Tarot cards are not magical; they do not mindread; they do not will themselves at the right place, nor is some invisible hand of a higher power interfering for the human to pick them: that is, there is no factual evidence to think of them otherwise as inanimated objects with beautiful pictures on it that are as randomly picked and shuffled as cards in a game of poker. As a matter of fact, you don't need Tarot cards to do a reading. You could use a normal card deck just as well (or any other system that relies on chance and randomnness), and as succesfully.
And yet they work! They even work over distance, like on the internet. How is that possible? There is one beautiful, but one of the least understood words that explains this - serendipity.
SERENDIPITY
Definition: to make meaning out of several random events into a big picture of valuable insight.
Serendip used to be the Persian name for Sri Lanka, and Horace Walpole created the word serendipity out of the old name for Sri Lanka in 1754 to describe the phenomenon where people encounter random information by chance and yet relate it to another piece of information and come to a whole new understanding. A famous example would be Archimedes' discovery when he lowered himself into his baththub and realized this is how he could measure the volume of an irregular object, such as a crown.
Horace Walpole based the concept of serendipity on a story of three princes of Serendip who made a journey through their country. On their travels they made several random and unrelated discoveries. One such observation was the grass next to the road being shorter on the left side of the road. Another discovery, much later on, was a camel* and how he was blind to the right eye. The prince deduced that the camel must have come down the same way as them and because he was blind to his right eye had only eaten from the left side of the road.**
While not every scientist or creative mind may want to admit to the fact that their discovery or invention relied on some chance event, it is the foundation of a majority of them.*** When posed with a problem that needs a solution, the search is often started with a brainstorm session. One of the most important rules when brainstorming is not to judge an idea, no matter how ridiculous. When people brainstorm they gather all sorts of unrelated information out of their mind and recombine it into one. A brainstorm therefore is a serendipity enhancing process.
Serendipity processes are characterized by:
- random unrelated information
- following a path/process plan
- relating the random information into a big picture with meaning and importance in cause and effect order of the path
And that is exactly what Tarot readings do.
TAROT'S SERENDIPITY
A Tarot reading starts with shuffling seventy eight cards with the blind side up. The cards will be cut, randomly picked and distributed and then turned with the image up. Statistically the first card has one chance out of seventy eight to be picked, the second card has one chance out of seventy seven to be picked, the third one chance out of seventy six. We cannot have a more randomized process than this. And there is no reason to assume that it is any less random and following the rules of statistics than when dealing cards during a poker game.
From the random process follows that each picked card is strictly speaking unrelated to the others. And yet a meaning is attributed to each card nevertheless. Like the story of the three princes recounts the discovery of shorter grass on the left side, and another discovery of the existence of a mule or camel blind at the right eye.
The picked cards are laid in a spread. It might be a row, or a square or a Celtic cross, where one card is the first, another is the second, yet another the third, and so no. When the reading is performed the reader will follow the order of the spread. In fact he reads according to the path laid out before him - a journey like the three princes of Serendip.
The encounter of the random card of information at its specific order of the spread is unified into an adapted meaning. And finally the unrelated individual meanings are then unified into a bigger picture to reveal some new insight of a problem.
So, Tarot reading has all the features of a serendipity process.
HOW SERENDIPITY CAN BE SUCCESFUL
I've shown what the serendipity process entails, how Tarot reading is such a serendipity process, and I mentioned that in sciences and technology serendipity is a major ingredient to finding a succesful solution or insight to a problem.
It works because the human mind is prone to make meaning out of things. We need only a few white dots on a black screen background moving across the screen to think it's a human walking. Children see figures of strange creatures in the paint drippings or unevenness in the walls next to your bed. And of course the star constellations are some of the best examples of this mind trick. And just like we do it with watermarkings on the wallpaper, we also tend to do it with life events. The more random events are, the more this habbit of giving meaning will kick.
This mind ability and focus on giving meaning to coincidences probably stems from a survival benefit. When life is going as expected and according to plan then the occurring events do not require our special attention. But when something shows up unexpectedly, like a carnivorous animal prowling on us, then we must be on the alert. We can never predict which dangerous animal may show up on the prairy, let alone predict at which precise moment. So, in order to survive on the savannah our ancestors' minds needed to be able to kick in alert status to the unusual, the unpredictable at the least sign of it - noise or other change in environment. Chance coincidences are by definition the most unpredictable and always take us by surprise, but our mind instantly will focus on this possible unknown, and give it a higher importance than the known and usual. Our mind thus needs to be attracted by the coincidental. Next, we give a certain meaning to it, relate and associate it with other features of our life in order to assess how it possibly may impact our lives, and we need to do this almost instantly.
So, when something totally unexpected (coincidental) occurss we give it all of our attention and instantly try to relate it on how it may impact us. If we didn't do this we would never have survived the African savannah as bands.
Just like our minds tend to make meaning out of randomness, even if things can not be factually related, we also tend to be selective in only remembering and looking for what we can relate. Ever went through a holiday brochure, not knowing beforehand which trip you would be doing? But once you picked one, then all of a sudden the place is mentioned on the news, in papers, by chance you meet someone who tells you stories about the place, etc... It seems too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence anymore.
Well, it isn't coincidence. That holiday destination was in the news before and you probably met people who went there before you, or know someone who went there. The only difference to before and after is you yourself: you notice the references, whereas you did not before. And of course you notice them, because what was meaningless to you before and therefore worth forgetting, now does have meaning to you.
As we developed this ability of focus on coincidences, humans expanded it to not just the question of cause and effect with "How may this unexpected prowler disrupt my life?". They expanded it to making the most out of coincidences. Imagine an ancestor cracking a nut by laying it on a rock surface and slamming it with another rock. At some point the rock surface would end up being chipped off with a sharp cut which results in the ancestor cutting his or her finger. With a mind prone to make meaning out of this unfortunate accident and prone to focus on its unexpectedness, we can easily see how the ancestor would discover the benefit in the event. And instead of cracking nuts for the next few hours, all of a sudden the ancestor is hitting rocks against rocks until he finds the right angle and the right rock material to create a knife. During this process his band members who see him at it may think him crazy for hitting rocks together without any direct benefit of being able to eat nuts, until they get to the river and he uses that sharp edged rock to cut up the fish he caught.
So, we do not just have a mind prone to pay attention to coincidences, to make them important and relate their impact on our lives, but also to selectively associate it with new and better ways to live in areas of our lives that are seemingly unrelated to the event.
What makes us humans so powerful in controlling and changing our environment and lives is the ability to make much out of a random event, and to selectively relate ans associate it to some aspect of our lives we wish a solution for.
SERENDIPITY'S FIELD OF SUCCESS
Of course, the opportunity of the cracked rock in how it can be to your benefit to cut up a fish is different from believing the cracked rock cut your finger was a warning that your wife would end up being eaten by a jaguar a week later, or that you are now the chosen of some supernatural being.
Unfortunately, humans tend to do this too. Some coincidence occurs in their lives and they make it out to be some sign of the heavens, either as some punishment or as some reward. They cannot believe or recognize it was random because of its impact, nor do they recognize how much they themselves is responsible for it.
Both critics and querents of Tarot see it as a divination system that will tell people how, what and when precisely of the future. Any honest Tarot reader, whether they have religious beliefs or not, will explain that is what Tarot cards cannot do. Most Tarot readers roll their eyes at such requests. If you ask a "when will love appear in my life," you won't get a date on which some dark tall stranger called Jack will strut into your life by accident in the supermarket as an answer, but ideas on how it is that you do not have love in your life at present and what you can do about it.
Tarot cards are not to be used for divination purposes, but to help people understand their lives, to gain insight and find a solution via the serendipity process, where the querent selectively relates the random chosen meanings to how it can benefit their lives. They do say something about the past, present and possible future, but not in a manner other than "what is the possible impact?"
CONCLUSION
Critics and believers in the divine will argue that if Tarot is truly a random process with cards having imprecise meanings, then the same question could be answered with other randomly chosen cards with other imprecise meanings. And I say "exactly!". However, they make the mistake to then conclude this makes Tarot a lie, meaningless and incorrect. Well, it reveals a truth, has value and will be correct, because of the serendipity and the querent relating the useful information to where it benefits him or her, as long as it is used to gain ideas, insight and understanding in yourself.
* sometimes the animal is said to be a mule instead of a camel
** As given by W. S. Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole's Correspondence, Yale edition, in the book by Theodore G. Remer, ed.: Serendipity and the Three Princes, from the Peregrinaggio of 1557, Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Theodore G. Remer, Preface by W.S. Lewis. University of Oklahoma Press, 1965. LCC 65-10112
*** here you will find plenty of serendipity examples
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