Tarot

At the beginning of the summer, I was at Colossalcon in Ohio. When I started to get bored between bigger events, I decided to walk around with my tarot deck, and get some practice doing readings for profit (read: $1 a reading). I only got a few bites, but the people that got readings were across the board impressed. Two of the girls I did readings for ended up crying by the end of the reading, shocked by how accurate the things coming up were.

However, following a reading where the guy I reading for was particularly impressed, a guy that had sat down to watch made some comments.

Grinning and scoffing, he said something along the lines of;

“Well yeah, but see the descriptions of these cards are so vague that it could fit anybody. A few key words that could work with anybody make it seem true, it’s all fake.”

I let him go on for a few minutes about how buzz words - words that affect everybody - were being used to make it seem like I knew things that I didn't about the guy I was doing a reading for. He was right and wrong at the same time.

When he was done, I just smiled, and explained to him something that I think anybody who wishes to use tarot needs to understand.

“First of all, Tarot does NOT tell the future.”



When you go to a therapist or a counselor, all you’re doing is talking. All they do is listen, and at the right moments, ask you questions and offer perspective. Tarot does the same - it asks you to look at specific aspects of your life from perspectives you may not have considered. If something jumps out as specifically important or true in a reading, it’s because the person, event or emotion that it’s connecting to in your life is already important to you. You may just not have realized it yet. Yes I was using buzz words - not to make myself seem magically wiser, but in relation to the cards and in order to evoke the right response from the one I was doing a reading for.

“Tarot,” I told him, “is like having a pocket therapist. You don’t have to follow the advice it gives, or even ask for it. But the cards and their meanings aren’t fake. It’s the people that claim the cards can do things they can’t - like tell the future - that are.” A therapist might ask you, based on the things you say, if there is trouble at home, or school, at work. If they guess right, it's not magic - it's just their job to try help, by asking questions based on what they've heard.

“Well, yeah, sure.” Despite his tone, the way he sat back, folding his arms and turning away a little from the smiling people around us told me that he felt embarrassed - his assumptions and attempt to seem clever had instead made him appear close-minded and uninformed. But, hey, he’s not alone. I’d had a long interest in tarot, but I didn’t start using it until just around Christmas - I had known about as much then as he did at that moment. The most that the majority of people know about tarot comes from pop culture and fiction - from http://www.learntarot.com (an excellent site for more history on tarot and lessons on how to read the cards) describing popular media portrayal;

“ [the reading is] A simple process, but rarely presented in a simple way. In films, we always see the tarot being used in a seedy parlor or back room. An old woman, seated in shadows, reads the cards for a nervous, young girl. The crone lifts her wrinkled finger and drops it ominously on the Death card. The girl draws back, frightened by this sign of her impending doom.”

In reality, the Death card represents change, and something ending so that something new can begin. In other words, ‘death’ actually means rebirth. What that means to someone getting a reading done is up to them.

The fact that each card has a very open meaning is intentional. If each card had only one extremely specific meaning, then tarot wouldn’t work for anybody. I use the Rider Waite deck - each image and the symbols hidden within were specifically chosen for their meanings and function. Spreads - how cards are arranged for a reading - assign a secondary meaning to the cards which help you narrow down what you’re looking for in an interpretation. For instance - I described the spread I normally use, at the end of my last post.


Say that the Death card came up as the card in position one: the central issue of the reading. It means that for the rest of the cards, I need to focus on the idea of something in my life ending so that I can start something new or better - that I need to focus on change regarding the rest of the cards. But if Death came up as the card in position two, that would mean that I need to think of it as an obstacle - some sort of change in my life is in my way, keeping me from resolving problems related to whatever issue came up in the first position.

All this having been said, there’s always going to be people who abuse the image of tarot - as pure entertainment, as a symbol of mystic evil, or unchangeable fate.
There will always be people who abuse the cards themselves - looking to trick people to make profit, who purposely look to use the mysticism of tarot to perpetuate mystery and keep others in the dark about their real meanings so they can keep up an image or make money.

But hey, there’s lots of others who want to make sure the truth gets out and that tarot gets used correctly. That’s why there’s hundreds of different decks and styles available, lots of websites and books, classes, etc. on the topic. I hope I can be counted among those others.