Your online guide to divination and positive magic

Tarot cards have been used for divination pretty much throughout their known history, and this is still their main application today. It is by no means their only use, however. Their esoteric links, particularly with the Kabbalah, allow them to be used for spiritual study and meditation. They also have psychological applications and are a valuable tool in the important search for self-knowledge. s really show the future?

Some believe the cards mirror a future set in stone, others that they show likely future trends and problems that can be worked with or avoided, and still others that the cards fall by chance and that reading any meaning into this is empty superstition.

If you choose to believe that the cards do foretell future events, the obvious follow-up question is whether events suggested by the cards are set in stone, or whether they can be avoided. This applies equally to positive predictions as to negative ones, because if it were possible to avoid some foretold disaster, then it may be equally possible to miss out on some predicted windfall or opportunity.

If the cards mapped out a fixed future then there would be little value in consulting them. The most positive approach to a reading is that the cards show trends and potentials: what will happen if you do nothing consciously to change the course of events. Most readings deal with the current situation and events leading up to it precisely so that the cards can suggest how the questioner has got where they are, and how best they can go forward. If the cards suggest future problems, they will also suggest the causes of these difficulties and how they can be avoided. If they suggest pleasurable future events, then they will also suggest how to make sure that these come to pass, and how to avoid wasting the positive phase approaching.

If you are of the school of thought that there is nothing mystical or presaging about the seemingly random selection of cards, then the Tarot works by providing a framework for the reader to analyze a given problem or situation and explore future options by reconsidering the past that has created the present. Meaning may emerge even from purely random patterns, as chance selections force you to consider concepts that you'd normally ignore, and the density of meaning is great enough that meanings can emerge from almost any selection of cards. Applying the meaning of a card in a given position to the question in hand means that the mind has to look for meanings and links that it would not ordinarily consider, and in this way fresh insights are found.

Those who believe that cards specifically foreshadow future events need to look beyond present-day science for an explanation. The mechanism by which the cards work may be looked at as an instance of the ancient mystical maxim, "As above, So below", where the seemingly trivial fall of cards somehow mirrors the greater machinations of the heavens, and the future is glimpsed. Others may turn to theories such as synchronicity, theorized by Carl Gustav Jung. Synchronicity is the coincidence of events that appear to be meaningfully related but cannot be explained by accepted mechanisms of cause and effect. The random selection of cards detailing future events would be a very good example of this.

The true art of Tarot interpretation lies not only in the cards chosen, but where they fall, how they are grouped and related, and how all this fits in with the questioner's concerns and the reader's experience, and this does require a gifted, human reader, though this reader need not be sitting across the table from you. Tarot diviners generally believe that Tarot cards simply allow them to exercise an innate psychic ability to see the future. It's popularly believed that the cards take on the "aura" or "vibrations" of someone who touches them. The cards are therefore "insulated" by wrapping them in silk or enclosing them in a box, and only touched by the diviner and person for whom the reading is done: the "querent".