A couple of Spo-fans want to know how I got interested in the Tarot.
I didn’t consciously seek out the Tarot. One of my roommates in college had a deck; he was took some sort of one credit course on the subject. He didn’t have much skill for them; he couldn’t remember what the cards meant or how to read them in a spread. In contrast I had a ‘knack’ for them. I gave him continual assistance as he ‘practiced’ readings for me. When the course was done he pushed the deck towards me and said “Here, you take them. You have the knack.” I have been reading them ever since.
When I was in Jungian analysis, my teacher had an interest in the Tarot as a means of examining the archetypes and the unconscious. He used them with his clients to do active imagination and self examination.
People often ask me do the cards predict the future? Mr. Tom Robbins sums up the Tarot in his book ‘Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas”:
“Now you listen, honey, and listen good. Do you really believe that I could pick stocks that are gonna double – or winning lottery numbers or racehorses? Come on! I’d be styling and smiling in a nice little villa in the Himalayan foothills. You get the picture. And another thing; I cannot accurately predict your future. We need to get that straight, too. I can’t, no psychic can, and any that claim they can are swindlers.
A crystal ball, this is not, and you damn well ought to be glad about it. It isn’t tea leaves or goat entrails, neither. What it is is a highly refined, highly efficient system of symbolic knowledge. The symbols that were carefully chosen over the centuries speak directly to the deeper levels of the mind. The Western mind. In the East, the I Ching cuts the very same mustard, but with more, shall we say, intricate turn of the knife. Never mind that. The images here in the tarot will serve to open up and free certain aspects of your subconscious. I can read what the hell’s going on in the recesses of your pumpkin. I read your subconscious thoughts – they’re damn near as legible to me as The Seattle Times – but I don’t read the future. Comprende?
Now for one reason or another, your subconscious knows things your conscious mind doesn’t. Oftentimes it’s ahead of your conscious mind in regards to the direction you’re leaning regarding a particular situation or decision. So in that respect, the information I glean for you tonight may, at a later date, seem to you to be a prediction coming true. Anything I reveal to you tonight can be changed. You, of your own free will, can change it. Reverse it, redirect it, whatever. You can remove the blindfold and slow the hell down. Remember that.”
That is my approach to the Tarot. It is like looking into the mirror, not into the future.
I collect decks not unlike others collect baseball cards or prayer cards.
Perhaps some day I will write about my dozen decks.
10 comments
August 15, 2008 at 6:46 AM
Raybob
I like that – Robbins is great at cutting to the heart of that sort of thing.
August 15, 2008 at 6:52 AM
BentonQuest
I love Tom too!
I wondered how a person of faith could also use Tarot, but I can see that it is not a means of prediction, but a means of brainstorming. That is cool.
August 15, 2008 at 8:17 AM
tigeryogiji
Very interesting! 🙂
August 15, 2008 at 8:46 AM
cameron
The element of Free Will is present in any “system” worth consideration. This is one of the first things which attracted me to Astrology.
(I love the Tarot too, although I have not tried to do readings. I have friends who do that.) 😉
August 15, 2008 at 3:16 PM
Bigg
So which card do you most ‘identify’ with? Is there a particular card or suit (wands, swords, etc) that turns up most regularly for you when you read your own cards?
August 15, 2008 at 4:55 PM
doug
I used to love the Tarot. I loved doing readings and I had several decks. I am not sure what happened to them. Perhaps I need a new one?
August 16, 2008 at 3:34 AM
Kalvin
I don’t necessarily believe that tarot can predict the future. I find it similarly difficult to imagine that the selection of cards can actually read the unconscious mind of a person as well in the same vein. It’s almost as if to me, applying the same rigor about the future would mean that there is no possible way that the random card selection could somehow be tailored to fit perfectly the present. It sounds like it would be mostly something best for someone highly empathetic to do. I can actually imagine people opening up more easily for tarot in some ways than for therapy! Did you read Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy where he had a character use the I Ching in order to “communicate” with dark matter/shadow particles?
August 16, 2008 at 6:37 AM
Shawn
Remove the blindfold and slow the hell down….I love it.
One hears and sees what he needs, as long as he will allow himself to hear and see.
August 16, 2008 at 1:50 PM
merri
Exactly!!
“it is like looking into a mirror, not the future”
I had a friend whose mother had the knack..
I like things like that ..
“There are more things in heaven and earth, etc..”
🙂
August 16, 2008 at 3:56 PM
seriouslyflippant
I love the tarot. I, too, just had a knack for it. I haven’t read cards in ten years, and then at a dinner the other night, someone handed me a deck, and it was like picking up one of my favorite books. I always kid that I come from a long line of Gypsies. When asked to elaborate, I insist that they were all chorus boys.