The card you pull:
Accidentally read “pump”
Maybe… you should say that to your friend, instead of using your shared religious beliefs that convince them to stay in a shitty relationship…?
tarot cards don’t have to be religious/spiritual.
Genuinely I would love to understand your perspective - how are they not a religious practice?
Jungian archetypes and shadow work reflection prompts.
I’m not sure how the presence of ideas promoted by Jung or the concept of guided self-reflection are at all mutually exclusive with religious beliefs.
I don’t see how they’re wedded.
They’re not, they’re distinct concepts that are commonly found expressed in religious practices but are not in of themselves spiritual. I’m sorry I’m genuinely confused as to what you’re saying.
Then you just answered your own question. You really are confused, it’s okay to admit it.
I’m saying you’re way too attached to this and it may be worth exploring, in your own time. This is like if someone latched on to your SN and assume you’re into the dark arts and Loki is your patron.
They work as excellent prompts for introspection and for helping you to see connections you might have missed before. The output can ofc be entirely non-sensical but if everyone involved is aware they are simply cards then that isn’t really an issue, you just laugh about it and move on.
It’s like rubber ducking in programming really, but for whatever issue you “ask” the cards.
In the meme the scenario is made up and we don’t know if the two individuals believe the cards can be used for something spiritual or not, but it’s just a meme anyways so it doesn’t really matter.
Thank you! That’s roughly what I thought, I appreciate the explanation. I wonder what the rate of spiritual vs. “secular” use of tarot is, I certainly see it treated with a degree of sincerity far more often than not, but there’s a large number of more abstractly spititual people in my social cricles and I assume that’s not the norm.
Why do you care?
Why the fuck do you care? It’s a public forum.
It is indeed a public forum - and you’re policing how other people engage with it.
I am not. I never told you what to do or not do. Just pointed out what you were doing.
If the point was not to criticize the behavior, why post a meme that presents that behavior in a reductive and highly sarcastic way?
You’re literally doing the same thing with the meme I posted to you lmao
I read Tarot as a mild hobby - I love collecting decks and paraphernalia and then using them. But for me it’s like any other creative impetus randomizer machine (scenes from a hat in improv, the artists way, oblique strategies…) - you pull a series of images and then talk about how it makes you feel.
it’s not spiritual at all for me.
Same except I’m pretty sure that’s what spirituality is, or can be, anyway. I’ve worked hospitals where atheist chaplains are a thing. Even atheists need help coming to terms with death sometimes. Not feeling inherently connected to anything in particular is still a belief about how you relate the the universe. And tbh I think a lot of the shit atheists get is due to it not adequately being recognized as a spirituality. They’re not actually missing one, it just looks different.
And I wholeheartedly respect that - I know people who view it as a means to enable meditative reflection on their actions, and people who hold to the messages in the cards as truth from the universe. But either way you should be straight with your friends when you see them making a bad call.
I mean, if they’re doing what the meme depicts, they’ve probably already had that conversation in a straightforward way. It does say “the 8th time” after all. If someone is repeatedly asking for your advice and then ignoring your advice, I think a little snark is reasonable.
That’s certainly a valid interpretation - though in that case I’d question why they’re resorting to snark while continuing to treat with their friend on the issue.
How is saying „dump him“ convincing them to stay in the relationship?
The seven other times they didn’t say it and the friend remained in the relationship.
The meme wants to say that they are trying to tell their friend to dump him and after 7 times of their friend not getting it (or not noticing that getting relationship advice 7 times is not a good sign for the relationship) they need to spell it out directly.
But they didn’t get real relationship advice, they asked for a card reading. That their own uncertainty in the relationship has lead them to consult an outside force 8 times is my whole point - if you are giving them readings, at some point you are in part responsible for not speaking up and instead allowing them to convince themselves to stay in that relationship. You are the one aiding their interpretation of the cards - you are, at the very least through your inaction by not directly confronting them, helping them to convince themselves to stay.
But they did speak up see the meme and holy shit it’s only a meme don’t read so much into it. It’s just supposed to be a joke about someone too dense to get the hint.
Spelling words with cards is not directly telling them to do something (or directly expressing yourself at all), and my one sentence criticism of a religious practice that started this is barely taking something too seriously. The previous comment was simply to clarify my position, since you misunderstood what I was saying.
It is perhaps the people leaping to defend the poor behavior in the meme that are taking it too seriously - why feel the need to be defensive over the criticism of behavior in a meme in the first place?
There is no implication that the previous times the subject used tarot to convince the person to stay in their relationship. If anything it’s the opposite.
I don’t mean to say that they dirrctly convinced them to stay in the relationship - I mean that they spent seven sessions giving their friend a reading and even on the 8th time, with a clear deeply held opinion, they are hiding their actual feelings behind the concit of a card game. They need to speak up and express their concerns to their friend directly, not attempt subtly hint to their friend via the mechanisms of chance.
If you actually want them to do something, just tell them, don’t enable them to keep convincing themselves to stay in a bad situation by being disingenuous with them like this.
Laying out the cards like this is not hiding your actual feelings.
Do you realise the post is a joke?
It’s literally relying on a message written in the cards to convey your feelings to them - the entire premise of the joke is about not being direct with your friend.
Writing “dump him” is directly saying “dump him” my friend.
Divination will never tell you to do or not do something. They’re really not tools for reading the future so they don’t prescript behavior they just describe a scene.
A horrible dark reading can easily be misconstrued if you’re lying to yourself. Hence the joke.
That’s interesting, thank you!
They are about as religious as a paper fortune game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller
Even among people who take their cards “seriously” they aren’t religious in nature. It’s that “I’m spiritual, not religious” line because there’s basically no religion that’s welcoming to Tarot.
It’s a hundreds year old Italian & French card game that has a reputation. You can play standard card games like War and Go Fish with tarot and you can lay a reading with Grandma’s bridge deck.
It’s all the same magical thinking that’s ruining the fucking planet
I am aware of what Tarot is - to quote wikipedia:
Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, ethics, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.
It is not a spiritual practice or religious belief because of the deck of cards it uses - it’s because tarot reading is a supernatural means of generating prophecies.
So is the Groundhog:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/02/groundhog-day-2026-shadow-results/88393885007/
We read prophecies all the time. They made a whole industry out of betting on such things.
I don’t disagree? While I doubt there are many who truly believe in the prediction of punxsutawney phil, it would absolutely be a spiritual or religious observance/ritual for those that do.
Bwahahaha this is perfect
