Purpose of Tarot

[Sar]

I am a norwegian and the germans I know are all very diciplined and rationale people with law and order in their blood stream.

 

[SunChariot]

Strolling around this forum I realized that many people use the tarot totally different from me. Most are concerned with predicting the future somehow, getting a prediction on their career or love life. That is totally not my cup of tea and I find it funny to imagine Crowley doing a spread on whether some girl loves him.

Personally, I use the tarot to get insights about aspects of myself, to become more aware of alternative ways of action and alternative ways to frame situations.
Furthermore it is a kind of kabbalistic encyclopedia. Flashcards of all the correspondences, like an abbreviated Liber 777.

Tarot can also come in handy when doing street magic as a mentalist effect. I have not yet done this, but could imagine doing so with a separate deck. I think the problem with doing street magic with a tarot deck are the different expectations of the audience. They could be disappointed, when you "just" do some card tricks, when they have expected a reading. This is something that has held me back.

Another obscure usage of tarot I know of is to pick up girls. Somehow girls love palm reading and horoscopes and all this stuff. This is also something I could very well imagine Crowley doing

For what purpose do you use tarot cards?

As you said, mostly for insights into myself. to understand myself, my motivations more deeply. For self-improvement. To understand the mysteries of life better. Some of my favourite questions that I like to ask the cards are the philosophical questions on the meaning of life. I once did a reading that I loved on the nature of destiny and how it works.

For me, when I do read about the future I am more interested in using the cards to create my best future than in just predicting it. I like to ask the cards what steps I need to take to get to where I want to go. Then I can take them and get there.

EG if I to have a better job in the next few months, that pays more, I might ask the cards what I need to do to get there...what steps I need to take that will lead me there. Then I TAKE the steps. Then soon after I ask what future I am heading towards in that area of my life. If it is the one I want, then the work paid off. IF not I ask what I still need to adjust. And take THOSE steps. I keep checking in and adjusting, and following the steps the cards outline, until I arrive at the future I want.

I believe Tarot is meant to be empowering. A tool that helps us create the future we want it more empowering that one that can just predict something that is destined to happen and that we have no say in. Of course the self-analysis questions can also be empowering. As, to me, are the questions about the world around us. The better we understiand how that works, the more in harmony with truth we are and the better our lives work.

Those are what I like to use it for.

Babs

 

[SunChariot]

I never thought about how my culture influenced the outlook i have on tarot up to now. Germany is mostly an atheist, unreligious nation, where tarot is considered as a form of superstition. I would certainly get weird reactions, when talking about tarot openly. I assumed in USA, this is the same.

It is pretty much the same here in Canada too.

People have a lot of negative ideas about Tarot, either that it is superstition or that readers are all frauds because it cannot work. A few people I meet are really scared of it. One person told me not to learn Tarot because it was Voodoo. Most seem to think it can only be used to tell the future. And some that the cards force that future to happen. Whatever they cards say HAS to then happen. They are too scared to get a reading as they don't want the cards to tell them something awful and they will then have to deal with the fear of waiting for it to happen. There are so many untrue ideas about Tarot out there. (sigh).

If you just talk openly about it, there is always the risk of getting a strange reaction.

Babs

 

[ATerribleOwl]

It is good explanation. I mostly think it was my question that didn't have a lot of forethought to it. I didn't think you were an oddball or anything of that sorts.

It was something I was kind of thinking of the other day, before this thread. I have a very English centered point of view on Tarot, result of me only knowing the one language. Something something incomplete thoughts.

Anyhoot, it was probably something I could have formulated better before asking or figured out myself. Thank you for answering.

 

[FLizarraga]

Funny you mention it, I first thought of writing about single mothers doing spreads about their cats but then decided it would rub some people the wrong way and instead wrote about love.

So you thought that "writing about single mothers doing spreads about their cats" would "rub some people the wrong way?" I see.

Well, I can tell you that it rubs me the wrong way, and neither am I a single mother (or even a woman, for that matter) nor do I do spreads about my cat.

In fact, Crowley used I-Ching to check whether a certain day was suitable for a dentist appointment. And when "the sticks", as he phrased it, told him to cancel he did.

This is a great bit of trivia. Very revealing, in more than one way...

I can easily see Crowley asking the cards or the sticks whatever struck his fancy. Why wouldn't he?

 

[Nemia]

Flizzy, I reacted so strongly to the sentence about these ridiculous single mothers with their idiotic questions that I wrote a much too strong answer that I deleted later. I'm so happy you noticed it too. It underlines my respect for you. (I'm not a single mother either).

There is no right or proper way to use the tarot. As long as we don't hoax, exploit or damage others, everyone uses the cards the way he/she sees fit. Like with every other tool, too. There are people who use books to decorate their room instead of reading them, who am I to tell them they're doing it wrong? They bought the book and did not sign a contract to use them the way I see fit.

 

[fchiaramonte]

Well, I could say that the Tarot used me and my girlfriend to pick up us as a couple (not the opposite) and here's why.

I had just bought the Vertigo deck and was hanging out with friends (and my future GF) that same night and checking the cards out. Some days later I noticed that a card was missing. It was the Knight of Cups. I looked for it everywhere but was not able to find it. I even tought that the card was missing from the deck, as I bought it used. Some more days later, though, and after I proposed a relashionship with her, the card mystetiously reapeared in a small room in my office, where I've already looked for it. It was on the floor. So, well, the mighty Knight of Cups traveled around passionate hearts and came back later with a couple as a prize.

So I could say that the tarot used us in this manner.

 

[chaosbloom]

Here, it is more associated with women. Basically tarot is feminine, like horoscopes are. Things that people stuff in themselves to not be confronted with the harsh reality. Stuff people use to feel safe and create harmony. Personally I would even argue, that if using tarot lets you feel safe, you are using it wrong.

Those views aren't exclusively German, I'd say they're modern Western and they're pretty ridiculous cultural values. The whole distinction between "low magick" used by women versus the (usually kabbalistic) "high magick" used by men is just typical of this sort of modern sexism that started when various men picked up the occult as a hobby back in the late 18th and 19th centuries. How is high magick closer to the harsh reality? You're still involved with angelic beings, divine emanations, names of god, occult transcendence. All that is pure metaphysics, and transcendence is the ultimate attempt to avoid "harsh reality" by transcending the material world.

It's pretty funny that this sort of thing became a norm only in the modern era. There was a widespread belief in the middle ages that women were the purer, more inherently spiritual sex, closer and more receptive to god and spiritual experiences. It goes even further back judging by how women have always held high places along with men in the ancient era. Female high-priestesses, female oracles like Pythia in Delphi and the Sibyls spread throughout the ancient world. There was no distinction then between male and female seers.

I don't really see any practical result either. Even the high-magick posterboy Aleister wasn't exactly a wise, radiant angel even after spending his entire life pursuing attainment and various forms of godhead. He managed to make more enemies than friends, partook in various unbelievable scams (bottling his sperm to sell as a sex magick elixir etc.) and died in poverty addled by multiple opiate addictions. That's not to mention his deeply racist views and his completely inexplicable antisemitism even though he was immersed in kabbala. There's even a rumor that he cursed his doctor shortly before he died because he wouldn't prescribe enough morphine to him. Apparently the doctor died shortly afterwards. In contrast, I've seen far more actually benevolent, balanced, peaceful "cat ladies" dealing with "feminine low magick".

It's also pretty interesting that while these women who deal with more "mundane", "low" forms of divination and magic and ask questions about boyfriends and their cats with Tarot spreads rarely complain about how others use Tarot or different forms of magic, it's usually the high-magickians and more "deeply" spiritual users who complain about them instead.

Seems like a pretty insecure, thoroughly unenlightened behavior to me so I'll choose the "cat ladies" anyday over aristocratic magickal dilettantes like Crowley.

 

[SunChariot]

In fact, Crowley used I-Ching to check whether a certain day was suitable for a dentist appointment. And when "the sticks", as he phrased it, told him to cancel he did.

You know, of course, when is the best time to go visit the dentist....

2:30. (or is that "tooth hurty").

Couldn't resist,

Babs

 

[Padma]

I like the cat ladies, too

I have always found tarot to be a tool that anyone can use however they like, and I really don't think it matters if you are male or female. Or what questions you answer with it.

My thinking is that those who feel they are somehow better, more "majikal" <gag> or hold the moral high ground because they are one gender or the other, or believe themselves to be superior humans merely based on how they choose to use the cards, are just big fakes. Rather like Crowley, scammer par excellence!

(I wouldn't be so quick to throw the crazy cat ladies under the bus, as Crowley built his fluctuating fortune off of their vulnerabilities...)

PS so did R.Waite...