Daily Dose of Eros - Tarot Reading

This lovely image is taken from On Winds Song blog. Click on the image to go and pay them a visit.

Tarot readers, astrologers and all things (feminine) mystic have gotten a bad wrap lately. Well, forever through history, but particularly lately. There seems to be great concern in the pseudo-scientific community, as WELL as the religious community about this form of mysticism, always, without exception, judging it from their own motivational perspective.

Why? What is the big threat?

I don't know one tarot reader "getting rich" off "exploiting" people  - if that was a true concern, why don't they target used car salespeople, real estate salespeople, telephone accessories sales people and hedge fund CEO's? I mean if you are genuinely concerned about the exploitation of the deeply ignorant by the stupid but pushy, find out where the most money is being lost.

I have been seeing tarot readers for a couple of decades now, and I have never ever met one that doesn't say the power to change my future lies with me and I can do what I want regardless of the reading. I keep hearing about people who "change their life" based on what a tarot reader says, but in all my dealing with the community, I've never met one. I only hear about this through people who are trying desperately to form an argument against tarot reading.

I also hear a great deal about this enormous power tarot readers have to influence the querent once they have left, as if by just saying "you will have a lot of money" the tarot reader is able to infuse the querent with the ability to make everything come true. If this is accurate, then more people should be seeing them, not less. They have gifts of persuasion that go far beyond the doctor or the diplomat, we should use them to convince sick people they can get well, and presidents that they can find a peaceful solution. I greatly wish the power of persuasion was that enormous, I really do, but the truth of readings are ... you walk away skeptical, but hopeful. Never convinced. Querents are like everyone else. They don't really and truly believe it until they see it.

So why do I go?

I use readers in the same way I might use therapy, or a conversation with a trusted friend, or a new age book, or a business motivational book. I do not go to any of these expecting my life to be fixed, I go to them all for comfort and solace and the will to carry on. I AM looking for a short term fix when I need a boost through something - a little like an athlete who uses the sports drink or the motivational music to get them up that hill. The readings are not always a success - I've had my share of bad readers - but I do know I get exactly what I need when I go there, I know what I want from the reader, and I know what I am willing to pay for. It's usually closer to feedback more than anything else, although I have had readers see the future with a clarity that can't be explained - but I promise you, that clarity is of no value until you see it manifest in your life, so prior to that it's just words.

My point is, knowing the future - whether you "manifest" it yourself or whether the reader has seen it accurately makes little difference to the reading or the querent. Knowing the future may be something scientific people or religious people might pay a huge amount of weight to, but it makes little difference when you have it in a reading. Let me give you an example. You go and see the Doctor at 25. He says, Give up smoking or you are likely to get very sick when you are 50. How many smokers leave and immediately give up smoking? If they give up 10 years later, are you going to imbue the doctor with mystical powers that lay dormant until the person acted on it? "Knowing the future" has far less power to affect your day today than people give it credit for.

Tarot readers are delicious people, interesting and exciting to visit. They are not capitalist monsters who think tarot reading is the best way to take advantage of the population - I've never met anyone who thought it was a good way to get rich, except people who know nothing about it at all. Tarot reading has a strong history in Wicca and female mysticism, and I like that one of the few places where the church and the scientific community are in bed together is over their fear of and anger at tarot readers. That alone is a reason to embrace it, because obviously we're dealing with something very scary and very subversive here.

Enjoy it, I say.