Alot is wrong with tarot card interpretation

[Expressionpersonelle]

Do you believe tarot tells the future or one's higher self? I seem to think alot of card interpretation these days are getting way out of hand.

[katrinka]

I can agree with that, but probably for different reasons. I don't subscribe to the Wellness Model trend.
And yes, Tarot tells the future. I've been watching it do that since Maggie May was charting. As for "telling the higher self", can you define "higher self"? To the best of my knowledge, at the higher levels we're all one. Just pure consciousness. At that level, a deck of cards becomes irrelevant, IMHO. Tarot concerns itself with things here "below": material well-being, relationships, enterprise, etc. There's a spiritual element, but we're not at undifferentiated consciousness. We're "chopping wood and carrying water" and trying to believe in something. That's life.

[Raggydoll]

I don’t really understand your question. Does it matter if it’s the tarot or your higher self that tells the future? If you meant that you’re against fortune telling then that’s another thing altogether. 

[fire cat pickles]

Tarot can tell us anything. To each their own. If someone wants to use tarot to predict the future (my hand is up!), or for personal development, or to tell them what toppings to put on a pizza, let them.

 

The only difference we are seeing now is that tarot has gained popularity in the last few years, so maybe that's what you're seeing? We shouldn't have a problem with this or say it's "getting way out of hand". I for one am grateful to see it more widely accepted into the mainstream!

[Raggydoll]

35 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

We shouldn't have a problem with this or say it's "getting way out of hand". I for one am grateful to see it more widely accepted into the mainstream!

I agree. There will always be those unskilled tarot readers who give bad predictive readings, and others who will give bad 'life-coaching/higher-self" type of readings. Just like there will be skilled readers who can make very accurate predictions and/or give apt life advice. Why would it be wrong for someone to make predictions if they are good at what they do? So in my opinion, the type of readings that people do is not relevant. I have no opinions on other peoples reading styles. Tarot has gained popularity and its true that the more people who read tarot, the more unskilled or inexperienced readers we will see. Its a matter of statistics, really. Some will improve with time, others won't. Its not something I get worked up about. I am, like @fire cat pickles , happy that tarot is getting more widely accepted.  

 

[Bodhiseed]

59 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

Tarot can tell us anything. To each their own.

As others have said, tarot is useful in a LOT of ways. It's like building a raft - it's not so much what it looks like, but does it float?

[katrinka]

1 hour ago, Bodhiseed said:

As others have said, tarot is useful in a LOT of ways. It's like building a raft - it's not so much what it looks like, but does it float?

 

Yes, or baking a cake. Some cakes are so pretty it's a shame to cut them. If they taste good, too, that's wonderful. But if they were simply created to be photographed, I'll pass and have a slice of ugly cake instead. Preferably one that fell apart when the baker was transferring it to the cake plate, so they tried to stick it back together with frosting and disguise the broken parts and the dents with yet more frosting. I like frosting. 🐷

 

I have to admit I'm not enthused with Tarot being mainstream. While it's good to see peoples' minds opening a bit, the masses have a rotten track record. They ruin things, get them all wrong, then the corporations jump all over it and that's the end of it. Reading cards is an art, and art doesn't take well to that kind of thing. Look at what happened to psychedelic art: in the beginning there were those lovely gig flyers and posters. Kind of an art nouveau revival with surrealism and brighter colors. But in less than 10 years, there was a flood of low quality psychedelic ads for McDonalds, Pepsi, etc. and people got disgusted. Virtually nobody wanted to see psychedelic art any more.

 

It's a gold rush mentality: get in there quick, wreck it and get what you can out of it, and move on. We saw it happen with Lenormand ten years ago. Before that, just about anything you could google on the subject was useful. Now the vast majority of what comes up is stuff by people who haven't learned the method but want to fool the public into thinking they're some kind of Lenormand Grand Poobah.

I'm starting to see articles on Tarot in mainstream magazines. And a lot of them say things like "Tarot doesn't predict the future."  They have to make it believable to people who never really thought about it, they have to sell it to the masses. That's wrong, and I take issue with the ones who paint us predictive readers as lying or crazy, too. Yes, they're free to do what they want with their cards. But so are we, and I don't appreciate people who don't even know what they're talking about trying to marginalize and discredit us.

 

 

 

[Jewel]

3 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

I agree. There will always be those unskilled tarot readers who give bad predictive readings, and others who will give bad 'life-coaching/higher-self" type of readings. Just like there will be skilled readers who can make very accurate predictions and/or give apt life advice. Why would it be wrong for someone to make predictions if they are good at what they do? So in my opinion, the type of readings that people do is not relevant. I have no opinions on other peoples reading styles. Tarot has gained popularity and its true that the more people who read tarot, the more unskilled or inexperienced readers we will see. Its a matter of statistics, really. Some will improve with time, others won't. Its not something I get worked up about. I am, like @fire cat pickles , happy that tarot is getting more widely accepted.  

 

I could not agree more with @Raggydoll and @fire cat pickles.  I do both types of readings depending on the circumstance.  And I am glad Tarot is becoming more mainstream honestly.  Tarot takes time and we continually evolve and become better readers over time if we take it seriously and put in the effort.  To me, Tarot is learning a new language, the language of imagery.  We learn to read what the images then put the images of multiple cards together to form a prediction, advice, etc depending on the question.  Much like learning an alphabet, learning to write words, and then learning to construct sentences and narratives with the information shown on the cards.

[Eric13]

Tarot doesn't "tell" the future. Someone has an interest, a question. The reader lays the cards down and tells what they see in the cards. If the reader considers themselves to be an experienced and respectful reader, that should advise the sitter what they feel, or see based on the spread that has been given. "Telling" the future as in "this will happen" by the words wouldn't be right in my outlook. And as far as its wider acceptance, that could not not be better. Tarot isn't a clique, or a closed society. It may have been at one time in some places, but seems to be widely accepted and used in Europe for centuries now. Actually, I believe many decks did come out of secret societies because they were not accepted. But also with more readers out there, well, there's a lot of people driving cars these days, but the good ones stand out in all that traffic. If that makes sense!

But they are just cards after all!

[malvina]

I personally use cartomancy to learn information I don’t and can’t have access to, whether it involves past, present, or future (but usually the latter). I’m not interested in asking about my strengths, or ways to improve, or advice on self-love because I’m perfectly cable of analyzing conditions that are already known to me and especially my own personality without external tools. If something is hiding deep in my subconscious that I’m not aware of, I would need help from a professional therapist, so either way, the cards can’t offer much. I think people can ask whatever questions they feel comfortable with, it’s their choice, but I don’t understand those who say that fortune-telling is objectively impossible. I especially get upset when such people convince many readers and clients alike that all the material questions any human being is interested in (relationships, money, health, and yes, future) are unethical, or wrong, or stupid. 

 

29 minutes ago, Eric13 said:

If the reader considers themselves to be an experienced and respectful reader, that should advise the sitter what they feel, or see based on the spread that has been given.

Can you explain how’s that different from “telling” the future? Of course a tarot reader uses cards to answer the querent’s question and of course the interpretation comes from the reader themselves. If the querent wanted to get answers in some other manner, they wouldn’t have booked a tarot reading.

[fire cat pickles]

I have, and do "tell" the future with tarot, and playing cards. I don't have a choice. It's what they do for me. Is it written in stone? No. Any reading [again this is from my perspective and mine alone] I do will produce an outcome that is changeable. I see it as a warning shot across the bow, Newton's Law and all that...

[Eric13]

That its not written in stone is what I meant. Well said.

But when you're telling someone something you're having a striking or revealing effect. 

When you're actually showing a sitter, via the cards, you're dealing in facts. 

[Rose Lalonde]

14 hours ago, katrinka said:

To the best of my knowledge, at the higher levels we're all one. Just pure consciousness. At that level, a deck of cards becomes irrelevant, IMHO. Tarot concerns itself with things here "below": material well-being, relationships, enterprise, etc. There's a spiritual element, but we're not at undifferentiated consciousness. We're "chopping wood and carrying water" and trying to believe in something. That's life.

 

I agree with this so much that I posted mainly just to say Yes. 

 

Not sure that's allowed on its own... So that I add something from me, what I like about tarot as I read it is that it points toward the idea of "we're all one, pure consciousness" while expounding on the everyday realities of "things here below."  

[katrinka]

1 minute ago, Rose Lalonde said:

Not sure that's allowed on its own... So that I add something from me, what I like about tarot as I read it is that it points toward the idea of "we're all one, pure consciousness" while expounding on the everyday realities of "things here below."  

 

Also this. I think we just founded a mutual admiration society. 😁

[katrinka]

1 hour ago, Eric13 said:

That its not written in stone is what I meant. Well said.

But when you're telling someone something you're having a striking or revealing effect. 

 

Not really. You can tell some people things until you're blue in the face and have no effect whatsoever.
 

1 hour ago, Eric13 said:

When you're actually showing a sitter, via the cards, you're dealing in facts. 

 

You're translating what's on the table. Whether that translation is factual or not depends on the reader.

[gregory]

17 hours ago, katrinka said:

 

Not really. You can tell some people things until you're blue in the face and have no effect whatsoever.
 

 

You're translating what's on the table. Whether that translation is factual or not depends on the reader.

 

I'm with katrinka here. On the whole I read for "indications" rather than specific prediction - but I know several people who predict spot on - I even did it myself once and wasn't even trying. The cards do the work. Some readers can't read very well; some sitters refuse to hear what the cards show; this applies especially when they have too much invested in what they hope to hear. A closed mind - for a reader or a sitter - is the killer. If you see something that will happen - pay heed. Yes, I agree about the set in stone thing, but there are things that cannot be changed even by listening to advice. There are actually readers in this world who will go into a hospice and tell hopeful, desperate families that their relative will recover. You cannot help but see that death coming. There are less extreme examples.

[Rupicapra]

On 11/12/2021 at 7:14 AM, Expressionpersonelle said:

Do you believe tarot tells the future or one's higher self? I seem to think alot of card interpretation these days are getting way out of hand.

I think this is a very broad statement, can you maybe elaborate a bit on it? I find they are two different things as well, what people use the Tarot for and then a second one about online card interpretations, the two things seem a bit unrelated to me.

I think it would be helpful if you could explain a bit more what you mean.

[katrinka]

2 hours ago, gregory said:

Yes, I agree about the set in stone thing, but there are things that cannot be changed even by listening to advice. There are actually readers in this world who will go into a hospice and tell hopeful, desperate families that their relative will recover. You cannot help but see that death coming. There are less extreme examples.

Exactly. The controversy over "fate vs. free will" strikes me as nonsense.  Common sense and observation should tell us that some things can be changed, some can't.

[Guest]

Free will is a construct the ego manifests to assure itself of it’s own survival 🥶

 

Lady Gaia won’t allow us to ascend unless we surrender to divine will 🧘‍♀️
 

Readings one’s ‘future’ is karma, for both the querent and the reader ♾
 

- Karma for the querent for believing there is a point to controlling the future. - Karma for the reader in that they believe they can influence the future.  

[katrinka]

I don't believe in "ascension."
Nor am I going to run out and buy Nikes. No cults for me. I'm not a joiner.

[Little Fang]

Remember that we all have different beliefs here, and not everything will be true for other folks as it is for you. Let us all keep this in mind and this is a reminder for all the be respectful! ❤ 

 

I've always made it a point myself to remind my seekers that free will is everything and while a reading prediction may be true in the moment, they have some amount of power in their life. I don't like my clients feeling helpless. There are also many different beliefs in where the answers come from. It depends on who I'm working with at the time. It is often spirit guides or deities, even the great universal energy sometimes. I enjoy hearing everyone's thoughts. 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Little Fang said:

Remember that we all have different beliefs here, and not everything will be true for other folks as it is for you. Let us all keep this in mind and this is a reminder for all the be respectful! ❤ 

 

I've always made it a point myself to remind my seekers that free will is everything and while a reading prediction may be true in the moment, they have some amount of power in their life. I don't like my clients feeling helpless. There are also many different beliefs in where the answers come from. It depends on who I'm working with at the time. It is often spirit guides or deities, even the great universal energy sometimes. I enjoy hearing everyone's thoughts. 

That’s a vibe 🙏 I sense deep respect for the ethics of Tarot Reading

 

…in my opinion, if my soul had free will it would definitely have reincarnated as a Lion 🙈 (or any other animal for that matter)

 

No worries, no stress, no need to be at the mercy of the geopolitical banking system

 

🤷

 

 

[gregory]

What exactly has the geopolitical banking system got to do with ANYTHING here ? Even lions. Just be.

[Eric13]

oh boy!

[Guest]

🙏