Tarot: Does it work? How?

Considering that I'm a spiritual being having a human experience rather than a human being trying to have a spiritual experience, anything I personally believe about tarot does have a highly spiritual component. I didn't mean to leave the impression that I had boiled it down to a simply mundane equation. I'm a spiritual being working within the confines of a physical body which includes a physical brain, most of which I haven't got access to through "normal" means. The tarot helps me to access the wisdom in that part that's normally not accessible to me. The quote by Whyte seemed to sum up what I believe better than if I had said I believe the Great Tarot Spirit of Hoboken was speaking to me through the cards or some such thing. I do believe there's an element of spirituality and unknown forces about it, of course. I'd be silly not to. I don't think I can really be called a reductionist physicalist just on the basis of making a quote that I felt expressed what I believe in simple terms. That's sort of a "reductionist physicalist" snap judgment of me, don't you think? Not said in a spirit of animosity, mind you.

thinbudda

Thank you for your very kind reply. Your words were very enlightening and so I have written an answer.. long though it may be.
This is in answer to your suggestion about the tarot cards just being paper and how they could work.
In the early ages of the Church it evolved that they chose a large land mass area and placed around it a theoretical noose. This noose was tightened and everyone in it either became R.C. or they were killed. (I am simplifying here). This included of course all the other beliefs. They continued applying the same method overall to other land mass areas.
The result was that those who survived went underground and there were many. A system of communication to put forth the ancient beliefs was devised and The Tarot was born. These were intelligent, gifted people many who were probably superior to us. Many of the others could not write and of course freedom of expression in writing was banned. Those who did were persecuted and killed. A deck of cards, such as was produced, was easy to hide especially if they just played games with them. In these Tarot cards were all the wisdom from the ages past or as much as they could possibly include.
In our day, here and now we have freedom of thought and expression. Are we using it to the fullest extent ? Some are, for in the last 30 or 40 years much ancient wisdom has been made available to those who search..."seek and you will find". The old cathedrals are decorated plentifully with plinths and gargoyles representing the ancient wisdom. The workmen who carved and prepared them knew what they were doing.( Shades of the Masons ?)
My view on it all is holistic. I believe there is some truth in all persuasions. Sorting it out for yourself is the key.

Deepak Chopra discusses "the holographic image" at some length and I understand his concept. It is probably correct but is it all inclusive ?I do not know. Are we only a projection ? I do not know.
This would mean we are in a dream here and reality is after you die ! It takes some getting used to and I cannot wrap my arms around that concept totally.

I might add that I studied Christianity for years and can back up what I have written with a multitude of books. My spirituality is inclusive of all and is a world view or as much as is revealed to me through study and/or revelation.
Yes, I believe in the Supernatural. Yes, to the Occult (which simply means the unknown).
Yes to ancient wisdom and wisdom literature including The Tarot.
Yes to the lost land of Mu !!!!

My previous post did not mean to suggest that Lyric has a 'reductionist physicalist' view of the world - but rather simply acknowledged that the quote of David Whyte's was given by Lyric - and it is a quote that, in the context of Whyte's other works (only a little of which I am familiar with), certainly to me appears to be based on an essentially reductionist (though highly appreciative) view of that author.

I see now that I mistook what you had in mind, jmd. No offense taken, at any rate.

No idea what a 'reductionist physicalist' is! LOL!!

But - in every discussion of 'Why does this work?" one point is being missed. A lot of people will turn to the 'archetypes' in tarot yada-yada-yada and discuss how a symbol transcends yada-yada-yada -- but what does that have to do with getting a tarot reading?

You pick out six symbols and create your system upon it - pick out six ... let's see .. an old man with a cane, a young man with a sword, a girl with a basket of white flowers, a demon with fangs and wings, a neutral figure with wings and flowing robes, and a bottle of Bud Lite. You will all agree these images could be interpreted and reinterpreted by any one in any culture on this planet.

Big deal.

You shuffle those cards like a madman for two hours and ask a question and turn up three of the six cards and sonofabitch! You get the exact answer to your question!

Is it the images on the cards ?(anyone using those same six cards could also get the same images you do). Is it the limitation of only using half of the total number of cards? (law of averages). How did you turn over the correct cards to answer your question? (synchronicity).

Somewhere at the intersection of these worlds is the answer.

Tarotbear, I believe that would be the intersection of Walk and Don't Walk, no?

In other words, maybe (likely) no one will ever know...

Great discussion, by the way.

thinbuddha said:

I don't do readings for others. period. I don't believe in them. I don't get readings from others- again, I don't believe in them. To me, it is sort of like dream interpretation (it's best done for yourself). There is nothing magical going on- the cards don't know, the universe isn't putting the cards *there* because *there* is where thye are supposed to be. It is simply a matter of a system of symbols that is flexible enough to fit most any situation, and fitting your issue (the question at hand) to the answers that your cards present forces you to look at your issue in a new way.

Click to expand...

Yay, someone else who holds similar views to me

I don't usually read for others partly because I am worried that they will take the tarot as an oracle of the future, which I really don't believe it is. Occasionally I have asked for an online reading, or given one in the readings section here, because I want to see what it feels like giving and receiving readings from somone else. But my basic view of what goes on is psychological.

You have 78 cards, honed over years to represent many of the main concerns and images important to human beings. Take a random selection of them, associate them with specific issues (i.e. the positions in a spread) and you can make up a story that not only makes sense but can be applied to the person's life. How? By the power of the human mind to make up stories and to make sense of the world.

I believe that the cards are randomly chosen and it is 'all in the mind' to make sense of them. But that doesn't mean that it is trivial. Anorexia is 'all in the mind' as is any brilliant new invention before it is committed to paper and then built. The human mind is amazingly powerful and fascinating. That's part of why I like tarot. Oh, and the pretty pictures

memries said:

Also, I am not sure what a "peep" is ?

Click to expand...

You know, those little marshmallow treats you get at easter? That's a peep. But seriously, I agree with others that have posted here, I believe that the knowledge or the answers from Tarot come from yourself, that we already know them, but just need a little help sometimes in getting them out. Whether we know them from ourselves or from the Collective, who knows, but Umbrae is right, does it really matter how it works?

This is an intimidatingly intelligent thread.. I'm also interested in the mechanism of the cards. Part of me wants to believe in some higher power, the Collective Self, which I see as a sort of organic psychic 'emergent being' (William Hasker & Peter Hodgson talk about this - how personality emerges from people as we develop and the same may be true of God) and yet part of me sees projection and archetypal images as the primary factor. And what fairyhedgehog said about storytelling is so true. The archetypes are present in us all to a degree and so whatever cards show up can reflect ourselves back at ourselves in some form that we recognise and can connect to.

I wonder what would happen if someone did figure out how it worked? Maybe taking the toy apart would break it.. but damn it, I want to see if the emporer is naked, or what..

Kali Kitty said:

Part of me wants to believe in some higher power, the Collective Self, which I see as a sort of organic psychic 'emergent being' (William Hasker & Peter Hodgson talk about this - how personality emerges from people as we develop and the same may be true of God) and yet part of me sees projection and archetypal images as the primary factor.

Click to expand...

Well, as you've read, I believe that tarot works because of psychological factors. But that doesn't stop me from telling the cards "you go where you want to go" when I shuffle, and treating them as if they have been specially and accurately chosen to appear in answer to my questions! I always feel like I'm playing when I do this, but it doesn't matter. It is how it works for me.

If at some level you believe in a higher power and at another level you believe in psychology and archetypal imagery - well why not! Maybe those are different ways of describing the same thing. And after all, all our explanations, including our soundest scientific theories, are stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. Well, that's how I see it, anyway