Evidence, Belief and the Cards on the Table
It appears I have once again been invited to darken the digital doorway of Learning Tarot.
This may come as a surprise to those who assumed I had expired quietly beneath an avalanche of old decks, incense burners and badly photocopied occult manuscripts. I am pleased to report that I am not dead yet. Admittedly, I look rather more like Gandalf with each passing year, but so far I have resisted both the grave and the temptation to shout, “You shall not pass!” at delivery drivers.
Since I am still among the living, it seems an appropriate moment to discuss a question which haunts nearly every serious student of tarot:
What counts as evidence that tarot works?
This is not quite the same question as, “Do you believe in tarot?”
Belief is easy. Human beings believe all manner of things, frequently before breakfast and occasionally despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Evidence is more troublesome. It asks us to define our terms, examine our assumptions and admit that some of our most treasured conclusions may not be as secure as we imagined.
Naturally, this makes evidence rather unpopular.
Belief Is Not a Dirty Word
Before the sceptics begin sharpening their Occam’s razors, let us be clear: belief is not necessarily foolish.
Every human life contains beliefs. We believe that other people possess minds. We believe that the world will continue to behave tomorrow more or less as it behaved yesterday. We believe that the person preparing our lunch has washed their hands.
Some beliefs are supported by considerable evidence. Others are reasonable assumptions. A few are acts of trust. And some are simply habits of thought wearing a respectable hat.
Problems arise when we confuse belief with proof.
A tarot reader may believe that the cards are guided by spiritual intelligences. Another may believe that synchronicity arranges the draw. A third may regard tarot as a sophisticated instrument of projection, pattern recognition and intuitive synthesis.
All three may give excellent readings.
Their explanations differ, but the observable event may be much the same: cards are drawn, symbols are interpreted, and the resulting reading proves useful or accurate.
The experience does not automatically establish the explanation.
That distinction is important.
Suppose I dream of an old friend and receive a letter from him the following morning. The coincidence may feel significant. It may even be significant. But the experience alone does not tell me whether it was telepathy, precognition, synchronicity, unconscious expectation or statistical chance.
“I experienced something remarkable” is a defensible statement.
“I therefore know exactly what caused it” is a rather larger leap.
Occultists, like everybody else, should learn to watch where they are putting their metaphysical feet.
What Do We Mean by “Tarot Works”?
Before searching for evidence, we must decide what claim we are testing.
When someone says that tarot works, they may mean any of the following:
- The cards accurately predict future events.
- The cards reveal information unavailable through ordinary means.
- The cards stimulate useful psychological insight.
- The cards help organise intuition.
- The cards provide a ritual structure for decision-making.
- The reader can construct a meaningful narrative from symbolic images.
- The reading gives the client clarity, confidence or emotional relief.
These claims are not identical.
Evidence that tarot helps a person articulate an unspoken fear does not prove that it predicts next Thursday’s lottery numbers. Conversely, a striking prediction does not establish that every psychological interpretation produced by a tarot reader is wise or useful.
We cannot simply place every possible effect into a large velvet bag labelled “Tarot Works” and shake it meaningfully.
A claim should be specific enough to examine.
“The cards told me something important” may be personally true, but it is difficult to test.
“Before the event, I recorded that the Six of Swords indicated an overseas relocation within three months” is considerably more useful.
Specific claims can succeed or fail. Vague claims possess the irritating immortality of fog.
Experience Is Evidence – but Not All Evidence Is Equal
Personal experience is a form of evidence. It would be absurd to pretend otherwise.
If you repeatedly perform readings and obtain information that appears accurate, that experience gives you a reason to continue investigating. It may provide strong evidence for you personally.
However, personal experience is also vulnerable to several well-known errors.
We remember the spectacular successes and quietly misplace the failures. We reinterpret vague statements after events have occurred. We notice the details that fit and ignore those that do not. We unconsciously obtain information from a client’s language, clothing, expressions and reactions.
None of this requires fraud.
A reader may be entirely sincere and still be mistaken.
Indeed, sincerity is one of the least reliable measures of truth. History is generously supplied with people who were sincerely and catastrophically wrong.
This does not mean that every accurate reading is merely coincidence, cold reading or selective memory. It means those possibilities must be considered before we announce that the veil between worlds has been conclusively penetrated.
A serious practitioner does not fear alternative explanations. A serious practitioner investigates them.
The Great Retrospective Miracle
Many tarot miracles occur retrospectively.
A card is drawn. Something happens six weeks later. The reader then looks back and declares the connection obvious.
The Tower represented the argument.
The Moon represented the misunderstanding.
The Three of Swords represented the betrayal.
The Page of Pentacles represented the new trainee in the accounts department who arrived carrying a green notebook.
Once an event has happened, the symbolic flexibility of tarot makes it remarkably easy to locate a suitable correspondence.
This is not necessarily dishonest. Symbolic systems naturally produce multiple associations. That richness is one of tarot’s strengths. It is also what makes careless testing nearly useless.
To examine predictive accuracy, the interpretation should be written down before the outcome is known.
Not merely the card.
Write down what you think the card means in relation to the question. Include timescale, likely event and level of confidence.
For example:
Within four weeks, the querent will receive a formal work-related offer involving additional responsibility, but the financial improvement will be modest.
That prediction may later be judged with reasonable fairness.
By contrast:
The Emperor suggests authority, structure, boundaries or perhaps a significant man.
That is not so much a prediction as an attempt to cover most of civilisation.
Keeping an Honest Tarot Record
Readers who wish to investigate their own accuracy should keep a prospective journal.
Record:
- The exact question.
- The date and time of the reading.
- The cards drawn and their positions.
- Your interpretation at that moment.
- The predicted timescale.
- What would count as confirmation.
- What would count as failure.
- The eventual outcome.
Do not improve the prediction afterwards. Do not quietly replace “marriage” with “an important emotional commitment” when the querent buys a spaniel.
Count the misses.
This last instruction is terribly unfashionable. Many readers collect successful readings like jewels while treating failures as though they were embarrassing relatives at a wedding.
But failures matter.
Perhaps the method was poor. Perhaps the question was unsuitable. Perhaps the timescale was wrong. Perhaps the reader was tired, emotionally invested or determined to see a particular answer. Perhaps tarot is better at revealing present dynamics than fixed future events.
Or perhaps the reading was simply wrong.
The universe will survive our admission.
Evidence for Whom?
Evidence has an audience.
A personally convincing experience may not convince another person. A detailed client testimonial may persuade a prospective client but carry little weight in a scientific study. A controlled experiment may satisfy researchers while failing to capture the complexity of an actual consultation.
We should therefore distinguish several levels of evidence.
Personal evidence consists of experiences that convince the individual.
Intersubjective evidence occurs when several people can examine the same record and broadly agree about what happened.
Experimental evidence attempts to control alternative explanations and compare results with chance or another baseline.
Each has value, but they answer different questions.
A private vision may transform a person’s life without proving anything to a laboratory. A laboratory result may reveal a statistical effect while telling us very little about the spiritual meaning attributed to it.
The error lies in demanding that one type of evidence perform the work of every other.
“Science Cannot Explain Everything”
This statement is true.
It is also frequently used as a sort of intellectual smoke bomb.
Science cannot currently explain everything. It does not follow that whatever explanation we happen to prefer must therefore be correct.
A gap in knowledge is a gap in knowledge. It is not planning permission for a crystal palace.
Similarly, saying “It is all psychological” does not settle the matter. Psychology is not the polite word for imaginary. Human perception, intuition, memory, symbol formation and unconscious processing are astonishingly complex.
If tarot operates partly by activating associative and intuitive processes, that is not an insult to tarot. It is an interesting proposition.
Nor does a psychological mechanism necessarily exclude a spiritual one. The two may be competing explanations, complementary descriptions or entirely different levels of analysis.
We simply should not pretend to know more than we know.
The Reader Is Part of the Instrument
A tarot reading is not produced by cards alone.
It involves the deck, the spread, the question, the reader, the querent, the context and the interaction between them. The reader’s knowledge, emotional condition, expectations and prejudices all enter the process.
This makes tarot difficult to examine, but not impossible.
It also means that skill matters.
An experienced reader possesses a developed symbolic vocabulary. More importantly, that reader should know how meanings change according to position, context, elemental balance, number, dignity, sequence and the precise nature of the enquiry.
Merely announcing the memorised meaning of each card is not interpretation. It is occult flash-card practice.
A competent reader synthesises.
The Five of Pentacles in a financial question does not mean exactly what it means in a spiritual question. The Hermit beside the Eight of Cups does not behave precisely as the Hermit beside the Three of Cups. Context modifies meaning.
One does not become a musician by owning a piano, and one does not become a tarot reader by purchasing a deck with especially photogenic moonlight.
Usefulness Is Evidence of Usefulness
Some readers defend tarot by saying, “It does not matter whether it is literally true, provided the reading helps.”
There is merit in this position, but it should not be stretched too far.
If a reading helps someone consider alternatives, recognise a destructive pattern or speak honestly about a fear, that is evidence of usefulness.
It is not necessarily evidence of supernatural information.
And usefulness does not excuse irresponsibility.
A reading may feel comforting while encouraging dependency. It may offer certainty where none exists. It may replace medical, legal or financial advice with theatrical confidence. It may flatter the client’s prejudices or strengthen a delusion.
“Helpful” must mean more than “the client liked hearing it.”
Ethical tarot should increase agency rather than diminish it. It should clarify choices rather than imprison the querent inside a supposedly fixed destiny.
The cards may describe the weather. They should not confiscate the steering wheel.
So, Must We Choose Between Belief and Evidence?
No.
We must merely stop pretending they are the same thing.
Belief may guide practice. Experience may provoke investigation. Evidence may strengthen, weaken or refine our beliefs. Uncertainty may remain.
There is nothing disgraceful about uncertainty.
In fact, uncertainty is one of the proper conditions of divination. Tarot exists precisely because human beings stand at the edge of incomplete knowledge, looking towards possibilities that have not yet hardened into events.
A reader who claims absolute certainty has misunderstood both tarot and life.
The mature position is not cynical disbelief, nor is it breathless credulity. It is disciplined openness.
Pay attention to remarkable readings.
Record them properly.
Examine alternative explanations.
Notice failures.
Refine technique.
Do not inflate a meaningful coincidence into a universal law before the kettle has boiled.
And do not imagine that scepticism requires you to strip the world of wonder. Wonder becomes more valuable, not less, when we cease manufacturing it cheaply.
The Cards Remain on the Table
After many years with tarot, I remain convinced that something interesting happens in a good reading.
Precisely what happens is a more difficult question.
At times, tarot appears to organise knowledge already present but not consciously recognised. At other times, it produces coincidences so precise that ordinary explanations feel inadequate. There are also readings that fail completely, usually while the reader is feeling particularly impressive.
That last detail may itself be evidence of a benevolent cosmic sense of humour.
I do not believe we honour tarot by making exaggerated claims for it. We honour it through careful study, competent practice and the willingness to question our own conclusions.
Belief without examination becomes dogma.
Evidence without imagination becomes sterile.
Tarot, at its best, occupies the difficult and fertile ground between them.
So keep your records. Test your predictions. Study the symbols. Respect the mystery. And should you encounter something extraordinary, resist the urge to explain it before you have properly observed it.
The unknown is quite capable of remaining unknown without our assistance.
As for me, I shall continue reading the cards until death, senility or complete transformation into a grey-robed wizard makes further work impractical.
None of these events, I hasten to add, has yet been conclusively predicted.
Related Reading
- Tarot for Beginners: A Practical Guide to Learning and Reading the Cards
- 15 Common Tarot Mistakes and How to Correct Them
Greetings, fellow seekers and wanderers of the mystical path! I am Alex Grayson, your guide through the realms of tarot, British Traditional Witchcraft and the many hidden corridors of the occult.
Born under the watchful gaze of ancient spirits and raised in the lap of Mother Nature’s most secretive nooks, I’ve spent a lifetime dancing with the shadows and conversing with the stars. My journey began in the rolling hills of the British Isles, where the whispers of the past and the wisdom of the earth infused my soul with a deep love for the mystical arts.
As a seasoned practitioner and slightly cheeky occult author at learningtarot.net, I’ve dedicated my life to unraveling the mysteries of the tarot, exploring the depths of witchcraft, and sharing the rich tapestry of knowledge I’ve gathered over the years. My articles, much like my life, are a blend of serious occultism and playful exploration – aimed at guiding you through the complexities of the spiritual world with warmth, wit, and a touch of whimsy.
When I’m not shuffling the cards or casting circles, you’ll find me wandering through ancient forests, brewing herbal concoctions, or penning my latest discoveries by candlelight. My interests are as varied as the cards in a tarot deck, encompassing herbal lore, astrological mysteries, and the timeless dance of the Great Rite.
Join me, dear readers, on this enchanting journey. Let’s uncover the secrets of the tarot, embrace the wisdom of the old ways, and navigate the ever-turning wheel of the year with curiosity, respect, and a generous sprinkle of magic.
Cheerfully and with a wink, Alex Grayson