I noticed my friend @Dankquanicus brought this up in another thing thread and I thought it could be a good discussion for all of us practicioners to have.
Is it possible to change the results of a divination. Well here’s my thinking. I’ve been working with the tarot for off and on 15 years. My take on it is SOME things can be changed and some things can’t. Typically when I see things I don’t like in the minor arcana my feeling is I can change that fate typically through magick. When I see things I Don’t like in the major arcana I feel it’s pretty much out of my hands.
That’s just my UPG and there’s probably going to be alot of different opinions on this. I’m interested to see what other people think. Can we change our fates once we know them by divination?
@MiKu would you like to give us your take on this?
I quite like your saying there are some things in the Minor Arcana that you feel you can change.
I’ve done more than 520 Geomancy readings, and more than 300 Tarot readings (the two systems I have the most experience in).
I know with Geomancy I have never seen it done that a querent (myself or otherwise) has changed the outcome of a reading, with or without magick, and Geomancy is extremely precise, and not intuitive.
The Tarot, while still being quite technical, can still be more subjective, so I won’t speak much on it because it can be more difficult to predict with precision using the Tarot, especially with yes/no questions in my experience.
But, I often pull an advice card with the Tarot, but I’ve often found this to be of little use to others because they rarely follow the advice, and the future card tells me whether or not they will follow it.
In any case, a technical and less intuitive system, such as Geomancy or traditional horary astrology best answers this.
On changing the smaller details, Geomancy can also show which areas will bring benefit to the querent in any situation. Sometimes it shows that absolutely nothing can be done, but otherwise it directs the querent to one area. And I believe that this can lessen the negative effects of a negative outcome, but not change the course. And improve the effects of a positive outcome, but not change it either. But I’ll have to see this more in practice.
Yes, i believe its possible personally because i haven’t seen anything that proves to me that we exist on a predetermined, destined course and that there’s nothing one can do to get off those railroad tracks. That sort of destiny argument is a hard sell for me, and reminiscent of my Christian past where folks would tell me that God had a plan for me, and no matter what I did, that plan would be carried out to the letter. To be honest, i wouldn’t see much point to divination if it was never changeable either. When i seek divination, for me the point is to see if a particular strategy I’ve employed to acquire a certain result will actually work. If not, then the divination has saved me time from employing one strategy in favor of another that will work better. I don’t think every single thing divined to a person is changeable, but most of it, yes (through magickal intervention)
I’m inclined to agree @Verdo and that is how I practice divination work with regards to rest of my practice. I like to know if my strategies and workings I’ve devised will be successful and if not what do I need to do to change that and be more effective.
I think @Dankquanicus was right though there’s a big difference with the tarot and geomancy per se. The tarot is much more open to interpretation.
I would say most people don’t follow out everything in a reading. I don’t. I try sometimes but I don’t carry out steps that leads to the final outcome
I’m being 100 - some good days, some bad days
But to get the result you must follow it’s advice
On the majors there are mercurial genii and another type, in the minors there is one pair of angels and one pair demons assigned to a given minor.
I used to think this way as well, but with horary astrology, there is no question that it is so. Before I saw the universe as one body, just the method of horary astrology was deeply disturbing to me, because it would be completely impossible in a universe where everything is random.
Now, I don’t believe we don’t have free will, nor did the Ancients. However, today we like to think that we exercise free will all the time, but the truth is, we rarely do. We are almost always influenced by our passions, emotions, beliefs, circumstances etc. The power of free will almost never shines down to us.
And the Ancients say, that our passions and emotions are controlled by the planets (not their material form), and in traditonal practice there is no doubt about this. So, being almost completely dominated by these things, it’s not difficult to see why things almost never go against a traditional Horary reading, or a Geomancy reading, or a more technical Tarot reading such as through Crowley’s system (ever since I switched to his system, I have been able to far more accurately predict events with the Tarot)
Yeah I hear you, but I’m still not really buying it. For one thing, I’m somewhat hesitant to take whom you and others call the Ancients word as gospel. I think like all folks that have ever lived, they got some things right, and some things wrong. For instance, you can open up some of the oldest grimoires we have access to, and when you read about their methodology on how to interact with otherworldly spirits/realms, you can see the obvious biases and dogma that cloud their approach. You don’t need half the stuff they try to shove in there in order to summon a spirit, for example.
And when it comes to things like the planets, I would substitute the word “controlled” with the word “influenced” personally. I think these things influence a person in a certain direction…and if you live your life on autopilot and allow these influences to direct you, then what the planets dictate for your life is what indeed will be carried out. But if you choose to take action, you can change your path and effect a different outcome. I view divination in the same light. When I get a certain divined outcome, I read that as the predetermined outcome that will indeed play out if no further/different action is taken. But if a choose to alter the input variables, I can alter the output outcome.
Here’s a good example: Say I do divination on a girl I slept with. Through divination, i learn that this girl will give birth to a child, and its most likely mine. Three days later, surprise surprise, she tells me that she’s pregnant. Now, here…my belief is that if you do nothing, that child is being born 100%. If you choose to not intervene and let nature take its course, then the whole situation will run on inertia, the path of least resistance, and it will occur. However, if you choose to do magick to say…change her mind about going through with the pregnancy, or worse yet have a miscarriage, I believe the outcome of her giving birth to that child can be changed to something that is aligned to what you want. I don’t believe that no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter what demon or angel you call upon, that this child is going to be birthed no matter what. I just don’t buy it.
Then practice it, and then come back. At times there is much theorizing on here, but without practice.
I would have said the same exact thing, before I went into these practices.
I do practice it…that’s the thing. It’s not like I’ve never done divination before or had divination done for me. The whole purpose of it for me has always been to change the outcome of things. This is why I’m not really believing in this whole destiny argument because I have first hand experience of divinations of mine and others being changed simply by taking a different course of action from the one I was already employing.
What methods have you practiced, and to what extent?
And I have first hand experience as well from Geomancy, hundreds upon hundreds of times, and I’ve already said my experience. And I’ve said, I haven’t seen the same with tarot because it is more subjective, and less technical.
Similarly, I am not aware of any traditional Geomancer or traditional Horary Astrologer who has not seen the same.
I think @Verdo is correct most people live life on auto pilot and that means they are largely subject to thier passions and the movements of the stars .
I think there are alot of things that are predetermined to happen unless we take corrective action. Most of us can’t take corrective action however as we are not aware of what’s coming down the pike.
Was it Shakespeare that said something to the effect of “a strong man rules his stars”?
I.think we can excerise free will bit we most often abdicate this to live in comfort on autopilot.
@Dankquanicus I wonder if the reason it appears set on stone is because most people are not in control of thier lives, themselves or thier wills?
Well I think you somewhat downplay how specific and objective Tarot can be with the right amount of practice, but I’m practiced in both Tarot and Geomancy …(I would say Runes are my personal favorite divination method nowadays.) And I’ve been doing magick for years now so I’m not some newcomer off the street. I will say this though…if it is indeed the case that everything is destiny and there is no way to change anything…that would be very difficult to sufficiently prove/argue to any capacity that goes beyond simple UPG. Because if i go back to my earlier example and say…“well I was able to change the outcome of it to instead have the girl undergo an abortion and not give birth to that kid”, a person who believes in destiny could say…“well…you were destined to succeed in making her abort the kid” or “she was destined to have a miscarriage, so even if you didn’t use magick, she would’ve miscarried anyway.” This is why this debate isn’t the most interesting one to me because it strikes me as non-falsifiable.
I also want to say one thing on this: Without practice, what the Ancients say should not be believed, nor disregarded.
However, we are so quick to dismiss what the Ancients have said these days, because this myth of progress that boosts our egos. Many of these ancient magicians, they had for their friends kings and people in high ranking positions, excelled in warfare and were victorious, acquired great honors, rapidly rose to fame, some even becoming more famous than their own king, predicting massive events in their kingdom and elsewhere, and could even control spirits unscathed, unlike many today.
I’ve never seen a modern magician who has even come close to this. Most people on here are struggling, even. They have not acquired success, either materially or spiritually. This alone speaks volumes, that perhaps the methods of the Ancients deserve to be looked into. But most will not today, and rather immediately dismiss them, yet I do not see them excelling.
My first teacher a RHP kabbalist told me this. I still don’t know if I believe this or accept this but I’ll throw it in the ring with us.
Most of our lives already happened as in time already happened we just aren’t aware of it. There are a few significant points of inflection during each lifetime where a person has an opportunity to flex freewill and has the opportunity to grow in the way that soul intended. Like a spiritual lesson.
To her it was a mix of predeterminism and freewill at certain intervals.
I’d like to believe I’m in control of my fate and my Destiny is mine. I have to play the hand I’m dealt and make it my own thing.
I don’t look down on them as purely primitive individuals that know nothing about anything and should be relegated to the dustbin of history, nor do I view them as omniscient elders who never got anything regarding spirituality incorrect. So yeah, we agree there. The main reason I said that is because I’m not solely convinced by arguments that start with, “Well, the Ancients said…”…I need more than that.
But I’ll just end with this @Dankquanicus . I wont say that you are wrong. I’m not that arrogant. What I will say though is that this question of does destiny govern divination is too non-falsifiable to sufficiently argue in a way that would convince me 100% of one point of view over another.
That is true, with a technical system, the Tarot can be very precise. However, it can be more subjective depending on the question and position. With Geomancy, if one were to ask “Will I marry this woman”, and the Judge is Carcer, the answer is clear and simple, they will not. If the Judge is Conjunctio, the answer is clear and simple again, they will. If they do not marry and the judge was Conjunctio, then there is no two ways about it, the reading was wrong.
But this is what I have never seen in my practice. I have never seen that the Judge was wrong and any case, despite in some situations even years passed by before the situation coming to a close (and the questited was not aware of the reading). Calculate the variables of things going wrong in the span of more than a year. It is immeasurable.
But in any case, if things were completely random, horary astrology itself would not be possible, as well as some systems of generating a Geomantic chart. How Horary Astrology works, is that the time a question is a recieved, the diviner notes down the time the question was asked or understood, and looks at the position of the 12 Houses of Heaven and the planets at that moment.
There is absolutely nothing random about this. With modern world view, this should not even be possible, yet Horary astrology is perhaps the ultimate system of divination.
My apologies, I did not mean to come off that way, that they are the ultimate authority.
I actually appreciate the nice way of going about the argument, and I won’t say you’re wrong either. It is interesting to argue in any case.
I’m not a believer in fate at all. It’s always felt an artificial concept, sometimes to avoid responsibility, guilt or might have beens, its easier to give up and let it go as fate.
I think the remote viewers, who use rv as a form of divination habe a good model. It’s like the future is a cloud of possibilities. As you get closer, the cloud shrinks, fewer possibilities become available.
It takes more energy to change some outcomes, simply because they have more energy put into them existing, like a sort of momentum, if you will.
If it takes more energy than you can muster, it’ll feel inevitable, but that’s not the same thing as actually being inevitable. Likewise making an outcome fixed is also impossible, you just make it by far the most likely result as much as you can. But it can be so likely it might as well be fixed, because it would take a very unexpected event to change it.
But the path through the cloud is made of descisions, so it doesn’t make sense to me that it couldn’t be mutable.
I think even just reading the cards can change things. And as the future changes, reading them on different days can give different results for the same question and does so all the time.