Spiegeloog - Athena: A Scientific Approach to Divination

Imagine – you are visiting a medieval market and you discover a stall of tarot cards with an old, mysterious lady. Spontaneously, you decide to have a tarot reading. Although you have never met the woman before, her future assessments seem surprisingly accurate. Sadly, the future she paints seems dark, she taps into your secret worries and addresses some of your worst nightmares. Worried, she advises you to be careful. How would you react? Would this influence your future decision making? If you belong to the majority of the population, you would forget about it. After all, there is no empirical evidence for the scientific truth behind tarot cards, isn’t there? But let’s say some of the events surprisingly do turn out to be true. Can tarot cards be considered scientific after all?

Tarot cards have a long and debated past – it is believed that they originated in the 15th century in Italy and have been used over time as symbolic divinatory tools (Naast, 2022). A tarot deck consists of 78 cards with 22 major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards displaying archetypal symbols. Each card has its individual meaning and helps to identify recurring life themes. There are specific spiritual rules that are believed to govern tarot card readings, a deeper discussion goes beyond the scope of this column, but I recommend looking them up in the article below, I found them quite fascinating! There has been an extensive debate whether there is a scientific basis underlying tarot cards, three explanations stand out.

Firstly, Carl Jung proposed the concept of synchronicity to explain how divination tools, like tarot cards work (Margulius, 2017). Synchronicity describes the simultaneous occurrence of two events that appear meaningfully related, but lack a verifiable causal connection. According to this perspective, tarot readings don’t predict the future, rather they form a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, allowing people to interpret the card’s predictions in a way that resonates with their personal life experiences. Thus, they help to uncover insights that may already exist in their unconscious minds, but have not yet reached conscious awareness. There are three key principles in synchronicity. First, the relationships between synchronistic events is purely a coincidence. For example, if the tarot reading suggests that someone from your past will return and just a few hours later an old high school friend unexpectedly calls, these two events are not related to each other. Second, the events are acausal, meaning that one does not lead to the other. As such, the tarot reading does not cause your friend to reach out, both events are independent from each other. Lastly, subjective meaning is important, as human minds naturally try to make sense of the world by seeking pattern and significance. Thus, when confronted with coincidence, people subconsciously assign meaning to it, interpreting a deeper personal connection between the events.

Next, the technique of “cold reading” sheds light on the seemingly paranormal ability of the reader, that is, the reason why the predictions are often surprisingly accurate even though the reader has no personal knowledge about the client (Ivtzan, 2007). According to Hymann (1977) as outlined in Ivtzan (2007), the technique relies on sharp observation and good memory through which the reader elicits subtle cues from the client, such as body language, which can be used to infer valuable information, like socioeconomic status or other personal characteristics. Subsequently, the reader links these cues to predetermined general categories and common issues that are likely to apply to a majority of people. By carefully monitoring the client’s initial reactions and by fishing for additional details, the reader refines her initial hypothesis, allowing him or her to infer personal issues and attach individual significance (Ivtzan, 2007).

Lastly, the well-known placebo effect in psychological and medical science, has been put forward to unravel the science behind tarot cards. In this view, it is the power of our expectation regarding the card’s effectiveness that trigger psychological changes, which in turn shape our perception of reality. Thus, it is our own belief and our unconscious actions that lead to changes in reality which are mistakenly attributed to the predictive power of tarot cards (Light Tarot, 2023).

Finally, while there is no scientific evidence that tarot cards can predict the future, the concepts of synchronicity, cold reading and the placebo effect shed light on how the readings can gain personal meaning for the individual. Ultimately, it cannot be denied that there is a wide fascination for tarot cards in society and that it is up to the individual to decide whether the readings are personally significant. Further, it is important to acknowledge the advantages tarot cards offer, such as as tools for self-reflection, hope, comfort or guidance in decision-making (Hofer, 2009). Lastly, they might be used in scientific contexts after all such as as projective techniques in therapeutic contexts thereby inviting further research and exploration.