Tarot: Predictive or something far deeper

I think there is too much focus on the cards and what they are supposedly trying to tell us, and not enough on the reader as an individual and how they read. It is our job to decipher. And it is difficult, if it wasn't then there would be no need for us because everyone would read their own cards.

I don't just look at my cards, I listen, I pay attention to sensations in my body, I still my mind to make room for images that may come.

“Everyone in class agreed that they could never have predicted a bank robbery from the cards Heidi had drawn.” I just can't get over this. I think it is a stretch to try to fit the cards to her experience. She was not harmed so why would she be alerted to such an event anyway? And what question was the tarot answering here? I don't believe one was asked.

Why are tarot readers so quick to discredit the predictive qualities of tarot but so quick to elevate themselves neck and neck with Jung and Freud without any formal psych training?

bah.

Sinduction said:

bah.

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I realise you are being serious- but that made me laugh!! You sounded like my Grandpa.

Well really I think not to many have the confidence of prediction when reading- and that confidence takes a while and feedback. Feedback in public readings is hard to come by as the clients come and go. So in many ways it is by the seat of your pants.
You see, I see little help in just predicting stuff- because if you predict things and they could be changed or should be changed- and the sitter changes them- then the prediction is out of date eh? It is not going to turn out that way - the way you said by the cards. It is different if it is less predictive- but just trends, would you not say?
Then we get back to this intuitive thing- which is the cards as a side tool. Thats OK- but it is not a side tool for me- it is the foundation of the reading because I can be fooled by how I feel and how someones body language is. Not always but sometimes- so I go with the cards.
As too the counselling aspect with out training- I am always having this discussion with my Professional Mental Health siblings. We all have the counselor within us I think, and often the sitters life counsels me during the reading- and I journal it and it helps with predictive readings.
Blessings to your Bah!
~Rosanne

Remember that our brains are wired to recall positive associations and outcomes of behavior and to forget negative ones. This is why the cold reader can talk about my dead grandmother, get 75% of his info wrong, and still keep me captivated by the other 25% he got right. My mind searches for, and clings to the familiar and safe, while discarding memory of failures and unsafe results.. This is a basic survival mechanism that in humans asserts itself into all manner of our thinking. This is why you remember the readings you did on yourself in which things went as you said they would and you forget the majority of the readings you did on yourself that were not correct or yielded no information.

I see the whole thing as putting yourself in a frame of mind that allows for divination, psychic power, or whatever, to occur. Flashes of the future do not always appear. But with more practice, it occurs more often. Reading cards is like raising a lightning rod for insight to strike. Sometimes it does, most time it doesn't. This is not to say that the cards don't tell us anything otherwise. They do, just not specific prophetic images. As one practices being within this zone, the lightning of insight flashes more frequently.

Change in method

Hello everyone!
Long time no see... or no write...

If you look at how the article goes, this piece becomes evident to me:

"Knowing that Heidi’s father had recently died, we predicted that her feelings of grief for her father would be strongly triggered but would result in some kind of awakening or acceptance of her loss. She told us she would be going to his home three hours away to tie up his financial affairs and we warned that going through his papers would probably be very difficult."

Well, I know we've gone through all the definitions of cold reading and such, but this shows how biased our logical sense of interpreting the card can become when we know what surrounds the other person.

Probably everybody knows the main life events in this group and, therefore, they arrive at conclusions without considering anything else. It's like when you read for yourself. I am writing this because it has been happening to me lately with one single topic, I tend to see it repeated in all readings so I had to take a break for a while.

Best,

Shehrazada.

I’m in agreement with Sinduction (above). Books and books and books are written about Tarot; we’re told to follow this school of thought or that school of thought (GD or OTO?) “Nobody follows Lévi!” “Ground yourself in the Correct Fundamentals!!!”

And very few talk about the reader.

It all boils down to the reader.

And yes – one CAN read, and read well – without any of the damned books!

But you have to pay attention to the reader.

I don't just look at my cards, I listen, I pay attention to sensations in my body, I still my mind to make room for images that may come.

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Never forget aromas…what was that smell? Its part of the reading!

Reading has little to do with the cards. Zip all actually. But we are confused by X-Perts who confuse Product with Process.

Focus on The Process – and you’ll arrive much closer to your goal...in my opinion.

Yes, focus on the process makes sense. The cards you use DO make a difference, but only in as much as some deck images resonate better with some readers. Plus I actually find that my instinct begins to cut in at the point I choose the deck - I just feel that a certain deck will work with a certain reading usually - and that's what I go with.

Apart from that, the main thing I want to say is that when my readings don't go well, it's always because I trip myself up with too much thinking. When I lay out the cards and have the guts, based on a glance, immediately to say something like, "What, you've met someone?" then I get it spot-on (usually). But when I begin to think to myself, "Hang on, that's not what those cards usually mean," then I can lose it. But you can't teach that in a book - in a book you need to give people a foundation and then encourage them to ask questions - even stupid questions - until they build up the confidence and experience to just SEE the reading.

Actually, I have just realised that this is rather analogous to what some people have written about alchemy. That it's a long, arduous process that needs much work and knowledge and experimentation. But at the same time, for some people the way to the Stone is obvious, easy and almost instant. Both paths are possible and each does not in any way prove the other wrong.

Make sense?

Umbrae said:

Reading has little to do with the cards. Zip all actually.

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In the word of Sinduction...Bah!

Just as people get tired of the focus on experts and the plethora of Tarot books- I get tired of this.

Lets play cricket without the Bat and just focus on the Team.
Lets roll the dice- oops no Dice.
Lets draw I-Ching from the air - no hexagrams
Lets just imagine a card depending on how we feel and what the sitter requires.
Better still what we think might answer the question.
Intuit our dreams -oops you haven't had a dream?
Process- Mileage-Hype-resonate- these are just buzz words.
I am a Tarot reader, which by it's definition requires cards. I would love to see a sitters reaction to "lets get to the reading, just concentrate on me and our rapport, I will concentrate on everything but the cards- 'cause really they mean zip in this process"

No disrespect to you Umbrae- of course there is not a lot of focus on the reader, the sitter, the contract between you, the questions either for that matter here- but it takes a while to become a good reader for most people.
Most of the learning can not be explained here without the mental or physical image of the cards as the focus. So actually IMHO they do mean Zip.
~Rosanne

I agree entirely with Rosanne's post. It isn't all about the cards, but the cards are important, even very important. If you want to read without cards, then call yourself something else, no argument from me.

Different decks challenge and alert in different ways even though the underlying 'tarot' is always there. It cannot be 'all about the sitter', or why be there, or why have cards at all? It is you (the reader), the querent and the cards, somehow flowing together, and in the best cases flowing beyond the murk.

Alta

I’m not forgetting or eliminating the Tarot deck when I say, “Reading has little to do with the cards. Zip all actually.”

I’m acknowledging its existence.

Usually we focus on deck + meaning = product (end resulet of prediction)

Books are usually written on ‘use ‘this’ to get to the end result.’

I prefer focus on the whole system, which includes the reader, the sitter and the experience; and place less emphasis on the actual deck.

I prefer not to give the power to the deck, but the relationship the reader has with the deck, the sitter, and themselves.

NOWHERE did I say read tarot without tarot...

Umbrae said:

Usually we focus on deck + meaning = product (end resulet of prediction)

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if you mean ' a particular deck' and it's ' particular meanings' I agree with you.
Too much focus, and not how one relates to Tarot cards in general.

Books are usually written on ‘use ‘this’ to get to the end result.’

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This is true- but there are exceptions.

I prefer focus on the whole system, which includes the reader, the sitter and the experience; and place less emphasis on the actual deck.

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As I said there is not a lot here about the whole system as an experience- you have the most threads on this I think. It is a balance but I think the cards weigh in against the feather in the experience- because that is what the sitter is expecting- that we read the cards- that is the object of the exercise I would think. So it seems to me the cards are the focus- how we read them is our particular style.

I prefer not to give the power to the deck, but the relationship the reader has with the deck, the sitter, and themselves.

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The sitter has no idea what relationship the reader has with the deck usually.
I do not understand what you mean- not giving power to the deck. The deck has power to the reader, because that is the images that draw out the reading, I would have thought?

NOWHERE did I say read tarot without tarot...

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True, you did not. You said the cards had little to do with the reading. Zip in fact.
Maybe there is a cultural difference in the use of words
Here 'a zip' is what does something. It holds two parts together over an important area usually.
Maybe that's why you keep losing your pants?
~Rosanne