How Accurate is Divination?

How  Accurate is Divination?

Can we believe what Tarot Readers, Psychics etc tell us? Is it all true or just what we want to hear? Do people who go from one reader to another actually believe that their questions will be answered truthfully and honestly by these so-called professionals.

The Fortune Teller

A psychic reading is a specific attempt to discern information through the use of heightened perceptive abilities; or natural extensions of the basic human senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and instinct. These natural extensions are claimed to be clairvoyance (vision), clairsentience (feeling), claircognisance (factual knowing) and clairaudience (hearing) and the resulting statements made during such an attempt.[1] The term is commonly associated with paranormal-based consultation given for a fee in such settings as over the phone, in a home, or at psychic fairs.[2] Though psychic readings are controversial and a focus of skeptical inquiry,[3][4] a popular interest in them persists.[5] Extensive experimentation to replicate psychic results in laboratory conditions have failed to find any precognitive phenomena in humans.[6] Psychic reading is pseudoscience.[7] A cold reading technique allows psychics to produce seemingly specific information about an individual from social cues and broad statements. Wikipedia

In the mid 1990's I took my research another step forward into the 'Telephone Tarot Business'. I had been reading privately for some years at this point, and I wanted to know if you could actually get a true and accurate Tarot Reading reading over the telephone. So I joined, what was at the time, one of the more notable companies to see if it really worked. My intention was to stay for about 6 months and see how these businesses worked their magic down the telephone lines. I stayed on the lines for about 2 years, as I became more involved in the whole setup of how they ran these businesses.

My first impressions were not very good, people sat there with pieces of paper with only the Major Arcana card meanings, no cards, just a piece of paper. Well that was not a very good sign of the so-called professional readers I was about to join. The management was so strict and the pay very low, I couldn't understand why these people would do a job like this. Most of the readers did 14 hour shifts, sometimes longer if people didn't turn up for their shift.

I had some very in-depth conversations with most of the staff about their skills and gifts and found that the majority were just people who wanted some extra money to help them along in life due to the fact they were either out of work and claiming benefits or had another low paid job and this boosted their income slightly.

Most of the staff would bluff their way through a 14 hour shift, but some truly had some kind of gift or talent to keep their clients coming back time and time again, and when I say talent or gift, I mean, 'the gift of the gab'.

I get asked many, many questions, relating to how you do this or how is that done, why must some things be done a certain way and others just disregarded?

I could be starting something here that I might not be able to finish, but I feel that it is my duty as an experienced reader to pass on to others all of my knowledge and expertise so that basically, everyone is reading from the same 'Hymn sheet'.

I am going to split this discussion into several categories, to try and clarify different areas of which some are just pure misconceptions of what Tarot is really all about.

Here are some examples of the questions I sometimes get asked or clients that say such things as, "Oh, I heard that you can't buy your own Tarot cards, they have to be given to you!" Or, "If someone gives you an old deck of cards, they will not work!"

UGH!

Let me just put the following misconceptions to bed, but before I do, let me just remind you of a few basic but real facts about divination -

You can use anything you want, from a crystal ball, water, mirror to dice, sticks and basically anything that you can call symbolic, to do divination with.

The art of divination is within the person doing the reading or casting. Everything else, such as cards, dice, sticks, crystals, stones, bones etc, are just the tools to do the job with.

A witch will either make or buy her own candles, a reader who uses anything but cards generally acquires them by purchase or other means. Can you see where I am going here?

So I hope I've dispelled some of the myths so far?

I believe that clients who have a reading for the first time are usually quite naive in regards to the whole concept of Tarot card reading and so may be gullible enough to take what is conveyed to them by the reader as factual. So unless the reader is of reputable substance and has a good deal of moral character, then It would be inconceivable to even think that anything the reader said would be nothing but pure fiction and maybe some assumptions, to boot.

This brings me on to the subject of 'Charlatans', a word that all good, well-experienced readers cringe at! Nevertheless, I have to make a few things clear and attempt to put some of the records straight.

Anyone can read Tarot cards! Or can they?

If anyone can read Tarot cards or should I say, 'cast them', then why are there so many who read for others? Surely anyone can pick up a Tarot deck and start to read them, or can they? I have mixed feelings on this part. You see I actually started reading ordinary playing cards before I tried to do the same with a deck of Tarot cards, and it was all just a bit of fun to me, I never really took it serious.

It wasn't until friends and colleagues started to come back to me asking more questions and expecting me to just pull a pack of cards out to answer them that I started to realise that I could do something that not many others could. I don't believe I am blessed with, was born with, inherited or have been granted any gift or special powers, to the contrary. I do believe that what I do is because I just want to do it, there is this constant urge to give and give to everyone I meet in my life and I don't want anything in return.

True readers will call anyone who tricks, deliberately lies and misleads clients as 'Charlatans'. I call them what I want to call them!

These so called professionals who profess to have every mystical power under the sun, degrees in Tarot and an education as long as your arm may have qualifications etc, but does it really qualify them to be a competent Tarot reader? "I don't think so".

It truly worries me to think that there are probably something like, 50 Charlatans to every 1 experienced Tarot reader in the world today.

How Accurate is Divination? – Part 2

It’s not often I get the old soapbox out, yawn! Just sometimes you have to try and stop the onslaught from that ubiquitous and meandering lava flow that some of us may attribute the words,

“I told you so. Now do you believe me!”. 

Do you find yourself thinking words like, coincidence, fate, destiny, deja vu, fluke and so on, especially when you can’t explain something that’s just happened, has been said or thought of? Of course you do! Everybody does and why shouldn’t they? There is nothing wrong with accepting that sometimes, we don’t have to try and explain, what may or may not have just happened. What might be an important fact to point out here, is that whatever we just experienced and in whatever shape or form, there is no human or logical, day-to-day, earth dwelling reason how it can be explained.

So should we accept this, what might be termed as, phenomena, and put it all down to, ‘The wonders of the universe’, ‘Gods influence or intervention’, ‘Alien activities’ or simply, ‘It didn’t happen’ and move on in blind ignorance.

On those occasions, especially after a long, detailed and exhaustively difficult reading I generally have these thoughts, sometimes when a client returns time after time, asking the same question and needs further clarity on the outcome.

Yes, the Tarot does work but only in the hands of the true believer.

As I always tell people,

"The Tarot never lies, only people lie."

Please feel free to comment, feedback is good for inspiration and always fuels the old grey matter.