Flipping Coins: Why I Don't Think Fortunes, Luck, and Tarot are Hokum.
There's a lot of cynicism in a secular world. Plenty of people seem suddenly so certain about the 'can'ts', 'shouldn'ts' and impossibilities. Now, I'm not a religious person... I'm the (now clichéd) "more of a spiritual kind of person". Do I believe there's some CEO-level, omnipresent man-god watching over us and judging our actions like Jeff Bezos monitors the productivity of the poor workers who make his massive fortune at Amazon possible? No. I think, on balance, it's pretty unlikely that there is some dude up in the sky taking a tally of all my mistakes.
All that said, do I believe there is a power greater than us lil' ol' humans down here? I absolutely do. I have no clue what form it takes, but the notion that there is some kind of mystery and magic out there, that we'll never quite understand, and that keeps everything we take for granted ticking along... Of that I am utterly convinced.
It's likely, in the end, that it comes down to a combination of physics and nature, more than some omnipresent being. For me, there's something in the unexplainables of science that I view with a sense of wonder and bewilderment (borne of a lack of understanding of the things, which I'm sure an expert could set me straight on and suck all the wonder out...) that one might view "magic" with.
The concept of humans seeing a concrete world around us through the mechanism of a weighty blob of flesh in the mostly closed box of our skulls, for example. What's that about? How can I ever know that the things I'm naming in my little anxiety meditation as "things I can see" are "real" in the sense of appearing the way I perceive them, removed from my brain's collection of stored memories and perceptions. It is comforting for me to perceive some element of "magic" in concepts I don't fully understand or have a hard time comprehending. For me, there's a beauty in exploring the "why" of things without being set on some concrete answer.
So, what do I mean when I say that I don't think Tarot is hokum?
A dear friend recently sent me a gift of some woodland themed cards, similar to Tarot cards but not quite as prescriptive. This inspired me to dig out my Tarot deck (also a gift and, in a beautiful serendipity, also woodland themed). I've always been a reflective person and someone in search of direction. I've always found beauty in searching for answers, but had a healthy amount of skepticism for those who claim that it is possible to "read the future" with any kind of certainty. I believe there are many futures and that the tiniest decision we make can take us down a different path, but I don't necessarily believe that you can see all the paths!
I'm at a time in my life where I can sense that I'm at a kind of crossroads. There's been a lot of "shedding" of old expectations and masks and a rebuilding of myself, which has at times been disorienting and disconcerting. I'm not someone who trusts myself easily, although I am convinced that I have strong instincts and even better intuition.
Have you come across the theory about coin flipping? The idea that you don't flip a coin (or shake the magic 8 ball, whatever your poison be...) because you are expecting the coin to solve the dilemma, you flip it and anxiously await its arbitrary decision because it allows you to hear your own voice more clearly. You know instantly by the sinking (or rising) feeling you get in the pit of your stomach whether the result of the flip is what you were secretly hoping for. The idea is that the coin flip, as an action, is a mechanism for tapping into that gut feeling that is always there, but that for some of us has dulled to a whisper after years of not being able to trust our instincts.
In the same way, I think a tarot card pull should be seen as a mechanism for tapping into our inner knowing (as woo woo as that sounds). I'm not pulling these cards, signing up with certainty to some action the reading might prescribe. I'm bringing along all my critical thinking skills and my skepticism, but I'm using these beautiful cards as a framework, scaffolding for my inner knowing (which has been a crumbled relic for many years and is much in need of it).
We should try, where we can, to reign in our cynicism and to approach concepts with a sense of childlike wonder. For some, these cards will be just beautiful objects to look at, for others they will bring comfort and support with decision making (¿Por qué no los dos?), and for others still they just won't resonate. I'm not suggesting everyone rush out and get a tarot reading, but I think there's something in remaining open to things that might just tap us into our instincts, in a world that seeks to pull us in the direction of hypercapitalism and constant overconsumption.
