My theory on the tarot

[Aeon]

Hi
I ive practiced using th tarot for quite a few years now and I was wondering if anyone shared my theory on how the tarot actually works.

Im not sure If I belive in it the way most folks do.   But my interpreatation of what the average persons theory on this subject could be biased as, I do not have many friends who share my intrest in this type of science. so iis very possible I have the wrong interpretation of what most peoples theory on the tarot is.  

I believe in self fufilling prohpecies and I also believe that there is three parts to the mind, the supraconcious, subconcious, and concious mind. I believe the tarot cards were once an ancient psychology tool or a self awarenss device for self improvement. I believe  by looking at the images you are forcing yourself to either see the three portals of  your  own mind or recive and interpret energy fields from the querents mind. While looking at the intricate pattterns and pictures on the tarot cards the mind is forced to engage in concious meditation and become aware of situations and events occuring in the querents life. Like a person taking off a blind fold, the images force the subconcious to reveal desires, conflicts, inner passions, pain, emotions, positive and negative enrgies that are  either currently residing in our present,  past or i a place desired for our furture. This  information is always stored within  oneself. The information becomes buried and therfore sometimes a tool is neded to allow the seeker to acess it.  A person is not always aware of his wants , deires , or feelings because they were locked in the subconcious. The cards force you to think heavily about the matter in question and seek information iinternallly.  what the images mean to you allows you to discover the answrs to the questions you are seeking. It points you down a path that your sub councious wasnt able to reveal to you. It unlocks the subconcious mind. Its like the tarot opened a bridge between the subconcious mind and the supra-concious mind. Once the bridge is formed the supra concious mind becomes aware of the needs of the subconcious and suppplies the answers of how to achieve and fufil these desirses and will give clues, warnings, opnions  and options  about ones personal enviormnemnt, internal conflicts, how he sees him self and others and his true emotions and reactions to events that occur in life. This information allows the seeekr to look objectively on their past,  current position in life and  also how to achieve its future needs. The supra concious mind derives its information thru your higher power, however one wants to interpret  what his higher power is is fine. wheter it be your own mental power, a god, or psychic vibrabration. The idea is the answers to our concerns are then transmitted to the concious thus giving us the answers we seek. . Im not very good a describing what Im trying to say so I hope im explainign myself ok. Now  I suppose thats what divinitation might truely means. I suppose the concept im trying to point to is im skeptic about iis the future predicting concept. I dont think they just predict the futre like a weatherman predicts the weather.  Or a thermometer gives you the temperature. It gives directions and if you follow the advice and head the warnings by listening to your own self. Your own true internal valid answers you become a self fufilling proheciy and thus then yes you could say it did predict the future. But did it? I think it just allowed the user to see what was already there. A tool that was nesscesary to unlock the doors of ones mind and recieve its own internal messsages.

Wow that got a little long winded. Any opinions welcome. Id like to hear anyone elses rheories on how they actually work besides just being as i heard one lady in the store one day calling them "magical cards that allowed you to see your future thru the power of demonic forces, htat lead you into a trap of self destrution"  or something like that.
sorry to ramble
e

[Abhishek]

personally & technically i am non-believer... however all this cant be such a big con game.... that half the world has heard or believes in.

i also see you point when you say... "ancient psychology tool or a self awarenss device" which is quite a twist to way tarot is usually preceived. but what would cause it to take such turns that it would be then conected to mystism and all?

I dont know... just my 2 cents.

Regards
Abhishek

[swetha]

till we started this forum, i did know anything about tarot. Deborah was the first to introduce me to it. and it really got em thinking. i am still not sure how it works... but it works thats all i know:)

[Deborah]

Its one way to percieve one way to insite .. maybe to some they are just cards ...pieces of paper to others they are instuments ...


If I tell you ..that you will se a yellow car..would u believe me? >>> well you might take a different way home and not see the yellow car..........things in life change.

Destiny ..do you believe yours is your destiny ..or for someone else to tel u how it goes?


I do not read for myself .. I find it ackward!  maybe my inability to face myself who knows.  I can tell you when I have the cards laid in front of me there is a type of energy that projects colors and wording to me.... I denied it for years... I refused to say I could feel this .. this site got me to sample back who I was etc.

Maybe I am taking you wrong but ... you seem to have a negativity towards this topic.. can I ask why?   someone read your cards for you once and you didnt like what they said? anyone can read them but takes feeling them to really know.

[Paulette]

Hi Aeon,

I believe your theory is plausible. However, could it be that Tarot has more than one way of working? Afterall, it has more than one use. At least for me it does. I think Tarot is one of the best meditation tools. Often I find it is superior to a reading or throwing the cards for myself. I just choose a card based upon how I feel or a question/challenge I am struggling with & by meditating on one of the cards (usually one from the major arcana) my subconscious is activated & I receive the answer. It does take time when meditating. But I feel it is often more complete & firmly understood than if I did a reading. The messages typically unfold during dream time & then I experience an "out-picturing" (physical manifestation) of whatever it is I am seeking. So not only is this a very empowering mode of meditation for me - but it is incredibly exciting & fun to do!

My question is: Can you define "supraconsciousness" for me? I am not sure if I understand the term. I had thought that it was the same as "higher - power/self". But you used this term as being something different than "supraconsciousness" so I am not sure.

Thanks for the insightful thought provoking post.

Cheers,

Paulette

[swetha]

I feel any form of astrology,tarot, palmistry, psychcics etc needs some intutition. till now i was under the impression that astrology is based only on planets and there's no intuitive powers involved... but from people on the forum i have understood that be it healing, divinaion, astrology does need something that not every one possesses.

[Aeon]

I think I did not describe my theory or get the words out that I wanted to say. I have a hard time expressing my ideas and getting the message out as i wanted to inted. I agree with many of the answers to this post.  To answer Debroahs question about negativity...I am not negative towards cards. I use them quite often. I just am a very anylytical thinker and I like to see things in a scientific way. Possibly what you precieved as negativity is my search for connecting tarot cards and mysticism with ancient roots and scintifc basis.  I do believe there is some mystiscm involved. To sweetha and paulette. I liked what you said about meditation. That is personally what I use the cards for. My question is. If you are to mediatatae on the cards. See the imagery it could open ideas that are locked in the subconcious or cause you to see new beliefs or invision ideas and give you answers just from the point of having to focus and mediate on your curretn question.  I believe I made a mistake when refering to the supraconsious. I think of it as the transciever of the brain. The center that relays messages to your concious from your higher power/ to your concious and subconcious mind. I think of it as a gateway. . I am not very good at expressing my ideas in writng or much of an expert on cards. I have onnly learned from what I have researched over the years. My personality has a tendency to try to take mysticsm and supernatural ideas and connect them with a scientific foundation.  I have other theories that I did not fully explain on this subject that is very long winded and perhaps better reserved for another time. I was just interested in how other people s ideas were formed on the thoery of how they work.
best wishes to all!
Thank you for replying I appreciate.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth

[Owl of Minerva]

Personally I think your theory is how you believe it works. I answered "plausible" even though I disagree, since the tarot works how we believe it works, and even if we don't believe, it still works. (Try doing it for a sceptic and I guarantee by the end of the evening you will have given them a bit of food for thought.) So I have moved on from this debate but will try and summarise my feelings here.

For me, I do think however that there is the definite ability for future precognition/prediction, even down to the level of the details like the yellow car. If it follows that major events like destiny and fate are pre-determined, then for me it follows that minor events can be pre-determined, since how does the universe distinguish between major events (e.g. a certain person becoming President) and minor events (a certain person being on a train at a certain time). Also I personally have had very clear and vivid dreams that have suddenly become replicated in real life - a similar building, posture, and so on - that have only become obvious after the event. It is said, for another non-tarot example, that the predictions of Nostradamus seem pretty much gobbledegook UNTIL they come true - then it is obvious what he meant. A good clairvoyant can train themselves to pick up future echoes, I have had two experiences where I have seen definite, realistic images - that blend in well enough to their natural environment, such as even a picture on TV - that others haven't seen. A little mental exercise for me is to read a book and then to say before reading a page: aha, there is a number X on here. Even though it might not be directly printed in X, it might be printed such that A + B - C = X. Thus I am training both my intuition and psychic skills in order to pick up on little details, and thus to progress to receptiveness to bigger and bigger signals, however we think that those signals are generated. I believe very firmly in God and Spirit, thus I believe that those manifestations come from a higher power than myself. But for people who believe they are generated from within, then there is no harm in that - what matters is seeing and using the wonders of synchronicity and magick for the right ends.

I did a weekly spread, one card per day :

Thursday: 7 Cups
Friday: 6 Cups
Saturday: 5 Cups
Sunday: Death
Monday: Chariot
Tuesday: Emperor
Wednesday: 4 Swords

On Thursday - I was rather confused and disorientated and could feel some hopes beginning to rise. I had manifested Thursday as the date for another "stepping stone" in my life quest and was not disappointed.

Friday - I bought six drinks for people because it was so hot! Also it was a day to get together with a cousin from the US who we hadn't seen in years.

Saturday - a wedding (the card had a church in the background) but also where I got into rather a pickle with a couple of merry gentlemen who wanted to talk about something that I wasn't really prepared to talk about. In the end I realised that I was sitting in the same posture that I had been in a dream on Wednesday night - and had actually slightly manifested itself on Thursday in a cafe. However one can't go through life walking on eggshells, and my theory is that clairvoyance and precognition work because the energies of other people - going about their random business unaware of any prophecies or whatnot - coincide to manifest precognitions, like the trivial one that my healer gave me yesterday about my spirit guide being on my left side - two human guides appeared out of nowhere, both walked me to stations or to trains on my left-hand-side, and one of them even touched my shoulder, just as the healer had intimated about where my spirit guide would be. She also picked up the fact that I had "pretended" to talk to him over my right shoulder, when I saw a name on a building that reminded me of him (he is called Charlie and I was walking past the Institute Francaise Charles de Gaulle in London. Not that I have Charles de Gaulle as a spirit guide - I wish! - but "Charlies" appear when I need his advice most).

Sunday - not sure about this one, but a crack appeared in a glass jug we use regularly, and I had drawn the Ace and Page of Cups earlier in the day trying to figure out the significance of this card. The Page of Cups is a manifestation of someone on a political level that might be the stopper in the bottle that is UK politics - when it comes out, the energies in the UK are set to overload and there will be an explosion akin to a cork coming out of a bottle of champagne won by a motor-racer. The jug might have been a synchronicity designed to illustrate the Death card (just like the slight resonance of the dream on Thursday leading up to its "fulfilment" on Saturday), though the jug didn't break, which possibly means that the stopper is only slightly worked out and that Thursday's manifestation of the headline in the paper is just another small increment on the way to getting it out. Since energy is imbued into things by mental association, thus those things themselves become oracles - which would be my theory on how I think tarot and other oracle/fortune-telling cards work.

Monday - the image of a chariot - a bus, a book on important landmarks on the history of transportation, a book on chaotic and unpredictable travel, the wheelbarrow I used to push the binbags down to the end of the lane - resonated with my healer's assessment of how my personal energies were flowing.

Tuesday - Invitation to London to visit our local "Emperor", ie our MP and, again working on the principle of energetic association, a manifestation or "alter-ego" of the person I think will lead the UK after the bottle is uncorked and the fizz of the energy release subsides. Also a warning: the Emperor can be very dictatorial and remote, and the day was filled with people who were using - and abusing - their power over others to sideline them, but also people who were maintaining order in chaos.

Wednesday - the need for a certain rest and relaxation after the violent energies of the weekend.

As you can see, the tarot and other people resonate on various frequencies to bring order or reason out of chaos. Personally I think if we all had perfect future sight, energies would cease to flow, since the fact that clairvoyance - and accurate future precognition - exists is actually dependent on a whole load of factors that are impossible for one person to control. Stagnation of those energies through everyone pre-empting everyone else would actually be detrimental to the evolution of humankind; experiences that I have had tell me certain things are unavoidable despite my best efforts, because people who have no knowledge of these "future echoes" actually conspire to bring them about. (About the yellow car - I had a similar I Ching prediction that specifically mentioned yellow as an auspicious colour for a garment. So I planned to wear yellow to my invitation with my local Emperor. It turned out my only yellow shirt needed to be washed and I couldn't wear it. But my mother let me try on one of her yellow jackets - without knowledge even that I Ching exists, let alone of my specific "yellow" prediction - thus using her energies to manifest the I Ching's precognition despite my decision to not to wear a dirty shirt.)

[samantha234]

hi!
I use the tarot as a guide, i choose a card and it gives me something to go on and make it easier to connect to the client.  If i can't connect, i can't read them, it doesn't feel right just going by the meanings to me, but thats just me! If the reading isn't right, my mind goes blank, even though i know the meaning to all the cards! Anyone else feel this way?

                                                                           Samantha

[lizmeegan]

The pictures on the cards help to access the subconscious mind.
When you shuffle, your subconscious mind shuffles and selects
the cards.

I don't know if the cards always predict the future, but rather help
with decision making and problem solving. Oftentimes, when
you shuffle and concentrate on the issue at hand, your
subconscious mind will pick the card that points to the
problem you need to deal with.

That's my two cents worth.

All the best,  LizK

[Midnight Moon Ryder]

Aeon,

Hi there.  In my use of the Tarot cards I have seen/felt the same thing you are talking about.  I just can't believe the cards are what the woman in the store said but I have heard that theory and much MUCH worse around my own small community.  I'm not saying it's impossible for the cards to become a portal for daemons/spirits or whatever else is out there, I'm just saying that wasn't their original use.  After all, I'm not even sure if I believe in daemons and such the way others do.  Are they completely separate entities or merely fabrications of our own making?  Hypnogogia and the hypnogogic state are very relevant to making any decision there, I think.  Are there beings out there that use our devices to communicate with us?  Sure!  Yes.  BUT just because you pick up a scrying mirror, tarot deck, pendulum, ouija board, etc does not mean that you are inviting some evil daemon into your life so it can lead you to self-destruction---humans will self-destruct all on their own.  If there are daemons/evil spirits out there they don't need to waste their time on making us do "bad" because if given the chance and the right set of opportunities some humans will do "bad" anyway.  Then you have to consider the reality vs. perception idea, too.  What is "bad" and what is "good"?  The answer is all in the perceiving, how you judge good and bad which relates right back to what you were taught when you were a child.

[fireraven]

To quote from Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune:
From the view of infinity, any defined long-term is actually short-term... or words to that effect...

Does anyone out there still class Tarot as a system of fortune/future-telling?

Certainly here the Tarot community I am involved with here in Australia doesn't view it that way. I didn't think anyone held that view anymore - except for those detractors who have no knowledge or experience with it.

I think everyone's theories presented thus far all makes sense, and I think for the most part we are all agreeing with each other - its just that we can't express it in words, or can't even pinpoint what or why exactly.... perhaps that's it; perhaps its all about the mystery....?!

To quote Terence McKenna:
If the Truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed!

Sometimes I get clients who loudly and immediately make it known their scepticism - I often wonder why they are coming to see a Tarot reader if they don't believe it to work, or think I'm some kind of fraud...
They always - without fail - quiz me on how the Tarot works. For the most part, I tell them this:

That there are 78 cards, and any of these could be applied to some aspect of their lives and hold true - they "randomly" pick one, and we focus on that aspect of their lives which that card represents. After all, the whole Tarot is meant to summarise universal human truths, which everyone experiences some time in their lives, regardless of race, creed, or class.

The mystery lies herein: why is it that you picked that card out of all the others? And why is it that particular issue was foremost on your mind at this time?

And then I point out that I don't have the answers to such questions, and that I let faith and wonder take over from here. All other cards from here on are really just helping to further flesh out the picture being drawn and offer possible advice/approaches to resolving the issue.

The ancient Oracles always answered the querent's questions with another question - its meant to make them start thinking for themselves and stop them from bothering the Oracles....  :smt005  why else would Delphi have the inscription at the front door "Mankind, Know Thyself" ?!

p

[ang-e]

I agree with your explanation of the tarot cards.  I have often thought this myself.  They are used as a tool to access the unconscious part of our thinking.  :)