Tarot: Predictive or something far deeper

[Umbrae]

So I’m reading this Mary K. Greer Blog, and I was troubled.

It IS a brilliant blog/article. However at the same time it goes beyond. We’ve been having this very discussion (or dancing around the subject) in five separate posts over the summer that I can think of without getting a headache.

In the illustrative story referred to in the above link, I believe that the limitation in the predictive aspect (“Everyone in class agreed that they could never have predicted a bank robbery from the cards Heidi had drawn.”), is due to the overuse of the WCS cards. The illustrations limit predictive interpretive language.

I also agree with the ultimate conclusions derived from the lessons.

There’s also the mention of a movie “Roshamon” which IMO is one of the best films ever made.

Here in the modern world of Tarot we often jostle amongst ourselves attempting to reach consensus; as though there is an absolute right and wrong in Tarot, that we should ‘see’ everything regardless of cultural or personal differences. This I don’t believe is possible. Each participant in the story in Roshamon experienced truth – differently. None were wrong, only incomplete.

There’s also the whole level in the (referred) story, of the three swords stripping away the fluff, and leaving Heidi quite naked in front of herself – the Knight of Pents as the Bank, and XX as an unpleasant wake up call (A brush with death).

[SolSionnach]

Bingo, Umbrae.
I'll be back with more thoughts tonight - right now the holiday is calling...

[squeakmo9]

Originally Posted by Umbrae

I also agree with the ultimate conclusions derived from the lessons.

In reading the provided link, I also get the idea that much more was derived after the bank robbery occured then in the prediction of the robbery itself.
I think it is possible to predict a bank robbery if you're psychic, but, then what?
How would you stop it, or could you?
By avoiding it would a person set into motion other possible negative events, perhaps this was(the bank robbery)the only way for Heidi to realize certain things in her life, and it all had to happen as a shock.
The outcome for Heidi certainly does verify the possibility of finding the good in bad events.

[firemaiden]

What a fascinating blog post.

What is interesting is that after the fact, the cards made so much sense to the girl who experienced the robbery, including rather literally as in the 3 of swords evoking the crossed glass in the revolving glass doors.

Can anything truly be fortold, ever?

The cards prophesied the exact future, but not the readers... The cards spoke in riddles. The sybl spoke in riddles. The prophesy is always a riddle. Until the actual future happens to explain the meaning of the prediction, it remains a riddle.

What does the reader do? We try to weave meaning together from the riddles. Still, wouldn't it be the height of arrogance to think we could ever unriddle the riddler?

Nostradamus's predictions make sense to some people centuries after the fact. Similarly with so-called predictions in the bible. Was any such thing intended by the prophesier? Not likely....

Methinks the accurate predictions are always after the fact.

[Hooked on TdM]

Hmm some thoughts here (I'm on my first cup of coffee so it might be confusing)

The first one is about them all agreeing that they can't predict. How would you know unless you practised all the time? I mean giving it one shot and being wrong means nothing, ultimately. Now if you practised for years on end and still never got a single thing correct, then yeah I might agree with that. They gave up before they even started!

The second is that they all agreed on what it meant. Huh? They all seen the exact same things? Are they reading out of a LWB? I can do a reading for anyone, and they see different things than what I see all the time. I think that is what is so beautiful about Tarot. It shines on each persons meanings which are as unique as the individual.

As for Nostradamus, I believe he knew exactly what his Quatrains meant. He actually had pointed out that he had to make them obscure for his safety. So the issue is that we don't know what they mean until after the fact, but he knew what they meant when he wrote them. So going with that line of thought, if we the reader are the ones making the riddle, hopefully we would also understand that riddle even if the sitter didn't. (I say hopefully since I am not good at predictions.. YET. )

Anyways that was what I noted off the top of my head. I can't comment much on the WCS since I don't use it and never have. It is an interesting blog though.

Hooked

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by Umbrae

Here in the modern world of Tarot we often jostle amongst ourselves attempting to reach consensus; as though there is an absolute right and wrong in Tarot, that we should ‘see’ everything regardless of cultural or personal differences. This I don’t believe is possible. Each participant in the story in Roshamon experienced truth – differently. None were wrong, only incomplete.

I'm reminded of an old saying that I was told came from the Torah or Talmud, I don't recall which (a Google search attributes it to Anais Nin): "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."

It is true, I think, that there are experiences we might like to avoid and which strip away all our facades and leave us exposed as we truly are. Traumatic circumstances can show us the truth of ourselves much more clearly than living in our comfort zone, and I think usually they show us strengths that we never knew we had.

Losing a parent can leave us feeling unsupported. Even as adults, many of us come to think of our parents as our "backup plan" -- someone we can fall back on if we fail or need help. Losing them can make us feel small and vulnerable in the world. It seems to me the experience showed Heidi what she's made of, and how she copes with life's extremes without her parent there (at least in the flesh) as a backup.

We never really finish growing up. Each step in life is part of the process.

I can think of times when I thought I was over something, some big grief or wound, and an experience would come along that brought it all back to the surface again, so I found myself not only dealing with the new circumstance, but a lot of leftover feelings from the old one that I thought was over and done with. It's interesting how life keeps bringing those things around until we really are done with them at all levels.

But back to what Tarot can do for us, I think it's a question similar to what higher education can do for us, or what exercise or a particular nutritional plan can do for us. The answer will differ for each person at least a little, sometimes a lot. It seems to me that every time we have a Tarot reading that shows us something like what was shown (yet not seen in advance) in Heidi's reading, it reinforces the lesson or value of the experience, because it makes us look at it with different eyes than if there had been no Tarot reading. Look how she was able to examine the experience with the class, when if there'd been no Tarot reading she might have wanted to just forget it as soon as possible.

Nevada

[zannamarie]

From what I can tell in the article, Heidi wasn't robbed so there'd be no reason for the cards to predict a bank robbery. She was frightened and traumatized, but there could have been many events which produced a similar response given she was in a greiving state.

I think her original prediction was correct. She did go through an awakening related to the death of her father and his financial affairs (she most likely would not have been in the bank had he been alive).

To expect the cards to give very specific details of one particular event seems to me to stretch the bounds of logic.

Heidi indicated she wondered why the cards didn't indicate a dangerous and traumatic event. I think Judgement does indicate a traumatic event.

As far as dangerous, everyone's opinion of danger is different. It can be dangerous to get in a car and get on the highway. I'm sure she does that all the time and doesn't consider herself in danger. She was in the same room as someone with a gun. It was never aimed at her nor was she shot at so although she had great, great fear, it doesn't appear she was in danger.

To go back afterward and say the Three of Swords was related to the revolving door seems to be stretching an interpretation to me. To say the cards seemed to indicate more a psychological after the fact aspect would be true, because the significance of the event occured in Heidi's psyche and not her physical environment. No lasting physical trauma happened.

The cards were predictive, but not detailed on the specifics of how the prediction would play out.

[SolSionnach]

Originally Posted by Umbrae

In the illustrative story referred to in the above link, I believe that the limitation in the predictive aspect (“Everyone in class agreed that they could never have predicted a bank robbery from the cards Heidi had drawn.”), is due to the overuse of the WCS cards. The illustrations limit predictive interpretive language.

(emphasis mine)

I think it's interesting how no-one has addressed this part of your post, Umbrae. Everyone is going down the road of the interpretation of the spread, versus (what I, at least see as) your point - being that the RWS paradigm has limited the interpretation of that spread.

For instance, I've been looking at Melanchollic's writing in the Historical decks/TdM forum. In his way of thinking, the ace/swords is the worst card in the deck, bar none, and the 3 is barely better than that. (of course, he's not using any GD-related kabalah-style pip interpretation). So for him, the 3/Swords would be a true wakeup call.

If you look at Mel's astrological spread (explanation starts here:http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread...4&page=6&pp=50, continues here: http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread...1&page=1&pp=10) you'll see that his method is a *predictive* method, because in Japan where he lives people expect concrete answers to predictive questions.

I find this all very interesting, but unnerving and a bit frightening. Unnerving because it freaks me out that cards can tell so much about the future (much like horary astrology), and frightening because of what it says about our 'free will'. Frankly, if the cards and horary can tell the future, then the future is not in our control... and that freaks me out as a dedicated believer in free will.

[Gavriela]

When people are studying psychological reading (to the best of my knowledge, Mary neither uses nor teaches predictive reading), I don't think it's fair to draw definitive conclusions from a one-off predictive exercise. It's pretty unlikely anyone in the class knew how to do predictive readings, and I doubt they had much, if any, practise at predictive technique.

I do predictive readings. I would not begin a predictive reading with a card for 'which archetypal energy will most strongly manifest itself next week/whenever?' - that's pure Jungian psychology, and pretty much throws the read to the realm of psychology from the start.

I think the lesson is to know what you want to do with reading, and follow the studies/experience that will get you there. If you want to do psychological readings, do those, be very clear about what you do, and you and your clients will usually be a good match - if you're any good. Not everyone is going to be any good.

If you want to do predictive work, then study that. Assume that you're not getting it if your predictions are so bad that you consistently get it wrong. Not everyone is going to be good at that, either. But assuming you are good, advertise your services honestly, and your clients will usually be a good match, too.

Not everyone can learn to read proficiently, regardless the system. That's just how it is.

I don't think it's fair to say that no readers can predict, anymore than it would be fair to say that no readers are good psychological counsellours. There's bound to be some overlap between the systems, and some folks just plain can't read and shouldn't be practising professionally.

I'm not primarily a psychological reader, but I'm not totally insensitive to the situations clients find themselves in - people who are happy don't usually come to fortune tellers. Some folks aren't predictive readers, but some of their clients still want a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel, a prediction of, if nothing else, this too, shall pass.

It's unwise to make a generalisation that divination is limited to success only in the kind of divination you prefer to practise. Is anyone anywhere expert enough to know everything there is to know about all forms of divination? No - none of us are.

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by Gavriela

If you want to do predictive work, then study that. Assume that you're not getting it if your predictions are so bad that you consistently get it wrong.

I'm curious how you know when you get it wrong? That's my biggest problem with predictive reading for others, especially strangers. I'm not sure that readers typically know when they've gotten it wrong. Obviously if I'm reading for myself or close family, I know. But if I go to a stranger for a reading, I don't tend to go back later and tell them whether they were wrong or not. I simply wouldn't go back to them if they were wrong. They would never know.

So how does one know? I'm afraid I would need a statistical study to convince me that anyone is all that good at predictive reading with tarot. I think it's pretty much hit and miss, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, especially when reading for oneself, and I think Mary's blog article points out why. By the way, she posted in another thread here (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=104567), about reading for oneself, in which she pointed out a prediction she made regarding buying a house that didn't turn out as she predicted, and that it might not have been a bad thing because the readings kept her on the right path toward the house she eventually bought.

I can think of several events in my life that I feel the same way about, where my hopes were dashed, but that turned out to be for the best, and hoping was what kept me heading in the right direction for the eventual positive outcome.

Are our lives directed by free will or destiny? I am more and more convinced it's an intricately woven combination of the two.

Anyway, it's certainly food for thought.

Nevada