As a teenage girl, I never had the experience of dabbling in tarot, Ouija boards and witchcraft. I was scared by the horror movies I would watch as a prepubescent teenager and was afraid that I would summon a demonic spirit that would torment me, as if a mundane teenage girl from Winnipeg, Manitoba could summon the likes of
Satan.
Although I never did the whole witchcraft rigmarole, I would listen to my friends who had, captivated as they told me of their experience of using a Ouija board and how they managed to contact the undead.
Even though I never dabbled in the world of witchcraft as a teenager, I always had the utmost respect for those who chose to practice. Now, as an adult woman, I find myself enjoying more of the things I was too embarrassed to explore as a middle schooler, such as tarot.
Tarot has always fascinated me, with the deck consisting of 78 cards to choose from. At its most basic form, tarot exists as a way to tell us of the cycles of our lives. The action of shuffling the deck and choosing cards at random reveals struggles or joys that one might experience.
The premise of tarot is to predict the future. I know a lot of people tend not to put a lot of stock into the accuracy and predictability of tarot. Still, I see tarot as a similar entity to that of the television series The Simpsons.
The Simpsons is known for accurately predicting multiple historical events, such as FIFA’s corruption scandal in 2015, Canada’s legalization of marijuana and even the COVID-19 pandemic. With The Simpsons’ reputation for predicting the future, both the show and tarot explore possibilities for the future and pose open-ended questions about life’s mysteries.
Tarot is often seen as an unreliable way to predict the future, and in some circumstances, I would have to agree with that. When I see people doing mass tarot card readings on TikTok lives, I am immediately unconvinced of the reliability of these tarot readings.
Tarot hinges on the ability to ask private questions that are then used to interpret cards that can offer advice or predict the outcome of a situation. With mass social media readings, you lose that intimacy that private readings can bring.
Both tarot and The Simpsons force you to think through questions they are asking you. With tarot, those questions come in the form of guided reflection on your personal life, but with The Simpsons, you are forced to think about the state of the world through the show’s farcical nature.
Tarot and The Simpsons both have different ways of predicting the future, but despite their difference in form, both allow you to critically think about yourself and how you occupy the world around you.
