Q&A: Can tarot make decisions for us?
By Psyche | May 10, 2008
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In a recent discussion on AIM I was asked about tarot’s role in decision-making. We’ve looked at tarot and accuracy, and sharing bad news with a client, but what happens when they want you or the cards to make a decision for them?
SPJ asked:
I’ve heard it’s not “good” practice to expect the tarot to make decisions for you and it may be better to only ask it what the outcomes to things might be if you continue down the same path?
Many will suggest that the mere fact the querent is aware of new possibilities may alter the outcome, but past experience has demonstrated thatit is incredibly rare for someone to radically change their character, even when it may be in their best interest to do so.
That said, decision spreads can be a great way to map out possibilities and test out ideas to see what the outcomes might be. This can give a fuller picture of the issue at hand, illuminate areas of not previously considered, and offer fresh insight on existing hunches.
Whatever decisions are made, influenced by the reading or not, ultimately come from those involved in the problem – even when there is a clear suggestion of a more favourable outcome from one path versus another.
The tarot, for all its elaborate imagery and esoteric symbolism, is not sentient. It’s merely another tool.
I don’t view the Tarot as a decision-maker, but I do use it as a channel of communication with my own guides. I’ll ask for their input on how this or that scenario might turn out, and sometimes I’ll amend my plans accordingly. I view it as one more input that I can gather before making my decision.
Oddly enough, I use tarot to illuminate tough decisions. More “What issues are around X” and “Why is X making me K?”
But taking tarot as exceedingly light hearted, when I have decisions that I really don’t care about an outcome, I’ll use the tarot as a tie breaker. I have three books to read, and don’t know or care which I read first? Draw a card for each, whatever looks best is the book I’ll start with.
The way I figure it, is if the tarot works by any “external” or “internal” mechanism, it will point to the right choice, and if it is all random and meaningless, well it doesn’t matter anyway.
~Ges
I find that Tarot empowers people to have more faith in their own intuition. You may not hear yourself clearly or resist listening to your inner voice. Tarot can also confirm your suspicions.
There is an important difference between Psyche’s discussion of SPJ’s question and caelum rainieri’s, Gesigewigus’ and Liara Covert’s answers. Psyche is addressing SPJ’s question from a two-party perspective in which there is a seer and a querent, whereas, caelum rainieri, Gesigewigus and Liara Covert appear to be answering SPJ’s question from a solitary perspective in which one is reading for oneself. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods of sortilege. However, in either case, the question must be raised as to, “what,” or, more accurately, “who,” is actually providing the, “divine,” information, answering the questions and, thus, making the decisions, and above all, the reliability of those sources. Cards of any sort are inanimate objects. Do they really have the power to make decisions for us; to give orders for us to obey? Or, is it more likely the case that the person reading the cards is the one making the decisions based upon his or her particular expanse of consciousness, life’s experience (or, lack thereof) and, thus, limited and subjective interpretation of the cards? These are important things to consider when deciding whether or not to follow the prescription of an oracle—tarot, seer or otherwise. To put SPJ’s question into the perspective of the masters:
19th century magician, Eliphas Levi wrote much about the Astral Light, which he calls, “the great agency of life,” and which the Hebrews divide into a combined trinity: 1) “Od,” magnetism controlled by the operator, life governed by free choice, the living light, the astral fluid, the torch of discourse, 2) “Ob,” passive clairvoyance, life ruled by fate, the dead light, the spectral phosphorus, the smoke of dreams, and 3) “Aour,” to rule the fatality of ob by intelligence and the power of od so as to create the perfect balance. Further, Levi accuses fortune-tellers, card readers and clairvoyants of being, “…subjects of hallucination who make their predictions by ob.” He states, “The glass of water in hydromancy, the tarot of Etteila, the lines in the palm, etc, produce a kind of hypnotism in the seer. Thus the seer regards his consultant in the reflection of his own silly desires or greedy imaginations; and because he is himself a spirit without dignity or nobility of will, he divines his client’s follies and suggests to him even greater ones, which is all part of his success so he thinks. A card-reader who counseled honesty and upright behavior would soon lose his clientele of kept women and hysterical old maids.” Levi also quotes the Pentateuch’s Book of Law, “Woe to those who divine by ob, because they evoke fate, which is an offense against the providence of God and the liberty of man.” Levi is being a bit harsh here, but, do keep in mind that, in context, he is referring only to the seer, “who has been made the slave of fate by the passions that master him,” whom he analogizes as, “like a blindfold man on a blind horse endeavoring to spur it into a gallop in a forest full of winding tracks and cliff-edges.”
A more moderate and plausible approach to divination comes from the Golden Dawn. Prolific occult writer and translator, A. E. Waite, designer of, perhaps, the most popular tarot pack—the Rider-Waite Tarot, which is rapidly being replaced by the more aesthetically appealing, re-pigmented Universal-Waite Tarot—and prolific occult writer, theurgist and magician, Dion Fortune, were fellow members of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn for which organization the Rider-Waite Tarot was created. Assuming their camaraderie, credibility and presuming their shared views on divination, Dion Fortune defined it as, “Given the present set of circumstances, what is the likely outcome? And, there is nothing more to it than that.” Elsewhere, she wrote, “Divination, in fact, is simply cosmic diagnosis and prognosis; there is nothing more miraculous about it than can be found in the prophecy of a speedy death from consumption after the use of a stethoscope.”
Most prominently, prolific tarot expert and astrologer, Hajo Banzhaf, pointed out the correspondences between the tarot’s major arcana and the ubiquitous literary theme, “The Hero’s Journey.” He further arranges the cards in a big circle tracing the sun’s daytime and nighttime arcs and compares, “The Hero’s Journey,” to the ubiquitous solar mythos. He then assigns each trump card a Jungian archetype and defines them in terms of what advice they have to offer in terms of expanding consciousness in different areas of life and the Jungian spiritual path to, “wholeness,” and, “individuation.”
Though not speaking specifically about the tarot, Satanist, Anton LaVey, coined the term, “Herd Mentality,” in reference to most human beings: that is, their willingness to subjugate themselves to authority and allow themselves to be led. Perhaps Lavey’s term, “herd mentality,” has some relationship with the great human, “social instinct.” In fact, psychological experiments have demonstrated that, when commanded with sufficient enough authority, most humans will obey, even when commanded to inflict excruciating pain on another human being, as one experiment proved.
In answer to SBJ’s question posed as a statement in perspective of the masters: Levi would regard allowing the tarot to make one’s decisions as folly; merely accepting the psychological projections of a less than pure and equilibrated seer whether those projections are applicable and appropriate to the querent and his or her situation or not. Apparently, the Golden Dawn—perhaps the most credible of sources—would choose clear-headed analysis of the situation and logical calculation as a method of divination for making decisions and, perhaps, not even bother with the tarot it created at all. Banzhaf posits that, though the specifics of ones’ lives are all unique, the path toward consciousness, wholeness and individuation is philosophically the same for everyone and, therefore, the tarot spread is the same for everyone. Making decisions is only a matter of determining one’s position on the path of his or her own particular Hero’s Journey. So, why even bother laying the cards and relying on them at all? LaVey would regard allowing the tarot to make one’s decisions as sacrificing one’s free will: simply establishing the tarot and/or the seer as an authority and blindly following that authority’s commands in the same way a herd of cows follows a bull, or a herd of sheep follows a shepherd: even to their own slaughter!
From my own, personal, perspective, I do not discount the paranormal element of divination and am not opposed to following the prescriptive of a gifted seer under certain circumstances. For instance, through divination, a gifted seer in the city in which I live provided invaluable insight into a violent rape case involving my former niece-in-law. The seer’s, “second sight,” knowledge, which she could not possibly have found out otherwise, provided information that led to the arrest and conviction of the rapist—with DNA evidence, a confession and all—in a case that was virtually clueless to the detectives handling it. However, this is a highly unusual set of circumstances. Otherwise, personally, I hardly ever use the tarot for divination anymore. When I was a younger man, obviously, my expanse of consciousness was much narrower than it is now that I am in my late forties. As a younger, less conscious man, I used to visit psychics, seers and readers often. In retrospect, I think that I was, in a way, borrowing their more expanded consciousness in order to supplement my lack of consciousness in much the same way as one would hire a business consultant for the purpose of gaining a better perspective on one’s business. I am far from, “super-conscious,” now. However, as I am older now and, hopefully, much more conscious, I don’t rely on oracles anymore, though I read occasionally for others.
While I no longer need the tarot for divination, I find it extraordinarily valuable for meditation purposes: that is, for acquiring a larger, deeper and clearer perspective on any given personal situation. I typically use a 21-card spread in which the cards are laid in pairs in the usual positions: past, present, future, inner and outer influences, ultimate outcome, etc. While I use my interpretation of the cards as, “advice well taken,” I don’t necessarily base my decisions on what I think the cards are telling me, or rather, what I am telling myself. My magical studies have impressed upon me just how much control I have over my environment. So, if I don’t like what the cards tell me, I simply, “effect change.”
To wrap things up, SPJ, I don’t know whether or not I’ve answered your question. But, hopefully, I’ve given you some information that will help you arrive at your own conclusions.