Thoughts on Yes/No Questions

Barleywine

There is an ongoing debate about whether tarot - essentially a story-telling medium - is effective for giving predictive answers of the simplest type - "yes" or "no." Some say no, it isn't. Some just use one-card draws for this, which I suppose is fine if you have an inflexible, predetermined "yes/no/maybe" meaning for every card (some are obvious, others not so much). But it seems to be devoid of any latitude for more insightful interpretation, like "why" or "how" that particular answer was arrived at instead of another.

Mary K. Greer has an interesting option on her site from a 1955 magazine article by Irys Vorel: https://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/yes-no-advice-oracle/, but it's a little less to-the-point than I've been looking for.

What I'm thinking is that a three-card line should be sufficient for this purpose, with the center - or "focus" - card as the "answer" card. I would then use elemental dignities from the other two to see if the center card is strengthened or weakend by them, making the suggested answer more or less likely. The inherent nature of the center card would of course still be the primary indicator, but I like the inflection provided by the "modifiers." The nature of those cards could also shed light on the ease or difficulty the focus card displays in producing an unambiguous answer.

As you can see, I don't think anything about tarot is cut-and-dried.

Marcus R

One I've seen is a 3 card spread. Left and right count as one vote, centre as two. Upright as yes, reversed as no. Once the answer has been determined read the cards to find out why. Using dignities would be fine. Maybe/unknown is possible, the cards will tell you why.
I've done it once for someone else, they seemed satisfied with the answer.

Padma

I like Mary Greer's spread, which has been superbly accurate for me - if I need details - but I have to say, in all honesty, if you want it really brief, the best way I have ever used is to take out the Sun for Yes, the Death for No. Discard the rest of the deck. I shuffle those till I no longer know which is which, cut the two cards, and pick one. And this has been infallible so far. Don't shortchange the tarot on its abilities, is what I think!

Nineveh

Hello! My automatic yes card is the sun upright. Generally, I read reversals as 'no' and upright cards as 'yes'. However, upright cards such as the star, hanged man, and justice aren't necessarily 'yes' but 'maybe' and also denotes that whatever is desired or asked about may take some time to happen.

Barleywine

Nineveh said:
Hello! My automatic yes card is the sun upright. Generally, I read reversals as 'no' and upright cards as 'yes'. However, upright cards such as the star, hanged man, and justice aren't necessarily 'yes' but 'maybe' and also denotes that whatever is desired or asked about may take some time to happen.

I've done something similar when trying to glean a straight "yes" or a "no" out of more complex spreads. The Sun is obviously at one end of the spectrum, and there are a few contenders clustered near the other end: Death, the Devil, possibly the Moon (although the true answer there might be "yes, but not what you think"). But the vast majority of the major cards fall into the gray area of "maybe," unless pushed one way or the other by the adjacent cards. With the minors, it seems to depend more on the deck. The Thoth 7 and 8 of Cups, at face value, couldn't be anything but "not no, but hell no!" while the RWS versions are more ambivalent. The modern trend toward squeezing affirmation and empowerment out of the cards at all costs can make it difficult to pin down anything useful for this purpose. I don't use reversals as an outright "no" since I see them in general as more "spin" than substance. I tend to stick with the astrological and elemental corrospondences of the cards for the timing of developments.

Barleywine

Marcus R said:
One I've seen is a 3 card spread. Left and right count as one vote, centre as two. Upright as yes, reversed as no. Once the answer has been determined read the cards to find out why. Using dignities would be fine. Maybe/unknown is possible, the cards will tell you why.
I've done it once for someone else, they seemed satisfied with the answer.

I like the "multi-vote" idea, but it seems like you might get a lot of "hung jury" situations just using upright or reversed as the determinant, and have to default to "maybe." But tarot is not unkown for mixed messages, so that's probably par for the course.

Barleywine

Padma said:
I like Mary Greer's spread, which has been superbly accurate for me - if I need details - but I have to say, in all honesty, if you want it really brief, the best way I have ever used is to take out the Sun for Yes, the Death for No. Discard the rest of the deck. I shuffle those till I no longer know which is which, cut the two cards, and pick one. And this has been infallible so far. Don't shortchange the tarot on its abilities, is what I think!

I've seen decks (not tarot, if I recall) that have a "Yes," "No" and "Maybe" card included. But it seems to me that flipping a coin might be just as effective (as has been frequently asserted here on this forum). Not that I would do that, of course; where's the charm and mystery in that? I don't think I would equate "brief" with bare-bones utilitarian.

Padma

Barleywine said:
I've seen decks (not tarot, if I recall) that have a "Yes," "No" and "Maybe" card included. But it seems to me that flipping a coin might be just as effective (as has been frequently asserted here on this forum). Not that I would do that, of course; where's the charm and mystery in that? I don't think I would equate "brief" with bare-bones utilitarian.

Well, I guess it is up to one's personal experience.. It works well for me; your mileage may vary

(and...I don't equate the two cards Sun and Death with utilitarianism! Unless I misunderstood you? )

Barleywine

Padma said:
Well, I guess it is up to one's personal experience.. It works well for me; your mileage may vary (and...I don't equate the two cards Sun and Death with utilitarianism! Unless I misunderstood you? )

No, I was thinking of the "Yes/No/Maybe" cards and the coin-flip ideas. I was afraid you might misunderstand that.

Padma

Gotcha! All good!