Why does the Tarot have a bad rap?

caridwen

RunningWild said:
*Note: the link that Caridwen provided had links that let to nowhere. I think only the last three led to other threads, if you haven't already tried them yourself.
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I apologise for wasting your time. Perhaps informing a moderator would be helpful and appropriate. There is also a search function (please let me know if you need help using it) which I'm sure will bring up a plethora of threads as this topic has been hashed and rehashed many times:)
 

RunningWild

caridwen said:
I apologise for wasting your time. Perhaps informing a moderator would be helpful and appropriate. There is also a search function (please let me know if you need help using it) which I'm sure will bring up a plethora of threads as this topic has been hashed and rehashed many times:)
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And I apologize if you somehow felt that I was making an accusation. I was interested and so tried the links is all and thought I'd let others know which worked. I assume it's all in the archives and have already made a note to make some time to research them. But thank you for your kind suggestion. :)
 

caridwen

RunningWild said:
And I apologize if you somehow felt that I was making an accusation. I was interested and so tried the links is all and thought I'd let others know which worked. I assume it's all in the archives and have already made a note to make some time to research them. But thank you for your kind suggestion. :)
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I didn't feel you made an accusation at all. I didn't realise the links were dead and it's obviously something that needs to be brought to someone's attention.:)
 

Girl Archer

Bhavana said:
YIKES!! The nerve of some people. Totally ridiculous. Some of the most materialistic and immoral people I know are catholics. Of course, I know a lot of good catholics as well. There is good and bad in every group. I have an aunt who is a nun - she is one of the good ones, a very spiritual and loving person - but she does not approve of my crystals, cards, statues of Buddha etc. and always makes it clear that if SHE has any needs, she PRAYS TO GOD. I guess what she is saying is that God is all one needs. She also had a reading done for her (without her permission) by the card reading sister of a catholic nun that lived in the same convent as her many years ago. The reading predicted a death in the family, and not long after, my uncle, who was in his early 40's, was stabbed to death. (his wife hired someone to do it) My aunt felt that the cards had something to do with it.

I was raised catholic, but do not feel that priests and nuns are above us all. They are people too, with all the good and bad that being human implies. I also feel that years ago, and even today, many people with sexual problems hid behind the cloth - maybe they felt the church could help or redeem them, I don't know. But, as we see, the problems they have don't go away - they come out in the form of abuse, etc. (though I do feel that the sexual abuse thing has been blown out of proportion) As for anything related to the occult, yes, the church is against it. I don't know exactly what is involved in getting someone excommunicated, maybe it isn't as hard as I thought...hard to believe though that someone would go thru the trouble because someone reads tarot. It makes me sick when I think of all the hypocrites that live their lives the way they please but feel it's all ok because they spend that 40 minutes at mass every sunday....but a priest is going to take issue and throw someone out of the church because of a deck of cards.

Girl Archer, I thought that the tarot was pretty popular in India...guess I was wrong there.. Isn't India where they have the tarot parrots, though?

For those of you who have mentioned it, I too have had experience with unscrupulous readers. Both times that I went to an official "pro" - a person who had a house with the "reader" signs out front, like a real business - I got some BS reading followed by a spiel saying that someone evil that didn't like me had put a spell on me and for the low low price of $99.99 this psychic would burn some candles or kill some chickens or whatever to remove the spell. How and why people fall for this, I do not know - but I don't think it is right at all to try to scare people like that. I have also been to pro readers who just do readings at their kitchen table, or come to you - most I heard of thru word of mouth. None of them tried to pull that evil spell removal thing.
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Bhavana, I completely agree with you. You know, it makes me laugh mockingly when I see all these sinners, hypocrites and immoral people going to a temple everyday and thinking that they are absolved from their sins. This kind of thing is especially popular in India, where you have all these politicians performing large scale havans/yajna (sort of a ritual where we offer rice, cloth, ghee and other foods to the Lord of fire, Agnidev) and you know they have so many criminal cases stacked up against them in Court, and yet they win every time! Not merely because of their temple tricks but other means too...

I had a reading from a "pro" too who mailed me saying that I had some very powerful blockage that was preventing me from meeting the love of my life and that she would unlock the key to my destiny at a special introductory price of $ 99.99 and this wasn't even counting the extra charge for the good spell work and the rest of the stuff required for that.

As for the parrots, its more of oracle parrots, not tarot ones. They just have some scrolls with messages on them and the poor birdie just picks something after the reader may say something like "Show X what message Ganesha/insert whichever God's name you will has for them". All that is really popular and of course the area that most girls and SOME guys would go to, at any given fair would be the fortune teller's kiosk. YET, the person who is sitting there getting their palm/cards read will be getting weird looks, like that person has lost it or something. Or, it takes an enormous amount of courage to do something like that, something that is considered "uncool" (unless you are a teenage girl) and then of course, one has to bear the questions, the jokes and mockery by friends...
 

Tiddles

I had my first bad experience a couple of weeks ago, lost a new friendship over my disclosing my interests in astrology, tarot, and spiritual cleansings. I think it was mainly the spiritual cleansings that did the most damage as I was basically "cut off" during my description of an egg cleansing, with a wave of the hand and a disgusted facial expression , and an "Ugh, I don't go for that....". Then I was completely avoided; it really, really hurt me for days. Thankfully he is leaving the city, and I never have to see him again.
Now this person was probably raised in a very Christian home, as I was (and I am still a Christian, I do my spiritual cleansings and other work using the Lord's prayer, Psalms). He is also gay and we've talked very openly about our crazy sexcapades many times, and he's never mentioned any religious beliefs, but this was such a huge turn off. Granted, it was probably more than Tarot, but now I am a bit paranoid about talking about any of this to anyone, especially if I start dating.

Today I was sitting in Starbucks and this cute guy put his bag next to where I was sitting to claim his seat. I had brought out the deck I had just bought to just look at the cards, while I was doing so, he grabbed his bag and moved it to another seat that was much more difficult to get in and out of, and was several seats away from me. I wasn't looking at him while I was looking at the cards, and maybe he didn't see them, didn't care, wasn't interested in me to begin with, but now I'm thinking that I have to keep this a secret (especially to guys I may be into).
 

Tiddles

^^ oh, and I don't think that everyone who is turned off by the Tarot is turned off because of religion. Some think it's just bs, or that it's just weird, but for whatever reason, it's not a popular friend-making tool (lol).
 

Girl Archer

Tiddles said:
I had my first bad experience a couple of weeks ago, lost a new friendship over my disclosing my interests in astrology, tarot, and spiritual cleansings. I think it was mainly the spiritual cleansings that did the most damage as I was basically "cut off" during my description of an egg cleansing, with a wave of the hand and a disgusted facial expression , and an "Ugh, I don't go for that....". Then I was completely avoided; it really, really hurt me for days. Thankfully he is leaving the city, and I never have to see him again.
Now this person was probably raised in a very Christian home, as I was (and I am still a Christian, I do my spiritual cleansings and other work using the Lord's prayer, Psalms). He is also gay and we've talked very openly about our crazy sexcapades many times, and he's never mentioned any religious beliefs, but this was such a huge turn off. Granted, it was probably more than Tarot, but now I am a bit paranoid about talking about any of this to anyone, especially if I start dating.

Today I was sitting in Starbucks and this cute guy put his bag next to where I was sitting to claim his seat. I had brought out the deck I had just bought to just look at the cards, while I was doing so, he grabbed his bag and moved it to another seat that was much more difficult to get in and out of, and was several seats away from me. I wasn't looking at him while I was looking at the cards, and maybe he didn't see them, didn't care, wasn't interested in me to begin with, but now I'm thinking that I have to keep this a secret (especially to guys I may be into).
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That is very sad, but anyone who is like that? You don't want to be with someone who does not appreciate how you are, accept you the way you are :)
 

Zezina

philebus said:
It's worth noting that while the Catholic church did have concerns about gambling, tarot cards did not create quite the same level of concern as regular cards. We have examples of regional bans on playing cards, imposed by the church, that specify tarot as exempt from them. Religious concerns about tarot do not really get underway until the popularisation of occult tarot and divination - and today, so far as I've been able to tell, the Church line on the matter (in both the Catholic and the Anglican churches) is that they are not concerned with the cards as a game, just when they are used in occult or divinatory contexts.
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Yes, philebus, it's also my understanding that the Church (and there was only the Catholic Church on those pre-King Henry VIII days) never actually banned Tarot cards - that the ban was on gambling with regular playing cards.

And, yes, it is the divinational aspect of Tarot that makes so many, even well-educated people fear evil, and back away from anything or anyone associated with Tarot cards.

Answers to questions such as the following constitute divination, or fortune-telling:
Will he love me?
Will he leave me?
Will I recover from bad health?
Will I get the job I applied for?
How long before so-and-so happens?

It's nonsense to really believe that Tarot cards can give accurate answers (apart from randomly, or from the shrewd reading of body language) to these questions, and it's the misuse of the power held by many Tarot readers over the millions of gullible desperate, that leads to the general prejudice against Tarot cards and against anyone who dabbles in them.

Fortune telling by any means is a game, but one only needs to read the threads here to see that those whose lives have elements of desperation could be very vulnerable to those who are after their money.

Personally, I love Tarot cards for their wonderful artistic properties, and I'm fascinated by the history and philosophies contained within the various decks. I'll still read the Tarot for friends if asked, for $1, and as we all know we can find pretty much what we choose to in any particular reading, I'm always vague in describing any possible outcome. I love writing about individual Tarot cards on my blog (from which I'm taking a few weeks' break, due to a forthcoming exam).

Girl Archer, each Tarot lover finds their own way of using and relating to their cards, that is right for them and their life circumstances. You clearly love your Tarot cards, so they will find their comfortable level in your life, and that might or might not include bringing your Tarot cards out at café tables.
 

Fianic

It depends where you are. Here in the UK (and perhaps the rest of Europe) Tarot is mostly seen as a bit of harmless fun. Although you still get the weird looks.

It must be taken into consideration that almost half of Europe are Atheists. In America Atheists only make up about 10%, it's still a very Christian country.

A lot of Europe just bunches religion and the occult together as superstition, so they generally pay it no mind.
 

Kindred9

Divination

May i say this discussion is fascinating,when i was young i thought all forms of divination were bad.Now i have read more about the subject,for example famous people like Rasputin the mad Monk although gifted he had his imperfections of course no one is perfect. I think divination helps with our intuition for some reason this has been discouraged.You can have the gift weather you are good or bad person.I like to think i am learning and growing all the time.Thank you for a great discussion.
K9
 
Tarot jigsaw puzzle! Illustrated Minors...RWS or other...opinions?