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What's your dream job?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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As a side note: blows my mind there are people over the age of 9 that persist in actually believing in tarot cards or astrology.
People believe in a god who sacrificed himself to save people from himself. Tarot is downright reasonable in comparison.
I've seen it. Tarot is like amateur therapy, with props. It's a whooole lot of talking back and forth, with some cards to comment on.
Yeah some people take it way too seriously, but most people just enjoy it for what it is. Like I've got a lucky rock that I feel off without, but I know it's just a fetish.
Just because tarot cards aren't real doesn't mean there isn't something potentially very positive about the experience of it, especially if the person doing the tarot reading is a really good people person and makes the person being read felt seen and listened to. If the person giving tarot readings is a genuinely good person who is enjoys interacting and listening with others than it really doesn't matter if the tarot part is just some props and bullshit. Sure you can argue someone should go to normal therapy, but there is just no denying there is a huge amount of people who aren't going to do that and will sit down for a tarot reading.
I think whether tarot reading is real or not is the least interesting perspective to look at tarot reading from. You have to see tarot reading through the lens of theater where the point is you use a bunch of pretend bullshit to positively impact the audience. If someone treats tarot readings as a way to scam people out of money ok I dont like it, but if the person is genuinely pouring their heart and soul into giving tarot readings I just don't think you can say it is a bad thing. Hell you can probably get way more people to take a tarot reading then try out doing community theater so shrugs.....
Yupppp, very well said. I've seen it done at small gatherings, or sometimes someone will set a room aside at a house party, and it really gets people talking. Lots of heartfelt conversations go on around that area of the get together. The people talk about their lives - theirs goals, and fears, and relationships, etc. They aren't talking about the cards, unless it's like to comment on the nice art.
But just in comparison
So independent of any woo-woo, tarot cards are designed to be a potent conceptual microcosm. That means that when you shuffle the cards and do a reading, with a decent understanding of what each of the cards represents, you essentially make a little randomly generated conceptual perspective through which to view the problem. Extremely helpful for shaking out of an established mindset, finding an unexpected angle which reveals connections you hadn't considered.
I can't really speak to astrology, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be approximately accurate for some reason other than the stars themselves. Perhaps the changing temperatures of the seasons have a slightly noticeable effect on natal development.
Astrology is only accurate in that everything it says is vague and easily interpretable in multiple ways.
A teacher did an experiment where he handed his class custom astrology reports based on their birthdate, and asked them to rate how well they fit each of them. Everyone gave it a high rating, and said it was very accurate. He had them pass the paper to a different student, and everyone laughed because everyone got the exact same astrology report.
Mystery Hunters flashback out of nowhere. My man Doubting Dave did this experiment.
I had some friends do astrology readings for themselves that depended on the exact time they were born. I asked one of them about how they accounted for time zones and DST. (They didn't.) I may have gotten my point across.
I'm seeing a lot of deeply unscientific arguments in these comments. This "Cult of Science" mentality is a concerning trend, where instead of thinking rationally and scientifically about something, people blindly follow whatever the contemporary consensus is. Your friends using poor methodology is not a rational argument against a field, any more than solving a math problem incorrectly invalidates math.
For what feels like the tenth time: I don't believe any star (other than the sun) has any direct significant effect on a person. However, correlation isn't causation. I do believe that it is possible that there might be other factors which vary over the course of the year which may have some effect, and that those variations can be coincidentally correlated to the zodiac phases as a convenient reference.
I was just picking one critique that was easy to make without additional supporting evidence.
What you're saying about astrology possibly working is just wrong. It has been studied and found to have no predictive power, a fact you easily verify for yourself by spending a few minutes with Google.
You've got a lot of nerve calling people unscientific while simultaneously defending one of the most thoroughly debunked pseudosciences in existence.
I believe that the time of year people are born could well have an effect on their personality. Because so much of your personality is developed in your early years, how old you were when you had your first Xmas, or whether you were the biggest (oldest) or smallest (youngest) person in your school class and sporting team.
I don't think this has anything actually related to the stars.
You just made an excellent argument for why tarot is inefficient given its random nature. There are healthier more logical approaches to expanding your perspectives.
Anything more and it’s less about shaking out of an established mindset and more just wanting to play pretend
Logical approaches explicitly can't expand your perspective that way, unless you mean a different word than logic. Logic can only operate after you've declared your axioms. Tarot allows you to stochastically test alternative axioms. They are different tools used for different stages of the problem-solving process.
I use tarot and other divination methods (primarily the I-Ching/Book of Changes). It’s less about trying to get magical communication from some sort of magical realm or helper for me, it is more a way to organize my thoughts. Often times, the advice associated with each card is just generic good advice, and it prompts me to consider situations from other perspectives. I take some time to think about a problem facing me and use the cards as creative prompts for ways to solve that problem. No supernatural stuff involved.
Horoscopes are mostly just (hopefully!) good advice packaged in what can only be described as a crime against astronomy. They’re good to read, because they tell you what people want to be thinking about themselves.
The way that I think about these things is that it's like flipping a coin to make a decision. It doesn't really matter what the coin says, but if you feel happy or disappointed in the result, that tells you what you really need to know. Tarot's like that but with a bit more depth. The value from the reading is that it encourages introspection.
Yeah, that's how I use it too. Like sometimes, I feel like the cards are calling me out, but it's actually just me calling myself out.
It reminds me of how I give great advice to my friends that I may not always follow myself. Tarot feels like a way of getting distance between me, the advice giver, and me, the dumbass who desperately needs to follow the advice
Tarot cards are a tool to be used in reflection and insight. When reading for other people, they mostly provide a talking point and help make connections.
What they are not is a magic oracle that can predict the future. It's up to the reader to interpret their meaning and consider how it may apply.
Astrology, yeah. I have no idea. It's not my thing.