Only charlatans see the future?

[Nevada]

So true! And although people sometimes diss tarot as "Fortune-Telling" (I don't!) I bet there isn't a tarot fan here on AT who wasn't first attracted to tarot for this aspect of its powers. The potential is so irresistable when you first get into the whole tarot universe thing. I know it was for me. And all my non-specialist friends associate tarot with spooky Fortune Telling anyway. I thought most people did.

This is true, and my very first reading, from a woman who used to read in a local vegetarian restaurant, was fairly accurate about the future ... some 30 years ago. It was a few years before I tried tarot for myself, but the desire to know what's around the next corner was definitely part of the attraction.

 

[Grizabella]

It amuses me this sudden shying away from tarot cards as "predicting". I wonder when this happened? The 1990s?

It's simply not the buzzword of the moment right now. And yet I think 9 out of 10 people who seek out a tarot reader would find the whole *touchy-feely* therapeutic/counselling potential of tarot cards infinitely less interesting than the possibilty that it might tell them whether their boyfriend wil marry them or dump them.

I just think that most people are too embrassed to admit they'd actually prefer the predictive side of things. Far better to dress it up as something which sounds scientific and therefore more reliable.

I also think a lot of people are afraid of being wrong and looking foolish. We all know that none of us readers are 100% accurate (if we're honest about it) and I think there are a lot of people who just want to avoid taking the chance of being wrong and feeling foolish so they just won't "tell fortunes".

 

[Kissa]

Hurray to Jodo, who sometimes writes BS and I am not even sure he said what he was quoted saying.

To make it short, pretty much agree on what Zan said earlier.
Fortune-telling? Nothing happens just *like that*, the upcoming events are the consequence of our very actions now. You change your actions, you change the future. You watch carefully at what you are doing right now (by reading cards for example) and if you are honest enough, chances are you will be seeing, "predicting", what is much likely to happen if you go on that way.

 

[Kissa]

have i succeeded in killing yet another thread???

ah well... i'm so darn good at that... sorry...

 

[nisaba]

You watch carefully at what you are doing right now (by reading cards for example) and if you are honest enough, chances are you will be seeing, "predicting", what is much likely to happen if you go on that way.

Yes, and if you don't go on that way, it will change.

 

[Le Fanu]

To make it short, pretty much agree on what Zan said earlier.
Fortune-telling? Nothing happens just *like that*, the upcoming events are the consequence of our very actions now. You change your actions, you change the future.

Do you? Imagine, I am a very reliable worker in a big firm that suddenly - unbeknown to me - gets in bad auditors and I wake up one day and my firm has gone bust. I then end up on the street looking for a job in the midst of a financial crisis. Is this a consquence of my actions?

I actually think it's very *in* right now to think our lives are entirely a result of our actions. We have been brought up on a generation of pop stars who want and get and tell us it is enough just to want. Not true for the rest of us, I'm afraid. I suppose it just makes people feel better, makes them enjoy the illusion of empowerment, but me, you and everyone else has things in their lives which are out of their control...

Try telling all those travellers stranded behind that cloud of volcanic ash that it is a result of their actions...

Surely people love the tarot for those aspects of their lives which they feel are out of their control.

 

[zan_chan]

Try telling all those travellers stranded behind that cloud of volcanic ash that it is a result of their actions...

That may well be true, but it doesn't mean that a tarot reading done a week ago would have told them to look out for an erupting Icelandic volcano...

 

[Le Fanu]

That may well be true, but it doesn't mean that a tarot reading done a week ago would have told them to look out for an erupting Icelandic volcano...

ahh, but you may be surprised. Surely that's what keeps us hooked on tarot? The possibility that we may actually make predictions like that. I'm sure there's an Etteilla meaning for disrupted plans/travel! You know, it's terribly morbid of me but everytime there is a plane crash I always wonder if there was anyone on board who had a premonition or read it in the cards. Can't help myself. I so often think there must be...

 

[zan_chan]

I'd really love to be able to believe in that kind of thing, even a little. I think I'm too lazy to believe in predicting the future. Does that make any sense? Like if someone says to me something like, "Stay indoors tomorrow or you'll get hit by a car!", I'll probably not want to go the store that night and end up having to go out the next day anyway. I mean, its one thing to enjoy the idea of believing in future-predicting, but a whole different thing to actually act on those predictions.

If you had had plans to travel to Iceland this week, but a week ago someone had done a reading for you and told you that a volcano was going to erupt and leave you stranded in Iceland for months, would you have changed your travel plans? I douuuuubt it....

 

[Le Fanu]

If you had had plans to travel to Iceland this week, but a week ago someone had done a reading for you and told you that a volcano was going to erupt and leave you stranded in Iceland for months, would you have changed your travel plans? I douuuuubt it....

Actually, I would, but then I'm the kind of person who before every flight I draw a card and - honestly - if it were Death or The Tower I would cancel my trip. Seriously. I'm not led by predictions in other aspects of my life but in this aspect (anything involving flights ) then yes!

I think it's nice to have a little magic in life. I say I don't believe in predictions by tarot cards but deep down, between you and me, maybe just a little

And I bet I'm not alone.