Tarot Cards Debunked

One of the most popular artifacts of the New Age movement is the phenomenon known as Tarot card reading. Though ubiquitous in New Age bookstores and kitsch shops, they have only barely clung to just-outside-mainstream in the form of "entertainment," advertised as such in the backs of magazines and on the internet. To many people, Tarot cards rank right up there with palm reading and crystal healing. Of the fraction of Americans that have had a Tarot reading, nearly all have had it at carnivals, parties, or other places where the whole practice is a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

However, some people do take Tarot cards very seriously. I learned this not long ago, at a shopping mall in Richmond, Virginia.

One Saturday morning over breakfast I was browsing over a mailing from Richmond Times-Dispatch that detailed local events, like concerts and movies, taking place in the city over the weekend. One ad that caught my eye was for a "Psychic Festival" at the Shops at Willow Lawn (a shopping complex in downtown Richmond) that very day, running all afternoon. I needed to do some shopping anyway, and I live only a few miles from Richmond proper, so I decided to investigate. After all, the "festival" was advertised as "free; proceeds from services benefit the Baby Girl Project and Free the Children."

Unable to squelch the skeptic within myself, I first armed myself with a notebook and a pen, should my inner Michael Shermer ever catch up with my good-natured humor over the whole prospect of a "psychic festival," and then I was off.

Upon arriving, I saw that the psychics had essentially co-opted the main concourse of the mall with a rectangular area about fifteen feet by a hundred feet roped off, and with an empty storefront filled with beds and mats. The other stores in the mall were open for normal business.

Firstly, the ad that the festival was "free" was misleading: it was certainly free to stand near the festival and look amused, as many Richmonders were doing, and all of the but to actually participate cost fifteen dollars for each service. As far as I could tell though, the money was in fact sharply guaranteed to go to the advertised charities. Among the services were Tarot card readings, astrology and Chinese astrology advisers, healing touch, palm readings, and others. There were people both in and out of the roped off area who were smiling, laughing, and looking good-natured, but a few were not.

One woman at a Tarot card table was in fact in tears. A couple of others were looking very earnest by their readings, and I even overheard psychics recommending books, tapes, and phone numbers to the people who had somehow stopped being customers and started being patients.

My inner Michael Shermer was winning. Deciding that perhaps indulging in the event in order to give proven warning to others would be worth a few bucks to charity, I got in line, and ordered a Tarot reading.

The Tarot card readings cost me thirty dollars total, but they were worth it. Here is why: I got two, from two different people... ideal for a controlled experiment!

The first Tarot reader, named Denise, explained to me that she would perform something called a "Celtic Spread" (this name will be important in the second reading). She asked me what my question for her cards was. I asked her about what people usually ask. She replied, "romance, money, and death." So, I asked for a forecast of my love life in the next six months. Fortunately, she said that she didn't mind when I asked if I could take notes.

She had me shuffle her deck of Tarot cards, then she set five of them face-down in a cross formation, then four more face-down in a line along the side. She flipped one card, the "Queen of Swords." She said that this indicates that I won't be single much longer. I haven't been single for a good 32 months, but I didn't let her know that, and she never picked up on it.

The rest of the cards she flipped in the cross were Arrows, Beggar, the King of Wands, and Strength. The cards along the side were the 5 of Cups, the King of Swords, the 3 of Pentacles, and Judgment. Their interpretations were vague and I don't need to recount them all here (for example, the interpretation she offered for the King of Wands was "you will have a real chance to shine" some time in the next six months).

After my time was over, I thanked her and got back in line and specifically requested a different reader.

The next woman I got was truly a piece of work. Her name was Catta. I sat down, and first she had me take two deep breaths to "center myself in this moment," and then, and I tried with only modest success not to laugh at this, she produced a quartz crystal about six inches in length and tapped the deck of Tarot cards with the crystal. She explained that this is to "clear the cards." I didn't ask her what that meant.

She asked me what I wanted to ask the cards. I told her that I just wanted a general romantic forecast for the next six months. She nodded, but before she began, I asked her if she could do a "Celtic Spread," my intention being to compare her reading to my other reading. She didn't even know what a "Celtic Spread" was. So I let it slide and let her do her thing.

She flipped four cards. I won't go over their interpretation, but they were the Conditioning 15, the Past Lives 17, Fighting, and Sorrow 9. Note that none of these cards are the same as the cards from the last reading. Side note: on the Past Lives 17 card, Catta told me that I might be having relationship trouble because the person I am "pursuing" and I had had a troubled relationship in our past lives. I tried to calculate the statistical chance of two people ever living within 100 miles of each other in different generations, but the number was too close to zero for my computer's calculator to work out all the decimal places.

But aha! There was more time. She said I could ask three more questions. I won't bore you with the first two, which are uninteresting in their vagueness. For the third, though, I had about finished trying to be scientific about comparing her with the last reader, so I offered for my third question, "What is my father like?" She asked if I ever knew him, and I said "yes, but he's no longer in the home." Now this is true: at the time he was on vacation in San Diego with my mother, but I was hoping that she would take it as a euphemism for him being some sort of deadbeat. Much to my satisfaction, she did, and she proceeded from the assumption that I never knew my father.

The cards she flipped indicated that my father "lives from moment to moment," "works for a cause or a non-profit of some kind," and his mind is "burnt out."

Let me tell you a little bit about my father.

My father manages the finances for himself and my mother. This includes three college funds (for my two brothers and me), various investments, retirement, and so on. He keeps immaculate his stock of receipts, bills, tax forms, and old checkbooks going back to about 1971. He plans trips and even weekends far in advance. "Living from moment to moment" is almost as inaccurate as saying that he "works for a cause or a non-profit of some kind:" my father is retired.

As for his mind being "burnt out," let me tell you how he is spending his retirement. He mused many times over returning to school over the last few years, but instead, he has indulged himself in home education. He has stacks of DVDs from The Teaching Company on Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Plato, the New Testament, even classical archaeology. He buys those calculus and trigonometry books that you see advertised for college students.

In short, poor Catta was as wrong as she could be about that.

Walking out with two false readings, neither of which at all agreed with each other, I turn now to the ardent Tarot reader or Tarot reader's customer. With solid evidence debunking Tarot cards, hopefully you can now join in with the rest of us in saying: what a load of crap.