Does fate want to be understood? A personal look at Tarot

By On March 12, 2011 · 4 Comments

The man who foretold the future
Such personal experiences though don’t really answer the question of whether or not there is any substance to the practice of tarot, or any other kind of practice that involves interpreting future events. For instance many evangelical ministers in the bible belt of the US regularly show people in the throws of religious fervor, unable to even stand on their own as they succumb to the power of The Lord. As intense as this seems on an emotional level it doesn’t provide a shred of proof for the existence of Jesus Christ. About the only thing it does prove is that faith is a powerful force in those wanting to believe in something. And people looking for something to believe, will find something to believe. So I often ask myself, is my experience with the tarot any different? Or to ask the question another way, does fate want to be understood?

Now we get to the really interesting question, because all of these things like tarot and crystal balls and reading tea leaves or rune stones or any other perception through time focus is all concerned with understanding events that are in our future – our fate. Chapter 7 in Radin’s book deals with perception through time, and begins by saying the experimental data is unclear on whether pure telepathy exists, but that a large body of anecdotal and empirical evidence exists that support various forms of precognition. The quote the chapter begins with is from Einstein – People like us who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

On a rational level I accept that we are living in a reality that is not pre-destined; we have free will and choose our own future, it is not chosen for us by some supernatural divine being. However if precognition or human perception through time exists, no matter the size of the time scale it does suggest that life paths exist ahead of decisions. This idea is itself supported by the concept of the multiplicity of futures, a concept that means there is an infinite number of time lines where all possible decision trees play out. I tend to think of life paths in these multiple time lines like rivers, some are very wide and flow strongly, while others are no more than a trickle. I believe that some life paths generate stronger forces of attraction than others, working on us like a vortex that draws elements to it. This is what I think fate is, broad rivers of life paths that run across many different time lines exerting strong forces that act like a riptide in our perceived realities. This force is what generates feelings within our consciousness too. We’ve all had that experience where we feel we’re exactly where we are supposed to be, or the other way where we feel that we’re drifting further away from a path that we should have been on. I’d even go so far as to say that when we find ourselves in a new place we’ve never been before but we strongly feel as if we have, this comes from our existence in this place in another part of the time line, or multiplicity of futures. Talking about it I feel that multiplicity of futures could just as easily be described as, a multiplicity of realities. The beautiful part of this concept is it negates time traveling paradoxes as actions occurring in one time line cause a new time line to be created. Simply put if you created a time machine and went back in time one minute and shot yourself, you wouldn’t cease to exist in that future time that have come from, a new time line would be created where you would not exist and a new reality would begin to unfold.

This is ultimately what I see the purpose in the tarot is, an instrument that can peer into these future life paths and interpret them. A viewing lens so to speak that can focus on a particular path that we choose. Which is why tarot are always used in conjunction with a question or context. I often think of life paths this way; as a series of rivers that runs through these infinite realities and defines fates that we can choose to follow. It does seem there are times when fate has a sense of irony when circumstances of our lives rapidly change as if being thrown about on a wild wave, but no sense can be made of why. In the end I feel if fate does have a purpose we could not fathom it until we have seen it through to the end.

Andy.

[[Disclaimer - I should finish this discussion by saying that all these things I've discussed are my own personal viewpoints. I don't speak for anybody else, and I'm not claiming to be some kind of expert or guru. Which is more than I can say for the religious nuts out there peddling their mysticism as fact.]]

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  • http://www.unwesen.de/ unwesen

    So I was actually surprised to find out Dr Radin was in fact a real scientist and not some fraud with a degree that came off his own printer. His background was in psychology and he had held positions at respected universities in the US and UK. The book itself was thoroughly researched with 25 pages of references from peer reviewed journals. Yes, references! In short, this book wasn’t just a collection of bullshit stories and one man’s opinion, but was a serious research effort.

    I haven’t read the book, so can’t really comment on the quality of the work. But the appearance of references does not really validate a claim, nor does a title from a respected university. That is not to say that Radin must be a fraud, merely that none of the above convinces me he isn’t.

    I would really recommend reading Bad Science – Ben Goldacre does a much better job than I could even attempt at explaining all the pitfalls one must avoid when examining evidence. One of the things he mentions is that pseudo-scientific works frequently contain lots of references, some more so than real scientific work. The quality of those references, though, is another matter entirely…

    Keep in mind that, as I write this, I have a well-used set of Tarot cards. I haven’t used them in a long time, however, and never believed that predictive powers were involved when reading them.

    What I think happens with Tarot (or many other clairvoyance tools) is that the symbolic meanings create structure that guides your thought processes — you know how hard it is not to think of something when someone tells you not to think about it. Knowing that a card symbolizes a particular type of event or set of circumstances makes it very hard not to think of your current situation as completely different.

    At the same time, the ambiguousity in what each card symbolizes gives your mind a rich set of options to pick and choose from. All in all, to me, they’re tools to guide your thought processes. In all the Tarot spreads I’ve made, I’ve never encountered one I couldn’t easily interpret in terms of my current situation, and use to extrapolate from there.

    As such, they’re not bad to me. I have a friend who has made a habit out of consulting Tarot cards whenever he’s unsure about something, simply because it helps him examine his thoughts on the subject piece by piece, or card by card as it were. He tends to do more than one spread on the same subject, too. As weird as it is in some ways, it’s to me no better or worse than drawing diagrams, making bulleted lists, or full-blown presentations to an imaginary audience.

    What bothers me about such tools is really just that the vast majority of people who use them don’t see things the same way :)

    • http://www.mentalechoes.org Andy

      Hi Jens. It’s a fair point about the book. The only thing I could say is to obtain a copy for yourself and read it. I think you’d actually be pretty surprised at the detail in his research. It’s also a really good read in terms demystifying the whole area of ESP (as the mainstream media call it), and explaining it for what is and is not provable and factual. I’ve actually got Ben Goldacre’s book on my bookshelf behind me, and he’s pretty good at debunking bad science, although I think there is a big difference between the medical and pharmaceutical industries and the field of psychic research that Dean Radin works in. It would be very interesting for Ben Goldacre to read Dean Radin’s book and see what he says. :) I think if you did read the book though you’d probably see that he is a guy genuinely trying to apply science to a field that up until the last few years has been populated exclusively by quakes and mystics.

      I like what you say about the Tarot symbolic meanings being tools to guide your thought processes. It fits well with my idea that the Tarot is a focus lens through which you can view events, as I see this involves orienting your mental framework to make the experience work. I think if you make yourself receptive to what you’re doing and the messages being communicated, you can find a depth of meaning in the spreads the cards make.

      In the end people who use Tarot are going to use it in a way that they feel is right for them, but yes, is this actually the “right way”? I really couldn’t say. :)

      Andy.

  • Lena

    “And people looking for something to believe, will find something to believe. So I often ask myself, is my experience with the tarot any different? Or to ask the question another way, does fate want to be understood?”

    So, then Tarot is much like Voodoo…it works if you *believe* it will. Kind of like why my paternal grandmother’s voodoo against my mother and I didn’t work. She stuck needles into dolls and left them under my pillow when I was a baby. She sincerely believed her voodoo magic would bring me harm. Lovely woman! What she didn’t expect was my non-believer mother who slapped her across the face when she found out what she’d been up to! :) Needless to say, her voodoo failed big time.

    I guess what I’m saying if you have faith and enough hope to make things happen…they just might.:)

    • http://www.mentalechoes.org Andy

      Hi Leens.

      Yes you know it’s an interesting question about voodoo because there is a group of people who powerfully believe in this form of “magic”, while you have others (me and you) who don’t believe it’s worth anything. Believers experiences are deep and profound, whereas the other group don’t seem to be affected at all. In this case, it’s clearly the mind giving power to the focus of spells and rituals. I guess in some way Tarot would operate the same way. Unlike an aspirin for instance that works whether the believer believes in aspirin or not, Tarot requires a measure of belief that the ritual is meaningful. Once you have that mental focus though, you’re able to tap into power of the ritual and find meaning.

      Unbelievable the actions of your paternal grandmother. What a bitch! (If you don’t mind me saying). I hope she’s suffering some bad form of hell according to her own beliefs. Karma would have kicked her arse big time!

      Hope you’re well and happy, and happy to see you comment on my blog. :)

      Andy.

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