The next step on your path through life
The very next step on your path through life very likely does not require a whole lot of thought. The vast majority of our daily life activities rely on our making accurate predictions regarding the outcome of each action we do during the day. Most of these predictions are based on how we have learned how to get along with the rest of the world and have a very high probability of coming true.
If I put water in a pot, set it on the stove, and turn on the burner, I’m predicting that the water will come to a boil. If I see Joe or Nancy on the street and smile at them, I’m predicting they will smile back. In both cases Epictetus would point out that I don’t really have control over whether or not my predictions come true. The stove, the pot and even the water are beyond my control; and whether or not Joe or Nancy is having a good day is way beyond my control. Nonetheless, I am confident at 99.9% that the stove, pot and water action will succeed (if only because I am paying attention), but my confidence level about getting a return smile, while high because I’ve learned that predicting a smile in return for a smile is usually a good bet, is not as high because I don’t know what’s been going on in their lives.
I do not need to consult someone with better prediction skills than myself about the consequences of putting the water on to boil. It is remotely possible that I haven’t learned anything about how to prepare food, but even in that case, the subject matter is clear, mostly logical and easy to learn through simple observation and mimicry. Things get a little more complicated when I need to predict where to put my hand to catch that flyball.
Newtonian physics is very useful for predicting things like catching balls; some dogs have a better mastery of that than I do. Does the “fact” that Newtonian physics is no longer valid in the face of quantum physics (or whatever is the current “truth” about how balls fly through the air) mean that my prediction based on Newtonian mechanics is wrong? I still catch the ball. I, and my dog, have internalized a slew of rules for tracking flying balls and meeting them; logical rules that work every time (except when I screw up).
However, the question of whether or not I should smile at Joe or Nancy becomes infinitely more complex and no longer logical if I have romantic feelings about either one of them. Neither Newtonian nor quantum physics, nor any set of logical rules works when I need to make a prediction about the next step along my path of life when it involves other persons.
Prediction and fortune telling: cleromancy
Depending on how all consuming my romantic feelings are, I might want to seek some advice, some good advice regarding whether or not I should smile at Joe or Nancy the next time I see them. I may look for someone who has some method of figuring out how to predict what I should do next; what action I should take that will maximize the chances of fulfilling the romantic urge; or at least to avoid catastrophe.
If I am the leader of a nation, I may well have the same problems when I meet with the leader of another country. Between nation-states, various kinds of treaties take the place of romance, but the problem remains: there is no equivalent of Newtonian physics, no reliable way to predict the best course of action.
Every human culture throughout history has had fortune tellers or soothsayers making predictions. Today we have a range that goes from papers prepared by policy wonks in think tanks at one extreme to daily astrological sun sign predictions in a supermarket tabloid at the other extreme. The history and literature of every culture documents how important people have used professional fortune tellers prior to making important decisions. There may be no formal logic used by the fortune teller and the prediction itself is often ambiguous. The important person may find the prediction useful or may ignore it. The job of the fortune teller is not really to predict the future, but to provide helpful advice about the future possibilities. Perhaps with some reasonable guesses about the chances of each possibility.
Whether I’m the leader of a nation consulting a (professional) policy advisor or a lovesick teenager consulting a (professional) Tarot card reader, I hope they have in fact spent years mastering the logic and details of their trade. Can either one actually tell me what’s going to happen? No, but if they are in fact professional and have mastered their particular method of divination, then I should expect words that make sense to me and will provide me with something to assist in my making a decision about my next step on my path through life.
Professional fortune tellers, whether with degrees in economics, political science or psychology like to think they are being scientific and will in fact make predictions that are more like giving odds in a horse race — 6 to 1 that course of action A is going to work, 1 to 1 that course B will work, and so on. Being professional means that you do know a lot about the situation being consulted about. Just like in horse racing, the more past results you have to go on, the more likely you are to get closer to predictions that come true.
Unfortunately, in affairs of the heart (love or hate), most professionals have very little relevant history to go on; professional tarot card readers have to go on what cues they pick up as the client is asking the question. Good ones will at least be able to give good advice with whatever their tools show, whether or not the client wanted to hear the “truth.” (The “death” card is a handy one to have show up when it is obvious that the client is undergoing or about to undergo some kind of significant life event — a major change is happening; as if the current situation is going to die to make place for a new situation. The client is getting married next week? The death card means their single life is coming to an end.)
All soothsayers, truth peddlers, highly paid consultants, psychologists, astrologers and Tarot card readers, if they are any good at all, have a highly developed, structured and specialized vocabulary that they have spent years mastering. The best ones also know how to translate what they say into words their client can relate to. Their job is not really to predict the future, nor is it to tell their client what to do. Their job is to get the client to think constructively about the question they are asking, or sometimes to make clear what the real question is.
The tools for cleromancy
It really doesn’t matter which of the many fortune telling tools are used; the most important thing is that the fortune teller has mastered both the tool and the art of reading enough about the client to be able to provide the kind of words that will be helpful. Psychic ability, intuition and hunches are not as important as either mastery of the tool or being able to understand what the client is saying or not saying.
The second most important thing is how good a fit the tool is to the client and their question. Tarot is not a suitable tool for military or diplomatic strategy since traditional tarot reflects the social order of Medieval Europe; on the other hand, the I Ching might be eminently suitable because much of it is based on the early history of the warring states period in Chinese history.
There are a great many “tarot” decks available. Many of them are wonderful (artistic) creations that are fun to use. What I consider the traditional Tarot is the Rider-Waite deck with the very obvious stories that can be read just from looking at the pictures on the cards plus a grasp of the four elements used in western metaphysics since before Aristotle. The drawings were created around 1900, but reflect the cultural worldview held by most western people since the middle ages. In the early history of the Tarot, the cards were used to give individual (love life) advice, much like they are today at a renaissance faire.
On the other hand, the early history of the I Ching was often used to provide predictions for political leaders. This book, I Ching: The Oracle by Kerson Huang, provides a fascinating look into the history of the I Ching by an author who is also a Professor of Particle Physics at MIT.
Professor Huang makes the excellent point that the I Ching, and, by my extension, almost all cleromancy tools and techniques, are there to help answer questions for which numbers and measurements and thus science can not answer. None of the cleromancy tools actually give answers, they only give the trained user a logical and systematic way to deal with a client’s question.
For questions relating to love life, the Tarot is much better since many of the cards depict various aspects of personal relationships and personalities. Once a reader has got beyond the need to consult the texts and can focus on the client, the tool really doesn’t matter. Ironically, the Tarot is easier to use than the I Ching because (most ) Tarot decks have pictures that tell stories while the I Ching’s elegant and abstract logic of lines, trigrams and hexagrams is so extensive that it is essentially impossible to memorize what each means. Yet the Chinese characters for the 64 hexagrams are pictures; but modern Chinese has little relationship to the original meanings of those characters.
With only one exception, fortune telling tools are susceptible to reader manipulation. Anyone who uses them frequently will soon discover that the cards (or hexagrams or lines on the palm, or tea leaves) seem to reflect the reader’s current state of mind. In fact, one of the lines in the I ching, the one about a fox jumping across a creek and getting his tail wet, is a warning that the reader is reading too often and quite possibly digging themselves a psychic hole. Like a psycho analyst practicing on themselves.
The one exception is Astrology because the reader has no control at all over either the positions of the stars at the client’s birth, nor over the current positions of the stars. However, due to the huge number of factors involved in a professionally done “predictive” chart, the reader has to narrow things down to the most relevant, a process that is in effect very much like a “random” selection of Tarot cards or the hexagram resulting from “random” yarrow sticks manipulation.
I recently heard Anne Strainchamps interviewing a data scientist on NPR about his work with Babalonian astrological records. Both she and the scientist were very quick to say categorically that they didn’t “believe” in astrology; but she did go on to say that reading a description of her sun sign always seems right on. The problem they and most people have with astrology is that they assume it is supposed to predict the future. As the presidential astrologer in Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land was careful to say, “the stars incline, they don’t bind.” As the data scientist found when going over 700 years of Bablonian astrological records and predictions made, some do seem to be predictive. But like other records of state level fortune telling, the readers tend to make ambiguous predictions.
There are two sides to astrology. One side is the categorization of people into the 12 signs; a method of personality classification that Jung found very helpful in developing modern psychology. Other cultures classify personalities differently, such as the 11 signs in Chinese astrology. The sun sign is a key part of the descriptive aspect of astrology and by itself is essentially useless for describing a real person. “What’s your sign?” may be a conversation starter, but an actual birth chart has dozens of signs and aspects which quite often portray a personality quite different from the sun sign alone. Like Psych 101, though even this basic level of astrology needs study.
The other side, the “predictive” side of astrology, compares the dozens of planetary signs, house positions, and aspects found in the birth chart with the same complex set of factors defined by the current astronomical situation plus the dozens of relationships between those two sets of planetary and house positions, transits and so forth. In other words, “predictive” belongs in quotes because it is incredibly complex and still depends on the reader’s choice of which planetary positions, aspects, and transits are the most important in relation to the question being asked. And, of course, if the question is something like “will my relationship with my love interest work out?” then the reader needs the other person’s chart and a technique for relating two charts.
If you want to put the same amount of effort into the study of astrology as the average PhD holder has put into their degree, then you may be able to cast professional horoscopes with enough detail that your clients find your advice useful. Assuming that along the way you have also picked up a whole lot of ways of reading people.
I took a pass on that path after a solid year of learning how to cast and read charts and realizing how much I didn’t know and that it would be even more work than a PhD. Tarot is a lot easier; so is the I Ching. But both of those still require many hours of study over years of walking your own path before things begin to make sense. Becoming a “professional” fortune teller or other consultant regarding human questions also requires a great deal of observation and study of human beings walking their paths through life. Reading (The Great ) books in your cultural heritage is also very helpful, as is bingeing on well done movies.
Your next step on your journey along your path of life might be something you want to spend some time contemplating. There are tools to help, and people trained in how to use them. Some of these tools come dressed as science, such as the wonderful and often very misleading Myers-Briggs personality types. I have done that one several times and finally realized the type I come out with has more to do with my current job or life situation than does my combination of Sun, Moon, and Rising signs which never change.
It is very easy to spend too much time doing what I will call life path calibration. I very much do recommend digging into whichever tool catches your fancy — maybe once a year devoting a couple of (distraction free) days pondering what the tool seems to be telling you and perhaps making a few decisions about how you are conducting your life. Maybe once every three or four months might be ok for doing this kind of internal work. If you are happy and fulfilled doing what you are doing, with your current balance as you walk your path of life, it might well be years or decades before you need to seriously think about the next step on your path through your life. Not too many people are in life situations where the world will give them that luxury.
Life path calibration needs to be done, but works best when done while preparing for or dealing with a major life event. I use the word “calibration” because whatever tool you use to assist in the proces, it needs to be used with the same training, knowledge, care and (loving) attention given to a Formula 1 race car just before Le Mans.
