The Central Coast of California is an area full of spiritual people, religions of all types, and highly educated, modern-day sages. They are not obvious, but they leave their mark everywhere. I moved to the Central Coast seven years ago, and one day a friend and I were exploring various book stores in Morro Bay. Time after time we saw Tarot cards.
"Cards that tell the future? Come on. That's a little hard to believe. How could they work? It's some kind of scam," I told my friend.
"Hey," he said, "Ouija baords and satanic powers, man."
I might have gone for something like that except I had just seen a TV science show about "Table-rocking" and Ouija baords, and they had proven that it was actually very minute muscle movements that did the moving, not spirits from another world.
"Nah, it's gotta be some kind of generic thing that people can interpret anyway they want. Of course, people are going to read their own life situation into the cards - it's the only life they know all about. Plus, its a psychological fact that people are ego-centric (self centered). Of course they are going to read their own lives into it!" I told him, trying to come up with theories of operation on the fly.
"Yeah, probably something like that," he said.
"I'm going to buy this deck to see how it works. I want to know how they get things so generic."
And so I did. After reading the small instruction booklet that came with the deck - which mentioned nothing scientific or plausable - I was pessimistic. I followed the directions and did a couple readings for myself. I was amazed at the accuracy. I kept reshuffling, reselecting, and re-reading cards, and they were always accurate. I asked my friend to come over and do a couple readings with me. I felt that an impartial party would see where I was reading things into it.
I did a few reading for him. He was impressed, but he still didn't believe the cards. "It's just like you said. No matter what card comes up, it fits because the definition of each card is so generic, it would fit anything."
"I don't know. We've done three readings for you, and all the cards had the same mood and attitude. Look at some of the cards the never came up!" And I pulled out about twenty-five cards and read off their briefly stated meanings from the little booklet. They definitely wouldn't have fit into my friend's life situation in any way.
"So is it just chance that not one wrong card came up in *three* complete shuffles and spreads? How could that be guaranteed every time?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he said. "It's probably just chance and interpretation."
From that moment on, I was determined to discover how and why these cards seemed to work.
