Tarot Readings for Non-Believers...

Introduction to Tarot: How it works for non believers, sceptics, and believers

Tarot decks consist of 78 cards that represent archetypes. There are pictures on most of the cards. The same picture can trigger memories, feelings and emotions that are totally different from person to person. Therefore, one should participate actively in the reading.

The archetypes illustrated on cards cover all possible human characteristics and the wide variety of situations that we experience in life.

I started to study tarot seriously when I enrolled in the Jungian Course on Archetypes at the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) at Sydney University. Then I bought my first set of tarot cards, the Rider-Waite deck. It’s the most popular among a number of existing tarot decks. Now I am collecting the most unusual editions. I have come to believe that learning tarot is a lifelong adventure.

Part 1: Tarot for non-believers

Sometimes we are in a vicious cycle, repeating the same behavioural patterns and mistakes over and over again. The spread of tarot cards will give you the possibility to look at your life from different perspectives and possibly see different motives and intentions of the people who are important to you. Tarot reading can also provide a wonderful speculation of what is possible or not possible in your life. Reflecting on it and accepting the possibilities presented is left to both of your minds: conscious and subconscious.

Tarot is about you. It forces you to focus on yourself, instead of Netflix or public characters (which usually give us the wonderful comfort of judging others and avoiding reflection on ourselves). It presents pure, basic, and innate possibilities that didn’t occur to you before because they were jammed by reading too much of the news, a conditioned upbringing, school, and hundreds of rules imposed by society. The tarot can force you to examine your previous beliefs and suggest that maybe it is time to unlearn some useless clutter. It can allow you to rule yourself by yourself again. It can make you truly understand the idea presented by Leonardo da Vinci (and later adopted by Steve Jobs): “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

When I meet a non-believer I usually tell them two things.

First is an old anecdote about Niels Bohr, a famous physicist during Einstein’s era, in which Bohr receives a Nobel Prize. A journalist comes to his house for an interview. To his surprise, he notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall.

The journalist, pointed on the horseshoe, says, “Mr. Bohr, you don’t believe in such things!.”

Bohr answers, “Of course I don’t believe in it, but it works even if you don’t believe.”

The second thing I explain is that statistically, about 1-3% of people are colour blind. If 99-97% people were colour blind, the remaining 1-3% probably wouldn’t talk about colours openly, because they would be afraid to be considered crazy. Statistically there is 1-3% of people with psychic ability. Most of them have the INFJ personality type. (Check if you are likely to be psychic by doing a free, online Myer-Briggs personality test).