Cold Reading Techniques

[Barleywine]

7 hours ago, Ruby Jewel said:

I really like this deck, but is it available to buy? 

You can still get it new on Amazon from a third-party seller for $45 plus $4 shipping. Used copies are about half that price. I didn't check eBay.

[devin]

40 minutes ago, Barleywine said:

... opinions of so-called debunkers and rationalists because they are almost certainly self-serving

Yes, they sometimes make the cast of Ancient Aliens look rigorously fact based.

Edited August 8, 2019 by devin

[devin]

23 hours ago, Barleywine said:

The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion.

How wonderfully put.

[katrinka]

2 hours ago, Barleywine said:

I tend to stay away from the opinions of so-called debunkers and rationalists because they are almost certainly self-serving; the ridicule of James Randi turned me off right away

Randi is as much a fanatic and a crank as David Avocado Wolfe. Two sides of the same coin, both pushing a narrative and the evidence be damned.
I wouldn't consider him a rationalist at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rationalists

2 hours ago, Barleywine said:

(and I'm a lapsed Mensan and recovering Ayn Rand fan). But maybe I should learn something about the "enemy," huh?

If you're a former Ayn devotee, consider yourself lucky. Most infected with Ayn never recover. There is nothing to do for them but quarantine and await the inevitable.

[DanielJUK]

I have a lot of issues with the sceptical challenges that were and are out there, I think they are impossible to win to keep their narrative going. I have read the stories of a lot of psychics and other people who really believed they have a gift or special skills and go to prove it. Things like Randi's one million dollar challenge move the goalposts, so you agree to the terms and then they move the goalposts so it's impossible to win. Everyone always failed the test but the rumour was always there was no money, the ultimate sceptical irony of a sceptical test 🙂 Randi was once asked about this on an American show and he said there was a real prize in the form of bonds put away in some secure place. I think the tests to prove beyond the rational were impossible to win, so they can always say each person failed.

 

Reading the cold reading definitions, it seems like the difference is that the performers might have tarot cards or a crystal ball or whatever as a prop but would read and gain info from the person. I have never seen a person who works like that in tarot communities, they learn tarot card reading as a skill and then improve with experience, we are reading the cards for the messages. Perhaps that is the dividing line and actually what you get from a person is intuitive. My intention in my readings is to give what I see in the cards to the other party.

[devin]

1 hour ago, katrinka said:

If you're a former Ayn devotee, consider yourself lucky. Most infected with Ayn never recover. There is nothing to do for them but quarantine and await the inevitable.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Lefty28]

This was so interesting I always thought cold reading meant you could not find any meaning kinda like the hot and cold game when you where a kid .... apparently I’m getting colder lol . What a great read and topic 

[katrinka]

1 hour ago, DanielJUK said:

I have a lot of issues with the sceptical challenges that were and are out there, I think they are impossible to win to keep their narrative going. I have read the stories of a lot of psychics and other people who really believed they have a gift or special skills and go to prove it. Things like Randi's one million dollar challenge move the goalposts, so you agree to the terms and then they move the goalposts so it's impossible to win. Everyone always failed the test but the rumour was always there was no money, the ultimate sceptical irony of a sceptical test 🙂 Randi was once asked about this on an American show and he said there was a real prize in the form of bonds put away in some secure place. I think the tests to prove beyond the rational were impossible to win, so they can always say each person failed.

Exactly. He's as much a weasel as the fake mediums, etc. that he criticizes.

1 hour ago, DanielJUK said:

 

Reading the cold reading definitions, it seems like the difference is that the performers might have tarot cards or a crystal ball or whatever as a prop but would read and gain info from the person. I have never seen a person who works like that in tarot communities, they learn tarot card reading as a skill and then improve with experience, we are reading the cards for the messages. Perhaps that is the dividing line and actually what you get from a person is intuitive. My intention in my readings is to give what I see in the cards to the other party.

Yes. We're being paid to read cards, so we read them. It's not deceit.

The thing is that cards actually work. And we have the Randis on one end of the spectrum saying that if we actually believe that, we're credulous chumps. On the other end of the spectrum, we have people who really ARE credulous and subscribe to the wackier new age beliefs.

I don't think we're going to make any progress with this until we look at card reading honestly and unflinchingly, and try to figure out what's at play. Some of it really IS unintentional cold reading/Barnum effect, since the cards might give us generalized information and a cooperative sitter will find a way to make it fit. But that doesn't explain how the correct cards "know" how to come up in a spread. If I'm reading Lenormand, I don't get cards like the Clouds or Cross for happy events, nor do I get the Sun or Bouquet for bad ones. And THAT is mysterious and really, really worth looking into.

[devin]

3 hours ago, katrinka said:

On the other end of the spectrum, we have people who really ARE credulous

"You don't want to become so open-minded that the wind whistles between your ears." - Terence McKenna.

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by devin

[katrinka]

4 minutes ago, devin said:

"You don't want to become so open-minded that the wind whistles between your ears." - Terence McKenna.

 

"...or that your brains fall out."
- Unknown

[Barleywine]

5 hours ago, katrinka said:

I don't think we're going to make any progress with this until we look at card reading honestly and unflinchingly, and try to figure out what's at play. Some of it really IS unintentional cold reading/Barnum effect, since the cards might give us generalized information and a cooperative sitter will find a way to make it fit. But that doesn't explain how the correct cards "know" how to come up in a spread. If I'm reading Lenormand, I don't get cards like the Clouds or Cross for happy events, nor do I get the Sun or Bouquet for bad ones. And THAT is mysterious and really, really worth looking into.

When confronted by a skeptic (which happens rarely), I might propose that it's a form of mental physics that we don't yet have the capability of measuring, and that it may have something to do with "subconscious induction" and mind-hand synchronization. It's all pseudo-science, of course, but they have less room to argue if you seem to be approaching them on their own turf. Or I might just use the "Hamlet Defense" and then smile enigmatically. 😎

 

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by Barleywine

[Rabbithorns]

On 8/4/2019 at 2:03 AM, Ruby Jewel said:

On the other hand, Performance "art" is a political act meant to make a "political" statement. The artist performing the act is making a political statement that "life is political, and since art is about life, therefore, art is political." IOW, anyone can be an artist for 5 minutes merely by calling it "art."  Even the destruction of a work of art is considered "performance art." This was a political maneuver by post-modernists to destroy the modern idea of "art for art's sake", and the concepts of "beauty and truth" as the criteria for artistic authenticity.

I haven't finished reading this entire thread, though I am finding it riveting for many reasons, but as someone with a BFA in performance art and postmodern dance from NYU (1982), I have to contest this definition of performance art. It is not necessarily political and although avant garde theater, experimental theater, and theatrical performance art can be political, I never participated in any and actually only saw one street theater piece that was political. Performance art is personal and is usually developed from collaborative improvisation of the participants one is directing. But it was often the product of a highly self-involved mind. While original post-modernists might have intended to rebel against art for art's sake, performance art slipped into a pattern of arts for the artist's sake in the 1980s. It certainly was not always beautiful, but it was almost always intended to share some truth which was highly relative and unreliable being the truth of the director, basically. I performed at La Mama Theater and many small theaters in the Village over a period of 10 years until I started dropping babies out and became an adult. I enjoyed it immensely and it wasn't always a masturbatory experience; we created a lot of good art. But there was a lot of shove-it-in-your-face garbage, too.

 

On another note, completely unfamiliar with the tarot 'community', though I have read cards for the last 43 years, I did watch a video of Enrique Enriquez (https://www.imdb.com/videoplayer/vi2918096153) after diving into this thread and found his thoughts on reading the cards like a story exciting as I use this as a method of enjoyment for myself as I LOVE story. I don't do this for clients, and I find the method a little less possible with many modern decks which might be comprised of complex works of art and not actual tarot card representations, per se. But I did enjoy his perspective. He walks around seeing tarot archetypes everywhere and that I also appreciate as a practitioner and teacher of the higher teachings of Tibetan Buddhism for more than 2 dozen years. In our tradition, we look for signs, often repetitive, that remind us that the world is a projection of mind and when one keeps the magic of possibility in mind (being aware of the emptiness of all things as a practice) along with the sadhana of one's particular Buddha family or practice, one will begin to project it more, creating more of it, until the world becomes an immersion in our own enlightened mandala, at first still just peeking through samsara (the world of death and rebirth) and eventually in the realm of enlightenment itself (beyond birth and death).

 

So I related to his video interview for those reasons.

 

As for tarot as performance art, I would hope not. I think tarot could be included in performance art, but I would feel the service to people would be lost, the possibility of helping someone connect with themselves deeply, if tarot was relegated to the status as a show.

 

I have also Googled cold reading and hot reading and as a theater person, thought cold reading meant no preparation, but the definitions of both seemed to imply some chicanery on the part of the reader and so I definitely do try to avoid that.

 

Still reading through the thread, but I am intrigued. Great thread and so much more to get through. I am only on page 1 as yet.

[Rabbithorns]

On 8/6/2019 at 7:37 PM, Ruby Jewel said:

we no longer can rely on what we see.....or even what we "know." However, intuition remains unassailable.

I don't understand this statement. it seems entirely contradictory as intuition is only what we believe we know and therefore in the basket of what we "know" and therefore unreliable by your own reckoning.

 

Apologies. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I have a touch of Aspergers and tend to have a problem with understanding statements that contradict themselves. Thanks in advance for any clarification.

[Barleywine]

27 minutes ago, Rabbithorns said:

I don't understand this statement. it seems entirely contradictory as intuition is only what we believe we know and therefore in the basket of what we "know" and therefore unreliable by your own reckoning.

 

Apologies. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I have a touch of Aspergers and tend to have a problem with understanding statements that contradict themselves. Thanks in advance for any clarification.

I've always found intuition to be a slippery proposition, suspect mainly because it's subjective and not demonstrably universal. (Neither is knowledge-based wisdom, but at least it has internal consistency going for it due to common usage over long periods of time.) I've taken to avoiding the word in most cases and substituting imagination, inspiration and ingenuity instead when I mean something other than analytical interpretation. (I'm more comfortable with them as a source of insight in story-telling space.) I tend to think of it as "fishing in your private memory stream," and wrote a blog post on it a while back:

 

https://parsifalswheeldivination.com/2018/05/12/the-other-i-words/

Edited August 9, 2019 by Barleywine

[Rabbithorns]

2 minutes ago, Ruby Jewel said:

are you a Rabbi or a Rabbit

Haha! Rabbit.

 

The degree is offered by NYU's Experimental Theater Wing although it changed greatly after my class graduated and the higher ups said - "okay, no more of that craziness. we need some legitimacy." LOL We took a lot of liberties but had worked with some of the best. JoAnne Akalaitis, Elizabeth LeCompte, and so many more. It was a grand time for sure.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about enlightenment. It will take care of itself once one has seen emptiness directly in a state of deep meditation, according to the lamas and scripture anyway. 🙂

 

I am enjoying the forum, though I haven't had much time to explore and read, but when I do, it is fascinating. I'm also learning such a lot about how readers approach their tarot practices/readings. It's refreshing to be a little less of a hermit, even if just online.

[Rabbithorns]

Thanks for the additional words regarding intuition. I don't like to use that term for what I do. I believe people's subtle bodies (I also don't like the term "aura") extends beyond the physical body and these subtle particles touch other beings' subtle bodies. I think there might be some interplay which allows connection, both comfortable and uncomfortable, trustworthy and untrustworthy, etc. and that is how some people are able to "intuit" another person's mindstream bits and bytes. So while I believe it's possible to grok someone in a way most people don't grok another, and by subtle physical and mental means, I don't think it's a mystery of intuition, but a somewhat scientific reality in the realm of both quantum physics and yogic teachings. A possibility anyway for something I can't subscribe to (intuition, per se) but need some explanation for.

[Barleywine]

4 minutes ago, Ruby Jewel said:

Well now Barleywine.....intuition is perhaps a characteristic of the feminine so I wouldn't expect you to have a lot of faith in it. As for me; however, it is a gift from the Divine World....aka The High Priestess.....how else are you going to get out of the Moon card? One makes a "leap of faith" based on one's intuition b/c that is all you have......and hope.

Rabbithorns used the word "grok." I recall in Heinlein's novel there was the concept of "Witnesses." When asked what color a house is, they responded "It's white on this side." Intuition tries to guess what the other side is, and might assume an unsubstantiated continuity where there is none. (It could be brick on the other side.)

[Rabbithorns]

1 minute ago, Ruby Jewel said:

I have to be obsessed with something to stick with it and if I'm obsessed with it then nothing else interests me

Same with me. It seems those who are able to perceive emptiness directly are indeed obsessed with it to the point of being able to achieve it. it's not a part-time quest.

 

Any path will take us where we will find fulfillment, if not now, then eventually. Buddhism has this way of denying an upward spiral of developing consciousness (as is posited in the New Age) and at the same time, while explaining how we travel through samsara by rising to more pleasant rebirths and falling to more unpleasant rebirths due to karma, asserting that we will all eventually become enlightened anyway. Perhaps that's not quite a spiral but a wave, but the end result is the same.

 

Tarot is just as valid a path as any.

[Barleywine]

1 minute ago, Ruby Jewel said:

Well, as far as I can tell, most things in life are a gamble. Some are more important than others so you had best cultivate some intuitive wisdom.....and as a matter of fact, "wisdom" is intuitive. Certainly it isn't taught in any school or by parents.....all they can give you is a certain morality and even then there's no guarantee it will work in all instances. I think one needs wisdom which only comes from learning by taking chances based on one's intuition and seeing the outcome.

I would say wisdom is cumulative rather than intuitive. Except for the occasional epiphany, it doesn't "leap" so much as "scuttle."

[katrinka]

9 hours ago, Barleywine said:

When confronted by a skeptic (which happens rarely), I might propose that it's a form of mental physics that we don't yet have the capability of measuring, and that it may have something to do with "subconscious induction" and mind-hand synchronization. It's all pseudo-science, of course, but they have less room to argue if you seem to be approaching them on their own turf. Or I might just use the "Hamlet Defense" and then smile enigmatically. 😎

Not helping. Any skeptic worth his salt will recognize pseudoscience and call you out on it. And a BS defense is, well, a  BS defense.
I'd suggest being less oppositional and taking a "let's try this" approach. Nobody ever figured anything out by digging their heels in.

[Eric13]

^^ Yes to what Katrinka said.

[Barleywine]

5 hours ago, katrinka said:

Not helping. Any skeptic worth his salt will recognize pseudoscience and call you out on it. And a BS defense is, well, a  BS defense.
I'd suggest being less oppositional and taking a "let's try this" approach. Nobody ever figured anything out by digging their heels in.

Not trying to help. Trying to be satirical. Anyway, I've said enough on the subject. Signing off.

[Barleywine]

39 minutes ago, Ruby Jewel said:

What is the "Hamlet defense"? I know his "tragic flaw" was his procrastination....and supposedly a metaphor for the tragic flaw of mankind. (according to my Shakespeare professor)....but I have never heard mention his "defense." I like the way the Buddhists handle skeptics when they are questioned.....they just bow and say "I know this for I have seen it in my meditations." Imo, one thing is as easy to believe or disbelieve as another whichever is your penchant, .....empirical evidence has been debunked by modern physics...and skeptics are just being arbitrary or a refuge of the past....b/c whatever you think you know, or is "real" can disappear simply by thinking about it or looking at it ......... and "signing off" is just another way of disappearing,..... but it can never be allowed as a "defense"....... not even for Hamlet. The Shakespearean audience would have pummeled him with rotten tomatoes or rotten eggs. (laugh)

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, Ruby Jewel said:

.b/c whatever you think you know, or is "real" can disappear simply by thinking about it or looking at it ......... and "signing off" is just another way of disappearing,.....

It can subjectively disappear. You sit down to a nice dinner and a cocktail, you're not thinking about That A-Hole At Work, therefore, he doesn't exists (at least to you, for the time being.
But he's still out there, occupying meatspace and most likely ruining someone else's evening.
Only he has no inherent, independent existence, right?
Well, yes. That's true. But that doesn't make him not real. It's more complex than that. https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/9063/is-lack-of-inherent-existence-the-same-as-not-real

[Raggydoll]

Every time I take a peek in this thread I find myself thinking “Oh wow. Complex discussions and lots of insights.” And then I start to think “But wait, what was the topic again?” 😁 Who knew the concept of ‘cold reading’ would be such a profound catalyst for deep conversations ☺️