Before my time off in April and May, I was having an amazing conversation with a person about psychics and tarot card readings. Personally, I do not particularly believe in psychics, and I’m agnostic about any type of the spiritual realm as we cannot prove nor disprove these beliefs.
The reason why I do not believe in psychics is because time is a hypothetical concept used to track events in every day life. Therefore, it doesn’t truly exist. And for a person to claim that they can tell the future is not logical to me.
This weekend my friend and I went to a festival, and there was a tarot card reader there. I’ve always wanted to watch a tarot card reading, or experience it for my own psychologically selfish reasons of watching the reader’s behavior, and listening and interpreting of how generalized their statements may be. So I agreed to pay for the reading for this social experiment. Here are the notes that I took during the reading:
I noticed that she (the reader) was shuffling the cards a lot, and she had several decks. Some of her interpretations were very generalized. For example, she said that there were big changes coming. Big changes can happen to anyone, at any time and in any capacity.
She attributed socially desirable traits to my friend. For example, she said that he is an empathetic person who enjoys giving to others. The reader also said that he is taken advantage of by a lot by people because of his good nature.
She told my friend that he was going to be moving up in his positions at work. He doesn’t work nor is he actively seeking work. I believe she said this because people who pay for these card reading services will have extra money to spend because typically may have a job that pays well to have disposable income. But since I was paying for the tarot card reading, the statement didn’t fit. Also, she asked him again, later, if he works in Toronto. I think it’s because he is gay and she assumed he was tied into the Toronto gay culture, which is the largest in Ontario. She clearly wasn’t even listening to his responses.
Without drawing from the deck of cards, the reader asked if my friend had an accident that affected his back. She was observing his physical posture and movements. My friend has terrible posture and has never been in an accident, but the reader was not even using the cards, but rather physical observation, which had no bearing on telling the persons future. It was more about building credibility, in my opinion.
My friend was sharing his feelings, and the reader was empathizing with him, which made my friend feel great. This is building rapport, trust and a relationship between the reader and my friend. This also is essential in psychotherapy.
At one point, the reader became nervous, because she saw that I was watching her without giving a reaction. She felt comfortable with my friend, but not with me because I was very neutral. I noticed that she was nervous because she said, “I don’t know what to do now” and continued nervously shuffling the decks. She also asked my friend questions like, “what did you think?”, “what do you feel?” and “do you want to pick a card from a deck?” to take up more time. She kept checking the time as well.
Spirituality and the Industry
Working at spas, and with many girls from the sex industry as well as watching people’s social media posts, I’ve noticed that many people in this industry put a lot of weight on the spiritual realm. This includes things like horoscopes, psychics etc. I wonder why this correlation. Could it be just random chance? Or can there be other factors like educational background, a sense of feeling helpless doing some thing they are not enjoying (and having faith that the universe will change it for them), lack of motivation to do hard work themselves or something else?
What Do I Believe?
Coming from a scientific background, both in the social science and the “hard” sciences (biology, physics), it’s very hard for me to believe in any of these things as it is not logical and measurable. I also haven’t personally experienced something life changing that others claim to experience with psychics, although anecdotal evidence is rarely classified as science. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
I was having a conversation with somebody a few days ago, who is having a child, and they were told by their psychic a few years ago that they would have a child of the gender that they are currently pregnant with. Coincidence or statistics?
I am not bashing anyone’s beliefs or spirituality. I am simply presenting my own perspective and making room to think outside of the box. I understand that there is no way for me to prove that this isn’t real because there is no way to measure any spiritual beliefs. However, I think tarot cards can provide a positive contribution to psychotherapy or any sort of ways to connect through self reflection.
Psychotherapy and Psychics
Psychotherapy is structured in a client centred way. This means that it is up to the client to book the appointment with the psychotherapist and sort out what they are seeking help for. It is client directed, and the client usually is experiencing some sort of inner turmoil. The same can be said about tarot card readings but, from what some of my friends told me, sometimes they just feel like they need to go back even if there isn’t some thing pressing. I feel like the tarot card readings can be beneficial because they can direct the focus of what can be discussed. For example, certain cards represent certain strengths or struggles. Of course, they can be very open ended and applicable to many areas of a persons life. However, sometimes the struggles are not at the forefront of a persons mind, and it can be very difficult to come up with them on the spot. On the other hand, sometimes this can create struggles that do not exist, and a person can be reaching to apply the cards to their life. I believe that these psychic readings should only be used for entertainment purposes, and not called a strong weight of how a person lives her life. This is where it can become maladaptive and dangerous.
When Are These Beliefs in Psychics Harmful?
One of my close friends believes so heavily in the spiritual world that they give up their whole sense of being and personal freedom in order to “trust” in what they believe will come. The term “manifestation” is a main stream belief system where people think about what they want in life, and it will come to fruition if focussed on enough. Typically, this belief system discourages doing any physical work towards the goal, but rather just using their mind for the universe to bring things into their life. I believe that this can be dangerous because it can stop a person from feeling in control of their life. Further, if this manifestation does not come to fruition, people usually blame themselves because they argue that they are not prioritizing their manifestation. I’ve seen this cause a deep sense of depression because they feel out of control for their goals not being achieved in a timely manner. And it creates this vicious circle of learned helplessness.
I am not saying that manifestation isn’t real, because I don’t know. But I believe manifestation and psychics can be used in conjunction with hard work. You focus on your goals, you make a step-by-step plan towards achieving your goals, and you tackle each step. Focussing on the goal can help you achieve it because you never lose sight of where you are headed. It’s best not to exclude everything that you may not believe in but rather use all tools to your advantage in order to get where you want to go in life. The power is within you to make these changes and your destiny and fate are not set in stone.
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