Author: Deaglan

Anyone even slightly familiar with the imagery of the tarot – popularly accompanied by a gypsie/Romani lady, the colour purple, and a crystal ball – will say it’s cryptic and maybe even spooky. This is in fact the majority of the tarot’s power. Skeptics will say this is to swindle the foolish, which is valid, but the story goes deeper.

Origins of the Tarot

The origin is controversial. If you ask most historians they’ll tell you they first came about in 1400s France, yet we have suggestions of them coming from ancient Egypt or from earlier. The disagreement on their place of birth comes about from an anthropology disagreement. Our modern minds tend to separate things into mundane (ordinary) and mystical objects, despite our ancestors never making such distinctions – in this case, we’ve separated tarot from playing cards. “Playing cards” have been in use for centuries before we even began recording history, as far as Egypt and China. These decks were surely used to play games, much like you can play a game of poker with today’s Tarot, but from what we know about these ancient cultures, they had a lot more meaning and use.

Peoples around the world as far back in history as we can tell have been developing tools to produce random results to “cast lots” in order to understand the desires of, or communicate with, the gods. An example is the use of the Yi Jing/I Ching in China, dated at the 9th Century BC – a sophisticated book of hexegrams known as “The Book of Changes” in English, which was consulted by the people to receive advice. It’s a very impressive and useful divination system, and I suggest you try it out. There are about as many divination tools as you can imagine, including dice or tea leaves at the bottom of your cup, and there’s really no way of knowing how old any of them are.

Our current Tarot probably had its beginning in 1300s Europe with its four suits and court cards. There’s no saying when these began to be used for divination or if they always were, but mainly they were used to play games. Despite this seeming innocent to us today, the church and authorities at the time saw the practice as dangerous, as playing with random arrangements of pieces of card was seen as “tempting fate” and “playing with the devil.” Having any kind of randomness in your life was deemed evil… for some reason… almost like these authorities knew that the function of randomness had an actual purpose and meaning, so they banned it. We know the early church up until this day embrace Astrology and other occult arts, preferring the rest of us remain frightened of them. Wave after wave of bans and persecution on the most silliest of activities like playing cards with friends, while the Vatican themselves embraced such things – Any thinking person should consider that they knew something and, under the excuse of keeping us safe, kept those arts from the people.

Modern Tarot

Today, as I mentioned, we separate the mundane from the mystical. Either something is just an ordinary object or it’s some ultra mystical or spiritual object that either doesn’t exist in physical reality or has some spooky history to it – like a haunted house or something. We even see ourselves this way. We live in a physical body that we’ll have to “leave” some day and our spirit/soul is somewhere out there in an unreachable place. You might already agree, but this is pure nonsense that’s been drilled into our heads from birth. It’s an idea that only existed for a few hundred years and, mainly, only in Europe. It’s such nonsense, that most people have seen through it by now, with the sad result of us rejecting the spiritual and keeping just the physical. Most of us live our lives seeing things “as they are” and read no further significance into them, making tea leaf reading and Astrology laughable to us. After all, what can some soggy vegetable matter at the bottom of your cup and the current position of Venus relative to the Earth have to say about our current lives?

Although many conmen (and conwomen) out there will use the mysterious symbolism on the Tarot and other ornaments to lure in vulnerable people who need help, only to swindle them with cold reading, this isn’t the only use of the mysterious imagery. We’ve divorced ourselves so much from the idea that the mundane world is full of signs from the divine that we require a specialised environment to mystify us and change our state of consciousness, allowing such magic to even occur. Even the Tarot reader him/herself requires this environment to take them out of the mundane world – the world dominated by money, taxes, worldly laws, and work hours etc. An ancient part of our mind, which is always active but ignored, needs to be tuned into by both the reader and the client in order to read and interpret the signs in the cards (crystal ball, tea leaves etc).

The mysterious appearance of the Tarot is also instrumental in pulling in new readers. That’s another story for another day.

How Tarot Actually Works

Whether the reader is aware or not, he or she is entering into an altered state of consciousness which many people would nowadays say is a “right brain” dominated state. It’s a place where the usual concerns of life and even their sense of self is secondary – somewhere far far away from where they are now. This removes expectations of what the reader might find in the cards that are up-turned. A state of free-association allowing them to weave together a story which they will make sense of with, yes, Cold Reading. The largely unconscious interpretation of themes presented by the cards coupled with where the reader perceives the client (person being read for) is in their lives at this point. As such, the reader relies on their client to be somewhat open to the process too. Although there are times that the reading will hold significance no matter what state either person is in, the success rate tends to be a coin toss.

Many Tarot readers are what we now call psychic-mediums, opening themselves up to non-physical personalities to provide a reading – either spirits they normally communicate with or spirits related to the client. I would personally warn you against seeking readings from people who use such practices as asking a spirit you don’t know for advice is as wise as approaching a random person on the street. You must remember that we live in a world with people who have their own agendas, which makes receiving a Tarot reading dodgy to begin with, so involving spirits in the process is just adding an extra unknown factor to the process. Speaking as a psychic-medium myself, I advise you that spirit intervention isn’t even needed in this process as the software of God/universe/consciousness itself is what drives it. Involving a third party makes as much sense as a committed couple having a threesome – maybe it might work out, but it usually doesn’t, and success ultimately depends upon all three participants knowing and being comfortable with each other. That’s not to say you can never have an enjoyable and rewarding threesome as there are a few psychic-mediums out there with a genuine gift and awareness of what they’re doing – but why bother?

Consider booking me for a Tarot consultation. Contact me with the keyword “TarotTruth” for a 25% discount.

Conclusion

My hopes is that my little essay will help. Either you’re interested in Tarot and are confused because nobody seems to talk about HOW it’s done, you already read and are still unsure how the f*ck this stuff even happens, or you want to receive a reading and you’re unsure of what you’re walking into.

Throughout history and before we even recorded history, the line between madness and brilliance has been recognised. Many come to the border between ordinary reality and the beyond – some go insane, some bring back treasures that improve all our lives. The former we drug and put in mental institutions, the latter we look up to as prophets or saints. We all have our own comfort zone when it comes to how close or far we are from that dangerous line, and the better we understand it the more content we’ll be with ourselves.