Can Tarot really foretell the Future ?

EyeAmEye

Nikita_ said:
I know exactly what you're talking about, and I can tell you that, in the past, the very same thing happened to me...but that's an entirely different story. I know that can happen, mistaking one person for another; this reader I know in a nearby town, where I also sent my friend, made the same mistake with me years ago, talking with plenty of details-which all turned out to be amazingly correct-about a guy who, unfortunately, was not the one I was asking about, but someone I met shortly after....but this time, I don't think this is what happened here. There were too many details that matched, the background to the story, everything...and this is not the first time it's happened, not the only similar story I've heard...I don't know, sometimes I wonder if tarot, when we really get to trust it, starts playing tricks on us...some catholics I know say that that's the proof that the Devil is behind it, making us think it works, only to make fun of us....I don't believe that, of course, but hey, I'm prepared to listen to all theories by now....
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And I think the devil sent the catholics to throw us off the course... (just kidding!)

Here's another angle to consider. Skeptics love to suggest that readers lead their querents. I often believe it works the other way around as well. In the give and take of a tarot reading (unless the tarot reader does not engage in any kind of feedback), I don't think there is any way in which a reader cannot be somewhat directed or influenced by the querent's feedback. That can cause a reader to "see" something in the cards that is not there. Yet another wrinkle to think about.

I know at times I have read for a querent and initially very little came to me until I started a bit of give and take. Once the querent started filling in gaps, the cards seemed to be easier to interpret. I may wish to believe that somehow the feedback opened my intuition and helped me apply the message to the situation, but it could also have been me using the information given to change the message to best suite the situation.

Since I gave a fairly abrupt answer to your initial question, I will add a little more to the mix. My initial response probably sounded overly fatalistic. I do believe life is a mix of fated and free will events. There are some things we can change and those we cannot. Tarot can answer any question you wish to receive an answer for. The accuracy of the answer not only is dependent on reader's ability to interpret the cards but also the degree in which that predicted future is variable or not. So, in essence, you can read a future that did not come to pass because perhaps that situation was heavily dependent on your own free will.

Last bit o'wisdom (or unwisdom coming from me) is that I believe tarot, or any other divination method, requires a lifetime commitment to even hope to master. I would naturally assume the overwhelming majority of readers will never reach the level needed to truly tap into the full power of it. We all can have moments of amazing lucidity, but it doesn't last. We have to understand that and question ourselves as readers and not "tarot" as a whole.
 

Nikita_

Owl Tarot said:
For me personally, the correct term which should be used is "possible future". Why? Because if you want to make the Tarot look like a "fool" you can simply do the opposite of what the reader seems to "predict", which is a simple way to reveal future is formed by many many paragons. So, I believe the Tarot can show a possible future which you can make real if you want to and try for it or try to avoid it if you don't like it. The perspective it can offer on any given situation is a real wonder for me, because it can lead you to good moves now, in the present, to lead yourself to a future.

I am not taking into consideration the subject of the "accuracy" of the reading because that's an entirely different subject. I have seen though "inaccurate" readings (inaccurate according to books but accurate from an intuitive perspective, which is always flowing) work out pretty good, so many people need to refine the term "good reading" I believe. I only do readings only when the people I work with realize their life is their own, and their future is their own. The Tarot is a wise advisor and a form of divination allowing for wonderful insights into a matter, can show futures worth chasing or letting go, but not the final decision maker. Weak people like to throw their responsibilities of life to anything, but if you go with that in mind the reading will be poor I believe, because you won't be able to appreciate it properly.

Just my opinion and what feels correct and true for me on the matter.
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Your philosophy seems to imply that we are always the Masters of our life and destiny, which I totally disagree with...true, tarot is a wise Advisor, but it is undeniable, from my point of view, that we can't always decide what we want to do, and how things are going to develop... sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we cannot make things happen or work, and other times, no matter how hard we try to avoid them, they just happen...this is my experience, anyway...and I do envy those who believe we have the power to turn things around and shape them every single time as we like, as if they were lumps of clay in our hands....
 

donnalee

Gotta agree with this: if everyone could create every detail of life as they intend consciously and have it manifest, it would be a much different world/set of worlds...

Nikita_ said:
Your philosophy seems to imply that we are always the Masters of our life and destiny, which I totally disagree with...true, tarot is a wise Advisor, but it is undeniable, from my point of view, that we can't always decide what we want to do, and how things are going to develop... sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we cannot make things happen or work, and other times, no matter how hard we try to avoid them, they just happen...this is my experience, anyway...and I do envy those who believe we have the power to turn things around and shape them every single time as we like, as if they were lumps of clay in our hands....
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Farzon

I have made both experiences: it can predict the future and does so, ignoring if the reader understands yet or not.
At several l times I got cards I didn't understand at the time of the reading but which came obviously true.

And it can be a mere reflection of your hopes and fears. And I don't think there is any experience or state of higher consciousness (at least not with most of us) that can shun is from them.
So even if the readers you mentioned have long time experience they still can be influenced by hopes and fears. They just have to think "such a nice girl" once and everything is ruined. The cards still work at that point.
As to your question HOW they could possibly fail: they're but humans, too. We all are.

I like Tarotbear's explanation. I also think that we are aware of things we don't even know - think of people getting symbols right they can't see, as in parapsychological experiments. That's very close to a reading I guess.
Or think of Buddhism where everything is one - a take on reality even reflected in some super-string-theories.

I wouldn't say there are no spirits, ghosts or angels interfering with our readings, this I don't know. But the connection of everything gives a quite reasonable explanation I think.
 

Nikita_

EyeAmEye said:
And I think the devil sent the catholics to throw us off the course... (just kidding!)

Here's another angle to consider. Skeptics love to suggest that readers lead their querents. I often believe it works the other way around as well. In the give and take of a tarot reading (unless the tarot reader does not engage in any kind of feedback), I don't think there is any way in which a reader cannot be somewhat directed or influenced by the querent's feedback. That can cause a reader to "see" something in the cards that is not there. Yet another wrinkle to think about.

I know at times I have read for a querent and initially very little came to me until I started a bit of give and take. Once the querent started filling in gaps, the cards seemed to be easier to interpret. I may wish to believe that somehow the feedback opened my intuition and helped me apply the message to the situation, but it could also have been me using the information given to change the message to best suite the situation.

Since I gave a fairly abrupt answer to your initial question, I will add a little more to the mix. My initial response probably sounded overly fatalistic. I do believe life is a mix of fated and free will events. There are some things we can change and those we cannot. Tarot can answer any question you wish to receive an answer for. The accuracy of the answer not only is dependent on reader's ability to interpret the cards but also the degree in which that predicted future is variable or not. So, in essence, you can read a future that did not come to pass because perhaps that situation was heavily dependent on your own free will.

Last bit o'wisdom (or unwisdom coming from me) is that I believe tarot, or any other divination method, requires a lifetime commitment to even hope to master. I would naturally assume the overwhelming majority of readers will never reach the level needed to truly tap into the full power of it. We all can have moments of amazing lucidity, but it doesn't last. We have to understand that and question ourselves as readers and not "tarot" as a whole.
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There are several points to be discussed here. True, there's an exchange and feedback that goes on between client and reader that, if not handled correctly, can be dangerous and misleading, and when I started out I did make mistakes because of that, or because I let myself be influenced by the sitter's attitude to the question, or, if it was a friend, by what I knew about the situation, but over the years I have learnt to control all these dynamics, and to listen to the cards more than I listen to myself or the client...
Second point, this free will thing really gets on my nerves, whenever someone brings it up as an excuse for tarot not working....If anything, I think it's quite the opposite : tarot hasn't worked, because our free will was smashed to bits by superior forces, or by destiny itself !
And about your last bit of wisdom....I couldn't have put it better myself....this business of tarot does require a lifetime commitment; we NEVER stop Learning-and when we think we have learnt everything, it's the beginning of the end in my view-and most of us will never truly tap into the full power of it...no doubt about that.
 

Owl Tarot

Nikita_ said:
Your philosophy seems to imply that we are always the Masters of our life and destiny, which I totally disagree with...true, tarot is a wise Advisor, but it is undeniable, from my point of view, that we can't always decide what we want to do, and how things are going to develop... sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we cannot make things happen or work, and other times, no matter how hard we try to avoid them, they just happen...this is my experience, anyway...and I do envy those who believe we have the power to turn things around and shape them every single time as we like, as if they were lumps of clay in our hands....
Click to expand...

I am not saying the universe has no stability or facts or that we can change everything. What I am saying is the Tarot helps consider more things or give us new ideas to make a decision and we then decide. Also, things that happen may not always be avoided, but that is not the Tarot's doing and not what I meant or said. Tarot can help turn them around, but only help or show us some problem is coming. It won't do it in it's own right I think. When you say masters of our life, you mean complete controllers which I never said and kinda find impossible. What we can do, however, is get up or stay down. The Tarot can show us a way or the path, but it won't walk it. We will or we won't.

EDIT: An imagination example: Let's say you were born with no legs. That cannot change. What remains however, is that you can search for a way to live without legs or end your life because of it.

When we can't make things happen, things won't happen. We can still try. The Tarot also tells us how the journey is important and not only the end I believe, since it can tell a story or show a journey. This journey is not always pleasant but we can either fight what we dislike or sink in it. We decide when we have a choice.

When we can't decide what we want, we can do nothing, try something, do something to see if we like it, try to find something new etc. In all of those senarios, the Tarot can aid us by revealing.

Please re-read my starting post a little bit more carefully, you seem to have misunderstood it entirely and threw what I meant out of the window. That, or I wrote too poorly.
 

Nikita_

Farzon said:
I have made both experiences: it can predict the future and does so, ignoring if the reader understands yet or not.
At several l times I got cards I didn't understand at the time of the reading but which came obviously true.

And it can be a mere reflection of your hopes and fears. And I don't think there is any experience or state of higher consciousness (at least not with most of us) that can shun is from them.
So even if the readers you mentioned have long time experience they still can be influenced by hopes and fears. They just have to think "such a nice girl" once and everything is ruined. The cards still work at that point.
As to your question HOW they could possibly fail: they're but humans, too. We all are.

I like Tarotbear's explanation. I also think that we are aware of things we don't even know - think of people getting symbols right they can't see, as in parapsychological experiments. That's very close to a reading I guess.
Or think of Buddhism where everything is one - a take on reality even reflected in some super-string-theories.

I wouldn't say there are no spirits, ghosts or angels interfering with our readings, this I don't know. But the connection of everything gives a quite reasonable explanation I think.
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Nobody knows how it works, that's the whole point...And I also think that the connection of everything is probably the reason why it works...but I still don't think those readers-like many Others, no doubt, all over the world-have failed because they're human and were influenced by her in some way. Of course we, as humans, can fail, but believe me, I have seen her cards, in that case, more than once, and even a monkey could have read them-and now I expect an endless series of jokes and comments on how monkeys can be good excellent tarot readers just as any of us...
 

Nikita_

Owl Tarot said:
I am not saying the universe has no stability or facts or that we can change everything. What I am saying is the Tarot helps consider more things or give us new ideas to make a decision and we then decide. Also, things that happen may not always be avoided, but that is not the Tarot's doing and not what I meant or said. Tarot can help turn them around, but only help or show us some problem is coming. It won't do it in it's own right I think. When you say masters of our life, you mean complete controllers which I never said and kinda find impossible. What we can do, however, is get up or stay down. The Tarot can show us a way or the path, but it won't walk it. We will or we won't.

EDIT: An imagination example: Let's say you were born with no legs. That cannot change. What remains however, is that you can search for a way to live without legs or end your life because of it.

When we can't make things happen, things won't happen. We can still try. The Tarot also tells us how the journey is important and not only the end I believe, since it can tell a story or show a journey. This journey is not always pleasant but we can either fight what we dislike or sink in it. We decide when we have a choice.

When we can't decide what we want, we can do nothing, try something, do something to see if we like it, try to find something new etc. In all of those senarios, the Tarot can aid us by revealing.

Please re-read my starting post a little bit more carefully, you seem to have misunderstood it entirely and threw what I meant out of the window. That, or I wrote too poorly.
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OK. I understand what you are saying, but let's keep it simple and go back to the fairy tale story me and those 2 readers saw in my friend's cards, which turned out to be wrong. What do you think happened there, in simple-as much as possible-terms ?
 

EyeAmEye

Nikita,
If I may ask, what has the time frame been so far in your story?

In the example I gave you of myself, the reading I originally gave myself is closing on 8 years now and still isn't over. I think many people also fail to consider that our time frames do not always coincide with what we read. I've seen from many discussions on this forum that opinions vary greatly in how far tarot readings can "see". I personally believe there is no such thing. A reading can "see" as far as you continue to exist as far as I'm concerned, so maybe your fairy tale is yet to be told...
 

Farzon

Nikita_ said:
Nobody knows how it works, that's the whole point...And I also think that the connection of everything is probably the reason why it works...but I still don't think those readers-like many Others, no doubt, all over the world-have failed because they're human and were influenced by her in some way. Of course we, as humans, can fail, but believe me, I have seen her cards, in that case, more than once, and even a monkey could have read them-and now I expect an endless series of jokes and comments on how monkeys can be good excellent tarot readers just as any of us...
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Get am infinite number of monkeys with infinite Tarot Decks and they will foretell your friends future correctly, at least once! [emoji1]

Correct me if I'm wrong but your argumentation now centers on how to read the cards - but the "fault" (if it was one) was in drawing the cards not in interpreting them.
Plus, you cast away human nature. Of course all the three of you could have been wrong or influenced by sympathy.

But consider the other options:
They might come together again after all.
Or it was the most probable future at that time to get lucky. And then things turned, because they decided differently, behaved differently than expected. Tarot cannot gun out man's free will.
 
My first reading came to pass!!! Reading as a personal connection