Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Trouble With Tarot

I lounged on my sofa in the early hours of this morning, unable to sleep I flicked through several channels and watched snippets of several programs. Feeling agitated and restless at not being able to sleep I kept hitting the up channel button on my remote until I reached Freeview channel 31. It was the 'Psychic tv channel'. I decided to watch for a while and what I witnessed was a money making machine designed to rob the vulnerable, insecure and not so clever of society of their money. I've never seen such a cringe worthy piece of rubbish on my tv screen before.

People ringing up in the early hours of the day asking the same stupid questions and being repeatedly told the same vague predictable answers from psychics that are allegedly gifted with things like 'remote viewing' and 'subtle energy'. The only thing subtle is their ability to get you to part with your cash, though anyone with a modicum of brain power can see straight through the ruses on show. Nobody who turns a pretty pictured card over for you can determine what tomorrow or indeed the future holds, it's just total bullshit.

Tarot cards originate from 14/15th century Italy, possibly before in Mamluk ran Egypt and were originally used for card games and depicted various regions in Europe, they later evolved somewhat and were used my mystics and occultism but generally not till the 18th century. It seems there were lots of different types of cards back depicting many things from gods, regions to animal types and indeed today there are many types of tarot cards.

They have no magical qualities, they cannot predict the future, they are just a card with a picture that is turned over by a person that has a gift to talk about the picture revealed and make sweeping generalisations regarding the image and how it supposedly relates to you. When you watch such programmes as psychic tv you almost never see bad predictions being made, it's always good ones as bad stuff wouldn't be a wise business model. What you do see is statements such as 'You'll have a fling when autumn leaves are falling'. Things like this are usually said when a few facts have been determined about the person, as in they in a relationship etc and of course with generalisations like that made there's the fortuitous window that it will happen. What psychics, mediums and clairvoyants do is practice the art of 'chance' by saying gambit orientated stuff that people identify or relate to, such as recent illness, the passing of an elderly relative and other such regular life events that happen to us all, if one person doesn't respond then there's a good chance another in the audience will and then they can begin to build on that with other like 'your grandmother was quite frail in the end wasn't she?' - well most elderly people are!

Emblazoned across the television screen is all the various ways in which you can pay for this nonsense, credit card, pay by phone, pay by mobile, no way to pay is left out and people will pay good money to be told good things. It all runs like a well oiled money making machine as people text or call in with the usual social dilemma's but mostly its love or happiness and they all are told the same but with different words. Credit where it is due, the psychics and tarot readers can talk, they are truly gifted and talking about finding love in a 1001 different ways. One woman called in and remained anonymous and asked 'Does my male neighbour like my Christmas card and will we find love in the new year?' The answer was of course he did love the card but was unsure of his own mind, he was lacking in confidence and perhaps the lady needed to give him a bit of a nudge to instigate something. Therefore the psychic is using the power of suggestion, urging the woman into action and thus making things happen but on the psychics part its all remained vague and no good or bad outcome is mentioned, it's all very clever and its all done with no information on the caller at all.

Sadly there's a lot of vulnerable, gullible and lonely people out there in society, money too is a scarce commodity at present and this compounds how people feel, increasing isolation. It's human nature to want to love or be loved and the producers of the show and their motley bunch of greedy psychics know this very well as they charge upwards of £1.50p a minute to make you feel good, it's television and lies of the worst kind. The fact they can give people a reading knowing nothing at all about them defies logic and when some do reveal their star sign or date of birth we get even more vague information that signifies or means nothing 'Oh Jupiter is in alignment with whatever and this means love for you'. Yeah of course it does.

Tarot cards are meaningless occultist mumbo jumbo, nobody can talk to the dead and nobody can predict the future otherwise we'd have some people in society that could just take over and run the whole show because they'd know everything.

It is odious deception of the worst possible kind. I'll bet they didn't see this blog coming !!!

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