Published February 19, 2007

(Continued from main page)

One of the first tarotbook writers to see Tarot's legacy of predictive readings as a problem to be opposed and overcome by something she called "symbolic" interpretations was Sallie Nichols, who over a quarter century ago popularized the notion of Tarot as a pack of Jungian Archetypes in Jung and Tarot. Nichols adamently affirmed: "I never use the cards to predict specific future events for myself or others." Instead Nichols viewed Tarot cards as Archetypal energies which could synchronistically correspond to the psychic conditions and concerns of a querent's present.

Nevertheless, Nichols admitted these symbolic interpretations could bear a "relationship to outer events which may take place in the future". Nichols struggled to explain exactly what she meant: "...one might say that reading the Tarot symbolically rather than literally...offers us opportunities to participate in the creation of a new and unpredictable future." How exactly one could be given an opportunity to participate in an unpredictable future Nichols does not explain. Presumably, no matter how fuzzy the future might be, to have an opportunity to participate in it, if one means by that something other than merely living to see it, he would have to proceed as if he had some idea about the shape of this unpredictable opportunity.

For example, Nichols explains how one client of hers got upset at her for failing to predictively read several Coins cards that had come up in a reading, prior to the client actually obtaining a lot of money. Instead, Nichols focused on the client's feelings about money, her fears that a lot of money and the opportunities to participate in a more predictable future by having it, would stunt her "spiritual" growth. In spite of this, the client's feelings were pretty much erased when the money and the opportunities actually manifested and instead she was annoyed at Nichols for failing to correctly predict what the cards seemed to be really saying.

Over the years, Nichols' concerns about not seeming too "gypsy" in her readings have been shared by most modern tarotbook writers, who have adopted psychological or counseling jargon, while generally warning against using Tarot to make predictions. Nevertheless, many readers, understanding that their clients are not merely or mainly interested in the psychological indications of Archetypes, but are instead wanting to know their futures, have continued to do predictive readings, and to claim some kind of efficacy for Tarot in this practice.

Yet, in more global questions of the catastrophic shaping (and terminating) of vast numbers of futures, Tarot seems professionally mute over and over again. Certainly, the events of September 11, 2001 were not the result of an unpredictable set of psychic forces at work, but were in fact the predictable outcome of a chain of very real world developments that any predictive tool worth a farthing should have been able to illuminate, at least to some extent. Yet, no Tarot readers came forward in the days preceding 9/11, to predict some horrific acts of terrorism were about to be perpetrated against the United States, or that the world was once again on the brink of war.

And neither did Tarot readers provide any warnings to the world concerning the devastating December, 2004 tsunami, which killed 300 thousand people. Of course, it is doubtful that any Tarot reader giving out predictions of doom-and-gloom wars, earthquakes and tsunamis would be taken very seriously by anyone (outside of Tarotmania). But, perhaps that is because the track record for their being able to provide accurate warnings about such things is sufficiently negligible to be counted as non-existent.

Lastly, the Tarot reader community responded with no help whatsoever in predicting the 2005 destruction of its greatest continuing live venue, New Orleans. In one striking failure of an allegedly accurate Tarot software program, The Mystic Tarot, the company predicted on its website "We predict a relatively quite [sic] hurricane season with little activity". Of course, the 2005 hurricane season was, as Wikipedia notes: "the most active Atlantic hurricane season in recorded history."