Why I Find Tarot Fascinating

When I grew up I used to think that Tarot was for fat old gypsy women, weird-looking quacks and Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost. It was years later that by circumstances I came into the posession of a Rider-Waite Tarot (the standard tarot deck). I read somewhere that the Rider-Waite tarot is the ugliest deck of them all. Well, that's probably true. It is also true that it is quite fascinating, for someone that enjoys symbolism like me.

Then I started playing with it. My game was quite simple: I would be shuffling the Major Arcana (the first 22 cards) and extract one card out of it. I have to say that some rather weird things happened. The first time I looked at the cards, I was drawn by the sight of one card: the Hermit (no. 9). Then, when I shuffled the cards and extracted one, to my surprise I got this same one. When I shuffled the next day, I got the Hermit again. Well, once can assume I wasn't shuffling very well. That's well possible. Yet the third day when I shuffled again I got the same card. I have to say that this experience had an impact on me, in the sense that it made me more interested (and perhaps more appreciative) of the Tarot.

Since then, I have spent some time to decipher the symbols and imagery of the Tarot, which I find quite fascinating. I'm by no means a Tarot specialist, but I'm trying to learn about it. I found that the Tarot is to some degree a two-dimensional portrayal of the human experience - kind of like snapshots are of ourselves at different times through life. Except these 'pictures' are portraying our internal, rather than our external selves.

So what do I think Tarot is relevant for?
1. Mirror of ourselves - so far, this is the best use I could find for it. When I pick a card out of the shuffle, I get an image of where I'm at and perhaps who I am at that particular moment. The card does not have universal validity - that is, it changes through time as we ourselves change.
2. Meditative and learning tool - studying one of the 22 major trump cards from time to time gives you insight into the deeper level of human experience. It is what Jung would have called 'tapping into the collective unconscious'. It is also, incidentally, a great way to learn about the symbols of Western Esotericism (something I'm really keen on).
3. Insight into the future? - This is what Tarot is most renowned for. People pay good money for some tarot reader to look into their future. While I think Tarot may be showing something about the future, I think it does it by showing you the path you are on, or the consequences of the things you are doing in the present. However, it does this in very symbolic and personal terms, and I think all a card reader can do for you is to show you some of the symbolism of the card. Card readers cannot really know what goes inside your head - only you can know that. In other words, the best person who can and should analyze cards is yourself. Moreover, the 'future' you see in cards is changeable. It doesn't need to remain that way. In many ways, the very act of looking into the future changes it, because we then know how to remove ourselves from a path we do not want to take.