Quantum Mechanics and Tarot
Are you wondering what quantum mechanics could possibly have to do with tarot? You are probably not alone. And frankly most people (including tarot readers) would not even be interested. Feel free to skip this blog post. However, if like me you are always curious about the ways of the universe and look for explanations, not least for the astounding results of a tarot reading, I think Heisenberg had it down.
There are laws that the universe seems to operate on, whether or not you believe in them. Take gravity. Drop a brick and if it lands on your toe you will probably agree that it hurts. Also that gravity is a force to be reckoned with.
Newton’s Law of Gravity
You do not have to understand Newton’s equation to know that dropping a brick on your foot is going to hurt. We get the consequences of gravity at an early age. But understanding Newton’s Laws gives us an insight into how and why the planets move around the sun, and why the universe looks the way it does.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, a foundation of quantum physics, explains that when we look closely at something very, very small, the huge amount of energy we use to make it visible inevitably affects the object we are looking at. (Apologies to all physicists for this simplification of many centuries of inquiry into matter and energy.)
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle as an Equation
Does the equation above help you to understand why it is difficult to examine anything closely without changing it? Probably not. And yet the idea that every particle in the universe has its own energy field has been of philosophical and scientific enquiry going back thousands of years.
Einstein and E=mc2
Einstein took Heisenberg’s understanding one step further. He linked mass to energy in one simple equation that is familiar to most of us. E=mc2 (squared) tells us that the energy of any particle is the same as its mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Most importantly it shows that mass and energy are both ways to describe the same thing – like two sides of a coin.
Panpsychism and Consciousness
Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophies of the mind and has become a recent but mainstream scientific theory. It proposes that all matter, every particle of the universe, is conscious. The modern theory does not define what consciousness means but philosophers and scientists, who struggle with anything that cannot be seen or measured, argue that it explains the existence of something undetectable that we know exists.
If the scientific theory of Pansychism does at last acknowledge the existence of consciousness in our universe, it goes far beyond acceptance that consciousness exists (I think most of us knew that already despite the lack of ‘scientific’ proof – except perhaps fundamentalist materialists who refuse to believe anything unless they can measure it). If all matter is conscious in the same way that it has energy, it means that we share that quality of consciousness with all and every particle of our Earth, our Sun, the planets, our galaxy, and all the universes beyond. Some people might explain this consciousness as God. Anyone who knows about the Hindu concept of Prana might be going, “Duh! Yes, we knew that already. Next!”
“And I’m still asking, what does this have to do with tarot?”
Well, a tarot reading is an observation of you now, at the time of the reading. It is as though you have pressed the ‘pause’ button. Everything comes to a halt, and now you can examine it under a microscope. Your life, your experiences, thoughts, feelings, emotions, are stopped, frozen in this moment in time. When we freeze frame our life we can examine it in detail. Just as Heisenberg predicted for the every particle in the universe, by stopping our life to examine it, we inevitable change it.
Why does it always happen to me?
Our unconscious is our expresses itself through our behaviours. We often act in ways that we do not understand and which lead to events or consequences that seem to be outside our control. Sometimes we can recognise patterns of behaviour in ourselves and others; and yet we all seem destined to repeat them. Our unconscious responses to the external world cause us to act and have exactly the same effect, over and over again. We become comfortable with responses and behaviours that might have served us well in the past, even though they may have been negatively impacting our lives for years.
Synchronicity and the Unconscious Mind
The unconscious is the deep part of our mind that is inaccessible to us but which influences the way we interact with the world - our feelings, our judgements and our actions. Freud described our mind as like an iceberg, with most of it hidden from us. The tarot is one way we can communicate with our unconscious, through the language of symbols and archetypes.
Jung proposed that we are all linked to one another through shared unconscious memories. He called it the Collective Unconscious. If all matter is conscious, then we are linked through consciousness to everything in the Universe – and for Jung that constant and eternal communication with everything in the Universe enables what he described as ‘synchronicity’. He said that there is no such thing as coincidence. That time when you thought of a friend a moment before they called you. Or suddenly recognised a place that you have never been to before - so common it even has a name - deja vue. We can all think of events that surprised us and we thought, “How amazing! What a coincidence!” This is Jung’s synchronicity - tapping into the universal consciousness in ways that surprise us.
Jungian Tarot works through synchronicity. We understand the messages from the archetypes that we have all been familiar with from our earliest days – the Queens, Kings and Princesses; good and evil; magicians and ferocious animals; love and grief; anger and sorrow; nightmares and nostalgic memories. The symbols become illustrations of the smallest details of our lives and can be pieced together to give the big picture of where we are right now. And just as Heisenberg predicted, when we stop and stare at our life in that freeze-frame moment, we can see what it is made of and think we can predict where it might go. Now we are empowered. We can start up again and we can change its energy, its direction.
Tarot is a way to stand back and explore our relationship with the external world, with the people we love, with those who have an influence on our life; with our hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties, and, most importantly, to develop the strategies we can employ to achieve and manifest the life we want.
A tarot reading can change your life.
In fact, I can say with certainty that a good tarot reading will change your life. That moment of clarity cannot be unseen. Understanding the impact on your life of past relationships, present concerns, or future possibilities, must inevitably affect the way you approach life afterwards.
You can understand and change your behaviours. You can choose to harness your new insights to alter your direction. Perhaps you decide to change your own damaging, hurtful or destructive behaviours; or challenge those behaviours from others. You can realise and acknowledge your talents or decide to acquire new skills. You can explore the ways in which outside forces have impacted your life and decide to adopt new tactics to overcome the obstacles in your path.
Whatever the outcome of a tarot reading, seeing that moment in your life in a freeze frame, illuminated by the cards, offers you the gift of insight into your journey.