work?" one point is being missed. A lot of people will turn to the 'archetypes' in tarot yada-yada-yada and discuss how a symbol transcends yada-yada-yada -- but what does that have to do with getting a tarot reading?

You pick out six symbols and create your system upon it - pick out six ... let's see .. an old man with a cane, a young man with a sword, a girl with a basket of white flowers, a demon with fangs and wings, a neutral figure with wings and flowing robes, and a bottle of Bud Lite. You will all agree these images could be interpreted and reinterpreted by any one in any culture on this planet.

Big deal.

You shuffle those cards like a madman for two hours and ask a question and turn up three of the six cards and sonofabitch! You get the exact answer to your question!

Is it the images on the cards ?(anyone using those same six cards could also get the same images you do). Is it the limitation of only using half of the total number of cards? (law of averages). How did you turn over the correct cards to answer your question? (synchronicity).

Somewhere at the intersection of these worlds is the answer.

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Thank you for that post! [emoji3] Very beautifully put!

thinbuddha said:

If you believe in psychic ability, you have to allow for the possibility that no matter what cards appear in your reading, the correct answers can find their path to you through the cards.... ANY cards- it doesn't have to have anything to do with particular (or even appropriate) cards showing up in certain positions.

The irony is that the thing that makes tarot work in this world view is the same thing that skeptics use as an arguement that it doesn't really work: the fact that each card is so flexible in interpretation. The underlying theme of the cards in the tarot is that every situation is in flux.... which is, of course, true. It is also true that at any given moment, every single cards specific meaning is at play in some level of our lives.

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I disagree on that point. I thought like that as well sometimes... but after getting the same cards over and over for the same question, from different decks, and predictions come true, I firmly believe that there is something that guides our readings. I don't know what it is, I like to believe it's my Spirit Guides. Whatever that means.

I like the idea that we are subconsciously linked to the spiritual world.