Every so often people ask about why to read tarot, not of me so much, but more generally on the Internet. But I’m thinking of why people turn to tarot today in response to the Pew Research study that came out in mid-May about Americans who believe in astrology, tarot, and fortunetelling. People are of course responding to this study with questions like, why this percentage of people? why these particular people?
There are lots of reasons to read tarot, and I once wrote a post on this blog listing a bunch of them. I listed good reasons, because I tend to think tarot is a good thing. I’m not going to link to that old post, though, because you know what? Fuck SEO and the AI it’s now trying to ride in on.
There are bad reasons to read tarot too, though, and there are bad ways to approach the tarot, or, if we want to be less judgemental, inadvisable ways to approach the tarot, in my opinion.
But today’s post is not about either good or bad reasons to pick up a deck of cards.
Today I just want to quickly point out one reason: Sometimes people read the tarot because nobody else is willing to listen. Sometimes people need to talk out their concerns, or maybe not even their concerns, maybe just something they happen to have on their minds or a random question that just occurred to them. Or maybe they just feel like talking about nothing, about just whatever the tarot might bring up, and they’re looking for, in a way, a conversational prompt.
Because yes, you can have a conversation with a deck of cards, and it can be just as rewarding and just as dangerous as talking to a human being.
For most of us, just as we don’t always listen well to the humans in our lives, we also don’t listen well to the cards.
And when we don’t listen well, when the message that comes through is garbled, or cryptic, or we can’t even notice it because our own brain is talking OVER what the other person said, and then we ACT on a mistaken belief about what was said–well, chaos can ensue.
When we’re thinking about a conversation, being in the present moment is not just about enjoying or appreciating the moment. As someone who practices and teaches meditation, I have heard about as much as I care to about appreciating the present moment, frankly! I am really getting very tired of the present moment. Because the truth is that when we’re talking about conversations, it can take us hours, weeks, years, or even decades to understand what the other person was saying to us. We seldom fully appreciate what is being said to us in the moment when it is being said.
So–put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Or better yet, go find a book you read before and read it again. Or just remember it. Because guess what? The value of what you read, with cards or in books, is not confined to the moment in which you read it.
Quiet Bonnie 