QUANTUM PHYSICS, SYNCHRONICITY, AND THE TAROT

QUANTUM PHYSICS, SYNCHRONICITY, AND THE TAROT


Just about anyone who has ever done a tarot reading and marveled at its
accuracy has wondered, "How does it work?" The answer to this question
depends greatly on our personal beliefs about spirituality, philosophy, and
the way the world works, and there are many possible theories. On one end of
the spectrum, many tarotists believe their readings are guided by a conscious
force, whether that be God/dess, an angel or spiritual guide, or one's higher
self. At the other end of the spectrum are tarotists of the psychological
school, who believe that tarot cards can only reflect projections of what is
in the mind of the client (and the reader), and who use a more interactive
style of reading similar to counseling.
Then there are the in between possibilities, which form the subject of this
article – those who may not believe that a conscious force is guiding each
reading, but who nevertheless believe there is more going on than simple
psychological projection. I confess to falling in this middle ground. Since
most of my readings are conducted via e-mail, without the client even seeing
the cards until after the reading is completed, there is little possibility
that her projections are influencing my reading, nor that I am reading subtle
body-language clues that help me interpret the cards. Yet, I receive so much
positive feedback for my readings, even for those that are very detailed and
specific, that I cannot believe that the way the cards fall is not linked to
the client's actual circumstances somehow. If I did not think that were so, I
could not ethically continue doing this type of tarot reading.
So being a scientist at heart, I have to ask myself, "How does it work?"
Whatever it is, it has to fit some basic criteria:
- Distance does not affect it, the client can be anywhere in the world
- There is no apparent exchange of energy between the reader and the client
- It is capable of focusing on a specific client's circumstances
- It is capable of affecting the physical layout of the cards
I do not consider myself telepathic or psychic, so I tentatively rule out
these mechanisms – although I don't discount the possibility that tarot cards
or other tools may facilitate such abilities in people that are not otherwise
aware of them. So let's look at some other interesting possibilities –
quantum physics and Jung's theory of synchronicity – which between them may
satisfy the above criteria. While many will argue that it is still not proven
that these mechanisms could reliably influence physical objects such as tarot
cards, they come closer than any other ideas I have seen in explaining what
could be happening, and if nothing else, are fascinating to think about.
Quantum Physics
Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics originally developed to explain the
behavior of very small particles, such as photons and electrons, which did not
appear to behave the same way as larger objects. Large objects follow certain
predictable laws of physics, called Newtonian mechanics, which had previously
been developed. For example, when you push a ball with a certain force, it
will move with a certain speed in a certain direction. If you know everything
about the situation, such as the ball's weight and the amount of force you
use, you can predict exactly what will happen. The object will behave the
same way whether you are watching it or not, according to unchanging laws of
cause and effect. These days, we know that all things, no matter their size,
are subject to quantum mechanics; however, it is generally not possible to
observe these effects in large objects, and Newtonian mechanics are still
perfectly good for describing their behavior.
When scientists began studying small particles, they found that Newtonian
physics no longer held true. Things no longer had to have a cause to produce
an effect – for example, radioactive particles decay for no apparent reason.
Having measured their behavior in the past, we can predict the probability of
a radioactive decay in a given period of time, but we cannot determine when or
why it will actually happen. Nor is it likely that we ever will be able to,
since particles of this size behave according to probabilities, and not
specific chains of action and reaction.
Another example is that very small particles cannot be determined to be in an
exact place. Instead, they exist in a kind of "probability-space" – there is a
certain probability of them being here, and a certain probability of them
being there. Not only that, they aren't really either here or there, they are
both here and there at the same time! In fact, scientists recently divided an
atom into two of its wave-functions (another term for probability-space) –
essentially creating a situation in which the whole atom was both in one place
and in another, at the same time.
This is all pretty mind-boggling, but there are some relevant aspects to it.
One is that, at a very basic fundamental level, particles are connected to one
another and somehow seem to "know" what state other particles are in, even
when the distance is too great for them to somehow be transmitting energy or
information back and forth. The deeper we go, the more things seem to be
interconnected in ways that don't require a transfer of energy. If things
could be connected in this way, it seems possible that a connection could be
made between a tarot reading in one place and the state of information in
another place (the client's environment).
Second, things at this level all behave as probabilities, not as objects with
a fixed behavior. So if we are receiving information through these basic
interconnected pathways, most likely we are working with probabilities, rather
than fixed outcomes. Most of the time, we'll receive the most probable
information about the situation – but rarely, we may receive improbable
information. If we do enough readings, the odds are that eventually we'll get
something showing up in our reading that is actually unlikely to happen. We've
all experienced that – a reading that just doesn't seem to click or which
seems way off, on rare occasions.
The odd things about quantum particles is that they exist in probability-space
until we look at them. As soon as we make an observation of them, we can't
avoid affecting the system in such a way that their wave-forms collapse and
they "choose" one state or another to be in. And from then on, they stay in
that state. It's almost as if, as long as we're not looking, everything is
fluid and anything is possible. As soon as we decide to look, one or the
other probability is chosen as a fixed reality. This is odd because it
suggests that the state of the world is not independent of our conscious
observation of it – an idea which runs counter to modern science at a very
fundamental level.
An interesting question to ponder is, does that fact that we've looked at it
change the situation? The most likely answer is yes, it does. According to
quantum mechanics, at least, we would have observed a situation and fixed
certain aspects of it by doing a reading on it. However, it is only fixed in
that moment of time, and future actions change the situation again.
The exciting thing about quantum mechanics is that, the further down toward
fundamental reality you go, the more interconnected the world seems to be and
the less fixed reality appears to become. Interactions between particles are
no longer limited by time and space, and the "rules" of cause and effect fall
by the wayside. Indeed, reality itself is apparently affected by our
observation or perception of it. This opens the door to the possibility that a
lot of things are simply not the way the scientific world has been assuming
for the last several hundred years.
On the other hand, there is not yet any proof that quantum effects can be
observed in the behavior of large objects, such as tarot cards, or that the
interconnected pathways are specific enough to transmit the kind of
information that appears in a tarot reading (although people are thinking
about quantum computers and instantaneous transmission of information). Which
is where synchronicity comes in…
Synchronicity
Carl Jung, the noted psychologist and professor, noticed that many of his
patients and he himself had had experiences in which "coincidences" seemed to
play a meaningful role, but which were too unlikely to have occurred by random
chance. For example, a patient might dream of a particular butterfly, only to
encounter a real butterfly of that species during a counseling session the
next day in which the patient was describing the dream. In his view, these
events were most likely to occur when the patient needed the experience to
trigger a breakthrough, and it was somehow attracted to her.
At this time, theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were just being
developed, and Jung was friendly with Einstein and Pauli, with whom he
corresponded and encountered in society. Jung recognized in the principles of
quantum mechanics a possible explanation for the phenomenon he was observing,
which he called "synchronicity." He postulated that in addition to the
cause-and-effect relationships with which we are familiar, there is another
"connecting principle" which is acausal in nature. In other words, two things
may be connected without having any apparent cause and effect relationship.
Although Jung was not particularly conversant with tarot, he was fascinated by
the I Ching, and suggested that synchronicity could be responsible for the way
that divination using I Ching might work. He also conducted experiments with
astrology to test the ideas of synchronicity, but was not entirely certain
that the motions of the planets did not in fact have a causal relationship to
our personalities and events during our lives.
In his treatise on synchronicity, Jung discusses a series of experiments on
ESP, which demonstrated to him that there could be a connection between
physical objects (e.g., psy cards) and the images one sees in one's mind, even
though there could not possibly be a causal relationship between the two. He
also discusses precognitive dreams as an example of this phenomenon. One of
the most interesting aspects of this research is that it showed that these
various "psychic" abilities were not affected by distance or time, similar to
the way that quantum particles can be connected regardless of their distance
apart. In fact, many of the precognitive dreams on record and which he
experienced with his patients did not coincide in time with the events with
which they were connected, although they were often within few days.
Because these synchronistic events generally do involve physical objects, they
provide a possible explanation for tarot readings and other divination
techniques. Jung argues that our scientific world became so steeped in the
concepts of cause and effect over the last few centuries that any phenomena
that did not fit that model were ignored or ridiculed. Now that it has been
demonstrated that other models lie at the very basis of our physical world,
there is the possibility that synchronistic events may gain more credence in
the larger world as well.
Unfortunately, synchronistic events are next to impossible to study, almost by
definition, since the scientific method is based on repeatable cause and
effect. Since they don't occur with any predictable regularity, it is
difficult to even prove their existence. This points out one possible
difficulty with this theory as a basis for tarot reading – it would have to be
a mechanism that works with reasonable reliability, over and over, whenever a
tarot reader wishes to do a reading. Most synchronistic events happen in an
unplanned manner, without regularity. The question is, can this acausal
connecting mechanism be harnessed and used by the tarot reader in a conscious,
directed manner?
One thing Jung noticed about the ESP and astrology research was that the
results depended on the subject's frame of mind. For example, if a subject was
bored or disbelieving, he or she would not score well on an ESP test compared
to a subject that was enthusiastic about the test. Similarly, when asked to
randomly select subjects' charts for an experiment on astrological
conjunctions related to marriage, an experienced astrologer would
synchronistically pair up a higher percentage of subjects with the appropriate
conjunctions without ever having looked at the charts. A computer-generated
matching would, on the other hand, select only an average number of people
with the appropriate conjunctions. This effect was entirely unexpected and
not part of the original astrological study.
These results suggest that, even if the underlying mechanisms exist, the
ability to make use of synchronistic approaches is dependent on one's frame of
mind and belief. To some extent, tarot readers know this implicitly. Our
readings are better when we are in a positive and receptive frame of mind, and
not doubting our abilities. It may also suggest that we need to direct our
thoughts along the appropriate pathways to get the correct results. If
everything is connected at some basic level, we could get any result at all if
we did not direct our thoughts toward a certain person and the circumstances
and energies surrounding them. This may be especially true of long-distance
or e-mail readings, in which the client is not present.
Although the ESP and astrological studies showed that the predictive
relationship was much higher than could be accounted for by random chance, it
is interesting to note that it is also much too low to be considered
"reliable." In other words, even though it seems to demonstrate a connection,
you couldn't make a living off of it as a gambler or a psychic because your
predictions would still be wrong a good percentage of the time. Even tarot
readers have noticed that it is difficult to make yes/no predictions of the
outcomes of events, such as sports or political contests. Tarot may be much
better at working with other types of information, such as the energies and
dynamics at work in a situation, than with definitive factual information.
In summary, quantum physics and synchronicity provide some concepts that could
explain how tarot reading works, in the vast middle ground between divine
direction and pure psychology. Although the current status of either of these
concepts is not sufficiently developed to definitively demonstrate that this
is the case, they do at least provide some plausible mechanisms and ideas that
are consistent with our experiences as tarot readers. And they're fun to
think about. :)