divination accuracy?

[bohemianeditor]

In a post I read recently, the poster mentioned that when sie began reading Tarot, hir readings weren't very accurate. Which is a much different perspective than I had when I began reading Tarot -- I assumed that the cards were accurate, I just didn't know how to read them yet.

What's your perspective? Is your divination method of choice always accurate? If not, do you think the fault is mostly in how you read it, or mostly in what the cards/runes/[ your method here ] had to say?

(I admit I don't keep track of whether or how often my Tarot readings are inaccurate; I also tend to ask more about forces behind a given situation than concrete, verifiable kinds of questions.)

Comments

[ex_lindsay366]

I think it depends on the person/deck/situation.

I think a person new to tarot, using a new deck, it's a both/and situation. They're not reading them very accurately, and the deck isn't itself very accurate.

I can't recall how it was when i first started doing tarot, so i'm not sure about that aspect of it. I know that if i haven't read them in a while, or if i'm using an unfamiliar deck, it's a lack of communication/understanding. I tend to view tarot as not necessarily a form of divination (meaning, i don't seen them as predictive devices), but rather, another possible viewpoint on a situation. So i'm not sure that accuracy is always even a factor for me.

[white_aster]

Personally, I think that it's all in the interpretation. I've had readings that were complete nonsense compared to what I was asking, and I've had more readings that were so spot on that I couldn't think of them as anything but cannily accurate. I don't know that the nonsense readings were nonsense because I couldn't read them so much as...just being nonsense, really.

Cards without real magickal intent are just an interesting psychological exercise, imo. They help you to look at your problem in different ways without really being anything but coincidentally prophetic. Divination with intent (or charging the cards with your own energy, or whatever) I guess I see kind of like any other magickworking: sometimes it works (and you get eerily accurate/helpful), and sometimes it doesn't (and you get nuthin). ;P

[jenett]

I think that divination always shows a snapshot at a particular point in time, and thus any changes (even fairly small ones) may mean a given reading doesn't 'come true'. Which is why, like you, I tend to ask about the background issues to be aware of in the first place, rather than something that's verifiable.

I think of divination like I think of the research process: there are several places something might go wrong. It can be an inappropriate (or flawed) tool, it can be the skill of the user, it can be the fact the user is totally failing to see something important, it can be some combination of factors that mean that the clearest answer just doesn't come together. (In divination, this might be that a given card/rune/whatever might work well in two places in a reading: it's physically only going to be in one.) And it might be about interpretation of the information in front of you.

So, yes, user skill helps a lot. But using the right tools, or well-designed ones is also helpful.

[deadnettle]

My divinations aren't always accurate, but then I do try to ask questions that are verifiable somehow.

When they aren't accurate I can often go back to them and think laterally and make them fit, so interpretation is certainly one of the areas where readings go wrong for me.

The rest of the time when readings are inaccurate its either been where I'm emotionally invested in the situation; or where the questions I was asking weren't really going to come up with the answer I needed; or occasionally when the method itself didn't have the vocabulary to cover the distinctions that needed to be made to give a clear reading.

[peskipiksi]

When I began reading Tarot, I remember the readings being so accurate they scared me - invariably they implied (often with all the subtlety of a Louisville Slugger) something I knew darn well about the situation but didn't want to admit. They still do this sometimes, usually when I'm asking because I want a different answer than what I know the answer is.

I wonder if the OP's sense of inaccuracy has to do with how well s/he clicks with the deck's symbolism. I still tend to stick with my first deck (Thoth) because it makes sense to me on a non-discursive level. So does the Rider-Waite. But I can't make heads or tails of my mother's Arthurian deck no matter how I try. Perhaps it's a communication problem rather than the deck's "fault"?

[zombi]

I wonder if the OP's sense of inaccuracy has to do with how well s/he clicks with the deck's symbolism.

I'm the OP, and the answer here is no, I don't think so -- these days I read very well with that very same deck, and it is never wrong. The RWS symbolism works very well for me, and I prefer to stick with it & its clones when reading regularly. In my original post, I was talking about how much different it was for me starting to read tarot when I was much younger & didn't really understand them/what I was doing.

I also think there's a nitpick with my original use of accurate; I didn't specify whether or not I felt the cards themselves were inaccurate or if I felt it was my reading of them that was inaccurate. I think it's a combination, as previous repliers have already noted -- accurate divination is a combination of tools and user, imo.

[lady_myfanwy]

I think I am with you on this. I have found that the more readings I do, the more I know what the cards are telling me, individually and as a whole.

[twistdfateangel]

I usually have fairly accurate readings after a fashion. But, I'm also the sort of person to over-analyze something until it screams. I look at the art of the card, any chance word play, other definitions of keywords and any other connection I can find.

I was taught originally, that the cards don't know anything you don't know. They're more like a mental organization tool, helping you see what you secretly know, but don't remember you know. Sometimes I just have go back and do another reading to get a different perspective and put the two together.