{"id":26302,"date":"2019-09-15T10:04:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T15:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=26302"},"modified":"2019-09-15T10:04:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T15:04:32","slug":"reverend-janglebones-soapbox-its-in-the-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/opinion\/2019\/09\/15\/reverend-janglebones-soapbox-its-in-the-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverend Janglebones&#8217; Soapbox: It&#8217;s in the Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Everyone\u2019s familiar with the trope of the mysterious old gypsy who offers to tell your fortune with tarot cards or tea leaves but the issue itself is, in reality, something surprisingly more complicated and controversial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether your thoughts are influenced by the twenty-some bible verses condemning the practice, you\u2019re afraid of altering your path by knowing the future prematurely, or if it just gives you the heebie-jeebies, it\u2019s likely you are already either completely for, or against, divination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tThat isn\u2019t the interesting part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tThe endlessly fascinating aspect of this topic is not the stance an individual takes, but <em>why<\/em> they have taken that stance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tIf the reason is religious, then that would suggest that the belief the individual holds is that card reading or palmistry in general does, in fact, work. However, these ancient manuscripts written by unknown authors say that God doesn\u2019t like it, and so it is bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tIf the reason is for fear of altering the future, that would suggest that the individual has a resting belief in fate of some kind. What harm is there in altering the future, unless you are already on the exact right course by some divine hand? If there isn\u2019t some perfect fate, then it\u2019s an unknown either way and impossible to determine benefit or detriment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" style=\"text-align:left\">Related Articles<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/entertainment\/music-entertainment\/2019\/08\/26\/reverend-janglebones-soapbox-bellwether-nails-it\/\">Reverend Janglebones\u2019 Soapbox: Bellwether Nails It<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/campus-life\/2019\/04\/26\/reverend-janglebones-tartan-spotlight-professor-michael-coyan\/\">Reverend Janglebones\u2019 Tartan Spotlight: Professor Michael Coyan<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"26297\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/u-s-news\/2019\/09\/15\/planning-to-raid-area-51-a-look-into-why-our-generation-is-willing-to-storm-a-military-base-for-a-meme\/attachment\/img_20190904_075224\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190904_075224.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"[]\" data-image-title=\"IMG_20190904_075224\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190904_075224.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190904_075224.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190904_075224.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-26297\" width=\"540\" height=\"405\"\/><figcaption>(Photo by Brian Yoder)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>\tIf the reason is as pure as \u201cIt freaks me out!\u201d then I empathize and applaud your honesty. It\u2019s also the only reason out of the three that is based upon very real personal feelings without deferring authority to hypotheticals or unknowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don\u2019t mind, I\u2019d like to explore that third reason a little more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tNow, let\u2019s pretend for a second that all of the apprehension and fear is completely unfounded. Let\u2019s say for a second that we know <em>for sure<\/em> that the cards in a tarot reading are entirely random. For the sake of our thought experiment, this is a fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No divine hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That no matter what, there is nothing involved but random chance. Got that? Okay. Now, let\u2019s say you have been feeling kind of vaguely down and don\u2019t know why. Let\u2019s say you do a reading anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You shuffle and you draw one card: The ten of disks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You see the title of this card is \u201cwealth\u201d and you immediately begin to congratulate yourself (even though you don\u2019t believe in this stuff) and begin to list all the ways that you\u2019re great within the privacy of your mind (hopefully) as you flip to the page in the little booklet about the ten of disks and begin to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The little book says that the ten of disks is about being fulfilled in, specifically, practical and tangible ways. This particular card, however, has a nagging undercurrent of lacking spirit. Or missing the <em>heart<\/em>. The idea of having all one could possibly need, but can\u2019t escape or deny that something crucial is missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In some decks it\u2019s called \u201cgreed\u201d or \u201cthe materialist\u201d and as you read the description you feel attacked. As if someone violated your privacy when, in fact, you have just been offended by your own ability to identify your issue. If that card happened by chance alone, and you felt an emotional reaction from the meaning, then you just had a productive conversation with yourself. You just did, with just a silly pack of cards, what a therapist may have taken weeks to unearth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You just had an honest-to-goodness personal revelatory experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Congratulations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, being honest with ourselves is not easy and our fragile little egos aren\u2019t always ready to see the reason for our malaise but, if this topic is examined closely it almost appears as though it is not, in fact, our possible futures that are giving us the willies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> If this is looked at closely, and honestly, it kind of looks like what we\u2019re afraid of is not as much our possible futures, but our probable and difficult present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brian Yoder<br><\/strong>Reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone\u2019s familiar with the trope of the mysterious old gypsy who offers to tell your fortune with tarot cards or tea leaves but the issue itself is, in reality, something surprisingly more complicated and controversial. Whether your thoughts are influenced by the twenty-some bible verses condemning the practice, you\u2019re afraid of altering your path by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":26298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3346,2109,2150],"tags":[3245,3125,3564,3563],"class_list":["post-26302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-off-beat","category-opinion","category-world","tag-reverend-janglebones","tag-reverend-janglebones-soap-box","tag-spirtuality","tag-tarot-cards"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190904_075624.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-6Qe","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26304,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26302\/revisions\/26304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}