Essay – Validity of tarot and other oracles

I find this frustrating when so-called scientists and sceptics try to test readers on documentaries, articles and especially on tv shows/news. Of course their conclusion is that readers are all fraud and are out there to make money on you. It’s true there are frauds everywhere but putting everyone in the same box is wrong, it’s generalisation.

The worse is that the methods used are not even scientific. They have no knowledge on these subjects and are deeply prejudiced. Worse, they do not test the readers’ capacity to read well, they test whether the readers are telepath or not, in other words, if the readers are not telepath and can’t read in the person’s mind asking for a reading is feeding false datas and is testing the readers, then these readers are fraud. Tell me, how many persons you know are telepath? Probably none, right? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a telepath myself and I hang with readers and Neo-Pagans. Indeed, some readers say they are psychic but most of them are not. Actually, anyone can read tarot or any oracle without having any psychic power, I’m among them. So these pseudo reporters completely distort everything, don’t use any scientific methods, feed false datas and then make funs of readers because they are not telepath. Not once do they truly and honestly test the readers.

Let me teach you a few things about how these things work. I’ll start with a pendulum and you can go buy one to test it yourself. I never use a pendulum on my side, for a simple fact, you can make a pendulum say whatever you want. You ask the pendulum if you will win lottery the next day, it will say yes, it will tell you you will meet the person of your dreams next week and a nice raise next month. Pendulums are like statistics, you can make them say anything. In other words, you have complete control over the pendulum.

Cards like tarot in the other hand are more difficult to control, but it is doable. Here are different ways to control the cards:

– If you are delusional about something, or the person you read is, cards will have weird reactions, they’ll end up saying things that don’t make sense. An excellent example of this is a friend who is highly delusional over many things and this person’s lease was finishing. The person did not want to quit the place at all but was forced to. I read this person many times and with other oracles beside tarot and there was no move in the cards, just to show you how much the person was fixated with the idea of staying there. But then, maybe I should have not let the person shuffle and pick the cards, because when I hold my decks I tell them I want to know the truth, no matter what, even if it hurts.

– I made the mistake, when I read this person, to ask the cards many times over the same question which is something else cards don’t like either, if you ask too many times the same question, the cards stop making sense because you don’t accept the answers they gave you earlier, they don’t want to deal with you anymore (didn’t you get it the first time?).

– Another way to control the cards is to be emotional during a reading, really emotional, whether it’s blissfulness, excitation, depression or fear. The cards will pick up on these and will be influenced. If you are too blissful, cards will tell you positive things that might be to good to be true, and probably aren’t. You’re excited about something? The cards might tell you you will get it, even if it’s not true. Depressed and scared? Then you can expect the cards to come up with the worse catastrophes to make you worry even more. It’s essential to be calm and objective about yourself and the situation when you read yourself, and the querent must be this way as well for the cards not to come up with stuff like that.

– People tend to ask the wrong questions or not phrasing well their questions. It’s best not to ask a yes/no question because it’s impossible for the cards to answer yes or no. Also, some ask about money but deep down they are asking about love and the cards end up not making sense because they don’t know which question to answer, so it’s important to have clear questions and to ask about what matter most.

– This one is the favorite of the pseudo-reporters and scientific testers, also used by sceptics, feeding the reader false datas. It’s obvious in science that if you feed false datas you will get false results. It’s the same with the cards. If you’re not honest and upfront, make up stories that aren’t true, the cards won’t make sense either. Also, cards require a lot of interpretation, the cards do not give clear cut answers, it’s up to the reader, using the informations you gave him/her, to interpret the informations and give them to you. If you get Two of Cups and you said before that you’re married the reader won’t think then about a possible marriage when interpreting this card, per example.

It’s very important to be open when being read, or doing a reading. If you really want to be read by a reader, then I suggest to avoid everything that can make the cards come up with nonsense that I described above. This is the only way to have a chance to have a good reading. So if you’re a sceptic and used one or many of these methods and the cards did not make sense, I hope now you can understand why it did not go well, give tarot (and any oracle) a second try and this time make sure not to screw up, it’s important not to go there and deeply wish the cards fail, because they probably will. These are also good tips if you want to learn to read tarot and/or any other oracle. The power of the mind is incredible and it’s important to be careful about being calm, grounded and objective before readings so that you control as little as possible the cards.

This is a past blog entry from my tarot blog on Multiply.

Gothic Tarot by Vargo

Here is a review I wrote for Aeclectic, it was edited, and I’m putting it here (unedited), since I wrote it, might give reviews of my other decks as well.

Gothic Tarot by Vargo

Imagine a world filled with mist, darkness and gloom where light shines through. Elegant, passionate and sensual characters wander through the mist and the darkness of this world, their hearts full of darkness and full of light. Vampires, werewolves, witches, gargoyles, angels, ghosts, are among the characters found on the cards. Each of them reveals the cards’s meanings in a particular way. The Gothic Tarot is an awesome gothic deck wonderfully drawn by the talented Joseph Vargo.

The Gothic Tarot is published independantly by Vargo himself. There is no need to be worried though, the publication is done professionaly, the box is nice and the little white book well done. The deck in itself is of good quality for an independant publication, the cards are a bit thin though; they have a hard smell, that goes away after a few weeks, and unfortunatly the scratches appear better because of the black background. The little white book is pretty average for a LWB. Frankly, this deck is so great it would have been neat to have a real small book with it, with Vargo talking about his deck and the cards and his art, similarly to the small book that comes with The Golden Tarot (Kat Black). Many have made that suggestion. (message to Vargo: Please! Please!) I suggest, for those who love this deck, to buy a second copy while the deck is still available.

Thankfully for everyone, as Vargo was working on the majors, and wanting to have unillustrated pips for the minor arcana, he heard about the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot and its fully illustrated pips. This is what gave him the idea to fully illustrate the minors. I’m saying thankfully because, even though the majors are really well done, the prettiest cards are among the minors. I don’t think I would have loved this deck as much as I do if the minors would have not been illustrated. The minors follow the RWS’s tradition. The titles are regular RWS titles, even though Strength and Justice are switch, la Marseille (Justice being VIII and Strength being XI). The back of the cards is not reversible. The deck is larger than average (7.5 cm X 12.6 cm), which allows for the art to come out better, and for this deck, it’s just perfect.

Many cards in the deck are based on previous art of works by Joseph Vargo. It seems Vargo had some fun reinventing his art to fit with the meanings of the cards. I don’t know if Vargo created some art specificaly for this tarot though. Be happy, the collage work doesn’t show. So, getting the deck is a cheap way to get most of Vargo’s art of works, especially at 15$US, with free shipping to the US residents (you have to buy it directly to Vargo’s website though for that).
While some might think this deck is just an art deck or a curiosity, one of those theme decks, this deck is actually quite workable, deep and intuitive. Even though the atmosphere is dark and gothic, the readings are not necessery dark and negative. I have made many light, good and positive readings with it, contrary to what people might think, and to the surprise of my querents. There’s not as much blood in the deck as people think. The effects are usually more atmospheric and left to the imagination than fully showed.

Here’s what I wrote for The Lovers – VI:

The back of the card is the same as the Empress and the High Priest. Here are the Lovers, in a door within a vault. The arch has a pillar on each side, and on each side of the arch stands the guardians (representing an initiation), skeletons with wings. A woman, wearing a white nightgown, is embraced tenderly and passionatly from behind by a vampire dressed in black, and gives her a kiss on the neck, before bitting her and making her belong to him, joined in eternity.
Him, dressed in black, and her, in white, makes me think of this act as a loss of innocence, loss of virginity. The others cards before refered to spiritual and material aspect, with this one is emotional, passionate and sexual. Giving yourself totally, your love, your body, your blood and your soul. And this is also a big commitment, for it is for eternity. She still can run away, if she really wants to, I don’t think this vampire would take her by force; it is entire up to her to stay or not, she has to surrender to be taken.

The Gothic Tarot is dear to my heart and I’m more than happy to have it in my collection. It fulfills the Romantic (and here I’m talking about the Romantic period in the 19th century), dark and gothic in me. The deck softly whispers to your ears and chats with you, hypnotic, and invites you in… Will you succumb?

If you want to study this deck and seek its depth, you can go to The Gothic Tarot by Vargo Study Group Forum on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum here: http://www.tarotforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=103

Vargo’s Gothic Website

This is a past blog entry from MySpace.