The Future of Tarot
Some of the technology that is almost commonplace today still feels magical and amazing to me. For years, I’ve wondered, how is technology going to change tarot? We can see some changes very easily: online groups help us connect with other readers, email and Skype and other messaging programs allow us to read for people all over the world.
We have apps for our phones (many Llewellyn decks are available via The Fool’s Dog, which makes my favorite apps). In addition to seeing the cards, these apps let us create spreads and sometimes even email readings to clients. We can even keep a journal within the app.
These things are all wonderful and handy and have expanded our reach, but they are simply doing what we’ve always done just in another way. I wonder if there is a next step, something that will change tarot in a big way.
I’m not sure how you all feel, but it seems to me that tarot is at the edge of cusp, like we’ve reached the World card and are about to enter a new journey heralded by the Fool. Ironically enough, this tarot reader feels a bit uncertain as to what that new frontier might be. Maybe it has to do with technology. Maybe it has to do with a shift in the fundamental beliefs of our culture about the nature of the future.
Rachel Pollack, author of (among other books) Tarot Wisdom, is known for pulling cards on the “big questions.” Who wants to join me in pulling cards about the future of tarot? Share yours in the comments and in a few weeks, I’ll share what has come up for me.
Hello Barbara
We were discussing this very question the other day, and we’d entirely agree Tarot is on the edge of an exciting tipping point! One thought I would like to share is that the future of Tarot will follow a path from its past.
In fact, I think the current revivalism and re-discovery of Tarot’s past is the last breath in before the leap!
That’s to say, Tarot was first a card game (like Lenormand) and then became a status symbol for particular Italian families, then became an occult tool for a semi-secret elite, then became a symbol of the revolutionary 60’s and self-discovery, then became an industry – which is what it is fast becoming, with a new professionalism.
As the technology moves on, I predict that Tarot will become more *individual*. So it will not be that ‘everyone has a deck’, but everyone has *their own deck*; a deck specific to their world-view and life. Somehow technology will make it possible for us to customise our own decks at a whim, maybe using the collected images in the “cloud” or our personal slice of that common databank.
We can create – eventually – whatever we can imagine, so I guess our responsibility as readers now is to imagine big!
Tali x
Tarot Tells Its Own Future.
The first ten cards of the Major Arcana on the future of the Tarot …
1. It will be more magical: And as more is revealed more will be concealed. The Law of the Trickster’s Table is that the ball under the cup was in the hand of the one moving the cups.
2. It will be more spiritual: And it will take its place again between the pillars. The Law of the Scroll is that what is written in the future will always look the same as what was written in the past until you change your tool of writing.
3. It will become alive: And it will unfold in ways which only She imagines. The Law of the Robe of Water is that what is on the surface is shaped by what is deepest. We must learn to hold our breath, then, and leave our shorelines far behind.
4. It will be more influential: And it will shape more decisions even as it resists its own regulation. The Law of the Throne is that those who take it are not alone in sitting in their own blood.
5. It will become more traditional: And it will recover its dignity from its own roots. The Law of Revelation is that it is only the Resurrection of the Forgotten.
6. It will be more popular: And it will become surfeit of its own choices. The Law of the Lovers is that you can’t have something without there being something else.
7. It will head in new directions: And as it becomes drawn by the few, it will be driven by the many. The Law of the Reins it that when you pull, you are no longer in charge.
8. It will be resisted: And even as it struggles to retain its shape, it will create that shape. The Law of the Lion is that we become that which we fight.
9. It will become more individual: And we will each own our own possibilities. The Law of the Lamp is that you have created everything before you even recognised it.
10. It will change the way we see time: And the way we see time will change tarot. The Law of the Sphinx is that the riddle is its own answer.
[Extract from Tarosophy Squared, forthcoming]
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