Tarot: Does it work? How?

gregory said:

I agree with nissy actually. Driving a car does not require one to go into the levels of intuition - which is where overthinking can break things down. Thinking "ooh nasty noise maybe I had better check the wheel bearings, and steer carefully for now" is not the same as a reading stopping dead while you think of all you have learned about the Moon card. That stops the flow. Thinking about wheel bearings does not stop you driving.

Click to expand...

Undisputed, I guess, altough the comparison isn't exactly fair. Thinking instead too hard about what foot to use for what pedal in what order might have an influence on your driving style indeed.

Anyway, the question I thought this little sided-discussion was about was: If you have thought a lot about how tarot works and if you have an opinion about it, can that have a negative influence on your reading abilities some other day while you are not actually thinking about it at this very moment?

I wouldn’t bet that it has no influence at all, but I'd guess that after all it hardly matters. And I wouldn’t accept it as an excuse not to gain more knowledge about tarot in general.

I THINK when you read you have to let it flow and NOT think. I THOUGHT that was kind of also what this was about. I mean - I have read a huge amount - but not only do I not think about it when I read, on the whole I don't CONSCIOUSLY use any of it. I agree that I have no idea what may be going on in the depths of my subconscious, but that isn't "thinking"./

I also know that after I was blasted (amiably) here for not "using what I know" from all my reading, I tried. I REALLY tried. But I couldn't read at all that way. The "knowledge" that x card "means" so and so stopped me dead in my tracks.

Actually I don't rely on textbook meanings either. Thinking of those tends to get in the way of my readings too. And agreed, reading straight from the subconscious (or the devine if you believe in that) without conscious knowledge by no means implies not using your skills (call them knowledge, intuition or what have you). There is nothing wrong for me with an entire "no-knowledge"-approach (meaning no conscious reproducible knowledge) to tarot. If it works it's fine.

I personally don't need such a "no-knowledge-approach", as I can normally "switch off" my conscious knowledge about tarot when reading, so it doesn't get in my way. Hard to tell on the other hand whether my knowledge helps me at all or whether it's entirely useless.

There is one thing I am allergic to though. That's when I am being told that me wanting to know things would be in any way unhelpful or counter-productive. Nobody in this thread actually seems to have claimed that. So I'm sorry about the side-step.