It's more like assigning meanings to 1-6 before rolling the dice. One popular theory is that once the meaning is established, the subconscious mind somehow makes the connection and steers the result.

Of course the intuitive reading version is slightly more like what you described. But still, there's a difference.

Disclaimer: I've only done tarot once in my entire life. My main interest in this regard are theorizing, *if* occult practices have any truth in them, how would they possibly work.

I don’t think you’re adding anything to anyone’s comment with that. Do you think they aren’t constantly told this?

Since the parent comment mentions science maybe I can get a response to my scientific observation.

I do not think they are constantly told this. This is my first interaction with a tarot believing person online. I wrote my comment with the hope that I can learn their scientific approach to tarot. If not, what makes them believe it is even remotely real.

I mentioned science in the frame of evidence in a criminal investigation. It didnt come across as such. I fell asleep not too long after that comment.

> I do not think they are constantly told this.

I definitely have been told this. Major practices are called religion, whereas minor practices are just 'cult' and weird. The existing larger religons' congregants are the worst to demean me and my practices, all the whole doing it themselves. But no matter.

I didn't get into tarot until after I became a pagan. I had a whole string of 'strangely coincidential' things that happened to me and people around me that have no relation to how they would in science. And that includes doing private rituals, and 2 people who don't know each other, directly asking about them in detail. They both admitted they could see what I did.

Again, I recognize the extreme personal nature, and no proof. (In a way, it's similar to a ZKP where recording it and showing it after the fact gives no proof.)

> I wrote my comment with the hope that I can learn their scientific approach to tarot.

The mechanistic reading is the boring one. Basically you just read the book and apply the straightforward answer to the question based on the book descriptions.

An intuitive reading is when you get pictures in your mind, and feel senses that others can't. The only equipment I know can do this is an fMRI. I certainly cannot construct one, nor find someone who'd do occult/divinatory research. I'd be willing though.

As for my other backgrounds, I'm a cloud/systems engineer by profession, so I'm well aware of the scientific method, and how my pagan practices are mostly irreconcilable with my scientific and engineering upbringing. I would love to connect the 2 realms together, but given what I do, and the research lab and equipment required, is highly unlikely I ever will do that.

Thank you for the detailed response. Do you feel Paganism or tarot makes a significant impact on your personal life? What can you achieve with tarot other than helping or reading others?

I realized before our NYE party that this site doesn't really do notifications of posts :/

> Do you feel Paganism or tarot makes a significant impact on your personal life?

It absolutely does. I live it daily. It's not a practice once a week, or on the 8 parts of the year. And I use my honed abilities on a daily basis.

For example, I've learned how to hear some animals talk, or at least impressions of words, thoughts, and feelings. They've taught me some things, like how catnip is called "happy dry". For me, its opening up conversations that normally we just don't have.

Ive also been told by 1 of our cats that before we adopted her, that she was with a "bad family". And the "mean woman" would try to step on her tail.

(I was able to teach myself this by starting with meditation. Took a while, but I could hear thought-words and pictures that didn't make sense. I realized that they were from living beings around me. And talking and meditating, I could hear them clearly.)

There's naturally a lot more, but this is something that is more concrete as an example.. And it definitely makes my life better being able to cross these normally-uncrossable boundaries.

> What can you achieve with tarot other than helping or reading others?

I usually reserve tarot and other divination when a problem is ill defined or there's lots of stuff missing, and you need to an action (nothing is an action). Most problems like this are rather easily solved with pro/con lists and that sort of thing to talk it out. However, sometimes, a problem is too convoluted or too hidden to make sense. That's where I tend to reach for divination.

I'm decently versed in tarot, I Ching, and a few lesser arts. All of them can provide the answers in some form or another, or guidance thereof.

Now, for people starting off, the bigger issue is that some get into what I call "divinatory paralysis", where they do a reading for everything, no matter how small or obvious. It's one of the traps inherent in magick like this. And it can be hard to get out of.

But for most cases, and most questions, tarot is just likely not needed. I tend to use it on the weird issues.

Now, another thing to remember, is that tarot decks, oracle decks, yarrow sticks, are all just instruments. The power to do this is with the human, not the tool.

I don't see where they mentioned that tarot is scientific. I think you misinterpreted their English

Indeed. What I was trying to say was that police and criminal investigations have a reasonable amount of science to ascertain guilt. (Aside some of the junk science used: blood spatter analysis, lie detectors, etc).

Tarot can be mechanistic or intuitive. It's my belief that we don't yet have the science understand to explain how it does and doesn't work.

And NOBODY should be making public accusations based on a tarot reading. That's just ethically wrong to begin with, aside legal and civil damages caused.