"Mystical Reasons" vs Plain Common Sense Rant

Zephyros

There are many posts, from time to time that adress a number of questions regarding Tarot, the use of the cards, and anything else relating to them. The posts I am referring to are those that ask "Do the cards do this or that...", "Can I do this or that or won't the cards let me...", or even "The Gods have taken away my love for Tarot..."

Usually, the members of the boards answer these questions with clarity, kindness, and usually, common sense. However, I have to ask if people really believe what they post, that they deify the cards to such an extent that a deck is a living, breathing thing that (usually) has a bad temper and will fly off the handle at any opportunity. I mean, apart from belief, we still live in the living world, and as such, must use our own common sense in all matters, especially Tarot oriented issues, where we have so few signposts to lead us along the way.

For example, if some one says that they have lost the "Tarot edge" and cannot read anymore, why do they not practice the same introspection that they preach. You can't read all the time, more than you can do anything all the time. Even writing in this forum is at times tiring. If I don't post a day or two, does that mean I hate you all? If I do not want coffee in the morning, does that have to have a "mystical" reason? Obviously not, but we do attribute mystical, spiritual reasons for not wanting to read Tarot.

Another issue that I have seen is that people tend to say "My deck is mad at me and I can't read with it." I mean, really... A deck of cards can no more be mad at you than the morning newspaper, and they are both made of the same material: paper. As others have said that they read with everything from toothpcks to napkins, you can use your intuition to pick words out of a paper at random and then read for your querent wth that. As long as you are a good reader of people, you can use a wide range of ways to read, and maybe the morning paper won't snap at you or be grumpy.

Be aware that I am not talking about Tarot myths and supersticions. Those, in my mind, are valid, since Tarot is about belief. We cannot prove that it works under scientific, controlled environments, hence me must practice a leap of faith. I have no problem with that, I myself believe strongly in the validity of Tarot, otherwise I would not be here. However, what bothers me is blind faith, and no use of common sense.

Like I said at the beginnig, think before you leap. Tarot is part of this world, not the next, and as such, operates according to it's rules.
 

TheOld

what is interesting here is that you talk about the spirit model a lot (when the tarot have a personalities/spirit) and it's in this model that peoples have morre superstition; The psychological/energetic and informationel model have a lot less supertition in them...

Light
Omeada
 

Fulgour

Cream

closrapexa said:
However, what bothers me is blind faith, and no use of common sense.
Acomplishing a level of expertise is very rewarding,
and an example might be with a musical instrument
where desire and effort develop skill, with practice.

So when I pick up my Dulcimer, I'll tune it a little...
strum awhile to limber up, and play something easy
to get started, and I do it because it's pleasurable.

Tarot provides a wide range of personal activities~
on many levels. The reward is often just a feeling~
a lingering melody echoing within, playing MY song.

*

Cream 1966-1968
Ginger Baker
Eric Clapton
Jack Bruce

Blind Faith 1968-1969
Steve Winwood
Ric Grech
Ginger Baker
Eric Clapton
 

Alta

Hi closrapexa,
Certainly an issue that repeatedly makes me wonder how far superstition has really been banished from the so-called modern world.

I have been reading, slowly, Greer's new book, "21 ways to read the Tarot" and what she writes has definitely given my tarot ideas a bit of a jolt. This lady does not read the way most of us here read. What she sees is image, reaching to experience including archetypal, reaching to emotion and recognition of emotion reaching to meaning. No 'tarot gods' here, no angry decks, no cleansing rituals.

Permit me to quote a passage that I was reading last night (page 96):
21 Ways to read a Tarot Card said:
Meaning is the essence of tarot reading. Dictionary meanings and those found in books are helpful, but meaning that arises out of your own experience will ring with integrity and truth. Personal meaning clarifies your situation and guides your actions because it is based on stories about 'what is' and where things are going. Stories structure your experience based on projected beliefs and opinions about your goals and intentions.

Meaning is expressed through metaphors of emotions from story and art that become personally relevant when you describe a card. Meaning is about patterns perceived through the senses that form connections promising to satisfy an intention. Like human experience, meaning is always multi-layered. You will never reach the end of all the possibilities. It can never be fully comprehended. Thus, meaning challenges you to stretch beyond your previous abilities and knowledge.

Tarot readings are based, at least in part, on the assumption that meaning will enable you to predict and control the future, in order to enhance and protect you. To some extent it may do so, but only temporarily. The situation, if not seen for what it is, will come back in the same or different guise. Ultimately, a reading offers the ability to consciously participate in what is happening. The alternative, to turn away, will only create more issues and more pain.

A reading can be a messenger from the soul, helping you to greet whatever frightens or disturbs you. The alternative, to turn away, will only create more issues and more pain.

It helps you to see how you hold back from the experience and try to escape it. Such escape is the basis of addictions and habits, created originally to protect you but which become limitations, shutting down the spontaneity of the authentic self. Tarot offers a healthy way to open your inner eyes, to see what is, and to enter unknown territory with a compassionate guide.

Sorry, long quote, but I wanted to show that while she believes that tarot is a deep tool using powerful connections to touch us, at no point does she even touch on the stuff that seems to grow up around the edges.

closrapexa said:
Tarot is part of this world, not the next, and as such, operates according to it's rules.
I agree. Or as my favourite wry internal phrase has it "yes, the laws of physics do still operate here".
 

Zephyros

What surprises me time and time again is that so many people fall into the same trap time and time again, and forget everything they ever knew about anything, when it comes to Tarot. Tell some one that a piece of paper is cursed, they will laugh at you. Tell that same person that a Tarot deck is cursed, they will believe you...
 

Indigo Rose

In my Tarot journey, I believe I am getting my answers from God. I seek to have a relationship with God, and I seek guidance and understanding from Him. To this end I pray, read scripture, and use the cards for receiving communications from God: divination. However, my Tarot answers are subject first to my knowledge of God(which comes through the Holy Spirit and His Word), my faith(which comes from the heart), and my common sense(which comes from the rational mind).

In my opinion, it is a hunger for connection to the Eternal Creator which allows people to fall into deifying the Tarot cards. The cards are just paper with meaningful images created by human hands. They carry no curse, no power, and no glory. They are objects. However, the One whom I seek the answers from carries all power, all glory, and deserves all reverance.

:heart:
 

baba-prague

I personify our decks quite often when I'm talking about them - Prague has a wicked sense of humour, Fairytale is hard to handle... and so on. But it doesn't mean that I actually believe they are alive in some way, it's simply a vivid way of describing the way in which different decks - because of their imagery, structure, associations and so on - really do "behave" - or act on the reader's mind - in different, distinct ways.

Simiarly, I do believe in Divination - as a conversation with the Divine - but I don't believe in a lot of the superstition around tarot. I fling my decks around with a fair degree of ease - they certainly don't get wrapped in black silk or "cleansed" and they work for me just fine without all that.

What I'm trying to say is that the dividing line isn't always very clear - it's in fact quite fuzzy and open to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Most of us say things on these boards that could be taken to be "mystical", but I'm not sure that they're always exactly meant in that way (sometimes no doubt they are).

I think religion has some of the same issues (though I am NOT saying tarot is a religion!) It's easy to slide from acknowledging the Divine to adopting all sorts of superstitions about this. But I agree, it's something to be careful of. I feel tarot works best when a good degree of common-sense is combined with some of the artistry and "mystique".

Ack - I have edited this a dozen times and I'm still not sure I'm expressing what I'm trying to say. Too tired perhaps (or are my tarot spirits angry? :D)
 

Bean Feasa

I think when people say 'my deck is mad at me' or 'this deck is jealous of that deck', it's really just a manner of speaking. Maybe someone's got a run of readings with a tough message from a deck, so they express that with a little peppering of humour and imagination.
In everyday speech we say really-over-the-top things like 'I love spaghetti' (You love strings of flour and water! Really?) or 'I'm dying to read so-and-so's next book.' (Dying? Expiring?) It's just a colourful way of saying things.
Seems to me it would be a pretty dull, dry world if we all said everything in a really literal way.
 

Sentient

I think that using the Tarot productively requires faith.

Faith that we'll do it right, faith that our efforts to learn and practice the craft will be rewarded, faith that the person we read for will find what we have to say useful, faith in using a tool which is both rational and extrarational at the same time.

When there are no accepted guideposts, and experience does not give us clear answers, it can be difficult to know where exactly our "faith" is supposed to begin and where it's supposed to end.

Was there ever a time when you believed that the "cards" were somehow imbued with energy? After all, if there's one thing that society is very good at teaching us, it's that we're all really quite ordinary and unexceptional creatures. If we achieve great results, it may be hard to believe that those results came solely from ourselves.

And yet that's exactly what a person must believe to think that their interpretation of pieces of colored cardboard can have a deep and meaningful impact on another person's life. Of course, one of the things that Tarot eventually teaches us, almost by osmosis, is that we're all exceptional, and can do wondrous things if only we allow for the possibility.

To attribute miraculous things to ourselves and not to some external source like a companion spirit, deity, or Anima Mundi goes against the grain, as history shows.
 

Phoenix Rising

Hi Closrapexa

Yes...I've read all those threads too, about what the cards feelings are..and I give the same answer..they're just "cardboard".....hello

I think people like to give the cards power...just like they probably give everything else in life...power to outsiders.

It's lovely that people on here are so understanding and answer in the nicest way...Sometimes I think a good kick up the "arse" will do just as good!

We are the ones shuffling the deck...so we are the ones in control!!