How Tarot Works?

Emily has gotten into it a little bit, and she's definitely of the of the state of mind of like, listen, this is something I do in the morning to sort of have a little quiet time. And I don't think she thinks that it like guides her life or has any sort of magic qualities. I think it's a little more one of those things like I'm gonna see what my cards say and just sort of ruminate on that stuff and maybe it'll open up some new ideas and

thoughts about life. I was reading a Vogue article that was pretty in depth about it, and that seems to be the general usage of tarot these days, and it's huge. It's gotten really big lately, apparently in a billion dollars worth of tarot cards were sold around the world. Yeah, and they're expecting it to go up by another quarter billion in the next three years. So it's definitely a thing.

For sure, it's having a moment, But um, it is kind of reassuring that it's not like following like the crystals are essential oil healing tract and instead people are like, I'm just using this to reflect on my my life. Yeah. And I think she also likes just thinks the cards are beautiful and cool looking and appreciates the art and that kind of thing, which they They are very and they can be expensive and super beautiful. Yeah. Do you

do you know what deck she has them? Sure, it's probably just the standard shopping ball tech from Spencer's Gifts. The the Green Day Tarot Day? Is there really a green Day? I know some bands have their own, I don't think so it's possible. Who knows that Billy Billy Joe Armstrong is. He's very innovative little guy. So, um, we are talking about tarot cards today. I think we let the cat out of the bag already. Um, and

they are not as old as you would think. And then their use of um for divination purposes is even younger than that. And there was a really long standing myth that I thought was correct up until yesterday. The day before that, playing cards evolved out of tarot cards in in an effort to conceal them at a time when people had to like watch out with their mysticism, their esoteric knowledge the occult, else they might be persecuted, so they developed them into playing cards like we have today.

That is absolutely false, and in fact, playing cards were around centuries before the tarot deck came along. Yeah, that's true. Uh. And people generally think it seems like so many things go back to ancient China, but a lot of people agree that they were invented in China in the thirteenth century and then sort of spread their roots from there. But like you said that, regular playing cards were around before this and the tarot we're twenty two different designs

that were eventually added to a deck. And this was for playing games like card games. Uh. And it became like a much larger deck and all of a sudden you could play, you know, with more cards that are different. You can play more complex than interesting games. Right, So you have China inventing playing cards apparently, it's spreading to Egypt, which I had not heard of this UM group. Had you before the mom Luke Empire? I had not mom Luke without an a in the middle. It's not a

Mama Luke right now, just that mom Luke. They were. They were Muslims who controlled Egypt for about three hundred years, from like I think the to the sixteenth centuries maybe, and they UM somehow got their hands on the playing cards that China had invented, and they kind of made their own flourishes to it. UM. The suits were kind of familiar UM like you might UM you might see today, kind of especially in the Tarot deck. But one of

the big differences was polo sticks. That was one of the suits because apparently the UM, the people who were running the show really liked playing polo. But polo was invented in Iran. If I'm not mistaken, is that correct? I didn't know that it was the word clue the other day, very nice, which which cross Chicago Tribune, New York Times. Is there any other No, there really isn't. UM. I'm sorry a person who writes the Chicago Tribune cross word, you do a very good job. It's not fair um So,

the mom Luke Empire spread out from Egypt. They they they had conquests and I think maybe even trade with other places around the Mediterranean. One of the things they did was they went to Italy and they brought with them their cards, and it seems like in Italy that's where Tarot was first created. And it wasn't again, not created for divination. It was created to make games much

more interesting. Yeah, I found it really interesting how many cultural things were spread through either war, uh in the military, or you know, I guess you know, oftentimes trade as well. But it seems like we talk a lot on the show about like someone went to war with something else and the people that they were fighting he loved this food or this game or this whatever and took it home. Yeah,

that's how Lincoln Logs came about. Really, I don't think it sounds like I don't know about this Lincoln guy, but these logs, right, people are crazy for them, So that's they exported. I guess in that sense. Yes, that's how Lincoln Logs got over there. So, um I think we're gonna cut that last little lame addition to the joke out later. Um So, when it arrived in in uh, Italy, Chuck, it was known as try no Fee, which is another term for the Italian carnival festivals that you see with

the masks and everything. But then shortly after that it changed the names to taroak, which apparently means foolish, stupid, simple, something like that. And they think that that the name change happened when they introduced the fool and they by introducing the fool card, which is a very well known um tarot card as we'll talk about later. Uh, it

signified like a huge change. They took regular playing cards, added twenty two more to them, made them all trump cards, and now you had so much more complicated complex games. And as a matter of fact, they think this is where trick taking games came from. Yeah, I mean you mentioned trump taking cards. That's what I mean. If you've never played any trick taking games, do yourself a favor and learn spades or hearts or something. Sure, j Yeah, Jen,

Remy counts. I guess, Uh no, it totally counts. I guess. I always think of spades. Really, um, I had I went through a spades phase when I was kind of in college. It was kind of early on for some reason. And oh and then what's the one in the Midwest that my wife's family always plays, Get us out of here. That's very funny, uh Yuker Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, my

parents played too. Of course, idea how it's played, no clue. Well, I'm fame us in our family for forgetting every single year how to play uk and then every Christmas they would then, you know, re explain the game. But long way of saying, these are all like trick taking games where you have, um, you're laying down hands and then someone will lay down like a trump card and you can like take all those tricks that are on the board. And there are all kinds of variations of trick taking games.

But they're basically saying that, I mean, was Tarrocco the original the o G I think so? Yeah. I think it originated in Italy and the north of Italy. Um, and then after that, uh, it's spread to France and they took the same name Tarok, which in French is Tarot with the A U X. Obviously we evolved into tarot t a R O T from there, right, So

that's what they think the progression was. But this was just for making trick taking games, um interesting or creating trick taking games as a matter of fact, and the people are parent you still play it. In Europe. I think it's super hipster. I'll bet if you're a euro hipster you probably play the original Arrak or Tarrok show, especially in northern Italy. But um, I think also if you're just kind of like a normal person too, you might you might find it attractive. So it's still being played.

So there's two kinds of taro out there in the world, and I say we kind of move on to the one that everybody knows over here. Um after an ad break. Hey, that sounds like a great plan alright. So I think when people click on an episode called hall Terror Works, they're not really interested in hearing about the early origins

of just another like spades light game. Uh. They want to talk about it's spreading cards on the table and having someone sit across from them and tell them how their day or week or life is going to go. And that's the divination aspect. Divination has been around a long long time. People have been using cards for a long long time. It's called cartomancy, and I think the French basically invented this and like the seventeen hundreds or so, right, Yeah,

and um it was originally they used playing cards. They didn't even use the Saro deck. And people still do cartomancy using regular playing cards. Yeah. Um, so I guess to kind of differentiate it, if you're doing taro, that would be called tarot ology, and then cartomancy is using I guess probably any other kind of cards. And so, um you think like, okay, taro is kind of presented as like this ancient esoteric knowledge. It's frequently connected to

ancient Egypt or ancient Greece. Um that like there's oracles involved, and that it's just kind of um evidence of a longstanding tradition of mysticism and fortune telling, and that is made up. Uh it is. And you had a tone in your voice like you're about to yank the rug out from us, you know, uh, and yank we are because we actually know for sure where this all came from. It was invented by a couple of guys, a couple of French guys, one couple of dudes, just a couple

of dudes or whatever dude in French might be. Uh. One gentleman was named Antoine court Day. How would you say that, Gibeline, Yeah, I think that's great, all right. Uh. He was born in seventeen twenty five. He was a writer, he's a freemason. He was super as was not a lot of people, but some people back then interested in

the occult and esoteric ideas and things like that. And when he was I guess and his uh what would that be like forties or fifties, Tara was not super popular at the time, And as the story goes, he saw some woman that we're playing it, and he looked down and, UM, I'm paraphrasing here, but basically said he glanced down and recognized that the allegory of these pictures on the cards, uh he found were relative to all of life, and there were unlimited numbers of combinations to

combine these cards, and that was sort of the inspiration of inventing this divination process. Yeah, like he said, oh, I've discovered these cards and it's clear that I've uncovered something here. So Gebelin was a very annoying person. Um, and he he took a Um, he took that inspiration and then went back and reversed engineered everything to support the inspiration that he just had, and he did so

again by just making up a lot of stuff. Um, he wrote this thing that was it came out multiple volumes. I get the impression it was a little bit like maybe the Paris Quarterly or something like that, or the Paris Review Quarterly legitimizes it more than I was thinking. But this, okay, how about the Hoboken Quarterly. But it's true though, you know. Um, So he called it the primeval World Comma Analyzed and compared to the modern world,

which seems pretty straightforward. It's fine with me. The thing is is each volume he just started talking about esoteric stuff. He wrote essays about whatever was on his mind, and he was trying to kind of build up this compendium of ancient knowledge that again, this guy was just pulling out of thin air. And it wasn't like he was the guy who pointed to ancient Egypt and said their mystery lies. There's there's an esoteric mystery tradition there. He

wasn't even the original with that. He was just kind of playing off of some stuff that was popular at the time and really going to town with it. Yeah, I mean I think, um, the franchise did a lot of people saw Egypt as this sort of um mystical, magical place, uh with you know, for a lot of reasons. But he's the one that sort of again didn't invent it, but borrowed on that idea. In one of these volumes,

he wrote an essay Ontario connecting to Egypt. Uh. And then he had his friend, uh Louis Raphael uh Lucresse de Fael, Count of Mela. That was beautiful. I'm not sure how much of that is right, but um, they got together as a team, and he was also a dude that was interested in the occult and stuff like that.

They tended to hang they tended to hang around together, and so they got together and sort of of made up these description of the game and the Tarot deck were not the game, but I guess the practice and the Tarot deck connecting it to Egypt. Yeah. What was pretty cool was that they they, um, they said, you know what the tarot deck is, these seventy eight cards. Um, I don't know if we said and if we didn't, sorry. When they added the tarot trump cards to the existing

deck of cards, it it made seventy eight cards. They had fifty six cards and then playing cards um deck before added twenty two tarot cards as trump cards, so you had a deck of seventy eight. So what um uh did Gibelin and defoy yell I like you um said was that these things were actually existing disguised pages

from the Book of Thoth. And it's actually really cool if you stop and think about, like along the lines of like ghostbuster UM like like sumer Um kind of mysticism cool and both if I'm I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He was a god of ancient Egypt, a real one. He was known for um balance in the universe. He was credited with um creating, if not all knowledge on Earth, at the very least certain knowledge like law, magic, philosophy, religion, science, writing.

So he's a good guy. And he also was known as an infallible judge. I saw it put somewhere Um. So he would be perfect to be the one who you could use the Book of Thoth to kind of predetermine the future, because you were basically tapping into thowth to say, um, hey, buddy, can you help me out here? I need to know the future. Can I sidebar for a moment? Yes, please, or what do we call it? What approach when we talk about tangents? Yeah, yeah, can

I tangent approach? Uh? You mentioned Ghostbusters. I just wanted to point out very fast that we showed my daughter the original Ghostbusters for the first time UH last week and it was surprisingly like okay for a seven year old. The jokes that weren't super appropriate as usual kind of go over her head and she loved it. And so the next night we watched the recent UH sequel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that, and that movie I think is very

unfairly piled upon. I don't care. It's not good, and maybe it has something to do with watching it with my daughter and watching them two days in a row. But I thought it was quite fun and super super enjoyable. Yeah, I would say it's p t. Anderson's like deepest movie. At the very least, it's most entertaining. I didn't think it was perfect, and I don't know it was a big nostalgia play, but I bought in and we just had a great time watching it. So I like a

lot of fun. It was a little weird that, like Egan at the end was like, mmmm, I'm not gonna say anything, but I'll give you some head nods kind of thing. I think that they really could have worked shop that a little more. Um, sorry for spoiling it for everybody, but um that. Other than that, I thought it was really engrossing, really cool. I liked all the characters because Paul Road, of course, is amazing, so I said,

go see it too. I think they kept him from talking a lot at the end because they didn't want to overdo a sort of dodgy uh you know, resurrection totally like it could have gone off the rails if he was like, hey everybody, no, completely for sure, they featured they gave him too much screen time then okay, so then cut back a little more even totally see that.

That's my take on it. Anyway, back to tarot Um, I'm all about the new Ghostbusters though, and we're going to show her the reboot with that Kristen Wiggan the Gang too? What about chew Ghostbusters too? You can't skip over that? Yeah, sure you can with Jano Hello, Where's the Baby? It had its moments, but I don't know, even even Bill Murray in the whole cast, we're kind of like that was a garbage movie. What. Yeah, Ghostbusters

do was they were not very proud of it. I'm gonna have to go back and watch it because I liked it. Right, Well, maybe we will. Um where were we? We were talking about how these guys, the Geblin and um his buddy defoy yell um had just basically made

all this stuff up. And I think we left off with how it was actually kind of cool that they linked it to lost pages from the Book of Both Sure, so they have now described this uh divination process, and it wasn't like it was a huge deal all of a sudden and like the latest fad that you know, caught like wildfire all over the world. Um, it did catch on in a pretty big way, but that came a little bit later. But what is clear is that all of these sort of stories that you hear about

Tarot was um of like the origins of it. And then there's some pretty fanciful stories written up about you know, uh punks that created this game and these decks were found in ruined temples and stuff like that. Like all of that just seems to literally have been made up to create kind of a fun back story. Yeah, And I mean you can kind of get the idea like this is pretty cool stuff, and like a bunch of

people took a crack at it. Um eliphas Levi, who created Baffa met Our buddy Um, he contributed to it, said, this is actually has to do with Kabbala, the Jewish mysticism. Paul christian Um, who I can't remember what his original name was, he added to it too, but he was a very famous mystic um or occult person, and like that whole spiritualism. Remember we did a whole episode on that. Those same people interested in in mediumship and the occult

and all that just basically added to this. They'd be like, also this and also that it was just a lot of people who are out of their minds contributing to this really neat totally made up mythology rounding tarot cards.

And then finally Chuck, we arrive at Alistair Crowley. Yeah, all roads point till old a c. I guess if you listen to that episode and and got through my sort of sneering through the whole thing, you will remember the gold the Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was in London, and this was a group that Crowley was was he the leader of or just a he staged a coup if I'm not mistaken, and they ended up breaking up UM rather than just

let him lead, all right, that that sounds familiar. So the breakup led to different factions in different groups sort of splintering off, and one of which was led by someone named A. E. Waite. Uh. And this is where the story UM kind of takes Taro to the uh

to the forefront of popularity. UM. In nineteen ten eight e Waite published the pictorial Key to the Tarot and Uh, this is where the most famous deck, like the deck that you would probably buy today in the shopping mall, comes from A. E. Wait Uh getting together with Pamela Coleman Smith, who I believe was the artist, and this, you know, kind of change to the deck up and this is this became sort of the most popular one, I believe in early nineteen hundred, nineteen o nine or so,

and it's still the most popular, Yeah, I mean far and away, especially in the United States, called the um Wait Smith deck or the Ritter Weight because I think Ritter published it, and it's it's if you saw you'd be like, oh, yeah, that's that's a tarot deck. That's what I think of it as it's this beautiful art deco UM illustrations. UM that like if you, if you again, if you just think of a tarot card, like they're probably imagining a um Waite Smith tarot card because Pamela

Coleman Smith just nailed it. I mean, this is nineteen o nine and there's a lot of different decks that have the same thing, but they're just drawing differently or whatever. They're still publishing this um a hundred years plus later.

It was just that well done. Yeah, and I think they also, um, I don't know if it was to make it more popular or not, but there was a lot of Christian imagery on previous decks and they kind of toned those down a little bit for this deck, Like they said, hey, why don't we get the pope off of their and include some cool like ancient Grecian priest instead. Uh. Maybe it was just to make it

a little more sort of mysterious. I think so for sure, but also not they didn't want to scare off the occultists, you know, they didn't want it to poppy, right. They also there was a papist to papists um, she became the high priestess Um. But and it also followed a lot of tradition to I think the moon card um has been generally unchanged for like five hundred years. It's still still contains the same baffling imagery that it always did.

The moon card means um. It means illusion and deception and that things are not as they appear, and so, of course, to demonstrate that and get it across, the moon card has a moon um. It also has a path that leads off into the distance. Animal on either side of the card to represent two sides of human nature. I guess good and evil kind of thing. Yeah, I got that part. Here's what it really takes a weird turn. There's towers in the in the background. Odd, and then

there's a crawfish crawling out of the water. Yeah. I mean that's got to symbolize some sort of evolution, right, I don't know. I have no idea what the crawfish means, and I don't really want to know. It's just so odd that that I would rather that be some sort of hermatic mystery for me forever. Well, don't write in about that then, yeah, please don't tell me dear listener. Uh, let's take a break. Yeah, let's take a break, and we'll talk a little bit about the deck itself, because like,

what's even on these cards? Right? Yeah? Okay, Chuck. Where we left off, Basically, a man discovered a deck of cards and decided that they were mystical in much the same way that if somebody discovered a World of Warcraft deck two years from now and decided that you could use them to tell the future. Exact same thing, but he made such a cool mythology around it that it it just called on. Yeah, so we're gonna talk a little bit about the deck there, not the most in

depth thing. We can't get into every card, but just sort of an overview. We mentioned that there are seventy eight cards, fifty six of these, or what's known as the minor Arcana, and they are the number car and they're divided into four different suits, which are wands, swords, pinacles, and cups um, which sort of explains the Terrence Malick film Night of Cups was in reference to the Tarot.

Oh yeah, I saw there's a compilation of tarot and films on Vimeo that it just made of Yeah, just imagery from the tarot that that shows up in films without you know, making a big deal out of it, kind of subtly. But was that one of those like look it's everywhere kind of things a little bit, but I mean they didn't hammer at home. They really just showed you, like, yeah, there's some pretty cool stuff. And that the end it said, see it's everywhere, she told you.

All right. So the pinacles, the cups, the wands, and the swords are the four suits, and uh there are also face cards in these suits, the page, the Night, the Queen, the King, and the ace, right yeah, And I mean just like a regular deck of playing cards, there's one through ten cards and in the face cards, and then on top of that there's the twenty two tarot cards that you think of like like the fool that we mentioned or the hero font we mentioned earlier, um,

and there I think the minor arcana or arcana um those are like the one through ten, Jack, Queen, King,

um kind of thing. And then the major arcana or arcana the twenty two um those are the ones that are like the money divin divination cards, but you can also divine the future based on some of the lesser cards too, and I think people have kind of added to that over time, and that was one of the reasons I think that the um the Waite Smith deck was so interesting is that they really took some of the formerly just kind of disused cards and really dressed them up with new imagery. And I think that was

one of the reasons that became so popular. Should we talk about some of the big daddy cards. Yeah, let's see that. All right, there's the hour card and this is not a card that you want, and we'll talk about readings and how those go in a minute. But generally, you know, you sit across from someone or you do it yourself, and you spread a certain number of cards out, depending on what kind of spread you're gonna use. Uh. If you get that Tower card, it's it's not a

great card. It's probably the worst card you can get. Um. It indicates all sorts of bad things. Uh Uh, something that might happen to you that really has a negative impact on your life, destruction, chaos. Uh, sort of like the rug getting pulled out from under your feet. Um, it's just no good. So you don't want to you don't want to get that Tower card. No, you definitely don't and then just kind of as a nod to what I was just saying about some of the minor

Arcanic cards also being fairly potent. I've seen um and also thanks to to the Tarot Guide and I Publishing for some of this info. UM that the Ten of Swords again, they'd be like the Ten of Spades and like a regular deck. That it is actually one of the the worst cards, that it's a runner up to like the worst cards you can get, and it's more about like being bad mouth behind your back or betrayed, um, the the end of a relationship or a situation hitting

rock bottom. Nobody likes that. But we should say at this point that when the card is pulled, it can be pulled upside down. And there's a couple of interpretations with that. One is that it means the opposite of what it normally means, right side up or basically bizarro taro. Or it also means um that the effect that it means right side up is just gonna have like it's gonna be weaker than it would have been had the

card been right side up. Yeah, I mean the direction certainly matters with how the card is drawn and laid and spread. Uh, and it seems to matter even more maybe when there if you're not just doing sort of a standard one card thing or like the three card spread, which is very common is uh, past present, future, But it seems like the more cards. What's the Celtic Cross, that's the sort of the most common complex one, and that one really it really matters which way these cards

are pointing in relation to one another. Yeah. And also each spot on the Celtic Cross spread represents a specific thing. So the card, the card you draw for that spot is how that whatever that card says, like say chaos or something like that, Um, how it relates to that part of your life, um, like work like say um. And then you've got not just the interplay between the card and its position, but also that card and its position and the other cards and their position. So it's

really complicated and complex very quickly. But I mean it's kind of like a really like a full astrology reading, like you can you can really go to town and come up with some really in depth readings for people. Well, starting with the Celtic Cross for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Um. You've also got the fool card, which we mentioned earlier, just to follow up on that. That is the first card of the major arcana, and that is that's a

good card. Generally speaking. It's a positive thing a lot of times, and it can indicate like a fresh start, a new beginning. Um, if you're gonna go on some exciting new adventure, you might uh draw the fool card if you believe in that kind of thing. It's a cute card. There's especially in the um um Wait Smith's deck. It's like a youth who's got like a little bindle over his shoulder, cute little white dog jumping up barking at him like, hey, you're about to step off of

a cliff. I think he's got a flower that he's smelling, and just kind of like a happy transfixed look. You know, the fool is usually a pretty happy person, and that's a that's like a good example, though like you would not necessarily think the fool is a good card. Same with the death card. Um Ibviously, anytime somebody gets the death card, they are a little flipped out until the reader tells them, actually, don't worry. The death card doesn't

actually mean death. You'd be way closer to being worried about dying with the tower card. The death card is much more um associated with change, transition, new beginnings, ends of old things. It doesn't it doesn't mean you're gonna die unless it does. In case, it does not help though that when they draw that card, they say, and the kind of death is it on your head? That was so good? That was such a great to geblin Or maybe we should get meagle to Uh I can't.

I can't, right well, I think, yeah, I need to. I need to sort of parse that out. I can't over meagle you. I can't. I just miss him so much. He'll be back. Don't worry his taff it is sweaty right now though. Uh So those are you know, some of them major Arcanada that are sort of the money cards that you might see if you go to a terror reading and get told by some you know a little old lady, what's going to happen in your life? Yeah?

Or a young lady or a young man or an old man, and you know, buinary non binary person, all sorts of different people. And that's the point. Any single person can be a tarot card reader. And one of the things that I saw, suggested Chuck, was to do what Emily does, like every morning, take a card and just think about it for the rest of the day. What does that card mean to you? How does it

tie into your life right now? And by doing that, you know, over and over again on a daily basis, you're just kind of wading into the world of Tarot cards, and you're also just absorbing what each card means and how it can possibly relate to somebody's life. So I saw that in Vogue UM as a really great way to kind of start and get into Tarot. And that's um that again, it's evidence that anybody who's interested can become a terror reader. Again, I just want to stress

there's nothing magic about Tara. There's nothing magic about terror readers, um. But that doesn't mean that they're not accomplished. Some of the terror readers out there are really really talented at what they do. They're just not performing anything magical, and any reasonable Tara reader will tell you the exact same thing, right And for listeners, I was desperately trying to think of an InVogue joke, and all I can think of something about you're never going to get it, but never

gonna get it, never gonna get it. The time came and went. But I know we're all thinking the same thing. Yeah, but I mean, I'm with you. It's clunky, but sometimes you just have to go back and like cite a joke, even if you don't pull it off right, then I

do that too. I'm with you. Okay. So I guess you know, we we said that there's a spread that happens, and you know, there's different ways of doing it and obviously different ways of reading and interpreting the cards, but generally you will have someone or yourself will do whatever spread you've decided upon. And if you're giving, so what

else are reading? There are some people that that think that that person being read should, like as the cards are being shuffled and such, should talk out loud sort of about the questions that they might have. Uh. Some people think that they should actually cut the deck so they physically interacted with it, while others say no, they shouldn't touch the deck hands off. So there's sort of different ways of going about it, depending on your methods.

I guess yeah, um, and I also saw that the there your tarot deck is supposed to have been gifted to you. You're not supposed to buy your own Tarot deck. But again, there's no hardened fast rules in tarot, and anybody who's like stressing you to to adhere to hardened fast rules does not get tarot. So they just need

to be quiet. That's your mouth. So UM. One of the one of the ways that this pops up is that tarot is actually sometimes used by psychotherapists and it actually has a kind of a lengthy tradition in psychotherapy dating back to Carl Jung, who starting in the twenties or thirties, became interested in tarot among some other divination

tools like the aging astrology. UM was trying to find these archetypes that are universal the human consciousness that you believed tarot kind of reflected, whether on purpose or not, and that you could use that as a way to kind of unlock that part of yourself that or that

part of the universal consciousness that was in yourself. Carl Young was maybe a little off the mark with that, but there's this idea that you can use this terror reading to really stop and reflect and think about your life, and that's a really great tool when you're in psychotherapy UM or counseling or any kind of therapy. UM anything that can kind of get you to stop and think about chaos at work or your love life or whatever in a certain way. Um, that's kind of guided by

the card that you draw. Um, that's that's helpful, that's useful, and there's there's nothing wrong with that at all. Yuh. I agree, I think uh. And I don't think there are a lot of psychotherapists out there that are saying like, let this be the guide to your life or anything

like that. No, run if your psychothapal. I think it's more along the lines of like if they if the if it helps the patient, and if they get something out of it as far as delving deeper into their own psyche, and as long as the psychotherapist gets money too, that's all good. Sure. I mean that fifteen o'clock is going to run. It's right, you get fifty lucky attree forty three? Is that real? Okay, I'm kidding. I can see forty five. But this is like what do they

break for commercials? Right? Okay? What if, um, you go to a tarot reader and they just nail it, especially if it's presented to you is like m you can kind of see a little bit of future with these cards. I'm not supposed to say that, but it's true, and they nail the reading like it just speaks to you. And there are plenty of people out there who have that have had that experience. But luckily science can swoop in and say, calm down, calm down. There's actually a

really good explanation to this. And there are two sides of the same coin. One is cold readings. The other is what's called the Forer effect. Yeah, and we you know, we talked about cold readings and uh, she's I feel like we've done a few episodes where we kind of

touched on that. But that's the idea that when you sit down in front of a a reader or it could be whatever, if they have the crystal ball or the tero or they're reading lines on your hand and stuff like that, uh, that they are really um, if they're good and they stay in business, then they're probably really good at cold reading, which is sort of just picking up on either obvious clues that you may not realize that you've even said out loud, or even sort

of subconscious clues that they pick up on. And how you carry your life or maybe how you walked in the room or what kind of car you arrived in, and just sort of picking up on all ease blatant or non blatant clues that a person might unconsciously or consciously give. Right. Um, So uh, that's where the reader is doing the work. There's also another way where the read, the person getting the reading, actually does the work, and that is that for effect I mentioned, which is uh.

It's named after a psychologist who coined it. It's also called the Barnum effect, based on P. T. Barnum's famous uh saying there's a sucker born every minute. It's people's willingness to accept very generic, very generalized information as tailored exclusively to them, which is something that can happen into terror reading. And in that case, it's not the reader doing the work. It's you, the read who's like, oh, that makes a hundred percent sense. I totally see how

that that jibes with my life. Obviously, these tarot cards are perfect and showing me the future. Yeah, I mean it's kind of a confirmation bias in a way, because you'll you'll remember the things that work infirm and you kind of don't really think about the other like six or seven things that didn't come true, right exactly? Yeah, for sure. One other thing that they could read our strangers in a cup of tea or beverage that can be read as well cold read too. Thank you. You

got anything more about tarot? Nah? Neither. I think that that's the end of this episode then, And since Chuck said nah, I said me either. Obviously, every one's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a correction. And um, we got we heard from a few people on this. This email was a little bit of a spanking about the condition of John Denver upon his death.

Oh yeah, sorry, John Denver's family of John Denver, it was very disappointed to hear Josh make the false claim that John Denver at cocaine in his system at the time it was plane crash. Toxicology test were neg for all drugs including ethanol. The following pertinent paragraph was taken from the NTSB investigation. I'm not gonna bother reading it, but it basically says what this guy says, which was tests were negative for all screen drugs. Uh. If you'd

like to review the whole report, you can find it here. Um. While Mr Denver was no altar boy, drugs played no role in the crash that killed him. Uh, And it's a sad disservice to say otherwise to his memory and his family. Very disappointing, you guys, And that's from John. Maybe it's the ghost of John Denver good he and uh George Burns are hanging out, that's right. Um, so yeah, I'm sorry John Denver and John Denver's family. That's I don't know how I felt for that, but I totally did.

I knew that like years and years and years ago, and I guess I just never bothered to look it up. So my apologies for that one, and I take it back. We should do a short stuff one day on the West Virginia controversy and country roads. Oh yeah, yeah, there's two sides that have long been fighting, and I think they each think it's settled of whether or not Almost Heaven was the state of West Virginia or the western part of the state of Virginia. Oh, that is a

that's a feud. I don't know if we should wage into that hornet's nest. Chuck, You're probably right, And also I think John I'd like John John Denver by the way I've said it before. I think he wrote one of the best songs about Toledo ever, made Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio, where he talks about how you can go to the park and watch the grass dye because

it's so boring. I love other good stuff. So hats off to John, hats off to John Denver, and hats off to us for being big people, especially me and admitting our mistake. If you want to get in touch with us and let us know about another mistake we made, doors wide Open, you can send it in an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you

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