Oracle cards in movie, The Gift

Has anyone here seen the 2000 movie called The Gift, starring Cate Blanchette?

Movie trailer is here:

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi4227007257/

SHe plays a psychic who uses a set of oracle cards when she is with clients,and I've never seen them before. In the trailer, they can be seen briefly at 1:15 and just after 2:00.

They have very simple cryptic shapes on them (a circle, a cross, some lines) and she arranges them in 3 rows of 3.

Does anyone know what those cards are, please?

That looks an interesting film! I think those cards look like Zener Cards, the ones you can practice ESP with. They were designed by parapsychologist Joseph Rhine & a colleague Karl Zener to measure telepathy & ESP. If it is them there are usually 25 of them in a pack & consist of the wavy lines, a cross, a square & a star I think (5 of each). The idea with Zener cards I think was to lay them all out & try to "feel" which pattern each card showed, apparently if you got more than 5 out of the 25 correct you showed good signs of having telepathic ability....I may be wrong but I can't think of any other cards which show those symbols, I've not seen anyone read with them but hey, I guess we can read with anything if it feels right

Including toothpicks! I am not familiar with them, other than the basic designs of wavy lines that look like water and the circle. But it definitely is not the Sacred Geometry deck. This is more of a basic black on white deck with basic shapes and symbols.

How did this movie sneak by me??

MysticalMoose said:

That looks an interesting film! I think those cards look like Zener Cards, the ones you can practice ESP with. They were designed by parapsychologist Joseph Rhine & a colleague Karl Zener to measure telepathy & ESP. If it is them there are usually 25 of them in a pack & consist of the wavy lines, a cross, a square & a star I think (5 of each). The idea with Zener cards I think was to lay them all out & try to "feel" which pattern each card showed, apparently if you got more than 5 out of the 25 correct you showed good signs of having telepathic ability....I may be wrong but I can't think of any other cards which show those symbols, I've not seen anyone read with them but hey, I guess we can read with anything if it feels right

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Yes! That is the first impression I got: that they were shapes used to test one's psychic ability (rather than oracle cards). I didn't know they were cards or that they had a name. Thank you very much. It was a small deck, so 25 cards would seem like it fit, too.

The film was very good. A good psychological thriller with some excellent ESP thrown. It is exactly the way I see psychic impressions unfold; I loved the way they put together the film.

The movie itself had some big names in it: Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Cate Blanchette, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Rosemary Harris (grandmother in Spiderman)...it was really good.

But those cards had me entranced, and the way she used them was fascinating...she'd look for patterns in how they showed up. I'd be interested in finding out if there is some technique to what she did (as in tarot reading) or if it was purely for the movie.

What funny timing for this thread! I JUST watched a video of this wonderful movie last night and noticed the ESP cards they used!!!

These cards are not used for psychic readings as an oracle -(as far as I know) but I feel the producers/set designers chose to use this deck because there are numerous card reading scenes in the film. Had they chosen a real tarot deck (or other oracle) viewers may have been distracted by imagery on the cards and trying to see how what she saw related to the situations or intuitions she was receiving.

They wanted to focus more on Annie's gift (and Kate Blanchett's acting) through the use of intentionally un-interpretable symbolism in the ESP cards.
The only time the symbolism of the cards came into play is when she picked three of the "wavy" lines in a row... and I can't say more or I'd ruin the movie. LOL

Just my thoughts

lightbug said:

What funny timing for this thread! I JUST watched a video of this wonderful movie last night and noticed the ESP cards they used!!!

These cards are not used for psychic readings as an oracle -(as far as I know) but I feel the producers/set designers chose to use this deck because there are numerous card reading scenes in the film. Had they chosen a real tarot deck (or other oracle) viewers may have been distracted by imagery on the cards and trying to see how what she saw related to the situations or intuitions she was receiving.


Just my thoughts

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I completely agree, Lightbug. That was my thought, too....that it prevented anyone from analyzing whether the "right" or "wrong" cards were shown when they created the movie.

Another movie with a tarot theme is "Things You Can Tell by Looking At Her." Here is the entire scene, which stars Glenn Close and Calista Flockhart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVxUylPfhzk

I enjoyed this clip so much I rented the video, but this truly was my favorite part of the movie. The rest was just a B movie, in my opinion. But in that one scene, I just *love* the character development in Glenn Close as she goes from thinking it is fluff to finding herself absorbed by the reading.

Enjoy!

P.S. By the way, the fanning of the cards is an excellent technique for those larger-than-our-hands decks like the Tarot of Dreams...the ones that are hard to shuffle. Sometimes I swoosh 'em out on the table, too.

Birdsong, thank you! EXCELLENT clip. Now I want to rent this movie too. LOL I've never heard of that movie at all. Thanks for info about the "Fan" technique.

Glen close did a powerful job of showing us what was going on in her awareness during her reading. Wow.

Oh... and I related to the part where they are discussing "it's a new man" - this is something I encounter a lot in readings. People tend to re-ask in that same hopeful, sad way, "are you sure?"