I read Tarot cards. And I don't call it playing. Its serious business. I also read runes on occasion. I don't dictate my life by them, bu they do help reassure me, and going back through my notebook of readings, I chek to see how right they were.

I do readings for people, but only if I can see them in person. Phone readings are highly inaccurate. It may sounds weird, but the person's aura has to be around the cards, or they can't accurately appear.

I don't have much experiences with psychics, as I sort of messed up when I was younger. I played with a Oujia board at age 14 and released a violent spirit into a home. Things like that are dangerous with untrained hands. That house was torn down 7 years ago, but I still shiver, wondering where it ended up.

I don't read them myself, but I do own a deck of Lord of the Rings tarot cards. I have gotten readings done by other people quite a few times, though. I enjoy them, and most of these gals were right on the money! I don't consider it "evil" or "satanic," because stuff like that has been around longer than Christianity, and no one even considered that stuff evil until Christianity began taking over.
I do, however, try to do dream analysis when I have a really vivid dream.

Oujia board is a game nothing more IMO. I have played it many times nothing special. I don't do cards or anything like that growing up I was taught they were evil. I don't know if I would call them evil now but they are just cards they can't predict the future or anything. It's just like having your palm read never accurate>.<
Spits

Ouija boards function via ideomotor movements: unconscious movements so small that the actor is unaware he is producing the action. This phenomenon is totally natural and has plenty of everyday examples: leaning to the right when you try to make a video game character jump, for example. It's a response involved in muscle memory. It is also what causes pendulum movement, dowsing movement, and various other "paranormal" activity. You can read more about it here: skepdic.com/ideomotor.html

I have used tarot cards, but not for a long time. I think they are a useful device for self-examination, whether you read your own or have someone else read them. However, I also don't feel there is anything paranormal that occurs while reading the cards. I think they are merely another form of cold reading--making guesses and assumptions from cues in the target. That's why it works in person, but not over the phone.

I've never played with a Ouija board, tarot cards, stuff like that, but I really want to. I just have to find someone who has them!

Frankly, the only medium of psychic-ism I trust is dream interpetations and "just knowing" things, because they have proven to be the most accurate *in my experince*. Of course, there is that one exception when my Mother and I got ahold of my Grandfather with a SpiritBoard. That was an amazing experince, but with the exception of that I haven't had any luck with boards or tarot.

I am a Catholic, but I don't think they're "evil". Personally, I think labelling things "evil" is a way for some people to deal with things they can't explain. The same goes for calling horrible events "acts of God." Some people need an explanation for everything and those seem to be the two more common outlets for that, the extremes on both ends of the specturm.

As far as psychic things, I definetly believe because the women on my mother's paternal side have a gift of "Sight". I get my visions mostly from dreams, and sometimes just knowing. But my mother, she's so accurate it's down right frightening at times! How does she explain it? "I just know..." And that is the form of psychic ability I trust the most, since we know humans don't use all of their brains yet. But I am skeptic when a person sits down and can answer any question accurately. Even the best psychic has hits and misses, and abscence of those seems suspect to me.

Stealing a line from Steven Wright...

I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house, and four people died.

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since we know humans don't use all of their brains yet.

That's actually a wide misconception, often appearing as the oft-repeated "Humans only use ten percent of their brains." The truth is, humans only use about ten percent of their brains on average at any given moment. You use the whole brain over the course of multiple activities, however. Parts of the brain that are not used, such as the visual centers in folks born blind, generally deteriorate and/or are replaced by parts of the brain being used for other things. In the case of people who are congenitally blind, the centers for hearing and touch expand into areas usually used for vision.

Sorry I agree with Babyhelpful:P cards are a cold reading *shrugs*. There are things that can't be explained but they don't get labeled evil Mare. I was raised penticostal (not now) but in my time of that I have seen weird things in church and couldn't be explained and it wasn't labled evil. Cards and readers are called evil because some people believe only god knows the future and for someone else to try and predict it is wrong. I wathced a speicial on TLC that showed how anyone could be a reader now they were cold readings but they were pretty good but it was due to the person giving info. I would love to find someone to give me a read while I just sat quietly but doubt that would happen.

I still think cold reading can be very helpful and revealing, but more for personal reflection than predicting the future. I think it's important to be aware of what you are really getting, too. I gave tarot readings a lot in high school, and people were amazed by the accuracy of my predictions--but it's fairly easy to predict the kinds of disasters someone is going to encounter when they reveal details about their alcoholic boyfriends, their troubles with their parents, and so forth while also describing their personalities and current actions. Even when I didn't realize what I was doing was cold reading, I always assured people that this was just my prediction for what would happen if they didn't change the course of events. It's just that people are resistant to change!

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I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house, and four people died.

That was a good one. For some reason it made me laugh. I never took psychics seriously. When I was 17 my friends mother took us to one of those psychic fairs. Well they are not supposed to tell you something bad, but one grabbed me and told me that I was in danger. Is that freaky? Yes, to a young girl who doesn't like getting touched by people she doesn't know. Apparently I would be attacked by a male stranger around the age 23-26 with dark hair. When I see him, I am to run away as fast as I can. I didn't buy into it. Two years later I was attacked severly by a white male who was 26 years old and dark brown hair. LOL. My friends new guy who was upset I wouldn't date him and didn't like rejection. Not sure if this had anything to do with psycics, but it proved I had bad luck. LOL.

Here's some evidence that psychics shouldn't be taken seriously.

science.slashdot.org/a...mp;tid=160

The headline in the above article is:

Astrologer Sues NASA Over Comet Probe

That was a Russian astrologer who claimed that the Deep Impact probe made alterations to the comet's orbit that deformed her horoscope

Now really, if she was a true psychic, shouldn't she have seen that coming?

LOL! That's great, Starwatcher.

Here's more on psychic powers from Skepdic, my favorite online resource:
skepdic.com/psychic.html

James Randi has offered a million bucks to anyone who can prove supernatural powers, such as telepathy, for years now. Time and time again, folks who have come to be tested fail once they are in controlled conditions that don't allow them to "cheat" and that follow up on all the predictions. No one has made that million bucks yet.

There is, however, some excellent evidence for people who have a natural (or sometimes even partially trained) ability to read very small body signals, facial movements, and changes in tone of voice that aren't apparent to most folks. These skills can appear supernatural, and for all intents and purposes, pretty much function that way since the skill can only be learned in a basic amount. These people generally call themselves "intuitives" rather than psychics, and their skills can be of great use, for example, during interogations.

Heh. Silliness. I try not to be mean to those who do believe, though. This is a biiit hard since my father taught me from a early age that the tears of new agers are the tastiest tears of all. He's kind of a jerk.

Although, funny story. Back in gradeschool a whole fascination with the business swept through my group of friends. Always eager to learn this sort of thing, I picked up a deck of cards and memorized all I could.

And then I did a reading for my (male) friend.

We came to the conclusion that he was going to, in order, meet a mysterious man, have some sort of doctor or health related episode, and then something about pregnancy.

His mother said he better get made a honest man of first.


I get longwinded here, since I just felt like sharing.

My girlfriend believes with all her heart and I sort of frustrate her with, well, not. Unfortunately I'm her favourite target for it.

What she says (I say everything is coincidence, but she's listed it enough I have it memorized):

-She says I see ghosts (I've got a mental condition.)
-I seem to have the weirdest luck (I almost always get what I want. To the point of cars crashing in front of us when I really, really don't want to go somewhere, as well as sudden terrible storms. I call coincidence)
- there was a year of it raining anytime I would go outside for more than a hour like it did for my mom at that age (That one was weird. I kinda went reclusey all summer during that)
-small animals have started dying when I glare at them (I don't think, however, three bugs and a mouse really count as a trend. The mouse must have eaten poison)
-people who have made me extremely miserable have, with no exceptions, ended up with cancer (which is awful. I tell her I'm uncomfortable with her using this, but she always brings it up so I decided to include it)
-I'm being stalked by a tarot card reader. This one is funny. See, years back there was a problem with someone shafting her in a deal and I was around and helped her out. Now I run into her all regular-like in odd places and she keeps giving me things, like ceremonial tobacco and telling me fortunes. She's been insisting it's fate, since she never knows that we're going to run into eachother but feels the urge to collect certain items on that day. I'm worried she's gonna have a knife one day. And sort of suspect she just keeps the stuff in her purse for months on end.

AND THAT IS MY GIRLFRIEND'S LIST OF EVIDENCE.

I keep sending the stuff off to my pagan friend, she gets a lot of use out of it. Except the tobacco. I should make a peace pipe or something.