Why does Tarot prediction work? How can a Tarot deck, like the famous, bestselling Smith-Waite (1909) reveal truths about the past, or the present?
The Science Show with Robyn Williams and Tibor Molnar has some good explanations. Not that it’s about Tarot, but it comes dangerously close. What follows is from a transcript of that show, which is excellent, in its simplicity and honesty. You know, there’s a reason why Pamela Colman Smith popped a cat (Snuffles, apparently) into the Queen of Wands. With her great gift for sensing the future, she was picking up Schrodinger’s Cat before he was. Her deck is full of references to the emerging field of Quantum Mechanics, or Theoretical Physics.
There Is No Objective Reality
In his book About Time, Paul Davies, from Arizona State University, writes: “The common sense idea that there is an objective reality 'out there all the time' is a fallacy.” Thus, when you read the Tarot for yourself, and it comes true, or you ask a stranger to randomly select a Tarot card, and it accurately describes his past - you have walked into A Very Peculiar Reality.
Don’t worry, though. It’s not the real one. Because there is no real one.
You Observe Reality - And That’s All Reality Is
In another book, Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg (author of the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize), he says: “The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stone or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them … is impossible …”
While I was observing this statement by Heisenberg, I observed this beautiful painting pop up in my Twitter account. It is from the National Trust’s Smallhythe Twitter posts, and shows Pamela Colman Smith’s friends at Smallhythe, home of Dame Ellen Terry. It was painted by Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood.
Snuffles the black cat, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith for her Queen of Wands card, is the unwitting model here for Schrodinger’s future thought experiment. (The notorious cat who can either be alive, or dead, depending on if you open the lid of the box, in which it is unfairly trapped).
78 Cards and a 3-Card Spread
Max Tegmark, Professor of Physics at MIT has the answer. In his book A Mathematical Universe, he writes, “ …our physical world not only is described by mathematics, but that it is mathematics.”
This is really a 78-card deck, isn’t it? And a 3-card spread? (Past, Present, Future). Or, if you reverse the Tarot (which The Golden Dawn never did, but some do) you’ll end up with a deck of 156 cards. Yes, mathematics.
Information is the Building Block
Vladko Vedral, Professor of Quantum Information Science at Oxford, writes something similar: “…information (and not matter or energy or love) is the building block on which everything is constructed.”
This does sound rather like Tarot, if you think about some spreads, organised into pyramids, or squares, or rectangles. Blocks of information. Think of a Tarot card as a brick of information, in an artfully constructed spread like The Celtic Cross - and it’s close to Vedral’s thinking.
Reality is Information is Reality
Anton Zeilinger, Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna, also thinks that 'reality' is made of 'information'. In fact, he thinks that 'reality' and 'information' are indistinguishable. All of which makes the Tarot interpretations you use, crucial. What sort of Tarot information are you using to build your reality?
Professor Fred Alan Wolf and Tarot
Professor Fred Alan Wolf is one of the ‘hippies who saved physics” and is known as Dr. Quantum: “The world we see out there appears in physical form because information from the past and from the future joins for a momentary flash of consciousness. Throw out either, and nothing would exist as a solid object.” Now, that really does sound like a Tarot reading. A three-card spread, as mentioned earlier: Past, Present, Future.
The Tarot Universe
When Tarot works, and it usually does, or neither of us would be here, reading this - we seem to have walked into a universe which beggars belief. It’s completely irrational. How can 78 pieces of coloured card, illustrated by a young woman named Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, possibly show the future? It seems mad. Quite mad. How can these busty beauties, likely illustrated from naughty postcards of the early 20th century, possibly tell us about our global business venture, say? But they so often can and do.
The Goldilocks Universe
Then again, we inhabit a ‘Goldilocks’ universe in which the temperature is not too hot, and not too cold (like the porridge in Goldilocks and the Three Bears). The odds of that are well against. And some of the creatures out there, like the octopus, or the sloth? Well, that also seems unlikely. Odd. But it’s real.
Except…if we accept that this is a ‘Cosmic Jackpot’ where there are thousands of parallel universes, and we just got lucky and ended up together in this one, then Tarot World doesn’t seem so unlikely either.
Parallel Universes at Oxford University
Anyone who’s ever stayed at one of the Oxford University colleges, or studied there, can feel as if she just walked into a parallel universe. It is, of course, where Alice in Wonderland was formed. So, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find Oxford offering up current parallel universe theory.
In The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch (Visiting Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics at Oxford), we find that 'reality' is actually composed of a multiverse of around 10500 weakly interacting parallel universes (each slightly different), with additional universes popping into existence (from nothing!) with every elementary quantum interaction.
Stephen Hawking and Parallel Universes
Professor Stephen Hawking confirmed that all these universes are all here, all around us, all of the time. In The Grand Design, he wrote: “…the universe does not have just a single existence or history, but rather every possible version of the universe exists simultaneously.” Including Tarot World, where coloured cards from over a century ago can specifically and accurately call the future.
I strongly recommend The Science Show, where all these extracts come from, as the thinking Tarot reader/client’s podcast. For those of us who occasionally catch ourselves thinking that the world of Tarot is quite mad, it can be a comfort to know that it’s no madder than any other competing universe, and there are zillions of them. If you’d like to try the Smith-Waite Tarot now, drop into my website.
This post is a jewel, Jessica! Thank you so much - Amazing bibliography!