Tarot, Astrology and Coffee Grinds: Part Two
This is Part Two of: thoughts on tarot, astrology, and woo-woo readings of all kinds. (See last week’s Tarot, Astrology and Coffee Grinds: Part One here.)
In Part One I talked about allowing yourself to have some authority in deciding whether the reading (or ‘divination’) works/worked or not. And also, allowing yourself to use and enjoy something that works even before you understand how it works. We do it all the time, and it’s unclear why the policy should be so different here. Cloning I can see. Weapons of mass destruction, sure. But palm readings? The I Ching?
The one area, or danger, I can see in using these ‘psychic’ or divinatory systems, is determinism. It’s the same one that arises with the study and use of genetics. The one where I lose my free will; where we are forced to accept, resign and finally embrace that we have no real power over our lives.
This brings me to what I wanted to talk about in Part Two: these ‘psychic’ or divinatory systems are functional and used correctly only when they empower. If you use them, or they are presented to you, in a way that writes off your control, power and authority over yourself and your life, the interpretation or reading is inherently dysfunctional. It is a misinterpretation of any wisdom or insight it might otherwise contain. (I would say the same of genetics, heredity, and anything else that transforms predisposition into predetermination.)
For example, ‘Scorpios tend to be passionate and volatile.’ turns into ‘I am a scorpio so I can’t help being jealous and having extreme mood swings.’. Or because, ‘our astrological signs are completely incompatible the relationship was doomed from the start.’ Mercury in retrograde gets blamed even for coffee spills these days.
But when we understand these things as decrees or fate, we misunderstand them. There is no fate because there is still free will. There are only predispositions.
In terms of fortune telling, there is a picture of a moment in time. Based on that picture there are future potentials, just as there is the most likely future potential. (Actually, in light of quantum physics, it might be more correct to say a most likely future potential.) Remember, for example, ‘that objects in motion tend to stay in motion’. This means that based on the information you gather in any moment, you can make predictions about that object’s future, all else being equal and remaining on course.
This is what the energy reader (of whatever ‘psychic’ or other-worldly variety) reads: the most likely future based on everything you are and are bringing in at that moment. (Or, if it were more important, they might tell you a less likely future possibility that you should be aware of.) They foretell the future based on what they read off the present. Their data are just more subtle forms of energy than the ‘typical’ empirical kind described by Newtonian physics. They are no more ‘occult’ than those you yourself pick up on when you instantly know that you and your new acquaintance are going to be b.f.f. (best friends forever), or that your partner, before he or she even says one word, is going to have a bad day. The only difference between you and the psychic is: 1) the intuitive has confidence in this data and his/her ability to read it; and, perhaps in part because of this, 2) it takes a lot less obviousness of the data for the intuitive to ‘read’ it in greater detail; and 3) the psychic uses a particular system or structure in order to help him/her interpret it.
This one uses cards, that one uses yolks; here you throw stones, there it’s sticks. But all roads lead to home: a picture of a moment in time (e.g. your birth, or the present). It is this picture that the intuitive reads, often with the help of their preferred tool or system (e.g. tarot cards, the zodiac). The reading you in turn are given is, in most cases say, a picture of the most likely future circumstance(s) based on the information contained in that moment of time. It is a picture of what is most likely to be your situation at some point in the future if you keep the same momentum, the same pattern, the same path, (this is the ‘all else being equal’ clause you find in all scientific predictions).
The reading should be interpreted and understood in the context of: ‘If you just continue the way you are going, you are heading for this.’ It is dysfunctional to present this future possibility as if it were written in stone because it’s not: you are always only dealing with probabilities. (The science of all the sciences, quantum physics, will be the first to tell you this.) Your reading is not guaranteed because the future is not and cannot be guaranteed. (Or, as quantum physics suggests, every possible future is guaranteed and happens at the same time (!), so … there.)
The point of ‘psychic’ information, as of all information, is to help you; to give you insight, knowledge, awareness and, ultimately, power. Not, to take it from you. If it is doing the latter, you (we) are probably doing something dysfunctional with it.
Go into these things in the spirit of wonder, mystery and fun. Go into them with the idea that you may – and hopefully, if you get a good one, will – learn something about yourself, your current path, and/or your life. That you might learn about your weaknesses, your patterns and strengths, not so that you can resign yourself to simply watching yourself act them out; but so that you might have the awareness to damage-control, even so that you might grow.
As with any ‘expert’ from whom you seek counsel or advice: do not trust their expertise and their counsel more than you trust yourself. Others (from psychics to doctors, strangers to loved ones) can point things out to you, they can tell you predispositions, and disclose to you things about yourself of which you are unaware. But they cannot take away your power to change any of the things, no matter how true, they have said about you.
Know that you are the ultimate authority on yourself, and a veritable creator (and not mere participant) of your life. You, and your will, are not a pathetic figure-head. You can change your course in an instant. You can change patterns. You can even transform weaknesses into strengths. (!) And as you do, you change your future, and the future, along with it. – And therefore too, the next reading you get. Even if its only 15 minutes later.
