Tarot: Is it all in our heads or are spirits talking to us?

[TarotNewbie101]

Curious as to what people's personal opinions are, as I know there are some people who study tarot secularly, simply as an introspective tool that reveals their subconscious, and others who use tarot in divinatory ways and believe spirit guides (or what have you) are providing answers. 

 

I can appreciate both sides, but something recent lately has made me question the secular tarot method recently. If tarot is only subconscious self-study, I'm confused as to why the many Pick a Card readings I've used to watch on YouTube, I would always get the same message? Not once has it deviated, and these are readings from many different people with the same specific details popping up.

 

As of late, I've been asking one particular question when I look at YouTube PACs. When I'm picking one of their cards, I'm unaware of what they're going to say, and I still get a similar message from every single video. I initially thought, "Oh, these guys are all following the same script, or all the options are very similar", and then I listen to the other choices and they're actually quite different. Then I've had friends do spreads just for me, and the same message pops out. I do one for myself - same message pops out. There has to be some divinatory things going on.

 

Anyway, curious to hear others' thoughts.

[katrinka]

I think the question itself is a false dichotomy.
I use cards predictively and I don't claim anything is going on with spirits. I suspect it has more to do with the nature of time/space.
People who do claim to be communicating with spirits often claim to use their subconscious in some capacity. I don't see an either/or here at all.

[TarotNewbie101]

33 minutes ago, katrinka said:

I think the question itself is a false dichotomy.
I use cards predictively and I don't claim anything is going on with spirits. I suspect it has more to do with the nature of time/space.
People who do claim to be communicating with spirits often claim to use their subconscious in some capacity. I don't see an either/or here at all.

I mean that way as well. Don't think I can edit my post now, but predictive reading also falls outside of secular tarot where some think it is a completely neutral tool with no inherent powers. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! 

[RunningWild]

There are so many ways to use tarot. 

 

I was introduced to tarot as a way to get me to think outside the box, which is, IMO, quite a secular activity.  However, I enjoy doing predictive readings.  Where do those answers come from?  I usually just toss that in the big box marked 'Universe', which is similar to Katrinka's response.  It's a more detached outlook and doesn't require a belief such as 'spirit' or ancestors, or guides, or whatever.

 

[Newpath]

I don’t think we can know for sure where the answers come from. I do believe they come from a power beyond our world. I have been warned and foretold things that can’t possibly have come from the subconscious mind. Both from my own readings and from professional readings.

[katrinka]

5 minutes ago, TarotNewbie101 said:

I mean that way as well. Don't think I can edit my post now, but predictive reading also falls outside of secular tarot where some think it is a completely neutral tool with no inherent powers.

 

Neutral tools have inherent powers (And I don't mean "inherent" in the Buddhist sense here, though if you look at it that way, neither the power, the tools, nor the user exists), that's what makes them tools. I can't drive a nail with my fist, but I can with a hammer.  I can't tell if I will have visitors this week by guessing, but I can with cards. Same thing.

Not knowing precisely what makes cards work predictively doesn't make them fall outside of secular Tarot. "Secular" is defined as having no religious or spiritual basis. There's really no way of knowing if predictive reading is secular or not.

[Miss-9-of-pentacles]

As they say “ Questions are the answer “ and  one of the main reasons I wanted to learn Tarot in the first place was to connect with my sub-conscious by asking better questions and thus making better life decisions.

However, for the purpose of divination and guidance, I mainly use Tarot to connect with the spirits. Why? Because this is what I believe. Why do I believe this? Because I have experience with the paranormal.

 

Your belief has been challenged. But that’s all it is, a belief.

The Tarot’s power stems from your power of belief.

If you believe that your experience feels divine. Then it probably is.

[katrinka]

17 minutes ago, Miss-9-of-pentacles said:

But that’s all it is, a belief.

Exactly. Having a belief is not the same as knowing. It's an item of faith.

[DanielJUK]

We all have different beliefs about how we get the messages but none of us know how it works. Just our own theories 🙂

Personally I think it comes from ourselves and the cards just inspire our intuitive ability. But where do the messages from? is it all in our heads? Some people say from ancestors/ spirit guides / something outside ourselves. Even if it comes from ourselves, somehow it has to come from out of us is my current thinking. I think it comes from the universe in some form, maybe God or Gods and Goddesses? Jung believed in the collective unconscious, where we are all born with some memories and images and dreams from our past in the unconscious part of us.

 

I came to tarot both in a secular and sceptical way and I have seen some amazing things and so I do think that the info we get comes from a higher source somehow. There are a lot of patterns in the readings and repeating messages. I see too many amazing synchronicities and coincidences and so they must come form a higher place is my theory.

[gregory]

I don't care where it comes from - when it works, it is awesome, and as the messages are often so very clear, that's all fine by me. I wish I could say hand on heart that they come from within me, as that would make me feel I was amazing !!!! But I just listen and share what I get.

[TarotNewbie101]

4 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

We all have different beliefs about how we get the messages but none of us know how it works. Just our own theories 🙂

Personally I think it comes from ourselves and the cards just inspire our intuitive ability. But where do the messages from? is it all in our heads? Some people say from ancestors/ spirit guides / something outside ourselves. Even if it comes from ourselves, somehow it has to come from out of us is my current thinking. I think it comes from the universe in some form, maybe God or Gods and Goddesses? Jung believed in the collective unconscious, where we are all born with some memories and images and dreams from our past in the unconscious part of us.

 

I came to tarot both in a secular and sceptical way and I have seen some amazing things and so I do think that the info we get comes from a higher source somehow. There are a lot of patterns in the readings and repeating messages. I see too many amazing synchronicities and coincidences and so they must come form a higher place is my theory.

I agree.

[Decan]

It comes from our soul, within and outside, connected with everything!

Lol, I say that but I have no real idea, but maybe it’s something like that? 🙂

[gregory]

Someone once told me that it holds up mirrors and enables us to see the parts of ourselves which we cannot usually see. Like using mirrors to see round corners.

[katrinka]

5 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

We all have different beliefs about how we get the messages but none of us know how it works. Just our own theories 🙂

Personally I think it comes from ourselves and the cards just inspire our intuitive ability. But where do the messages from? is it all in our heads? Some people say from ancestors/ spirit guides / something outside ourselves. Even if it comes from ourselves, somehow it has to come from out of us is my current thinking. I think it comes from the universe in some form, maybe God or Gods and Goddesses? Jung believed in the collective unconscious, where we are all born with some memories and images and dreams from our past in the unconscious part of us.

 

Maybe we're bigger than we think. Who knows. It's said we're all one, and that makes sense. But if we could access that, wouldn't we know everything?
I personally can't picture any kind of deity or higher being staying on call to tell people if their parcel will arrive on time or why some guy didn't text back. Meanwhile people are praying and calling out over real suffering, and it ignores that in favor of trivial stuff? What kind of "higher being" is that?

The answers certainly come from outside of our knowledge. And I can't buy the subconscious theory, either. My subconscious is stupid. It's had me doing things like reaching for cigarettes that weren't there because I'd quit smoking, and picking up the phone to call people who were deceased. It takes a few weeks for it to catch on to anything. It certainly doesn't know the answers to things I get asked about.

I'm still leaning towards something to do with the nature of time/space. Time is curved and weird, Einstein proved that. Hawking has said it's spherical and asking what's before the beginning of time is like asking what's north of the North Pole. People are just scratching the surface of how it works, it's not understood well yet. When people don't understand the mechanics of something, they call it magic or supernatural, they attribute it to gods and spirits.

 

29 minutes ago, gregory said:

Like using mirrors to see round corners.

I like that. It doesn't explain everything, but it's a good metaphor. Like those periscope toys we had when we were kids. 😀

 

 

[frankie]

I think that how we use the Tarot (or any divinatory/predictive system) and how we believe it works can be two separate things, and I like the analogies used by katrinka (Tarot as a tool like a hammer) and gregory (as a mirror) because you don’t need to understand the physics behind either but you know how to use them to help you achieve something you wouldn’t be able to do on your own.

 

I ask my cards (mostly the Lenormand) pretty much any type of question, from straight up predictive questions (yes to when packages arrive lol) to more introspective and metaphysical questions. I even like to ask the cards for definitions! (E.g. What is time?) For me, I don’t put any limits on how I use the cards, although of course for learning purposes, a predictive reading is easily verifiable. Others not so much, and that’s where you get to what you believe.

 

As for how the Tarot/cards work, I’m inclined to go with what katrinka said above, about it having to do with the nature of time/space, and in some way (like the tool analogies above), the cards allow us to shift our perspective and see things (past, present, and future) in a different, non-linear and contemporaneous way.

 

Now what makes time/space how it is goes back to one’s belief, especially since we don’t have the material knowledge to explain why (yet). Although I also think you can have multiple explanations (i.e. scientific, metaphysical, etc) coexisting and not being mutually exclusive.

 

I do have to say that, for learning purposes, it helps me to think that I’m having a dialogue with someone when I consult the cards. I can’t remember where I heard this (maybe on a Netflix show lol), but it was in the context of a musician learning an instrument. That to learn it and develop an intimate relationship with it, it helps to treat the instrument as if it were alive. For me, it’s not so much the cards themselves being alive, but the communication line that the cards help me establish is live and active, with whatever is out there that provides the answers.

 

I don’t subscribe to the subconscious theory, either. (Admittedly anything psychological/psychoanalytical applied to the cards is not my bag.) I’m reading a book on traditional astrology (On the Heavenly Spheres by Helena Avelar and Luis Ribeiro) and while I personally don’t have a working cosmology to explain how it all works, I am finding it revelatory, particularly the concept of correspondences and elements, even if I’m way out of my league. That in someway, something smaller can map or reflect greater dynamics at play.

[katrinka]

32 minutes ago, frankie said:

Although I also think you can have multiple explanations (i.e. scientific, metaphysical, etc) coexisting and not being mutually exclusive.

Yes. I've read bits the Dalai Lama wrote about science catching up and "discovering" things that have been Buddhist concepts for centuries.
I think "secular vs. spiritual" is a dangerous way of thinking. It's a potential ticket back to the Dark Ages.
If something is true, it's true.

[katrinka]

55 minutes ago, frankie said:

I can’t remember where I heard this (maybe on a Netflix show lol), but it was in the context of a musician learning an instrument. That to learn it and develop an intimate relationship with it, it helps to treat the instrument as if it were alive.

IIRC, B.B. King called all his guitars "Lucille." 😁

[fire cat pickles]

When I first took violin as a child in third grade, we had to name our instruments. I named mine Wilma!

[frankie]

2 minutes ago, katrinka said:

I think "secular vs. spiritual" is a dangerous way of thinking.

I agree, and yes, if something is true, it's true.

 

10 minutes ago, katrinka said:

IIRC, B.B. King called all his guitars "Lucille." 😁

😂 That's amazing. Lucille must have been quite the lady! (if she existed in real life, she made a lasting impression 😉)

 

2 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

When I first took violin as a child in third grade, we had to name our instruments. I named mine Wilma!

Awesome 😄 so there's something to it after all!

 

[katrinka]

6 hours ago, frankie said:

😂 That's amazing. Lucille must have been quite the lady! (if she existed in real life, she made a lasting impression 😉)

 

She made a lasting impression on B.B. and he didn't even know her!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_(guitar)#The_story_of_Lucille

 

OK. Back on topic. 😉

[frankie]

14 hours ago, katrinka said:

 

She made a lasting impression on B.B. and he didn't even know her!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_(guitar)#The_story_of_Lucille

 

OK. Back on topic. 😉

Wow! Very cool thank you for sharing 😄

[Grizabella]

My philosphy is---if it ain't broke, don't fix it!  It doesn't matter how it works, it just does. 

 

However, Dean Radin, PhD and Amit Goswami, PhD have written some excellent books on the topic of what used to be called ESP.  (I don't know if it still is.)  Years ago, the jury was out on whether ESP was for real or not.  In order to find out, double blind studies needed to be done to prove whether it's real or not.  Lo and behold, these guys have the double blind study proof that it's a real thing.  I'm not surprised because it's something I've experienced all my life.  I highly recommend going and getting books by them.  

 

So it isn't communicating with spirits, it's learning to listen to that little voice from the Universe.  The cards aren't what's working, it's your own inner "whatever" that's communicating to you through the images on the cards.  The more you relax and just listen to that inner voice while looking at the cards you've drawn, the more often you'll get the answers they're providing.  

 

There are people who use the cards to purposely seek communication with spirits so I guess it can be done but I don't choose to do that. 

[Stacers]

I don't think I could ever explain how tarot cards actually work. Maybe its spirits, maybe it's intuition, maybe its the energy we pit off? I however do not believe it is all in our heads.

 

I've done spreads that were so accurate it was creepy, and I've pulled the exact same card for every spread, no matter the topic, for over a week straight... no way that is in my head.

[TarotNewbie101]

On 1/30/2022 at 5:13 AM, Stacers said:

I don't think I could ever explain how tarot cards actually work. Maybe its spirits, maybe it's intuition, maybe its the energy we pit off? I however do not believe it is all in our heads.

 

I've done spreads that were so accurate it was creepy, and I've pulled the exact same card for every spread, no matter the topic, for over a week straight... no way that is in my head.

Exactly.

[AlbaTross]

For me, the jury’s still out as to whether or not there is any supernatural element whatsoever to reading Tarot, or if I’m simply randomly drawing cards and drawing inferences from them.  I guess I’m enjoying it either way, so I would not be bothered enough in the latter case to really care either way.  

 

If someone is told something they need to hear, or I end up with something I need to know, it doesn’t matter to me whether it was fate or mere coincidence.  Spirits can be added to the list of “supernatural considerations” that I haven’t really taken the time to entertain.