Tarot & Addictions

Hi guys!

Do ye smoke/drink etc. before reading Tarot cards?
Someone told me that you have to get rid of all toxins in your body in order to receive messages clearly. Is that true?

Personally, I used to smoke before reading Tarot because it helped me to focus on my question and relax. However, I stopped doing so.

It depends, I don't have a rule. (I'm not a smoker but I like a glass of cider or wine. ) Sometimes it helps, more often it screws my awareness.

But I do know it's impossible to get rid of ALL toxins in your body. We breathe them.

And then there are the poisonous thoughts we're barely aware of having, the habitual assumptions and feelings of moral superiority... and of course if anyone's directing toxic energy at us, that can't always be fully cleared (it can take a very long meditation sometimes, or years other times!).

.. Not that I believe everyone, all the time, has this kind of trouble.

Anyway, I'm more inclined to think we need to examine ourselves with honesty to see that we're "clean", whether or not that means physical "purity". If a reading was a particularly big deal, I'd probably want to shower first and have completely fresh clothes on, and have no radio or tv at all that day. But I've never taken those steps. Quite often I have the radio on in the background, and sometimes it has even contributed to a reading by throwing an appropriate song into the mix. Other days something like that would mess with my head and stop it working so I'd have to have silence.

Just my own take.

Nope, but that's because I don't read in smoking-friendly places anyway. I don't smoke in my own home. Haven't touched a cigarette in a while actually...

It's true that you need your mind clear and focused before a reading, and substances don't actually help that... Alcohol definitely doesn't, it dulls the senses for me.

My guides would certainly disapprove if I drank or smoked before/during a reading.

ETA: my guides disapprove of me drinking and smoking at all. Haha.

I don't think it matters much, except that alcohol can sometimes dull the senses.

However, having said that, I have had eerily perceptive readings for others when in bars.

I don't think the cards care what you do. I don't think they are judgmental. And if you are a good reader, you can read under any circumstance, anywhere, with anything. Imo!

Padma said:

However, having said that, I have had eerily perceptive readings for others when in bars.

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I'd think that is down to the atmosphere, the "mass psyche" (my phrase, not one I've come across anywhere) - I mean the thing that's behind mob hysteria and the applause that accompanied Princess Diana's coffin to her funeral. I hope this makes sense to someone... At a gig or a political rally or a great movie, sometimes everyone present feels part of one thing. I suspect that energy is what seeps into you in a bar and connects you, making the reading work well.

Philosophising on the hoof...

There's no real rule about smoking or drinking before (or during) readings. The only reason I can think of is that if you're drunk, you might get more confused and have a harder time focusing. There are probably people who drink even when they're reading and do just fine.

I don't see a reason why you can't smoke before readings. Reading with a headache sounds more difficult! The toxins don't just leave your body immediately, so it doesn't sound feasible to stop smoking temporarily in preparation for a reading, unless you're a very sporadic reader (or a very sporadic smoker). I'm sure there are many people here who read and smoke multiple times a day and do just fine.

This is just one of those things that depends on your beliefs, not a strict rule for reading.

Personally, I believe in the chakras, and I believe that intoxications are alligned to the higher chakras, those experiences, or the spiritual, as with how that also messes up your health, which is the first chakra. It's a bad idea to use serious durgs ofcourse, I mean stuff like smoking and alchohal, na dmaybe just a little stronger. The moon card describes this very well, as it represnts imagination, introspection, madness, and in a way, imagination is a very spiritual thing, so I elieve that intoxication actually helps a lot with tarot readings, if you're for it.

MandMaud said:

I'd think that is down to the atmosphere, the "mass psyche" (my phrase, not one I've come across anywhere) - I mean the thing that's behind mob hysteria and the applause that accompanied Princess Diana's coffin to her funeral. I hope this makes sense to someone... At a gig or a political rally or a great movie, sometimes everyone present feels part of one thing. I suspect that energy is what seeps into you in a bar and connects you, making the reading work well.

Philosophising on the hoof...

Click to expand...

"Hive mind?"

MandMaud said:

I'd think that is down to the atmosphere, the "mass psyche" (my phrase, not one I've come across anywhere) - I mean the thing that's behind mob hysteria and the applause that accompanied Princess Diana's coffin to her funeral. I hope this makes sense to someone... At a gig or a political rally or a great movie, sometimes everyone present feels part of one thing. I suspect that energy is what seeps into you in a bar and connects you, making the reading work well.

Philosophising on the hoof...

Click to expand...

Holly doll said:

"Hive mind?"

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I think yes - actually, hive mood rather than hive mind? (water rather than air?)

And I was sober when I started waffling on about that! Tired, though.

Which reminds me that being over-tired will mess with reading just as badly as alcohol (in my own experience anyway). Apparently, too, tiredness can be as dangerous as drunkenness behind the wheel. And I know that long-term tiredness and/or overwork will mess with creative thought (causing writer's block for example). I find that reading the cards and writing creatively use the same "muscle", and it's the very one that processes stress, trauma, and suchlike.

Just connecting ideas that I see echoes between, which perhaps don't obviously connect.

But yes, 'hive mind' is what I was getting at - 'hive' is anyway - except that I wasn't meaning 'mind' exactly.

I can see hive mind, yes! Totally got what both you and HollyDoll are saying there.

I also think that a small amount of alcohol (not loads of it!) can open the mind a little more, even if only by relaxing the defenses a bit. Hence, makes reading a bit easier, because walls are down - both on my own part, and on my sitter's.

Smoking cigarettes has not impeded my ability to read, as far as I can judge!