Spiritual Growth or Seeing the Future?

Ask this question, most will blush red, then admit they "got into the cards" to help them see the future. Yet, the cards started as a game in the late Middle Ages to early Renaissance and developed into archetypes for spiritual and occult meditation, became tools of magick, and finally, late in life, a tool for "predicing the future." Still, the allure for millions lies in future gazing.

How Can Randomized Cards Tell Futures?

If they could, why aren't all tarot practitioners millionaires? If they can't, why are so many of us devotees who practice daily? How exactly can Tarot cards possibly work?

 First, a distinction or definition. Tarot cards do not tell fortunes. Fortune-telling and divination are NOT the same thing. A tarot practitioner might use the cards to divine truth, divine influences or divine (listen to) the inner voice. We might divine the influences at "play" in our lives. But fortune-telling implies a fixed fate — and few tarot devotees support a belief in fixed fate. When a tarot devotee sets out to "divine" a future, they are referring to "listening to the inner or higher voice to divine truths or to reveal influences."

Three Theories

Three theories have been bandied about. Take your choice. One or all of these reasons must be the answer, or something we have not yet discerned, because millions are convinced the cards work. To many of us, it's more than fanciful games. Most practitioners believe all three theories are valid and contribute to results.

First, a Caution

If we are to believe the tarot cards can predict the future is this fate? NO! some would shout. The Tarot, as you'll note from the prevalent theories, focuses on influences. True, a major arcana card in a reading might be considered a strong influence -- but an influence nevertheless. This is why, in many spreads, there is some variation on an "advice" card (card 9 in some Celtic spreads, for example.) The outcome can be changed by taking an active role in the outcome. On the other hand, if the outcome is pleasing to you, the tarot may help focus the superconscious, subconscious and conscious minds to help you achieve the results. Free will is always in play.

Random Odds

The randomized odds are staggering. You have a 1 in 78 chance of drawing a specific card for a one card read. However, when using three cards, you now have a staggering 1 in 456,150 chance of a specific card showing up in the first position, 405,160 to one for position two according to Robert Place's calculations in his excellent book The Tarot, History Symbolism and Divination. Care to calculate odds when you include reversals and a ten card Celtic spread (the most popular)? The vocabulary of the cards is staggering when you consider each position carries a different meaning. Just learning the "language" of the cards is a lifetime pursuit.

So with these odds in play, how can so many millions believe in the power of the Tarot deck?

Theory 1
Books such as the popular Hajo Banzhaf/Elisa Hemmerlein Tarot As Your Companion (ISBN 971572812178) subtext their titles with claims such as "The Reliable Adviser." If so, on what basis can we "rely" on the advice? Where are the answers coming from?

"Tarot can be a very valuable companion which directs our inner eye to what is decisive at the proper moment in all of life's situations—but particularly in times of crisis and profound change," writes Banzham/Hemmerlein in Tarot As Your Companion in the introduction. In our first theory, we are tapping into the "higher self." "The ego tends to hold on to the familiar.... in contrast, our Higher Self wants to lead us to further development."

Theory 1 focuses on the clarity of the Higher Self, called by some the Super Conscious, a belief held by many faiths, from Doaism to Gnostic Christians to pagans, and even many scientists. The Super Conscious in this theory, is the Higher Self, in touch with the Collective Consciousness first outlined by Carl Jung. Which leads us to theory 2.

Theory 2
Carl Jung's familiar theories of universal archetypes and collective consciousness do not require faith or religion or magick. Jung's theories are far too complicated to delve into in this short article, but basically the eminent psychiatrist's theories are often used to explain divination. Jung placed four functions of consciousness on a cross, with "Thinking" and "Feeling" as north and south poles of one axis, called the "Rational", while "Intuition" and "Sensation" are on the horizontal arm, called the "Irrational Axis."  It's important to note that intuition and sensation are used to "investigate" reality but not to make decisions. Only "feelings" and "thinking" is involved in the decision process (rational.) To shorten this theory to a manageable length, the two aspects of self converge and focus through various techniques (dreaming, meditation, tarot cards) in the center of the cross. Universal archetypes (the visual symbols on tarot card illustrations) are the language understood by both. In other words, again the self, albeit the "total self" is BOTH the investigator (using intuition and sensation) and the decision-maker (thinking and feeling). The cards simply open us to our total selves.

Theory 3
Variations on faith believes that attribute the power of divination to a higher power. Angels, guardian angels, gods, spirits, super conscious (super self) linked to the collective consciousness, God, ancestors, demons, take your choice. Some can rationalize they are all the same thing, united as Jung proposed by the collective consciousness. In other words, we may not have the same name for these powers, but they're available to everyone.

Collective Language
The important element in all this is "COMMUNICATION." The cards become the symbolic or visual language. In Jungian terms, archetypal language. No spoken words are required. The "intuition" of the super conscious and communicate with the "thinking and feeling" of the rational or ego conscious, the self. Whether you attribute this communication to super self or gods — some would argue they are the same thing — the communication is really the function of the cards. If you come to understand the visual symbols of the cards, which are universal — archetypes that decades and centuries have made common to us all — you can open the channel of communication between super-self and self, superconscious ad conscious, god and man, angel and ego. And by activating the awesome power of the unconscious, directly linked to this superconscious and the rest of the universe, things happen. Whether you explain this in the occultist way — "As Above, So Below" — or in the chaos scientist's theory of "every atom in the universe is connected to every other atom and influences responses" — the so called butterfly theory (where a butterfly in South America can cause a typhoon in Hong Kong) — either way, the Tarot cards have shown in millions of uses, to be a common language with an important story.