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Personal Prognostication Preferences

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Anonymous

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Over the years, I have met many people who swear by various fortunetelling methods, from the daily horoscopes to fortune cookies, that "always match eerily" for them. For me, it's Tarot - when I was in college, my roommates all had various tarot sets, and it didn't seem to matter which set I used, I'd invariably get the same cards in the same position. As a scientist (chemistry), I "knew" that it was impossible for the layout after a random shuffle to be anything but random, but I'd had enough quantum theory by that time to not be too freaked out, and just sort of accepted that it worked for whatever reason. I'm not the best card shuffler in the world, but I'd honestly try to give them a good honest shuffling, and as I mentioned above, I'd use different sets of cards to increase the variables.

I also got to be pretty good at doing readings for friends, and would suitably freak them out by "exactly answering the question" they had mentally asked at the beginning of the reading. I would just smile mysteriously and knowingly, but knew that most of talent came from my knowledge of the basic problems in our lives - our studies and the opposite sex, and my inate ability to put together the Big Picture from a bunch of parts (the individual cards). But, I also had my personal experience with it that left me open to the possibility that maybe there was something to my readings. I never memorized the meanings of each card (as I frequently joked, if I wanted to memorize a bunch of stuff that I could look up, I would've become a biologist), so I would look them up in the book each time. I noticed that while at first my subjects would think that they wouldn't get "as good" of a reading from someone who had to do that, they would be more impressed in the end. I always thought that was rather backwards - if I had memorized the cards, I would have been putting even more personal interpretation into the readings.

Despite my success with the method, I don't really believe that there is anything behind tarot, but I'm certainly open to it. The other basic methods haven't ever done much for me (my horoscope doesn't ever "match" at all, which seems weird to me because of how general the ones in the paper is), but others do swear by them - I do have a friend who says that fortune cookies are eerily matched to him, and others have success with ouija. My question is, have other board members had positive correlations with various methods, and what?

-Virginia
 
I think the whole idea of these methods is to open up the
mind, so the fact you didn't memorize the traditional meanings of
the tarot wouldn't really matter, so long as the associations
prompted your imagination at some deep level.

The Sortes is something I have used with some startling results. Not
in telling the future so much as in mysteriously echoing my own thoughts.

Traditionally it was done with Virgil or the Bible but I find there is far too much
smiting in those books, random dippings are bound to come up with
something nasty. The Thesaurus is not a bad choice as it carries the
full range of experience, though it is open to the charge that it is
too organized to be random enough. You could, I suppose, in theory
learn the layout.

I have also had fun with a computer poetry generating application called
the MacPoet which uses wordlists and templates to create random
verses. It produced good lines about as often as a human poet but never
produces a good complete poem. The author of the software sees it as
a demonstration of how we project meaning on what we read.;)
 
The absolutely best method for scrying that I've found is gazing into a pool of blood. Only trouble is that you have to be quick if you're using your own.
 
I thought tarot card reading was more seeing how your future can be and not will be.

As for "fortune telling" goes for me I read my horoscopes (of my sun sign, what most call star sign). Although it is for my sign and not my birthdate, this cuts it`s "fortune telling" rate down a lot.
I also have occasionaly used dice, pendulm and tarot (weird experience since the reader was in Ireland at the time, the miracles of chatrooms).

Personally none of the above have had a great rate of predicting my furure, although the pendulm seems to give me the best results. I generally use the dice and pendulm as a guide to what my future can be. Although I believe in fate I also believe my future is not set in stone.

lucydru
 
My 2p:-

I dabble with the tarot, always weird results, if I don't use them too often.
Runes are good, not so open to intuition.
The I Ching I found inpenetrable.
I concur with lucydru - dowse for the future, also good for detecting spiral energy patterns.
 
Bringing in the ol' Sub C

I have worked with the tarot for almost 40 years, and conclude --

With the merest scan, our subconscious mind is capable of registering the sequence the cards have assumed in the shuffled deck. It can track the changes in this sequence as we shuffle more. When we "draw" the cards, I think we are responding to consciously imperceptible prompts...as the subconscious, for reasons whatever, creates the pattern in which the cards fall. The creating of this pattern is the subconscious' mode of talking to us in a state other than dream.

Whatever the spread, it is a species of mandala, through which the subconscious speaks.

I set out the cards from time to time when I think my subconscious may be harboring information that for one reason or another my conscious mind has missed.

HOWEVER, I always keep in mind that the subconscious is just as likely to tell me what it thinks will make me happy as it is to tell the "truth". Tarot, so regarded, emerges as a highly complex form of dowsing...and one must never discard the responsability of separating the wheat of ungroked data from the chaff of wishful thoughts.

Easy it ain't.
 
As a teenager (about 40 years ago) I learnt something called 'A Walk through the Forest'. At the time I thought it was a sort of psychology test (maybe it was, originally).

The reader would ask the subject to take a walk through an imaginary forest, describing what they saw and did when confronted by various objects, such as 'a cup', 'a hut', 'water', etc. These reactions were supposed to correspond to the subject's feelings on wealth, religion, sex, etc.

I treated it as an amusing game, and it proved a way of passing an evening on a yacht at anchor in some some remote place when I worked as a skipper.

However, from my subjects' reactions, I often penetrated rather deeper into their psyches than was comfortable, and I eventually gave up the 'game'.

Two questions:
Did I miss out on a career as a psychic, and
Has anybody else any info on 'A Walk in the Forest'?
 
rynner:

We meet again.

I remember doing this exercise decades ago...

I wonder if there would be value in doing it again...refashioning as one sees fit. I may go for a little walk in the woods later tonight...there was a wall somewhere, right? Its size and scalability indicated one's approach to obstacles in life...and the other side of the wall one's notion of the Afterdeath...? wasn't that the gist?

I have learned from other guided meditations to let such images appear spontaneously -- those appearances are all messages from the subconscious....which itself is the conduit to whatever Other is.

If your psychic career crashed, I wouldn't mourn. I have known a lot of psychics and very few of them have had an easy time of it.
 
A Walk in the Forest

In the version I used, the subject's description of the forest represented their attitude to life (dark and gloomy, impenetrable, or pleasantly open, sun-dappled, etc.)

There was no wall, but the subject was told they had come to the end of the forest, and what they experienced there represented the afterlife.

One of the objects 'found' was a key - that represented wealth, not the cup: the cup represented marriage, I think.

The reaction to water (sex) always got the biggest laugh when interpretation time came round. Some people found puddles or streams, but one girl (who had a reputation as a bit of a nympho) found a great big lake and jumped in it!
 
I have a very open mind on this.there are definitely some people more tuned in and who can read a persons aura by sight or sound or even touch.This has happened to me without prompting by answering a knock on the door in 1993 and being met by an elderly lady from Wales who proceeded to tell me things which were true and the answer to a problem which was causing great distress at the time.She said things would actually work out even though at the time the odds were stacked against me.The secret of the tarot cards lies in their interpretation and a person with great command of the language can essentially predict whatever applies to the sitter.A real genuine clairvoyant merely uses the Tarot or pendulums etc as an aid as this is what the sitter expects.The fact is that they dont actually need props and many accept their gift more as a burden than anything else.
 
I have always found the I Ching to be wise and effective. I'm never sure how much faith I have in the whole "predict the future" thing, but the I Ching definitely helps me find an approach to a problem that is bothering me. I have quite a lot of time for taoism anyway, so that probably helps.
 
Re: A Walk in the Forest

rynner said:
There was no wall, but the subject was told they had come to the end of the forest, and what they experienced there represented the afterlife.
Click to expand...

That's interesting, I'm a total non-believer (in pretty much anything), and when I read the words "come to the end of the forest", my mind instantly conjoured an image of nothingness, the forest just...ending. Of course, I could have heard what that represented before (I've certainly read a lot of different people's uses of the game, and I know some of the things in any case (such as the water I knew)). And my eyes could have easily read the words "represented the afterlife" before they told my brain. Amusing, nonetheless.

The problem I'd have thought with this game is that it does work on a subconcious level, but symbols represent different things to different people. A gnarley and scary-looking tree to someone may have the connotations of insecurity and paranoia, wheras for another it might remind them of being held protectively in their mother's loving and safe arms watching Disney's Snow White.

There's also the problem of "contamination". If, for example, someone had played the game before and had been told that they encountered a castle in that version, and that the castle represented their attitude to love (I think that's right) and then played a different version years later in which they encountered a wall, they may not remember even playing the game the first time, but the subconsious may think "wall of castle" and throw out what it thinks (or what it thinks it thinks) is relevent to "love", when it should be "obstacle".

And, of course, I know that "water" = sex, so no matter what I think of, I'm going to tell you of a peaceful comfortable, warm spa with natural springs for that "jaqusi" effect, and a rough, choppy end leading to exciting rapids. Or anything else that'll make me out to be a good, variable lover.
 
A Lib Dem speaks

I would agree with what several posters have said, that all the different methods come down to the same thing, and the external "props," whether they be tarot cards, runes or what have you, are not the essential ingredient: it's down to the diviner, not the method.

On the other hand, the "props" are very useful as a way of conning yourself into believing you aren't resonsible, thus giving yourself permission to do something "magical" that you don't, consciously, think you can do.

I don't believe divination tells you about the future, but (potentially) gives you a deeper understanding about the present. You knew it all the time, but you didn't know that you knew it. If you see what I mean.

By no means useless, but it won't tell you the winner of the 4:30 at Kempton Park.:(
 
All the above prove that we have each got to find something that works for us on an individual basis. To some people that may be tarot, to others a seance. If people find these work and provide some meaning or pointers through life, then thats great! It really is.
I have found that life throws little ( sometimes massive) pointers to guide me in the form of synchronicity. Not just instances of coincidence and chance but something much more. Heres an example that happened to me in 1999, I would have imagined everyone has something similar......

Went to the gym first thing and two regulars were wearing identical orange t-shirts which led me to make a comment on it. It was just co-incidence,they said.
Went to the reception to buy a carbo-drink but they were sold out so I had to make do with a can of Tango. (this is a fizzy orange soft drink). I commented on this to the orange t-shirt pair when I went back in the gym because the advertising slogan for Tango is " you know when youve been tangoed! and the company mascot is a big orange coloured man who runs around slapping people.
Drove home and on the way, the oil light ( orange) lit up in the car. The first and only time it ever did it in that car. The oil level was fine.
When I got home, the post had been and I'd got junk mail from Orange, the mobile phone network!
By this time, I'd obviously spotted what was happening and so I accept that I was looking for an orange connection in everything to a certain extent but even so.....all this orange stuff seemed like too much for just a coincidence. Ive still no idea what it all meant. I bet everyone gets days like that but for me, stuff like this proves there IS something "out there" more than any medium or anything like that. Like I said, each to his or her own.
 
Lee Bentley said:
By this time, I'd obviously spotted what was happening and so I accept that I was looking for an orange connection in everything to a certain extent but even so.....all this orange stuff seemed like too much for just a coincidence. Ive still no idea what it all meant.
Click to expand...
Oh, what a let down! I was hoping you'd be the man(woman?) to explain my recent pack of bloodhounds to me! (See my post on the "Synchronicity in the workplace" thread (here) for details.) And bloodhounds are much rarer than orange stuff!
 
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