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Vompatti

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Posted: March 28 2017 at 08:39

^^ I WOULD reply is m@x would let me

2dogs

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 00:57

People have always been very good at making up what they don't know, embellishing and extrapolating ideas, and money making deception, in all fields of life. Noticing meaningful coincidences has led me to just experiment for myself e.g. draw a Tarot card plus a card each from my two decks of fact cards then look at all three for common ideas i.e. which bit of the gobbledygook in the Tarot book is the relevant part of the message? I've actually had a lot more success with just the fact cards when doing reading exchanges with other people using various "oracle" decks on a Tarot forum - it's a great buzz when the reading works - but I'd like to have another go in the Tarot section for which I have to use a proper Tarot deck.

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette

Dean

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 02:55

2dogs wrote:

People have always been very good at making up what they don't know, embellishing and extrapolating ideas, and money making deception, in all fields of life.

This is indeed correct, and that works because people have always been very good at convincing themselves that they can distinguish between what is real and what is deception, that their ideology is the one true ideology and their beliefs are the one true belief. This conviction is the result of connecting the dots between what they know (or believe) to be true and those extrapolated ideas that ought to be true as a consequence, and then drawing conclusions that only have a passing relationship to the original "truth" yet are taken to be (self-evident?) truths.

We can do this because we are very good at pattern recognition yet that can (and does) result in false-positives that in visual and audio pattern recognition psychologists term as pareidolia, and in general terms is known as apophenia. The ability to see apparent patterns in the random distribution of any single set of data points and/or draw false conclusions from the coincidence of two unrelated data-sets is the "downside" of being able to detect tigers hiding in tall grass.

2dogs wrote:

Noticing meaningful coincidences has led me to just experiment for myself e.g. draw a Tarot card plus a card each from my two decks of fact cards then look at all three for common ideas i.e. which bit of the gobbledygook in the Tarot book is the relevant part of the message? I've actually had a lot more success with just the fact cards when doing reading exchanges with other people using various "oracle" decks on a Tarot forum - it's a great buzz when the reading works - but I'd like to have another go in the Tarot section for which I have to use a proper Tarot deck.

I'm not completely sure I follow every word of what you've written because it doesn't follow any of the tarot reading methods I am familiar with, but I think I get the gist of it. There are trigger-phrases in your post like "meaningful coincidences", "look...for common ideas" and "when the reading works" that alert my scepticism here.

Edited by Dean - March 29 2017 at 02:55

What?

Vompatti

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:27

The cards are universal enough so you pick one and apply it to any situation and it'll make you think of something you wouldn't have thought on your own. It's the same as picking a random passage from the Bible or a number of random words from a dictionary.

Dean

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:32

...or just thinking for yourself.

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Vompatti

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:34

not really because you need the external stimulus k

Dean

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:40

Vompatti wrote:

not really because you need the external stimulus k

Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?

However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness.

What?

Vompatti

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:53

Dean wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

not really because you need the external stimulus k

Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?

However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness.

Isn't it though? What would you consider divination?

Dean

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 04:16

Vompatti wrote:

Dean wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

not really because you need the external stimulus k

Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?

However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness.

Isn't it though? What would you consider divination?

I take divination to mean what it is defined as: "the art or practice that seeks to foresee or foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers", and that is what tarot card reading purports to do. I would avoid confusing divination with intuition, though there are those who would see them as being one and the same, they're not.

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Vompatti

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 04:29

Dean wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

Dean wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

not really because you need the external stimulus k

Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?

However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness.

Isn't it though? What would you consider divination?

In that case I've gotten the impression that most tarot readers today don't do divination. Instead of foretelling the future it would seem more common to intuitive suggest actions that would lead to the desired consequences.

Dean

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Posted: March 29 2017 at 04:50

Vompatti wrote:

Dean wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

Dean wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

not really because you need the external stimulus k

Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?

However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness.

Isn't it though? What would you consider divination?

I would regard that as window-dressing, same book/different cover or merely an affected euphemism because the definition I quoted also says "or discover hidden knowledge" which is the same thing as you are saying. I said to avoid confusing divination with intuition, and that's what "intuitive suggest actions" (sic) does, divination's secondary meaning is intuitive perception with the emphasis on perception, not intuition.

What?

2dogs

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Posted: March 30 2017 at 04:55

While discussing this with Mrs 2dogs in the car this morning the randomly playing iPod threw up Nektar's It's All In The Mind. Just whose side is the thing on? LOL

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette

2dogs

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Posted: March 30 2017 at 05:27

This discussion has certainly been very helpful to me. After reading about Olivier Messaien's early aptitude for music last week on Wikipedia I was feeling a bit let down that I didn't have any special skill like that, but this has helped me realise my major characteristic or ability is actually to absorb a little knowledge about a lot of things then use it to see patterns and meanings.

I've just gone on another forum to get the first post of my thread practicing with these cards as an example for you. I remembered two of the cards but I'd completely forgotten the message and now it seems uncannily relevant.

I got my new deck and book and have been pondering the first card for three days - the book is very different and goes into the meaning of ten symbols on each card so is really deep, and drawing a card from my two fact decks has added even more intriguingly relevant information, so this method of study could go on for a very long time. I'm keeping notes on my tablet -

7 of Disks: A book with 7 seals, cracking the code. Saturn in Taurus. Discovering one's unique point of view and mission in life, the personal meaning in things, karma, character through persistent and repeated study of riddles, long experience, one's origins, deeply ingrained characteristics and talents, but avoiding getting lost in the details. Finding oneself and happiness within one's achievements, leaving a legacy.
Moondust p72: Gene Cernan, Apollo 17, travelled on Saturn V rocket to valley of Taurus-Littrow. Ingrained in dust which could clog and choke but is full of valuable information and beauty when examined microscopically.
Mendelevium p231: Inventor of the Periodic Table, discovered the arrangement of the chemical elements according to groupings of observed characteristics.
Very similar images of faces, even headset mirroring bald patch and long hair, and Cernan's red helmet ring matching the rings around the Saturn and Taurus faces. Both historically significant and achievements or footprints will last a very long time.

It's on a public page so here's the link for anyone suspicious I didn't actually post this a year ago - http://www.pagan-heart.net/forum/index.php?topic=3961.msg46904#msg46904

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette

2dogs

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Posted: March 30 2017 at 05:31

Images for the above as I didn't want to lose the entire post....

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Vompatti

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Posted: March 30 2017 at 06:06

2dogs wrote:

I got my new deck and book and have been pondering the first card for three days - the book is very different and goes into the meaning of ten symbols on each card so is really deep [--]

The Book of Thoth, you mean? DuQuette's Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot is a good supplement.

2dogs

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Posted: March 30 2017 at 06:22

Oh no, I gave up with those. This one is the horribly mistranslated from German (and horribly mistitled) The Ultimate Guide To The Thoth Tarot - I don't believe in any set occult meanings for the cards

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2dogs

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Posted: March 30 2017 at 23:42

Well there may be set occult meanings but I don't use them or play by fixed rules, I'm more experimental.

As for predicting the future, on the Tarot forum it's generally not done and the focus is more on offering constructive advice on how to deal with situations and behaviours now so as to make the desired outcomes more likely, helping people understand and see things for themselves, not making them dependent on the readings.

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette

Dean

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Posted: March 31 2017 at 02:01

2dogs wrote:

Well there may be set occult meanings but I don't use them or play by fixed rules, I'm more experimental.

As for predicting the future, on the Tarot forum it's generally not done and the focus is more on offering constructive advice on how to deal with situations and behaviours now so as to make the desired outcomes more likely, helping people understand and see things for themselves, not making them dependent on the readings.

As I said, (twice), divination is not just fortune telling and predicting the future. Using two metal rods or a forked hazel twig to search for water and other hidden material is divination and there is nothing in water divining (aka dowsing) about predicting the future. Feng shui is a form of divination that neither predicts the future nor answers posed questions. There are many other forms of divination that have nothing to do with direct fortune telling and some of those are only used to gain answers to posed questions. Even then, all forms of fortune telling (scrying, astrology, dream interpretation, etc.,) are used to make a desired outcome more likely, or an undesirable one less likely. You can dress it up however you like but tarot reading still divination. [note that Tarot cards themselves are merely pasteboard playing cards with pretty pictures on them, using a tarot deck for divination (cartomancy/tarotology) is a secondary, later application].

The word 'occult' comes from the Latin occultus (meaning "hidden, concealed, secret"), so it means "knowledge of the hidden", which is what any form of divination purports to reveal and is exactly what you and Vomps have described how tarot reading is used.

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Vompatti

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Posted: March 31 2017 at 06:35

So why is dowsing considered divination? Because the water is hidden or because there's supposedly something mysterious about the mechanism used to find it?

In theory, can't any "occult knowledge" be discovered by scientific methods and vice versa? Blavatsky says the pre-Vedic Indians knew the laws of quantum mechanics.

2dogs

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Posted: March 31 2017 at 07:14

Dean wrote:

Yes I'm not disagreeing with you, this is what I find fun about doing it.

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette