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