How does Tarot "work", in your personal opinion or experience?

Shade said:

I like that you have option #2 as a place in between #1 (it's all in our heads) and #3 (magic).

I hope it's #3 because that would be the most satisfying and it does seem to be what is happening but I'm willing to accept it's much, much more likely that it's #1 and we're all at best Eye's-Shut readers.

I'll hedge and say #2, so again thank you for that option.

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Try reading some books by Dean Radin, PhD and Amit Goswami, PhD. Also Dr. Larry Dossey. They're awesome.

Padma said:

I'm so going with #3. How does it work? Magic! (almost joking!)

I love my cards, and I always feel like I am tapping into something very old and unknown when I use them. It's a really cool feeling!

I've also had others do my cards and had the most accurate readings. As these people were strangers, and knew nothing about me, I can't say anything else but "wow!"

It's an amazing world, still so full of mysteries, among them the tarot.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

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It's #2 and #3 for me. I began using Tarot at #1, progressed to #2 and now I'm solidly at #3 but with elements of #2.

Why choose one position? On different levels, they're all true. Even if we "only" believe the tarot reflects our inner archteypes in visual language, that's a wonderful and mysterious thing - these archetypes are wonderful and mysterious, after all! How did they get to the place where they are, and where is that at all?

I guess I'm a Pantheist and I believe things are connected and beautiful. The tarot is for me a symbol and culmination of the beautiful web we live in and so often disregard. It works on a psychological level, but it also opens the door to other levels. You can decide how to approach it. Just like we don't get involved deeply and emotionally with every person we meet on our way, we don't explore every place of magic that we pass through.

Hmmmm.... Interesting discussion. Here's something that happened the other day: I drew the Sun Card as my daily card to ponder. My daughter asked me to pick up my granddaughter at the bus after school. As I sat there waiting, I noticed that above one of the doors in the apartment building across the street hung a large metal sun decoration. On the second floor I noticed a wooden sunflower decoration. I chuckled to myself thinking all I needed now was a child on a horse, at which point the school bus arrived carrying the children. The All is very mysterious indeed. For me, explaining the tarot is somewhat akin to explaining life itself.

EvaSegovia said:

Hmmmm.... Interesting discussion. Here's something that happened the other day: I drew the Sun Card as my daily card to ponder. My daughter asked me to pick up my granddaughter at the bus after school. As I sat there waiting, I noticed that above one of the doors in the apartment building across the street hung a large metal sun decoration. On the second floor I noticed a wooden sunflower decoration. I chuckled to myself thinking all I needed now was a child on a horse, at which point the school bus arrived carrying the children. The All is very mysterious indeed. For me, explaining the tarot is somewhat akin to explaining life itself.

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Once, what happened to me was....

I was at work on a break. At the time I was very new to Tarot and always carried a deck with me everywhere I went.

So it was my break and a cloudy dark skied day. It have been raining literally non-stop for 3-4 days, dark gloomy skies non-stop all that time.

So I had 15 minutes off and i pulled out my deck to meditate on a card image. It was THe Sun card. The card image showed some clouds and the sun just breaking out behind them. So there i was meditating on the image and staring at it for like 15 minutes non-stop.

Then break over, I put the card down and get ready to put it back in the box, A second later, literally after I had put the card down, I saw the room all around be brighten by a lot, I looked up and the real sun had come out for the first time in like 4 days after meditating on The Sun.

NOT ONLY THAT, but when I looked up at the sky the cloud formation was IDENTICAL to the shapes the clouds were in in the card! Like a photograph of it.

I could not get over that, but it sure said to me that something more is at work here. To me it said that my cards are somehow connected to the universe and life in a real way.

Of course not the cards (printed cardboard) but there was something powerful working through them that can connect to my life experience in a real way. Its not the only time things like that have happened either when my life will mirror a card image or vice versa.

Bab

I love it, Babs!

One thing I've learnt over the last few decades, is that during periods when I question how it works, it stops working. In periods when I simply accept that it works and let it work without any deep questions about how, it works.

It's like driving a car: if you are a good driver, you drive mostly on instinct and reflex. Now if you've just completed a beginner's course in auto-mechanics, and you climb into a car, and you try to analyse how everything is working in the engine as you drive, your driving will become erratic and jerky and even downright dangerous.

I am deeply connected to my gods, but the theory I like best (whilst disliking all theories for the reasons in the last paragraph), is a scientific one. A few years ago, the cutting-edge theory in particle-physics was the theory of the "enfolded universe", which basically states that a single particle may be stretched out so far (like a single drop of ink in a swimming-pool) that it manages to be the basic sub-atomic particle making up all sub-atomic particles everywhere: in each card in your deck, inside your mind, in your client's mind and even at the opposite end of the universe.

OF COURSE your deck knows! By this scientific theory, how could it possibly *not* know?

Silmaril23 said:

1. Tarot provides a valuable new vocabulary and lens for seeing reality. Tarot is a useful psychological tool.

2. Tarot provides a new vocabulary, AND...there is also something deeper and more mysterious going on. The cards drawn for a particular situation... may tap into some kind of higher realm.

3. Tarot is undoubtedly a sacred, supernatural tool that taps directly into the Mystery and is guided by divine forces and supernatural energies.

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Beancrew49 said:

...Tarot is nothing more than an open line of communication between my higher self and my earth body, facilitated and triggered by symbols and imagery on playing cards. Through my mind, body, and soul my higher self dictates which cards come out, and if I am able to remove my ego mind as much as possible, helps to interpret those cards in an accurate way that draws from a source of information that contains all of the knowledge and wisdom of the universe.

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nisaba said:

...the theory of the "enfolded universe", which states that a single particle may be stretched out so far (like a single drop of ink in a swimming-pool) that it manages to be the basic sub-atomic particle making up all sub-atomic particles everywhere: in each card in your deck, inside your mind, in your client's mind and even at the opposite end of the universe.

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All of the above.
"Nothing is supernatural, it is only the natural - which has not as yet been explained." (and possibly never will! Lol).

Mitakuye Oyasin.

Silmaril23 said:

1. Tarot provides a valuable new vocabulary and lens for seeing reality, but there is no deeper component of mystery involved. In other words, I could hypothetically draw ANY cards for a given spread, and if I'm willing to dig deep enough into my own psyche, I can apply those cards to my question or situation in a meaningful way. The cards themselves contain no special qualities beyond symbolism, and my draws are random (i.e. not guided by any higher principle or supernatural force). In a nutshell, Tarot is a useful psychological tool.



2. Tarot provides a new vocabulary, as stated, BUT...there is also something deeper and more mysterious going on. The cards drawn for a particular situation are NOT random, indeed, when combined with intuition, they are often eerily relevant and prescient in a way that defies human understanding and taps into some kind of higher realm.



3. Tarot is undoubtedly a sacred, supernatural tool that taps directly into the Mystery and is guided by divine forces and supernatural energies.

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New reader of two months here. I have a lot of the same feelings! As a skeptical art historian it has been an interesting ride. If I had to pick from the areas you've mentioned, I suppose I'd be in the #2 camp. What is more important to me, and doesn't necessarily classify as 'mysterious,' is the archetypal journey represented in the cards (particularly the Major Arcana). It works well with and is encouraged by the synchronicity of card pulling. For me, as long as you remain open, and steer clear of confirmation bias, the relationship with the cards can be spiritual or at least therapeutically sound.


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For me Nemia has a point: why chose one position? So has nisaba: as long as it's about reading and as long as it works for me, I just read, and I rather don't spoil the magic by questioning how it works. But for those who enjoy philosophical discussions for the sake of it, here is why believe that #1 is true.

Patterns appear at random more often than people would normally guess. Consider laying a celtic cross (10 cards), reshuffle all cards and do it again. What is the chance to get at least one identical card in both spreads? It's 77%.

Our brains are built to fall for selective perception. All our thinking consists of making connections between different things. It helped us to survive. If we ignore the connection between a tapping noise and a dangerous animal we might die. If we flee in panic, while the tapping noise was just raindrops on some old timber, then it doesn't matter too much. But in the same way we tend to ignore and forget those cases, where there are no repeated cards or other patterns when laying tarot spreads, while our mind gets exited immediately as soon as some regularity or pattern does appear. So even if a pattern is unlikely, we tend to only remember those cases where it appears anyway within a large number of draws.

The mind's tendency to make connections means that we are able to connect almost everything. With tarot the large variety of symbols on every card, the images that support our free association of thoughts and our intuition, all that makes it easy to always find a meaningful story that matches the subject of the reading.

The distinction between a natural realm and a supernatural realm doesn't make any sense to me. It would mean that "the devine" has a physical influence on the cards or on my hands shuffling them. The devine, by doing so, would provide some information that can only by measured by the cards or my hand, but otherwise is entirely invisible, since, by definition of the supernatural, there is no other way of measuring this information in scientific ways.

We tend to underestimate the sheer complexity of the human mind, of weird ways of perception, unconscious communication and many other things that enable us to find a lot of meaning and help even without the supernatural

nisaba said:

One thing I've learnt over the last few decades, is that during periods when I question how it works, it stops working. In periods when I simply accept that it works and let it work without any deep questions about how, it works.

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This really resonates.

I also really enjoying hearing about everyone's synchronicities. I suppose I'm being too dualistic in trying to establish any kind of position...it's better to keep an open "beginner's mind" and just follow the Tarot trail as far as it leads down the rabbit hole. Wheeeeeeee! I do love adventures.