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Tarot Cards: Using Them For Divination, Gaming, Etc.

I read Tarot Cards myself, done it for years, sometimes interesting things happen.
Someone we knew was involved in a court trial, and it was not going well. I would dash over to the courthouse every day after work and things looked worse and worse. One evening after court this man came over for dinner and told us that his attorney had warned him that he was not going to win this case.
He was very upset and asked me to read his Tarot Cards, because he was thinking of going home and packing and running to Canada or even Mexico. I gave him the cards and he shuffled and split them.
I couldn't believe his cards myself, they were all the best cards you could possibly have in a spread, the sun, the wheel of fortune, everything. When I told him, he didn't really believe it, but I convinced him to wait 1 more day.
The next day after work I ran over to the courthouse and as soon as I walked inside the front door I got a very 'warm' feeling, I knew everything was fine. Walking into the courtroom, a mistrial was being called, and charges were dropped.
If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it - this man was stunned, and so thankful that he didn't run.
 
Serious question... could the infamous Top Trumps horror cards of the 1970s be used for Tarot? OK, the illustrations are crude, but there was an occult flavour to them.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The Death card isn't really about predicting someone's physical death. It is more appropriately seen as denoting transformation involving the end of something current so that something different or new can be initiated. Closing one door so another can open, burning off a field so that new growth can occur there - that sort of thing ...
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Yes, that's usually the case but once, I remember the opposite being true as well. Like everyone else, I learned tarot with all those same caveats re the more ominous cards... Death isn't usually literal Death, Tower might just mean change etc etc. Then I had a friend who wanted a reading and myself and the person who had taught me Tarot, both decided, to read for her. This in the early-ish days of the interwebs and we were friends IRL but lived about 30 miles apart, so didn't do our readings in the same physical space as eachother and probably not the same decks either, but we did them the same evening, for our mutual friend. Just as a sort of experiment, to see what happened.

Anyway, whatever else we pulled, we both pulled DEATH. Both told our mutual friend the usual sweeteners/caveats etc. Few hours later she learned a very old mate of her's had died, in hospital, that night. IIRC her mate was quite young as she had young kids, so it was unexpected. I guess the odds of two of us pulling it were a bit more remote than if the reading had just been one of us.

Usually Death doesn't mean DEATH... but occasionally - it totally does.
 
GNC said:
Serious question... could the infamous Top Trumps horror cards of the 1970s be used for Tarot? OK, the illustrations are crude, but there was an occult flavour to them.
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Yes, why not? Before Rider Waite Smith came along, most people reading cards in the UK at least, read playing cards. No reason not to! I can't see "made up" oracle cards are any different to Top Trumps... (Looks over shoulder to check no-one just saw Controversial Opinion).
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Yes, why not? Before Rider Waite Smith came along, most people reading cards in the UK at least, read playing cards. No reason not to! I can't see "made up" oracle cards are any different to Top Trumps... (Looks over shoulder to check no-one just saw Controversial Opinion).
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You're right - I have read both ordinary playing cards and Tarot Cards, all 78 of them are included. And I use the Rider deck. The Tarot Cards I wrote about in my post above were lost unfortunately in one of our infamous NJ hurricane 'floods', had them for years, they were right on the money every single time.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Yes, why not? Before Rider Waite Smith came along, most people reading cards in the UK at least, read playing cards. No reason not to! I can't see "made up" oracle cards are any different to Top Trumps... (Looks over shoulder to check no-one just saw Controversial Opinion).
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My spooky Auntie Val taught me to tell fortunes with playing cards. Used to scare my schoolfriends stiff. :cool:
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Yes, why not? Before Rider Waite Smith came along, most people reading cards in the UK at least, read playing cards. No reason not to! I can't see "made up" oracle cards are any different to Top Trumps... (Looks over shoulder to check no-one just saw Controversial Opinion).
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Fascinating! Unfortunately (fortunately?) I just had the spaceships and dinosaurs one, which might have been harder to fathom. Then again, they do have scores of various attributes assigned to each card, those could help in the interpretation.

I think you can get reprints of the Top Trumps horror cards, might be wrong.
 
GNC said:
Fascinating! Unfortunately (fortunately?) I just had the spaceships and dinosaurs one, which might have been harder to fathom. Then again, they do have scores of various attributes assigned to each card, those could help in the interpretation.

I think you can get reprints of the Top Trumps horror cards, might be wrong.
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Oh no, dinosaurs would be epic. Pterodactyls = Swords. Trilobites = Pents. Megalodon = Cups. Drop in a dragon for Wands.... (Can't think of a fiery dinosaur?)

Football players could be court cards.

Space ships a bit more freestyle. You'd have to cold read the querent! (Ah, USS Enterprise means you're seeking out new frontiers...")
 
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escargot said:
My spooky Auntie Val taught me to tell fortunes with playing cards. Used to scare my schoolfriends stiff. :cool:
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Years after I learned tarot my dad told me casually one day his grandma had read the playing cards and scryed using the fire (she saw her son dying in the trenches, shortly before he did, at Passchendaele). Whilst being a sceptic usually, he said his grandma was known to be scarily accurate. She was born in Leeds but came from an old Westmorland farming family, originally and was brought up by her Westorland born grandad, in Shipley. Another relative had a crystal ball. Which had to be ceremonially destroyed, I just remembered, by the family member who laid her out when she died... Although this was before and after WW1 when that stuff was all the rage. I think a lot of people of that generation and the one after, did this stuff but it's hard to know if the roots go deeper...
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Usually Death doesn't mean DEATH... but occasionally - it totally does.
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On a much less sombre note, I have the Linestrider tarot phone app. You can set this up to show you a card of the day, which I do use, and find quite useful if only to help me get familiar with the cards and their meanings in relationship to my life. Anyway, I was once on a teacher training course in Kuala Lumpur, and on a Sunday morning I decided to go for a walk around one of the last remaining chunks of old rain forest in the city centre. This is to be found on the slopes of the hill on which stands the KL TV tower. Bearing in mind that I'd decided to do this before I checked, guess what my card of the day was... That did seem a bit too on-the-nose, but I'd take it any day over the other connotations of the tower.
 
For those who read tarot cards: in the readings, do you ever get a sense that an external intelligence was directing you to a particular interpretation, or that the person being read about needed to hear a particular point of view that was not what the person was desiring? For example, person wants to hear about romance, and you are urged to warn about a nonromance danger.

This is not an idle question.
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
For those who read tarot cards: in the readings, do you ever get a sense that an external intelligence was directing you to a particular interpretation, or that the person being read about needed to hear a particular point of view that was not what the person was desiring? For example, person wants to hear about romance, and you are urged to warn about a nonromance danger.

This is not an idle question.
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Sure, it happens a lot - I always read whatever is in the cards, which is not at times what the other person wants to hear.
I also ask the other person to shuffle and split the cards themselves, so that their vibes are in them and they are totally their cards, nothing to do with me, I just read them. And not always good news.
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
For those who read tarot cards: in the readings, do you ever get a sense that an external intelligence was directing you to a particular interpretation, or that the person being read about needed to hear a particular point of view that was not what the person was desiring? For example, person wants to hear about romance, and you are urged to warn about a nonromance danger. ...
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In large part this depends on the card set you're using, the spread you're using to present the cards, and the manner in which you are conducting the reading (e.g., one-way presentation versus bidirectional interview).

If you're using a fairly structured combination of these three elements the cards themselves will cue you to such shifts or divergences, just as they will cue you toward a particular interpretation based on the logic and layout of the reading as it unfolds.

Speaking solely for myself ... No - the only "external intelligence" I will acknowledge and accommodate in a reading is the querent.
 
EnolaGaia said:
In large part this depends on the card set you're using, the spread you're using to present the cards, and the manner in which you are conducting the reading (e.g., one-way presentation versus bidirectional interview).

If you're using a fairly structured combination of these three elements the cards themselves will cue you to such shifts or divergences, just as they will cue you toward a particular interpretation based on the logic and layout of the reading as it unfolds.

Speaking solely for myself ... No - the only "external intelligence" I will acknowledge and accommodate in a reading is the querent.
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It happened to me once. I read tarot cards only for a very short time of about two years in my 30s. The intrusive thoughts I had during a reading for a young 17 year old girl were partly the reason I quit. She wanted to know about her future, typical happiness and romance. She seemed like a typical, cheerful teenager.

I don't remember what the cards implied, but I had sudden, overwhelming thoughts to slant the discussion towards the temporary nature of her unhappiness, her abusive father (WTF!) which I did not know about, that she shortly would be in control of her life as an adult, and so on. These thoughts were like a physical wave coming to me. Everything my intrusive thoughts urged me to say turned out to be true. I suppose I could have been cued into unconscious signals or facial microexpressions, but that is not how it seemed to me.

So, tarot cards join ouija boards as something I won't do anymore.
 
Krepostnoi said:
On a much less sombre note, I have the Linestrider tarot phone app. You can set this up to show you a card of the day, which I do use, and find quite useful if only to help me get familiar with the cards and their meanings in relationship to my life. Anyway, I was once on a teacher training course in Kuala Lumpur, and on a Sunday morning I decided to go for a walk around one of the last remaining chunks of old rain forest in the city centre. This is to be found on the slopes of the hill on which stands the KL TV tower. Bearing in mind that I'd decided to do this before I checked, guess what my card of the day was... That did seem a bit too on-the-nose, but I'd take it any day over the other connotations of the tower.
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LOL Here's to literal tarot!:beer:
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
For those who read tarot cards: in the readings, do you ever get a sense that an external intelligence was directing you to a particular interpretation, or that the person being read about needed to hear a particular point of view that was not what the person was desiring? For example, person wants to hear about romance, and you are urged to warn about a nonromance danger.

This is not an idle question.
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Yes. You see what you see and you feel what you feel. Sometimes the cards aren't bothered about what the querent thinks is important, I guess?

I did a reading for someone recently who didn't tell me what she was asking about, nor did I ask her (although she told me afterwards) and I pulled 4 cards I think it was. But of the 4, one in particular was screaming at me. As I didn't know what the reading was about, I didn't know why but when I told her about the reading (she is also a Tarot fan with a good knowledge base of her own), and when later she told me what the reading was about, it became apparent why that one card was shouting loud and clear. So, even within a reading there may be one card or a couple acting together, that "feel" stronger, more urgent, more important. I don't need to know what they're asking about, as a rule, but it's always fascinating to find out afterwards.

I once did a reading for a whole group of people and didn't know precisely what it was about but I started getting references to this really shitty person, who was affecting them all. Turned out they had a horrible boss. But that was what they were asking about. Or not asking, rather, because they were sort of "testing" me and tight lipped about what they were asking about but once I hit the nail on the head, they were excited to tell me what it was all about.

Have also done readings (and had them) that made no sense at the time or failed to answer my burning question, or the querent's burning question, only for them to make complete sense, in retrospect...

Not an external intelligence as such. I take the Jungian view it's just those archetypes activating something already there inside you. It feels very much part of me, when I read - not external to me or imposed on me. Hard to explain.
 
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Endlessly Amazed said:
It happened to me once. I read tarot cards only for a very short time of about two years in my 30s. The intrusive thoughts I had during a reading for a young 17 year old girl were partly the reason I quit. She wanted to know about her future, typical happiness and romance. She seemed like a typical, cheerful teenager.

I don't remember what the cards implied, but I had sudden, overwhelming thoughts to slant the discussion towards the temporary nature of her unhappiness, her abusive father (WTF!) which I did not know about, that she shortly would be in control of her life as an adult, and so on. These thoughts were like a physical wave coming to me. Everything my intrusive thoughts urged me to say turned out to be true. I suppose I could have been cued into unconscious signals or facial microexpressions, but that is not how it seemed to me.

So, tarot cards join ouija boards as something I won't do anymore.
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I wouldn't go near ouija but tarot no problem. However, caveat - I haven't read with Thoth for years. It's brutal. Also I can do runes but they are so direct that I tend to prefer tarot for other people although I'd do runes for myself.
 
The cards go way back beyond Waite and Colman and Waite's occult meanderings.

They aren't for foretelling the future, what they do is tell you about the influences around you that might impact your current and future condition - quite a different thing. I used to do readings way back in the 70's - what a different world it was back then.

An interesting thing about the cards is that the major arcana count from zero to 21 - zero is a relatively late concept introduced I believe by Arab mathematicians.
 
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So I'm kinda late to the game. My favourite tarot that I have is the Sacred Circle deck. I love the CGI and some of the real settings that they are done in. To me, there is much symbolism that can be drawn on when using them.

I have a few mini decks - fairies and gnomes, I think. I have used them in the past for myself, but they generally confirm what I think the answer is anyway. I have only read for one person, a younger friend, and I felt like I was intruding into her privacy. I can read people quite well, and especially with those I know, I don't really want to pry into things they may not be aware that I can catch onto.

So I am interested in tarot, but I don't really have any pressing questions or concerns that I can't see the outcome without them. I have used them just to confirm what I already know. Yes, I know, many would argue that I am only reading what I want. I believe that I am clairsentient. I didn't know of that term until about 10 years ago. I only knew of clairaudience and clairvoyance. I just happen to know things with no voices or visions. So scrying of any type often just confirms what I know and I will use it if I really want to know if it is a path I should take. I use my intuition always.
 
Cochise said:
... An interesting thing about the cards is that the major arcana count from zero to 21 - zero is a relatively late concept introduced I believe by Arab mathematicians.
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The Arabs got it from India, who got it from the Greeks, who got it from Mesopotamia. Some claim the concept of zero in expressing numbers goes back as far as Sumeria 5,000 years ago ...

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-origin-of-zer/
 
I don’t like Tarot Cards since I had a bad experience.

When my wife and I were younger, our local museum had a fund raiser, and the Tarot reading was free.

The lady started our reading and then got nervous and made a strange excuse of going to the bathroom and stopped.

The next day one of my wife’s aunts died.

Was this an event the card reader saw in the cards ?

When my mom was alive, she talked about a tea cup reader strangely stopping on her in a similar fund raiser, and the next day a good friend died on her.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The Arabs got it from India, who got it from the Greeks, who got it from Mesopotamia. Some claim the concept of zero in expressing numbers goes back as far as Sumeria 5,000 years ago ...

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-origin-of-zer/
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Which suggests a non-European origin for the Major Arcana, not least since the Minor Arcana have conventional numbering. Interesting, if not vey useful! Maybe we have a merging of two different traditions somewhere in the middle ages/ early Renaissance?

The occult stuff surrounding the cards comes later, when the Church started to see them - and many other new influences from that time - as a threat to their overall control and tried to associate them with the Devil. Waite and his successors who bought in to all that have a lot to answer for.
 
This topic has revived my interest. Way back in the 70's I used to do readings (to get girls, obvs. nothing a male teenager does is intended to other than get girls) . Feedback was pretty good. But, life soon overtook that.

But I'm now retired and lacking mental stimulus, so I've decided to set myself to memorising the card meanings which I forgot years ago, not particularly intending to do readings, but simply to try and activate and organise my poor old brain.

I like the Steampunk Tarot - available in pocket size too. Hey, maybe it can still get me girls :) Hope springs ever eternal and all that - but heck, has to be better than internet dating.
 
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Cochise said:
This topic has revived my interest. Way back in the 70's I used to do readings (to get girls, obvs. nothing a male teenager does is intended to other than get girls) . Feedback was pretty good. But, life soon overtook that.

But I'm now retired and lacking mental stimulus, so I've decided to set myself to memorising the card meanings which I forgot years ago, not particularly intending to do readings, but simply to try and activate and organise my poor old brain.

I like the Steampunk Tarot - available in pocket size too. Hey, maybe it can still get me girls :) Hope springs ever eternal and all that - but heck, has to be better than internet dating.
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I love a bit of steampunk. I've had a look and they're beautiful cards. And the folksy nature of tarot fits well into the genre.
 

Does Tarot Count as Therapy?​


I’m falling apart.

In a burnt-earth-tone cotton top, her thick brunette hair pulled back out of her face, a few strands escaping, the woman I’ve come to see starts shuffling a worn deck of Rider-Waite tarot cards, spreading them out on the table. Smoke from a nearby smudge stick wafts through the room. I look down at symbolic images I recognize: Knight of Swords, Chariot, King and Queen of Pentacles.

Here we go.

...perhaps the most surprising place you’ll shuffle a tarot deck—your therapist’s office—isn’t actually surprising at all. Tarot cards have always had deep roots in psychological applications. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung explained that the cards were an easy way to represent the “archetypes of mankind”—or universal traits like strength, ambition, and passion—in psychology, making them ideal tools for therapy and mental health.

“Tarot cards are universally applicable and can create a visualization of your situation,” says Inna Semetsky, PhD, from Columbia University. “Once you see things laid out, it becomes clear what you actually want. They help you externalize your problems.”

Translation: It’s all about the visuals. Tarot decks, with their easy-to-understand symbolism, are so strangely useful in healing and therapeutic sessions because they allow you to storyboard your life—you can look at the cards and see colorful, palatable images of behaviors you may identify with and that are now assigned to you, since they’ve been pulled for you. Seeing your hopes and fears laid out in pictures, they become more obvious and less therapy.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a29440976/tarot-therapy-mental-health-astrology/

maximus otter
 
So, in the future this will be covered by health insurance? (Assuming you have health insurance . . .)
 
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