Can Tarot be used as an oracle?

BLFO

I see that this board separates tarot from oracles but can tarot be used as an oracle?

I am using Tarot Made Easy by Karen Garen. She is is already predicting for me what a card represents, is this an oracle form of tarot? For instance, Tarot Made Easy may say concerning Gifts/Rewards, 3 Cups means that you are going to get a pair of gold watch as a gift from someone. (Yeah, I made it up because the book in the other room but the book is like that.)

Thoughts?
 

Disa

I think, in general the word "oracle" is any tool used for divination.

In this forum, they separate the cards as Tarot(having 78 cards consisting of major arcana, minor arcana, courts and the numbered cards) and Oracle cards(being a different system of reading than tarot and not having a specific # of cards)

That's my interpretation of it, at least.
 

mollymawk

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euripides

sounds to me like that book is going to mess with your head. Nothing worth doing is easy.

Go to the 'learn' bit on this site and read Thirteen's meanings. There's a lot there, maybe just do a page a day or something. a good starting place.
 

Sophie

Tarot is an oracle. It's also a game, a tool for meditation and useful for brainstorming ideas.

Sounds like I need to buy that book - I've been drawing the 3 of Cups quite often for myself lately ;)
 

BLFO

The book is alright if you want to know material predictions that are specific like for fortune, it will say that you will buy something in order to replace what was broken in your house.

However, the book is flawed for whatever category she is predicting for you (home, finances, romances, unexpected), the author make it seems that everything in that category will come true or it will happen exactly the way she says it and it won't. For example, and I am making it up.

Romance

You will meet an intriguing and charming man that will try to romance you off your feet. A great romance is in store.

Then a few days later while you are waiting at the bus stop, an old dirty bum with no teeth sits next to you and asks if you are married. No, he wasn't intriguing, but he was trying to charm you because he thought you were hot stuff. And no, you don't want an old dirty bum so no great romance was in store. I hate this happen to me many times using her book in categories where only her prediction came partially true. So you have to take her book with a grain of salt. In the case of the romance, just know you might meet someone that will try to flirt with you or you may have an attraction for but there is no indication that something will come out of it.

Another prediction is that she would say that you will meet an admirer accidently on the street. And you are thinking admirer in the romantic sense, like your boyfriend or a guy you know has a crush on you, but it ends up being that you saw your grandma. Your grandma admires you too, right? So she used admirer loosely. It can be anyone from a coworker, a fan, a family member, someone who is psycho obsessed with you or a friend. Not necessarily a romantic admirer.

I refuse to use her news, family and friends catergory and I almost don't want to use her unexpected catergories, because sometimes I would get a prediction for death for family or friends and on a rare occassion there might be a real death in the family or close friends but her prediction would be like this.

Family
There will be a discussion of a death in the family.

That happened to me about two weeks ago and I was paranoid thinking that someone will die in my family for a whole week and it end up being that my mom and I were discussing the death of Anna Nicole Smith as soon as we heard that she died on tv! My mom is my family and we did discuss death, but not about a family member. Grrrr.

Somtimes, I like the book, but many times it drives me crazy!
 

SunChariot

euripides said:
sounds to me like that book is going to mess with your head. Nothing worth doing is easy.

I would have to agree with that. Tarot is such a deep thing, I fully expect to be learning about it for all the rest of my life.

I do not know your deck, but as for if the Tarot can be read as an Oracle, personally I read them both in the same ways and it works well for me. I don't read much by set meanings anyway, but by seeing what symbolism stands out for me in a card and sensing what it means to me in relation to the question asked...

So yes, I read both in the exact same way and it works fine for me. I am not saying that is your path, but you certainly can read them in the same away and it will work.

Oh and I use both in the same way as well for medititions as well.

Bar
 

Grizabella

Here's the online definition I could find for the word "oracle".

or·a·cle Pronunciation (ôr-kl, r-)
n.
1.
a. A shrine consecrated to the worship and consultation of a prophetic deity, as that of Apollo at Delphi.
b. A person, such as a priestess, through whom a deity is held to respond when consulted.
c. The response given through such a medium, often in the form of an enigmatic statement or allegory.
2.
a. A person considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinions.
b. An authoritative or wise statement or prediction.
3. A command or revelation from God.
4. In the Bible, the sanctuary of the Temple.

I think when decks of cards were being made up that didn't fall into under the "tarot" definition, someone just named them an "oracle" and now we've got a little confusion about whether tarot can be called an oracle or used as an oracle.

Soooooo-----I guess now it's semantics to some extent. Judging by definition "a" and "c":

a. A shrine consecrated to the worship and consultation of a prophetic deity, as that of Apollo at Delphi.

c. The response given through such a medium, often in the form of an enigmatic statement or allegory.


and imagining then that we've designated the cards a "shrine", then I guess if you designated your tarot cards a "shrine consecrated to the worship of a prophetic deity", then you could consult them as an oracle. Same with the cards the creator has chosen to call an "oracle". If you "consecrate them to the worship of a prophetic deity", then they're an "oracle".

That's being very literal, I know, but it's the best I could do.
 

tarotreader2007

I guess it could be considered an oracle, but an oracle deck, which is what I think you are thinking of, is more "personal" to the author than a tarot deck.

What I mean is, the card names change with each oracle unlike tarot (most of the time). The cards don't have set meanings. And oracle decks are all left to the artist's imagination. There is no kinda framework for an oracle deck.

tarotreader2007

**PEACE**