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How Tarot Works? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, So it's a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: good old fashioned hooting and holler and how down of
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a Stuff you Should Know episode. Yeehaw. Uh, this is
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: your pick the tar Otah, I'm sorry, that's okay. Uh.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: You know who's into this a little bit? Uh? Fortune tellers,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: wealth tarrot specifically who my wife? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Emily has gotten into it a little bit, and she's
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: definitely of the of the state of mind of like, listen,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: this is something I do in the morning to sort
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of have a little quiet time. And I don't think
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: she thinks that it like guides her life or has
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: any sort of magic qualities. I think it's a little
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: more one of those things like I'm gonna see what
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: my cards say and just sort of ruminate on that
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: stuff and maybe it'll open up some new ideas and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: thoughts about life. I was reading a Vogue article that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: was pretty in depth about it, and that seems to
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: be the general usage of tarot these days, and it's huge.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It's gotten really big lately, apparently in a billion dollars
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: worth of tarot cards were sold around the world. Yeah,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and they're expecting it to go up by another quarter
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: billion in the next three years. So it's definitely a thing.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: For sure, it's having a moment, But um, it is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: kind of reassuring that it's not like following like the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: crystals are essential oil healing tract and instead people are like,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just using this to reflect on my my life. Yeah.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And I think she also likes just thinks the cards
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: are beautiful and cool looking and appreciates the art and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing, which they They are very and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: they can be expensive and super beautiful. Yeah. Do you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: do you know what deck she has them? Sure, it's
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: probably just the standard shopping ball tech from Spencer's Gifts.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: The the Green Day Tarot Day? Is there really a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: green Day? I know some bands have their own, I
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: don't think so it's possible. Who knows that Billy Billy
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Joe Armstrong is. He's very innovative little guy. So, um,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: we are talking about tarot cards today. I think we
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: let the cat out of the bag already. Um, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: they are not as old as you would think. And
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: then their use of um for divination purposes is even
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: younger than that. And there was a really long standing
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: myth that I thought was correct up until yesterday. The
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: day before that, playing cards evolved out of tarot cards
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: in in an effort to conceal them at a time
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: when people had to like watch out with their mysticism,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: their esoteric knowledge the occult, else they might be persecuted,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: so they developed them into playing cards like we have today.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: That is absolutely false, and in fact, playing cards were
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: around centuries before the tarot deck came along. Yeah, that's true. Uh.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And people generally think it seems like so many things
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: go back to ancient China, but a lot of people
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: agree that they were invented in China in the thirteenth
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: century and then sort of spread their roots from there.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: But like you said that, regular playing cards were around
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: before this and the tarot we're twenty two different designs
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: that were eventually added to a deck. And this was
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: for playing games like card games. Uh. And it became
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: like a much larger deck and all of a sudden
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: you could play, you know, with more cards that are different.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: You can play more complex than interesting games. Right, So
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: you have China inventing playing cards apparently, it's spreading to Egypt,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: which I had not heard of this UM group. Had
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you before the mom Luke Empire? I had not mom
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Luke without an a in the middle. It's not a
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Mama Luke right now, just that mom Luke. They were.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: They were Muslims who controlled Egypt for about three hundred years,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: from like I think the to the sixteenth centuries maybe,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: and they UM somehow got their hands on the playing
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: cards that China had invented, and they kind of made
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: their own flourishes to it. UM. The suits were kind
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of familiar UM like you might UM you might see today,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: kind of especially in the Tarot deck. But one of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the big differences was polo sticks. That was one of
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the suits because apparently the UM, the people who were
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: running the show really liked playing polo. But polo was
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: invented in Iran. If I'm not mistaken, is that correct?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that it was the word clue the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: other day, very nice, which which cross Chicago Tribune, New
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: York Times. Is there any other No, there really isn't. UM.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry a person who writes the Chicago Tribune cross word,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: you do a very good job. It's not fair um So,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the mom Luke Empire spread out from Egypt. They they
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: they had conquests and I think maybe even trade with
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: other places around the Mediterranean. One of the things they
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: did was they went to Italy and they brought with
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: them their cards, and it seems like in Italy that's
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: where Tarot was first created. And it wasn't again, not
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: created for divination. It was created to make games much
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: more interesting. Yeah, I found it really interesting how many
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: cultural things were spread through either war, uh in the military,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: or you know, I guess you know, oftentimes trade as well.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: But it seems like we talk a lot on the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: show about like someone went to war with something else
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and the people that they were fighting he loved this
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: food or this game or this whatever and took it home. Yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: that's how Lincoln Logs came about. Really, I don't think
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: it sounds like I don't know about this Lincoln guy,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: but these logs, right, people are crazy for them, So
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: that's they exported. I guess in that sense. Yes, that's
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: how Lincoln Logs got over there. So, um I think
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: we're gonna cut that last little lame addition to the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: joke out later. Um So, when it arrived in in uh, Italy, Chuck,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: it was known as try no Fee, which is another
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: term for the Italian carnival festivals that you see with
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the masks and everything. But then shortly after that it
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: changed the names to taroak, which apparently means foolish, stupid, simple,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: something like that. And they think that that the name
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: change happened when they introduced the fool and they by
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: introducing the fool card, which is a very well known
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: um tarot card as we'll talk about later. Uh, it
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: signified like a huge change. They took regular playing cards,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: added twenty two more to them, made them all trump cards,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and now you had so much more complicated complex games.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, they think this is
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: where trick taking games came from. Yeah, I mean you
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: mentioned trump taking cards. That's what I mean. If you've
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: never played any trick taking games, do yourself a favor
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and learn spades or hearts or something. Sure, j Yeah, Jen,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Remy counts. I guess, Uh no, it totally counts. I guess.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I always think of spades. Really, um, I had I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: went through a spades phase when I was kind of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: in college. It was kind of early on for some reason.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: And oh and then what's the one in the Midwest
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that my wife's family always plays, Get us out of here.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: That's very funny, uh Yuker Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, my
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: parents played too. Of course, idea how it's played, no clue. Well,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I'm fame us in our family for forgetting every single
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: year how to play uk and then every Christmas they
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: would then, you know, re explain the game. But long
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: way of saying, these are all like trick taking games
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: where you have, um, you're laying down hands and then
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: someone will lay down like a trump card and you
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: can like take all those tricks that are on the board.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And there are all kinds of variations of trick taking games.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But they're basically saying that, I mean, was Tarrocco the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: original the o G I think so? Yeah. I think
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: it originated in Italy and the north of Italy. Um,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: and then after that, uh, it's spread to France and
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: they took the same name Tarok, which in French is
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Tarot with the A U X. Obviously we evolved into
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: tarot t a R O T from there, right, So
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that's what they think the progression was. But this was
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: just for making trick taking games, um interesting or creating
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: trick taking games as a matter of fact, and the
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: people are parent you still play it. In Europe. I
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: think it's super hipster. I'll bet if you're a euro
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: hipster you probably play the original Arrak or Tarrok show,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: especially in northern Italy. But um, I think also if
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: you're just kind of like a normal person too, you
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: might you might find it attractive. So it's still being played.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So there's two kinds of taro out there in the world,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and I say we kind of move on to the
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: one that everybody knows over here. Um after an ad break. Hey,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that sounds like a great plan alright. So I think
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: when people click on an episode called hall Terror Works,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: they're not really interested in hearing about the early origins
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of just another like spades light game. Uh. They want
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: to talk about it's spreading cards on the table and
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: having someone sit across from them and tell them how
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: their day or week or life is going to go.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And that's the divination aspect. Divination has been around a
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: long long time. People have been using cards for a
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: long long time. It's called cartomancy, and I think the
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: French basically invented this and like the seventeen hundreds or so, right, Yeah,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: and um it was originally they used playing cards. They
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: didn't even use the Saro deck. And people still do
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: cartomancy using regular playing cards. Yeah. Um, so I guess
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: to kind of differentiate it, if you're doing taro, that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: would be called tarot ology, and then cartomancy is using
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I guess probably any other kind of cards. And so,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: um you think like, okay, taro is kind of presented
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: as like this ancient esoteric knowledge. It's frequently connected to
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: ancient Egypt or ancient Greece. Um that like there's oracles involved,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: and that it's just kind of um evidence of a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: longstanding tradition of mysticism and fortune telling, and that is
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: made up. Uh it is. And you had a tone
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: in your voice like you're about to yank the rug
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: out from us, you know, uh, and yank we are
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: because we actually know for sure where this all came from.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: It was invented by a couple of guys, a couple
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of French guys, one couple of dudes, just a couple
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: of dudes or whatever dude in French might be. Uh.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: One gentleman was named Antoine court Day. How would you
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: say that, Gibeline, Yeah, I think that's great, all right. Uh.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: He was born in seventeen twenty five. He was a writer,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: he's a freemason. He was super as was not a
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: lot of people, but some people back then interested in
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the occult and esoteric ideas and things like that. And
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: when he was I guess and his uh what would
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: that be like forties or fifties, Tara was not super
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: popular at the time, And as the story goes, he
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: saw some woman that we're playing it, and he looked
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: down and, UM, I'm paraphrasing here, but basically said he
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: glanced down and recognized that the allegory of these pictures
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: on the cards, uh he found were relative to all
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of life, and there were unlimited numbers of combinations to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: combine these cards, and that was sort of the inspiration
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: of inventing this divination process. Yeah, like he said, oh,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I've discovered these cards and it's clear that I've uncovered
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: something here. So Gebelin was a very annoying person. Um,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and he he took a Um, he took that inspiration
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: and then went back and reversed engineered everything to support
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the inspiration that he just had, and he did so
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: again by just making up a lot of stuff. Um,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: he wrote this thing that was it came out multiple volumes.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I get the impression it was a little bit like
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: maybe the Paris Quarterly or something like that, or the
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Paris Review Quarterly legitimizes it more than I was thinking.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: But this, okay, how about the Hoboken Quarterly. But it's
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: true though, you know. Um, So he called it the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: primeval World Comma Analyzed and compared to the modern world,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: which seems pretty straightforward. It's fine with me. The thing
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: is is each volume he just started talking about esoteric stuff.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: He wrote essays about whatever was on his mind, and
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: he was trying to kind of build up this compendium
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: of ancient knowledge that again, this guy was just pulling
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: out of thin air. And it wasn't like he was
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the guy who pointed to ancient Egypt and said their
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: mystery lies. There's there's an esoteric mystery tradition there. He
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't even the original with that. He was just kind
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of playing off of some stuff that was popular at
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the time and really going to town with it. Yeah,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I mean I think, um, the franchise did a lot
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: of people saw Egypt as this sort of um mystical,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: magical place, uh with you know, for a lot of reasons.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: But he's the one that sort of again didn't invent it,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: but borrowed on that idea. In one of these volumes,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: he wrote an essay Ontario connecting to Egypt. Uh. And
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: then he had his friend, uh Louis Raphael uh Lucresse
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: de Fael, Count of Mela. That was beautiful. I'm not
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: sure how much of that is right, but um, they
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: got together as a team, and he was also a
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: dude that was interested in the occult and stuff like that.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: They tended to hang they tended to hang around together,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and so they got together and sort of of made
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: up these description of the game and the Tarot deck
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: were not the game, but I guess the practice and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the Tarot deck connecting it to Egypt. Yeah. What was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: pretty cool was that they they, um, they said, you
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: know what the tarot deck is, these seventy eight cards. Um,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we said and if we didn't, sorry.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: When they added the tarot trump cards to the existing
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: deck of cards, it it made seventy eight cards. They
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: had fifty six cards and then playing cards um deck
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: before added twenty two tarot cards as trump cards, so
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: you had a deck of seventy eight. So what um
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: uh did Gibelin and defoy yell I like you um
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: said was that these things were actually existing disguised pages
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: from the Book of Thoth. And it's actually really cool
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: if you stop and think about, like along the lines
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: of like ghostbuster UM like like sumer Um kind of
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: mysticism cool and both if I'm I hope I'm pronouncing
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: it correctly. He was a god of ancient Egypt, a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: real one. He was known for um balance in the universe.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: He was credited with um creating, if not all knowledge
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: on Earth, at the very least certain knowledge like law, magic, philosophy, religion, science, writing.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So he's a good guy. And he also was known
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: as an infallible judge. I saw it put somewhere Um.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So he would be perfect to be the one who
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: you could use the Book of Thoth to kind of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: predetermine the future, because you were basically tapping into thowth
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to say, um, hey, buddy, can you help me out here?
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: I need to know the future. Can I sidebar for
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a moment? Yes, please, or what do we call it?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: What approach when we talk about tangents? Yeah, yeah, can
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I tangent approach? Uh? You mentioned Ghostbusters. I just wanted
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to point out very fast that we showed my daughter
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: the original Ghostbusters for the first time UH last week
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and it was surprisingly like okay for a seven year old.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: The jokes that weren't super appropriate as usual kind of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: go over her head and she loved it. And so
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the next night we watched the recent UH sequel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I saw that, and that movie I think is very
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: unfairly piled upon. I don't care. It's not good, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: maybe it has something to do with watching it with
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: my daughter and watching them two days in a row.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: But I thought it was quite fun and super super enjoyable. Yeah,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I would say it's p t. Anderson's like deepest movie.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: At the very least, it's most entertaining. I didn't think
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: it was perfect, and I don't know it was a
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: big nostalgia play, but I bought in and we just
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: had a great time watching it. So I like a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. It was a little weird that, like
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Egan at the end was like, mmmm, I'm not gonna
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: say anything, but I'll give you some head nods kind
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: of thing. I think that they really could have worked
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: shop that a little more. Um, sorry for spoiling it
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: for everybody, but um that. Other than that, I thought
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: it was really engrossing, really cool. I liked all the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: characters because Paul Road, of course, is amazing, so I said,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: go see it too. I think they kept him from
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: talking a lot at the end because they didn't want
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: to overdo a sort of dodgy uh you know, resurrection
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: totally like it could have gone off the rails if
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: he was like, hey everybody, no, completely for sure, they
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: featured they gave him too much screen time then okay,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: so then cut back a little more even totally see that.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: That's my take on it. Anyway, back to tarot Um,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I'm all about the new Ghostbusters though, and we're going
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to show her the reboot with that Kristen Wiggan the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Gang too? What about chew Ghostbusters too? You can't skip
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: over that? Yeah, sure you can with Jano Hello, Where's
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the Baby? It had its moments, but I don't know,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: even even Bill Murray in the whole cast, we're kind
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: of like that was a garbage movie. What. Yeah, Ghostbusters
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: do was they were not very proud of it. I'm
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: gonna have to go back and watch it because I
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: liked it. Right, Well, maybe we will. Um where were we?
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: We were talking about how these guys, the Geblin and
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: um his buddy defoy yell um had just basically made
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: all this stuff up. And I think we left off
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: with how it was actually kind of cool that they
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: linked it to lost pages from the Book of Both Sure,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: so they have now described this uh divination process, and
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like it was a huge deal all of
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a sudden and like the latest fad that you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: caught like wildfire all over the world. Um, it did
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: catch on in a pretty big way, but that came
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit later. But what is clear is that
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: all of these sort of stories that you hear about
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Tarot was um of like the origins of it. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: then there's some pretty fanciful stories written up about you know,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: uh punks that created this game and these decks were
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: found in ruined temples and stuff like that. Like all
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: of that just seems to literally have been made up
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: to create kind of a fun back story. Yeah, And
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I mean you can kind of get the idea like
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: this is pretty cool stuff, and like a bunch of
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: people took a crack at it. Um eliphas Levi, who
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: created Baffa met Our buddy Um, he contributed to it, said,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: this is actually has to do with Kabbala, the Jewish mysticism.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Paul christian Um, who I can't remember what his original
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: name was, he added to it too, but he was
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a very famous mystic um or occult person, and like
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that whole spiritualism. Remember we did a whole episode on that.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Those same people interested in in mediumship and the occult
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and all that just basically added to this. They'd be like,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: also this and also that it was just a lot
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of people who are out of their minds contributing to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: this really neat totally made up mythology rounding tarot cards.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And then finally Chuck, we arrive at Alistair Crowley. Yeah,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: all roads point till old a c. I guess if
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: you listen to that episode and and got through my
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: sort of sneering through the whole thing, you will remember
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the gold the Temple of the Hermetic Order of the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Golden Dawn, which was in London, and this was a
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: group that Crowley was was he the leader of or
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: just a he staged a coup if I'm not mistaken,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: and they ended up breaking up UM rather than just
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: let him lead, all right, that that sounds familiar. So
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the breakup led to different factions in different groups sort
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of splintering off, and one of which was led by
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: someone named A. E. Waite. Uh. And this is where
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the story UM kind of takes Taro to the uh
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: to the forefront of popularity. UM. In nineteen ten eight
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: e Waite published the pictorial Key to the Tarot and Uh,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: this is where the most famous deck, like the deck
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: that you would probably buy today in the shopping mall,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: comes from A. E. Wait Uh getting together with Pamela
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Coleman Smith, who I believe was the artist, and this,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of change to the deck up and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: this is this became sort of the most popular one,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I believe in early nineteen hundred, nineteen o nine or so,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and it's still the most popular, Yeah, I mean far
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and away, especially in the United States, called the um
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Wait Smith deck or the Ritter Weight because I think
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Ritter published it, and it's it's if you saw you'd
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, that's that's a tarot deck. That's
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: what I think of it as it's this beautiful art
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: deco UM illustrations. UM that like if you, if you again,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: if you just think of a tarot card, like they're
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: probably imagining a um Waite Smith tarot card because Pamela
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Coleman Smith just nailed it. I mean, this is nineteen
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: o nine and there's a lot of different decks that
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: have the same thing, but they're just drawing differently or whatever.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: They're still publishing this um a hundred years plus later.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: It was just that well done. Yeah, and I think
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: they also, um, I don't know if it was to
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: make it more popular or not, but there was a
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: lot of Christian imagery on previous decks and they kind
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of toned those down a little bit for this deck,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Like they said, hey, why don't we get the pope
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: off of their and include some cool like ancient Grecian
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: priest instead. Uh. Maybe it was just to make it
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a little more sort of mysterious. I think so for sure,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: but also not they didn't want to scare off the occultists,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you know, they didn't want it to poppy, right. They
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: also there was a papist to papists um, she became
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the high priestess Um. But and it also followed a
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: lot of tradition to I think the moon card um
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: has been generally unchanged for like five hundred years. It's
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: still still contains the same baffling imagery that it always did.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: The moon card means um. It means illusion and deception
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: and that things are not as they appear, and so,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: of course, to demonstrate that and get it across, the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: moon card has a moon um. It also has a
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: path that leads off into the distance. Animal on either
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: side of the card to represent two sides of human nature.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I guess good and evil kind of thing. Yeah, I
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: got that part. Here's what it really takes a weird turn.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: There's towers in the in the background. Odd, and then
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: there's a crawfish crawling out of the water. Yeah. I
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: mean that's got to symbolize some sort of evolution, right,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no idea what the crawfish means,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: and I don't really want to know. It's just so
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: odd that that I would rather that be some sort
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of hermatic mystery for me forever. Well, don't write in
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: about that then, yeah, please don't tell me dear listener. Uh,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: let's take a break. Yeah, let's take a break, and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about the deck itself, because like,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: what's even on these cards? Right? Yeah? Okay, Chuck. Where
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: we left off, Basically, a man discovered a deck of
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: cards and decided that they were mystical in much the
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: same way that if somebody discovered a World of Warcraft
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: deck two years from now and decided that you could
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: use them to tell the future. Exact same thing, but
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: he made such a cool mythology around it that it
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: it just called on. Yeah, so we're gonna talk a
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: little bit about the deck there, not the most in
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: depth thing. We can't get into every card, but just
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: sort of an overview. We mentioned that there are seventy
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: eight cards, fifty six of these, or what's known as
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the minor Arcana, and they are the number car and
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: they're divided into four different suits, which are wands, swords, pinacles,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: and cups um, which sort of explains the Terrence Malick
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: film Night of Cups was in reference to the Tarot.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I saw there's a compilation of tarot and
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: films on Vimeo that it just made of Yeah, just
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: imagery from the tarot that that shows up in films
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: without you know, making a big deal out of it,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: kind of subtly. But was that one of those like
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: look it's everywhere kind of things a little bit, but
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I mean they didn't hammer at home. They really just
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: showed you, like, yeah, there's some pretty cool stuff. And
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that the end it said, see it's everywhere, she told you.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: All right. So the pinacles, the cups, the wands, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the swords are the four suits, and uh there are
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: also face cards in these suits, the page, the Night,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the Queen, the King, and the ace, right yeah, And
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I mean just like a regular deck of playing cards,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: there's one through ten cards and in the face cards,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: and then on top of that there's the twenty two
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: tarot cards that you think of like like the fool
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that we mentioned or the hero font we mentioned earlier, um,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: and there I think the minor arcana or arcana um
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: those are like the one through ten, Jack, Queen, King,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: um kind of thing. And then the major arcana or
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: arcana the twenty two um those are the ones that
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: are like the money divin divination cards, but you can
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: also divine the future based on some of the lesser
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: cards too, and I think people have kind of added
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: to that over time, and that was one of the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: reasons I think that the um the Waite Smith deck
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: was so interesting is that they really took some of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the formerly just kind of disused cards and really dressed
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: them up with new imagery. And I think that was
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons that became so popular. Should we
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: talk about some of the big daddy cards. Yeah, let's
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: see that. All right, there's the hour card and this
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: is not a card that you want, and we'll talk
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: about readings and how those go in a minute. But generally,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: you know, you sit across from someone or you do
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: it yourself, and you spread a certain number of cards out,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: depending on what kind of spread you're gonna use. Uh.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: If you get that Tower card, it's it's not a
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: great card. It's probably the worst card you can get. Um.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: It indicates all sorts of bad things. Uh Uh, something
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: that might happen to you that really has a negative
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: impact on your life, destruction, chaos. Uh, sort of like
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the rug getting pulled out from under your feet. Um,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: it's just no good. So you don't want to you
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: don't want to get that Tower card. No, you definitely
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: don't and then just kind of as a nod to
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: what I was just saying about some of the minor
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Arcanic cards also being fairly potent. I've seen um and
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: also thanks to to the Tarot Guide and I Publishing
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: for some of this info. UM that the Ten of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Swords again, they'd be like the Ten of Spades and
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: like a regular deck. That it is actually one of
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the the worst cards, that it's a runner up to
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: like the worst cards you can get, and it's more
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: about like being bad mouth behind your back or betrayed, um,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the the end of a relationship or a situation hitting
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: rock bottom. Nobody likes that. But we should say at
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: this point that when the card is pulled, it can
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: be pulled upside down. And there's a couple of interpretations
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: with that. One is that it means the opposite of
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: what it normally means, right side up or basically bizarro taro.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Or it also means um that the effect that it
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: means right side up is just gonna have like it's
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: gonna be weaker than it would have been had the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: card been right side up. Yeah, I mean the direction
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: certainly matters with how the card is drawn and laid
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and spread. Uh, and it seems to matter even more
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: maybe when there if you're not just doing sort of
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: a standard one card thing or like the three card spread,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: which is very common is uh, past present, future, But
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it seems like the more cards. What's the Celtic Cross,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: that's the sort of the most common complex one, and
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: that one really it really matters which way these cards
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: are pointing in relation to one another. Yeah. And also
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: each spot on the Celtic Cross spread represents a specific thing.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: So the card, the card you draw for that spot
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: is how that whatever that card says, like say chaos
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: or something like that, Um, how it relates to that
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: part of your life, um, like work like say um.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: And then you've got not just the interplay between the
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: card and its position, but also that card and its
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: position and the other cards and their position. So it's
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: really complicated and complex very quickly. But I mean it's
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: kind of like a really like a full astrology reading,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: like you can you can really go to town and
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: come up with some really in depth readings for people. Well,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: starting with the Celtic Cross for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Um.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: You've also got the fool card, which we mentioned earlier,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: just to follow up on that. That is the first
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: card of the major arcana, and that is that's a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: good card. Generally speaking. It's a positive thing a lot
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: of times, and it can indicate like a fresh start,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a new beginning. Um, if you're gonna go on some
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: exciting new adventure, you might uh draw the fool card
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: if you believe in that kind of thing. It's a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: cute card. There's especially in the um um Wait Smith's deck.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: It's like a youth who's got like a little bindle
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: over his shoulder, cute little white dog jumping up barking
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: at him like, hey, you're about to step off of
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a cliff. I think he's got a flower that he's smelling,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and just kind of like a happy transfixed look. You know,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the fool is usually a pretty happy person, and that's
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: a that's like a good example, though like you would
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: not necessarily think the fool is a good card. Same
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: with the death card. Um Ibviously, anytime somebody gets the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: death card, they are a little flipped out until the
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: reader tells them, actually, don't worry. The death card doesn't
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: actually mean death. You'd be way closer to being worried
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: about dying with the tower card. The death card is
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: much more um associated with change, transition, new beginnings, ends
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: of old things. It doesn't it doesn't mean you're gonna
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: die unless it does. In case, it does not help
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: though that when they draw that card, they say, and
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the kind of death is it on your head? That
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: was so good? That was such a great to geblin
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Or maybe we should get meagle to Uh I can't.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: I can't, right well, I think, yeah, I need to.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I need to sort of parse that out. I can't
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: over meagle you. I can't. I just miss him so much.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: He'll be back. Don't worry his taff it is sweaty
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: right now though. Uh So those are you know, some
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: of them major Arcanada that are sort of the money
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: cards that you might see if you go to a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: terror reading and get told by some you know a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: little old lady, what's going to happen in your life? Yeah?
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Or a young lady or a young man or an
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: old man, and you know, buinary non binary person, all
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: sorts of different people. And that's the point. Any single
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: person can be a tarot card reader. And one of
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the things that I saw, suggested Chuck, was to do
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: what Emily does, like every morning, take a card and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: just think about it for the rest of the day.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: What does that card mean to you? How does it
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: tie into your life right now? And by doing that,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: you know, over and over again on a daily basis,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you're just kind of wading into the world of Tarot cards,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: and you're also just absorbing what each card means and
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: how it can possibly relate to somebody's life. So I
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: saw that in Vogue UM as a really great way
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to kind of start and get into Tarot. And that's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: um that again, it's evidence that anybody who's interested can
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: become a terror reader. Again, I just want to stress
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: there's nothing magic about Tara. There's nothing magic about terror readers, um.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that they're not accomplished. Some of
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: the terror readers out there are really really talented at
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: what they do. They're just not performing anything magical, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: any reasonable Tara reader will tell you the exact same thing,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: right And for listeners, I was desperately trying to think
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: of an InVogue joke, and all I can think of
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: something about you're never going to get it, but never
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: gonna get it, never gonna get it. The time came
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and went. But I know we're all thinking the same thing. Yeah,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: but I mean, I'm with you. It's clunky, but sometimes
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: you just have to go back and like cite a joke,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: even if you don't pull it off right, then I
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: do that too. I'm with you. Okay. So I guess
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: you know, we we said that there's a spread that happens,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and you know, there's different ways of doing it and
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: obviously different ways of reading and interpreting the cards, but
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: generally you will have someone or yourself will do whatever
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: spread you've decided upon. And if you're giving, so what
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: else are reading? There are some people that that think
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: that that person being read should, like as the cards
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: are being shuffled and such, should talk out loud sort
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: of about the questions that they might have. Uh. Some
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: people think that they should actually cut the deck so
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: they physically interacted with it, while others say no, they
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: shouldn't touch the deck hands off. So there's sort of
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: different ways of going about it, depending on your methods.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, um, and I also saw that the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: there your tarot deck is supposed to have been gifted
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: to you. You're not supposed to buy your own Tarot deck.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: But again, there's no hardened fast rules in tarot, and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: anybody who's like stressing you to to adhere to hardened
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: fast rules does not get tarot. So they just need
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: to be quiet. That's your mouth. So UM. One of
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: the one of the ways that this pops up is
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that tarot is actually sometimes used by psychotherapists and it
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: actually has a kind of a lengthy tradition in psychotherapy
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: dating back to Carl Jung, who starting in the twenties
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: or thirties, became interested in tarot among some other divination
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: tools like the aging astrology. UM was trying to find
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: these archetypes that are universal the human consciousness that you
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: believed tarot kind of reflected, whether on purpose or not,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and that you could use that as a way to
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: kind of unlock that part of yourself that or that
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: part of the universal consciousness that was in yourself. Carl
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Young was maybe a little off the mark with that,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: but there's this idea that you can use this terror
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: reading to really stop and reflect and think about your life,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and that's a really great tool when you're in psychotherapy
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: UM or counseling or any kind of therapy. UM anything
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: that can kind of get you to stop and think
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: about chaos at work or your love life or whatever
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: in a certain way. Um, that's kind of guided by
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the card that you draw. Um, that's that's helpful, that's useful,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and there's there's nothing wrong with that at all. Yuh.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I agree, I think uh. And I don't think there
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: are a lot of psychotherapists out there that are saying like,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: let this be the guide to your life or anything
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: like that. No, run if your psychothapal. I think it's
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: more along the lines of like if they if the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: if it helps the patient, and if they get something
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: out of it as far as delving deeper into their
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: own psyche, and as long as the psychotherapist gets money too,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: that's all good. Sure. I mean that fifteen o'clock is
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: going to run. It's right, you get fifty lucky attree
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: forty three? Is that real? Okay, I'm kidding. I can
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: see forty five. But this is like what do they
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: break for commercials? Right? Okay? What if, um, you go
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to a tarot reader and they just nail it, especially
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: if it's presented to you is like m you can
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: kind of see a little bit of future with these cards.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to say that, but it's true, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: they nail the reading like it just speaks to you.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: And there are plenty of people out there who have
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: that have had that experience. But luckily science can swoop
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: in and say, calm down, calm down. There's actually a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: really good explanation to this. And there are two sides
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: of the same coin. One is cold readings. The other
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: is what's called the Forer effect. Yeah, and we you know,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: we talked about cold readings and uh, she's I feel
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: like we've done a few episodes where we kind of
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: touched on that. But that's the idea that when you
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: sit down in front of a a reader or it
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: could be whatever, if they have the crystal ball or
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the tero or they're reading lines on your hand and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, uh, that they are really um, if
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: they're good and they stay in business, then they're probably
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: really good at cold reading, which is sort of just
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: picking up on either obvious clues that you may not
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: realize that you've even said out loud, or even sort
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: of subconscious clues that they pick up on. And how
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: you carry your life or maybe how you walked in
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the room or what kind of car you arrived in,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: and just sort of picking up on all ease blatant
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: or non blatant clues that a person might unconsciously or
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: consciously give. Right. Um, So uh, that's where the reader
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: is doing the work. There's also another way where the read,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the person getting the reading, actually does the work, and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: that is that for effect I mentioned, which is uh.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: It's named after a psychologist who coined it. It's also
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: called the Barnum effect, based on P. T. Barnum's famous
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: uh saying there's a sucker born every minute. It's people's
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: willingness to accept very generic, very generalized information as tailored
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: exclusively to them, which is something that can happen into
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: terror reading. And in that case, it's not the reader
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: doing the work. It's you, the read who's like, oh,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: that makes a hundred percent sense. I totally see how
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: that that jibes with my life. Obviously, these tarot cards
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: are perfect and showing me the future. Yeah, I mean
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a confirmation bias in a way, because
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you'll you'll remember the things that work infirm and you
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: kind of don't really think about the other like six
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: or seven things that didn't come true, right exactly? Yeah,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: for sure. One other thing that they could read our
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: strangers in a cup of tea or beverage that can
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: be read as well cold read too. Thank you. You
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: got anything more about tarot? Nah? Neither. I think that
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: that's the end of this episode then, And since Chuck
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: said nah, I said me either. Obviously, every one's time
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm going to call this a correction.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And um, we got we heard from a few people
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: on this. This email was a little bit of a
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: spanking about the condition of John Denver upon his death.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sorry, John Denver's family of John Denver, it
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: was very disappointed to hear Josh make the false claim
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: that John Denver at cocaine in his system at the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: time it was plane crash. Toxicology test were neg for
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: all drugs including ethanol. The following pertinent paragraph was taken
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: from the NTSB investigation. I'm not gonna bother reading it,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: but it basically says what this guy says, which was
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: tests were negative for all screen drugs. Uh. If you'd
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: like to review the whole report, you can find it here. Um.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: While Mr Denver was no altar boy, drugs played no
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: role in the crash that killed him. Uh, And it's
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: a sad disservice to say otherwise to his memory and
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: his family. Very disappointing, you guys, And that's from John.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's the ghost of John Denver good he and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: uh George Burns are hanging out, that's right. Um, so yeah,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry John Denver and John Denver's family. That's I
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: don't know how I felt for that, but I totally did.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I knew that like years and years and years ago,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: and I guess I just never bothered to look it up.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: So my apologies for that one, and I take it back.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: We should do a short stuff one day on the
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: West Virginia controversy and country roads. Oh yeah, yeah, there's
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: two sides that have long been fighting, and I think
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: they each think it's settled of whether or not Almost
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Heaven was the state of West Virginia or the western
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: part of the state of Virginia. Oh, that is a
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: that's a feud. I don't know if we should wage
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: into that hornet's nest. Chuck, You're probably right, And also
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: I think John I'd like John John Denver by the
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: way I've said it before. I think he wrote one
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: of the best songs about Toledo ever, made Saturday Night
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: in Toledo, Ohio, where he talks about how you can
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: go to the park and watch the grass dye because
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: it's so boring. I love other good stuff. So hats
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: off to John, hats off to John Denver, and hats
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: off to us for being big people, especially me and
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: admitting our mistake. If you want to get in touch
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: with us and let us know about another mistake we made,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: doors wide Open, you can send it in an email
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
• 43:02
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• 43:05
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• 43:11
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