Why so many Tarot readers or psychics are wrong?

tarot_quest

Feedback and personal experience

The first reading I had was a card reading with playing cards, rather than tarot, so I didn't mention it in my earlier post, but the reading was extremely accurate. She asked me for something of mine to hold, gave me the cards to shuffle, and then just went through the cards, giving me predictions as she went. She stated clearly that she wanted no information from me at all.

At this time I had no contact at all with any members of my family for the previous 18 years, this is relevant.

She told me that someone was trying to find me - within a week I received a letter from my father, forwarded to my by the health authority, asking me to get in touch.

She said I would go to Germany. I had never been abroad (aged 37) and did not even have a passport, the idea of my going abroad seemed extremely unlikely. Six months later I was in Germany for my younger brother's wedding. At the time of the reading I didn't even know he lived there.

She said she saw me sitting on a veranda, which I totally forgot about until I was enjoying the sunshine on the veranda of my brother's house in Germany.

She also said that someone would tell lies and I would be angry, my elder brother's ex-wife did nothing but tell lies for the next five years (and to say I was angry is a bit of an understatement!).

There were other things she said that did come true, I can't remember them all now, but I do remember writing down notes at the reading, writing them in a book immediately afterwards, and then ticking them off one by one as they happened.

I only went for the reading out of curiosity and didn't really believe in any psychic stuff at all so when the predictions came true I was completely shocked, particularly regarding the letter from my father as that was totally out of my control. Friends were saying that I must have given her some clues, but she didn't let me tell her anything, in fact, she didn't let me speak at all, so the only way she could have made these predictions is by psychic ability.


:) :) :)

That is very impressive with so many accurate details!

Now, how a psychic could see this events sometimes years in advance if we have free will and if these events were not ''planed'' by us... That is the question.

I would like to give two drastic examples, that are also very personal.

One of my little brothers had leukemia, a cancer easily treated in children with a very high remission rate. One of my aunt told me that my brother would never go over 12 years old. She dreamed about it. She told me this about 2 years before he passed away. Believe me, there was no clue about whether he was going to die or not when she did the prediction. I was hoping she would be wrong, but she was not.

About 2 years ago or so, I dreamed that my grandmother was going to pass away on an exact date. I could not believe it. Well, about a year ago, she died on the exact same date! I am assuming that these dreams were some warnings to enjoy our time with them when they were still alive.
 

Midsummereve

Hi ATers!

I did not see tons of tarot readers or psychic in my life (about 6?), and all of them were quite wrong in their predictions.

I understand the rule that at best, the accuracy reach 80-90%, but all of those readers were far from this ''statistic''.

My future just unfolded lately, and I have not been accepted in a very competitive program that would have required years of commitment. 3 different tarot readers told me that I was sure to get in. Of course, I tried to do not think about these predictions and I prepared a lot to get accepted.

Even if I love Tarot, I am starting to think that I should not see professional tarot readers again. They also made a lot of other inaccurate predictions and wrong assumptions about my present life and other wrong predictions.

So here is my question: Have you already had a useful and accurate tarot (psychic) reading? Do you think that all of these readers made mistakes on important life events because I was not meant to know?

Hi! I don't have years of experience behind me, but in my relative brief experience with the Tarot, I have found one person here on AT so far whose predictions have been pretty much spot on for me, so I do believe that we can have the good fortune to be placed upon the path of a truly gifted person...

I think that it is eminently human to want to make sense of the uncertainty (causing fear) that is present in our lives. Trying to predict the future has been a way for humankind to deal with that uncertainty and therefore to manage our fears. If we do away with the predictive powers of the Tarot, do we not underuse its powers?

Perhaps by bearing in mind that what we see in the cards is only a possibility, and not an absolute certainty, can we still use Tarot's predictive power, while taking a reading with a "pinch of salt"?
 

SunChariot

Hi ATers!

I did not see tons of tarot readers or psychic in my life (about 6?), and all of them were quite wrong in their predictions.

I understand the rule that at best, the accuracy reach 80-90%, but all of those readers were far from this ''statistic''.

My future just unfolded lately, and I have not been accepted in a very competitive program that would have required years of commitment. 3 different tarot readers told me that I was sure to get in. Of course, I tried to do not think about these predictions and I prepared a lot to get accepted.

Even if I love Tarot, I am starting to think that I should not see professional tarot readers again. They also made a lot of other inaccurate predictions and wrong assumptions about my present life and other wrong predictions.

So here is my question: Have you already had a useful and accurate tarot (psychic) reading? Do you think that all of these readers made mistakes on important life events because I was not meant to know?

There are a number of reasons why this can happen.

First some people pretend to be readers who are not and who don't have any idea who to read. They just make up a bunch of stuff and charge money for it. Or worse, charnge minimal amounts for the reading and tell a lot of scary things, then charge huge amounts for itens to sell to the querent to try to protect themselves. So (very very sadly) for one thing, some people just pretend to be readers who are not.

I would say that yes, as well there is no human being who does not make mistakes. In any profession you can think of. Even surgeons whose work is some of the most serious make mistakes. Also as readers, we need to stay subjective and keep our own life beliefs out of things, and that can occasionally be a lot harder than it sounds.

And the last one I can think of atm, which I think is the most common one, a reading on the future CAN in fact be perfectly accurate and still the future does not play out as predicted in the reading. And yet, still the reading may have been perfectly done and accurate at the time.

It's the very nature of the future that it is by nature changeable. At almost any point in time there is not just one future possible, but a myriad of them. ALL that a reading on the future can do at the very best is to tell you which of them you are currently heading towards at the exact moment in time that the reading is done.

That is all Tarot can ever do because that is the nature of the future. If anything changes, even something so little as the querent's thoughts after reading a reading can sometimes be enough, that can be enough to change the future. When this happens the reading was in fact accurate. It did what it was supposed to, it told the querent the future they were heading towards at that time. That is all it ever can do.

Because we always have free will all along the path towards our futures, the cards cannot yet predict if we will change our mind, that is not written yet. Changing our mind changes the future.

The cards can only, at best, show us where we are heading at the moment in time the reading was done. Surprisingly, it tends to play out most times, as we are so much creatures of habit and we tend to think and act in the habitual ways. We are creatures of habit so that makes us fairly predictable. if we act in predictable ways, our future can be predicted.

Biut if we break from that, and change at some point, that will change the future from what the cards predicted to something different.

Personally, questions on what will happen in the future, tend to be my least favourite kind of question. I prefer to ask questions about the meaning of life, or how to conquer my life obstacles...

But if i do as about the future, I tend to prefer to ask something more along the lines of how to acheive what i want in the future than what will happen. Eg if I wanted to get into a competitive program, instead of asking IF I will, I tend to prefer to ask what I can do now that will increase my chances of getting in Then I set about to do it. And it feels like I am doing something useful. Instead of asking where I am heading now, which I know can change, I prefer to try to change where I am heading to where I want to end up. If that makes sense.

Asking what will happen in the future seems to be the most commonly asked questions. To me it just isnt the kind of question that Tarot does best though.

Just my opinons....


As for your last question, that is an interesting ones. I do believe that if you are not meant to know something you will not be told it. That can result in the cards purposely misdirecting you, but i think that is rare and only if that is the only way to stop the reader from telling you.

There are other ways to get that message across. I once did a reading where I got the answer clearly that the cards would not answer that question for the querent as she was just NOT meant to know it. I just got that from the card, that I had to tell her the cards refused to answer her question and that it was not in her best interest to know that right now. Even though Tarot can answer anything it is not always willing to.

I remember that reading. I told her that (that the cards would not tell her as she was not meant to know right now) and she sighed and said that 3 other readers had already told her the same thing but she thought I would be different. LOL

If you are not meant to know something, you are not going to be told it. But the cards can just say that without lying.


Babs
 

AraLuck

That is all Tarot can ever do because that is the nature of the future. If anything changes, even something so little as the querent's thoughts after reading a reading can sometimes be enough, that can be enough to change the future. When this happens the reading was in fact accurate. It did what it was supposed to, it told the querent the future they were heading towards at that time. That is all it ever can do.

Because we always have free will all along the path towards our futures, the cards cannot yet predict if we will change our mind, that is not written yet. Changing our mind changes the future.

The cards can only, at best, show us where we are heading at the moment in time the reading was done. Surprisingly, it tends to play out most times, as we are so much creatures of habit and we tend to think and act in the habitual ways. We are creatures of habit so that makes us fairly predictable. if we act in predictable ways, our future can be predicted.

Biut if we break from that, and change at some point, that will change the future from what the cards predicted to something different.


Babs

I agree with Babs here... and this is what I tend to tell paid/unpaid querents who come to me. This has been for my own readings too, on my personal life. Although I have been spot on about many things that have happened to me, I have found it was less to be the case with pro readers. For instance, I kept asking if my ex would marry someone else... and most of them said no. Potentially, because it's an arranged marriage, the energy was not willing, but ground reality was binding him... and I knew that. So it came as no surprise to me that they couldn't apply their readings to the reality I was living in... and that he did in fact get married to the one his family had chosen for him!

I also do daily 'energy' readings... and I see that all the time how my own energy changes about a situation... and therefore I ask "based on how I feel today... what could be the outcome of this situation?"

I do believe that free will is the ultimate key player... and Tarot can only read what will be the outcome of the current free will frequency... which leaves the actual outcome up in the air...IMO.
 

Barleywine

There's an old saying in astrology (attributed to Claudius Ptolemy, but I couldn't find it verbatim in my copy of Tetrabiblos):

"The stars incline, but they do not compel."

My firm belief is that tarot taps into that same paradigm. At best, it shows us an inclination in the fabric of our personal reality, more like a surface wave from which we can discern the direction of the wind rather than the movement of a deep undersea current. The more subtle and variable the wind that moves it, the more challenging it is for the reader to deduce where the wave is headed. Readers like to come across as confident and convincing, so the least ripple can sometimes drive the most unlikely pronouncement. This is where I find the esoteric approach (as in qabalah + elemental dynamics + astrology + number and color theory + mythology etc.) to be of the utmost value: it offers numerous layers of subtlety that - if wielded with discernment and not the usual starry-eyed eclecticism - can really open up those "undersea vistas." But while the vision can be inspiring, its intelligible translation can be beyond the reach of those readers with an average command of language. So they fall back on what they know, which may yield an imprecise or incomplete judgment. This isn't an elitist attitude, just an observation from long experience.

To me, the most useful predictions are those that come not with an explanation point (Yes! No!) but with a qualifying clause that conveys a hint of the options available to the querent (Yes, if . . . No, but . . . Maybe, assuming . . . ). This sends a clear message that he or she has ultimate responsibility for following through, either to reel in that happy ending or to stave off that less fortunate one. A flat "Yes" or "No" lets the querent off too easy. I want my sitters to reconize that the reading is theirs, not mine. I interpret the cards in the spread as a mirror of the querent's subconscious knowledge of the most likely outcome, however dim or flawed, at that moment in time, and I'm their impartial agent. Readers take your money for their time and effort, not for the absolute perfection of their vision. That's for you to strive toward with the knowledge handed to you by the cards. Hopefully you (the plural you, that is, like what they mean in Philadelphia by youse, or in the American South by y'all) can run down that epiphany before it hits you over the head.
 

Chrystella

So here is my question: Have you already had a useful and accurate tarot (psychic) reading? Do you think that all of these readers made mistakes on important life events because I was not meant to know?

Yes, but they have been few and far between. The best readings I've had were about 80% insight and 20% predictions (which all came to pass, including a death). Only one was from a tarot reader, Mary K. Greer. The rest were from diviners in orisha traditions using other tools.

Everyone else has expressed my general sentiment. I'll add that I don't think the tarot is the problem; it's the reader. There are a lot of shonky readers out there. In the worst reading I ever had, I was looking to shed some light around a work-related matter. The reader put three cards down, slams her palm on the table, and said things like, "You see?! It's right there." She looked at me, nodding her head, and said sympathetically, "You know exactly what you need to do." That was the gist of it. And this woman is a full time professional tarot reader. I'm sure that kind of blank nonsense goes over well with a lot of people who simply project the results they want.
 

TheProphet

I consulted a few tarot readers a couple of years ago, but didn't have a great experience with it. I remember one reader that I consulted who told me that I would be engaged a couple of months later and that she could see "an engagement party with family and friends". I told her that I just recently got brutally dumped without an explanation! She didn't care, she still saw an engagement. Haha, well, it was a bunch of rubbish as it never happened. However - a family member of mine who reads cards has been quite accurate in her readings. She predicted a certain visitor coming to me (which I said 'would neeeever happen', but it did) and when I was younger and in love and involved with an older guy, she said that he was married with kids - I shut her down and said that she was absolutely wrong, but it turned out she was right!

But because I have pretty bad experiences with tarot readers, as I believe there are plenty out there who don't know how to read the cards and just make stuff up, I tend to stick to mediums. I'm sure there are many honest and skilled tarot readers out there, I just haven't met them I feel like. What I like about mediums is that I don't have to tell them anything about me or my life, the only question I have to ask is "What do you see for me?" and they'll start babbling on about me and my life. So far, they have been eerie accurate about many things and known stuff that they couldn't possibly know otherwise.

I do however trust my own tarot readings :D
 

AraLuck

I consulted a few tarot readers a couple of years ago, but didn't have a great experience with it. I remember one reader that I consulted who told me that I would be engaged a couple of months later and that she could see "an engagement party with family and friends". I told her that I just recently got brutally dumped without an explanation! She didn't care, she still saw an engagement. Haha, well, it was a bunch of rubbish as it never happened. However - a family member of mine who reads cards has been quite accurate in her readings. She predicted a certain visitor coming to me (which I said 'would neeeever happen', but it did) and when I was younger and in love with an older guy, she said that he was married with kids - I shut her down and said that she was absolutely wrong, but it turned out she was right!

But because I have pretty bad experiences with tarot readers, as I believe there are plenty out there who don't know how to read the cards and just make stuff up, I tend to stick to mediums. I'm sure there are many honest and skilled tarot readers out there, I just haven't met them I feel like. What I like about mediums is that I don't have to tell them anything about me or my life, the only question I have to ask is "What do you see for me?" and they'll start babbling on about me and my life. So far, they have been eerie accurate about many things and known stuff that they couldn't possibly know otherwise.

I do however trust my own tarot readings :D
Very similar experience! And I am trusting my own readings increasingly!
 

Grizabella

I haven't read the whole thread but wanted to share something from my own life in regard to psychic awareness.

When my husband and I got to the place where we were able to make some plans for things we'd like to do in retirement, I was no longer able to come up with anything. I found it very odd and frustrating and was puzzled about that, but thought maybe the stress of raising a second family might be causing me to lose that kind of vision. I always liked to look forward to happy times we could make in the future, even with two little kids.

Not so. What happened was that my husband died in the summer of 2000. It had never occurred to me that that was what was going on with my sixth sense. His death was totally unexpected, but that was why I couldn't seem to dream for the two of us anymore, I'm sure. It was because I'd be living the future without him.
 

tarot_quest

Not so. What happened was that my husband died in the summer of 2000. It had never occurred to me that that was what was going on with my sixth sense. His death was totally unexpected, but that was why I couldn't seem to dream for the two of us anymore, I'm sure. It was because I'd be living the future without him.

Sorry about that Grizabella :heart:

I also think that you sensed something. Big hug at distance!