the usatarot
you doing tarot?
this post is pretty good.
oh, yeah, it is interesting! the comments are crap though.
I don’t actually believe in Tarot/astrology/palmistry/runestones etc, I’m very much a sceptic/atheist/materialist. but I am interested in the history and cultural influence of what can be loosely defined as the occult. plus I find all these things useful tools to direct my attention to things I perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise considered. my mum used to have a colleague who was a counsellor, I think she was Catholic, who used Tarot cards with some clients as a free-association tool. I mean cold readings work because they can be tailored to any person and any situation, no?
but mainly they are pretty and talk a lot about me and that is seductive, in the same way Enneagrams and Myer-Briggs tests and “which Buffy character are you” and whatnot are. I am hugely sceptical of “scientific” personality tests as well — I think they’re useful for finding out about how someone sees themselves and that’s about it. in my opinion they’re kind of more dangerous than cosmic tree wizard stuff because they have more mainstream credibility.
having said that, I really need to be more careful because I have friends and acquaintances who can’t help but take this cosmic stuff seriously on some level. I am often in the weird position of being the one who’s like “How can you reject someone as a lover because they’re a Gemini? That’s ridiculous! Do you even know anything about the rest of their chart? What about Venus, Mars, the Moon? Where are they, what are their aspects, what are yours, how do they work together? Those are the things you really want to know about for romantic compatibility. No, I don’t believe in astrology.”
