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    Hi! I’m new to tarot and I think it is so awesome how there is so much diversity in beliefs among tarot users. My beliefs are ever-changing, but I will try to describe how I currently see it and how it works for me. As an animist I do believe that the deck it’s self has a spirit and a personality. How the deck gathers it’s info, I don’t know. I assume it gets messages from the universe, my guides and ancestors, my higher self, and the deck has it’s own input too. The deck is basically the middle man. When I read the cards I like to use my intuition along with my understanding of the card and it’s context. I believe that my interpretation will be a combination of my sub conscious knowing and knowing that comes from other sources. I believe tarot is a powerful tool for self reflection and tapping into the subconscious or higher self, the part of you that knows the answer. I believe tarot can predict the future to an extent. I think it tells what the outcome will be for the path you are on, I don’t believe in fate so I believe that this is not fixed. Depending on the context I may or may not try to change the outcome of things.

    I am still figuring out my beliefs around tarot and I would love to hear some more perspectives. How do you believe tarot works? what makes it so accurate? can it really predict the future?

  • How do you believe tarot works?

     sad_dragonfruit7077 updated 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
  • Temporary_Bumblebee

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I view tarot as less of a divination tool than it is a self reflection. It’s holding a mirror to your self and asking real questions. The kind of questions that no one else can answer for you. There can be a level of confirmation bias, absolutely, but I find if you ask the enough questions, you’ll get an unbiased answer. Or at least a little more perspective than when you pulled your first card for the reading lol. I also read/interpret tarot cards in the reverse now as well, which I find helpful in finding the questions you ought to be asking. Truly tho it’s just a reflection of yourself… I’m not sure I believe it’s much beyond that tho

    Sometimes I ask questions to like Persephone but she has her own separate deck lol.

    Tl:Dr, tarot holds a mirror to your soul but it can’t tell the future necessarily

  • apostate_messiah

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I too believe in the animist perspective, this is why I don’t limit my use of the Arcana to divination and sometimes use them in magick.

  • thecaressofnight

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I believe it is best used for questions that are turned inward as a means of sparking ideas, considering paths forward or introspecting/being called out on my own bullshit. I use them as a method to claim my agency or help another claim their own

    When you turn the questions outward in worry of relationships/events, it’s just looking for an out. It’s surrendering power. Waiting for the world to come to you or pulling a lever until you hear what you want to hear. It’s a mentality very appealing to grifters.

  • Sand_msm

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I have the same vision as you but let’s keep in mind that anyone can read and learn tarot cards but not everyone channels messages from spirit.
    🙂
    But i agree with your opinion and also i do “deck interviews” spread before start using them as this gives me a better insight of how i can work better and as a team with that specific deck. So this attributes a “personality” to a deck of cards basically. I follow this idea but I don’t follow Animist or Animism (not sure what’s the correct term).

    You can get different answers from the same interview to the same deck made by another person so this only shows me that the cards are intrinsically connected to the subconscious part of the mind hence only predictable until certain extent only.

    Now a channeled message is different. It comes from spirit and those can happen to be very predictive far ahead or far behind in time.

    This is my opinion.

    L&L

  • Omelie_

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    Unexplained mystery

  • Black_Cat_Sun

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    The cards are a representation of yourself. You are asking yourself questions and using meditation and the interpretation of the cards to think about your perceptions, actions, and attitudes on that particular question.

    Essentially you are asking yourself questions (even about the future) that you already know, but have to think out – tarot is like supercharging that thinking out.

    The cards represent you, but also represent the collective consciousness/universe, which…is basically just you again. It’s an exercise in perception.

  • sexy_syzygy

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I’m honestly not sure but I’ve never done a reading for myself that wasn’t spot-on. For example, yesterday I did a reading for myself. I had a very big important exam to take, and I wanted to know how it was going to go. I drew the eight of pentacles, the six of wands, then judgment. I passed the exam.

    My personal beliefs aren’t that the deck has a spirit, what I believe is that the powers that be guide my hands to select the cards I need to see in that moment.

    I only have one tarot deck. I’ve never used another one and I’ve never done a reading for someone else or had someone else do a tarot reading on me. So I can only speak from my very limited personal experience.

  • The_souLance

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    Here’s my take, for what it’s worth…

    The universe is the devine collective.

    We are apart of it too, it is in us and IS us, but only if we set aside our egos that separate us from the collective shared spirit.

    Within that shared spirit is the infinite wisdom and knowledge of time and space and all of existence everywhere.

    By releasing control and giving moments over to something out of our hands we open the universe up to be able to speak to us.

    One example would be listening to the radio. If you’re going through something and put on a song you think is relative, it doesn’t always speak to you, but if you’re going through something and turn on the radio and a song COMES TO YOU, then it hits harder, it has a much more profound impact on you.

    This same concept applies to anything, but especially something like tarot. There is so much randomization, more cards than a normal deck of playing cards, and the idea that inverted or upright effects the meaning essentially doubles the deck count. The combinations are almost infinite.

    The best way to get in touch with the infinite spirit is by using an infinite medium.

    It’s not hard science, it’s just probabilities, possibilities and intuition.

    But it is a way to get a view point that is at once outside your own perspective as well as directly from within yourself.

  • sagmanav

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    A small anecdote and why I know we communicate with spirits through tarot.

    When i was learning to read the cards, I would go and visit public parks here in madrid, and I would ask to complete strangers if they would allow me to read the cards for them, for free. I explained to them that i was an apprentice and needed the practice.

    I am very introverted so i was pretty determined to find out the truth about the cards, to walk up to complete strangers and ask them to read for them.

    I asked many people, most of them allowed me to.
    I didn’t request any personal information from them, I didn’t even ask their names…

    One by one, every person that i read for, told me that what i was saying resonated a lot and they were going trough the experiences i was describing.

    I read for younger people, older people, man, women… I pretty much tested this skill again and again. I was perplexed at how accurate i was.

    Not long after I decided to create a youtube channel and now i have more than 50k subscribers.

    Also, not long after I started doing readings professionally, I developed crown chakra activations, which feel like cold air and tingling sensations at the top of the head.

    I very much know that tarot is a channeling spirit tool, very similar to a oüija board, but different at the same time.

    I think that people who see tarot as a psychological tool or a divination tool, or entertainment tool, or confirmation bias, are not channelers. They are tarot readers at best.

    Channelers or mediums receive messages from spirits.

    Tarot readers memorize the cards meanings and they don’t understand the messages, they interpret the cards to the best of their ability.

    But just like with mediums, real tarot channelers are rare and hard to find.

    They do exist, but you will need an open mind and open heart to find them.

    If your mind is closed, it’s very difficult for you to be in alignment with a real one.

  • MugzysMove

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    “How the deck gathers it’s info, I don’t know”

    They have a machine at the Chinese printing factory that installs its spirit.

  • klauszen

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I think the tarot is a luck measuring tool. Like taking the temperature with a thermometer. With the cards you can measure and read your luck.

    Also, I believe there is a pattern to existence. It might be a mistake, like we’re seeing patterns where there are none. But it might be that there are patterns and we cannot understand it fully. The tarot is an arcaic tool to visualize these events in time.

    For example, the ancient roman belief of bad days and good days is, in my opinion, a 100% true: there are bad luck days where should be extra careful, and we have to notice them on the go. There are different kinds of years (chinese zodiac), different kinds of months and planetary movements (western zodiac), an underlying system. The ancients had their methods, made charts and there were specialists in these matters. Astronomy (telescopes) was in service of Astrology (horoscopes), as was math (calculation of auspicious dates) and geometry (magical circles and birth charts). The tarot is a window to peep into these matters. To measure one’s luck instead of using the more complex calculations of other fields of divination.

  • damnations_delights

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    Through randomness and/or chance.

  • Uisgah

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I call its operative principle “subconscious induction” that arises from the querent’s shuffling of the deck, by which they “imprint” their inner awareness of the situation and its likely resolution on the order of the cards pulled. Joseph Maxwell, in his book The Tarot, had a very clear description of this.

  • ALivy

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I share the same belief as yours.

  • East_Percentage3627

    Guest
    October 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    I feel Tarot has a certain “intelligence” and “language” of its own.

    Does Tarot know the answers to my questions?

    Or is it getting the answers from my higher mind? Or spirit guides or angels or ancestors? Or the spacetime continuum?

    I don’t know. I suspect all are valid in one way or another.

    At this point, there have been thousands of Tarot decks made and read by thousands of people over the past 500 years. (records show Italian fortune tellers were divining with Tarocchi cards by the 1500s)

    Anyway … I fbelieve Tarot has an “egregore” or “intelligence” that speaks to us in a language of numbers and statistical improbability. We notice when cards defy statistical odds to slap us in the face with their message.

    I just did a reading for a client and got 3 twos in a 10-card spread. It doesn’t strain the fabric of the universe or anything … but it’s notable enough to say *this is tarot’s number language talking to me.*

    We’ve all had stalker cards … the card that shows up again and again in multiple readings / multiple decks or other such statistical anomalies that hint at a “ghost in the machine”.

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