Tarot - first principles

Sort of a "This I believe" essay for my tarot interest.


Little pieces of colored cardboard
The cards themselves have no power to “predict” anything. They are bits of artwork on thin cardboard in a set of patterns defined ( usually ) by Rider and Waite. The utility, the power is inherent in them as they’re used, as any other tool is used. A hammer by itself is worse than useless. Put the hammer in someone’s hand, and it can do something very useful. Put a hammer and chisel in the hands of someone skilled, and you have a work of art, an expression of something higher.

The super-conscious
There’s the part of me that functions day-to-day, and then there’s the part of me that’s wiser, more knowing, and way more perceptive. Sometimes, me and my conscious mind can’t figure things out. So I do something else and let that unconscious part of my mind put things together and shove an answer into my thoughts when it has a chance. Or something comes to me in a dream or as I was thinking about something allegedly unrelated. The super-conscious is that part of me that “knows better”. The higher part of myself that sometimes guides me when the normal part of me that’s awake all the time, the part of me that doesn’t return movies, that eats McNuggets and drinks the occasional Long Island. The same part of me that knows it’s my mom on the other end of the phone when it rings, the part of the cop with no evidence but with a sure feeling

Synchronicity, and the myth of randomness
Do you believe everything happens for a reason? For the most part, I do. And when I think something is happening for –no- reason, I usually wind up drawing some lesson or seeing some pattern later on. I believe you meet people in life when you need them; you have exactly the sort of problems you need to work through to become stronger in ways you’re lacking. I know how difficult it is to be –truly- random; how tough this is for experimental sciences like physics and mathematics, so when we do something as simple and hands-on as shuffle cards… I have very little trouble believing that the super-conscious is working in cahoots with synchronicity, and that cards that are relevant come up. Tarot card pulls are anything but random.

Pattern recognition
I believe our minds from day one are wired to find patterns; to make associations and draw lines of connections between people, events, and symbols. We’re very very good at this, as we train for this almost every hour of every day in one way or another. The cards are arranged by the super-conscious, byt the “spirit” or whatever the higher, non-everyday part of my mind might be called in a helpful way. My pattern-recognizing mind puts the pieces together, and can draw real meaning and insight from the cards

Experience
As I do something more often, I get better at it. As my own super-conscious and yours arranges little pieces of cardboard with symbols I recognize in some pattern, I detect that pattern as I work with you, and tell you something that maybe you already know, or perhaps that you never thought of. It might not be what you were looking for, or what you expected, or even what you wanted… but life is like that, eh?

“Energies”
Until I see otherwise, someone touching my cards has the same effect on my ability to read that someone touching my hammer would have on my ability to drive a nail with it. That is, not much. I don’t need to keep the cards wrapped in a specific color silk, kept in special box, laid on a piece of satin and read on a natural-material table to be correct. Although I don’t disagree that perhaps all of these things could help put someone ( me, or the questioner ) in a better frame of mind to do tarot work… I don’t think the manipulation of various “energies” are a deal breaker. But I could be wrong about this… and will keep an eye out.


…

I’ve been interested in a variety of esoteric and metaphysical topics for a very long time. I won’t go into too many details, but since childhood, I’ve had a vested interest in things outside the boundaries of the five senses and “normal”, rational thought. Mostly these interests included how we’re all connected, how the universe seems to be set up and wired, and how the whole “system” works together.

Or doesn’t work, in some cases.

From a very early age I had ideas about mind-to-mind contact, reincarnation, out of body experiences, the nature of the soul, the effect of prayer and ritual, and how these things are seen and interpreted… today and in the past.

On the one hand, I don’t believe in unicorns ( now, or ever ), dragons, pixie dust and so on. I’m not trying to be adversarial with other people not on the Main Sequence of social thought about what’s real and not real, but my whole life I have tried to be sensitive to what makes sense, and what sounds merely fanciful or hopeful. When I walk into a New Age shop… much of what comes to my senses feels a bit over some edge. I am at heart a scientist, and some things are tough for me to accept.

But having said that, I am anything but close minded. I believe the universe and we in it ( perhaps as discreet expression of that universe ourselves ) interact in ways that modern physics can barely get its brain around… but this understanding and acceptance is not the same thing as blanket acceptance of everything. “Because I said so,” wasn’t cool when my mom said it when I was a kid… and I don’t take it as gospel now.

About the Gospels and so on… I was raised Catholic, so I have a keen appreciation for ritual, dogma, repetition, and how such things can possibly weave into one’s life in a positive way. But I also know the downsides. Up close and personal, I understand how a group of people might take something as powerful as faith and bend it to serve their own needs. I see a lot of this around me today… doctrine that may very well have been divinely or transcendentally inspired bent a bit to serve some human purpose.

“Love one another as you would love yourself, and God above all else’ sounds pretty straightforward and easy enough to get behind. But “It’s sinful to eat meat on Friday” or “you will go to Hell unless the good works you do are in Jesus’s name” is a bit tough to accept. When I was young, the kid on the playground who gathered a group together and proclaimed that they were cool and all kids not part of their group were “gaylords” was kind of annoying and never really spoke well of the group. Any group that practices “You’re not us so you’re less” does not, for me, have the ring of the Divine.

That’s me- spiritual, but not religious. Open, but not foolhardy.

I believe in discarnate entities of various stripes... but not unicorns.


; )