The card you pull:
Accidentally read “pump”
Maybe… you should say that to your friend, instead of using your shared religious beliefs that convince them to stay in a shitty relationship…?
Why do you care?
Why the fuck do you care? It’s a public forum.
It is indeed a public forum - and you’re policing how other people engage with it.
I am not. I never told you what to do or not do. Just pointed out what you were doing.
If the point was not to criticize the behavior, why post a meme that presents that behavior in a reductive and highly sarcastic way?
You’re literally doing the same thing with the meme I posted to you lmao
tarot cards don’t have to be religious/spiritual.
Genuinely I would love to understand your perspective - how are they not a religious practice?
They work as excellent prompts for introspection and for helping you to see connections you might have missed before. The output can ofc be entirely non-sensical but if everyone involved is aware they are simply cards then that isn’t really an issue, you just laugh about it and move on.
It’s like rubber ducking in programming really, but for whatever issue you “ask” the cards.
In the meme the scenario is made up and we don’t know if the two individuals believe the cards can be used for something spiritual or not, but it’s just a meme anyways so it doesn’t really matter.
Thank you! That’s roughly what I thought, I appreciate the explanation. I wonder what the rate of spiritual vs. “secular” use of tarot is, I certainly see it treated with a degree of sincerity far more often than not, but there’s a large number of more abstractly spititual people in my social cricles and I assume that’s not the norm.
Jungian archetypes and shadow work reflection prompts.
I’m not sure how the presence of ideas promoted by Jung or the concept of guided self-reflection are at all mutually exclusive with religious beliefs.
I don’t see how they’re wedded.
They’re not, they’re distinct concepts that are commonly found expressed in religious practices but are not in of themselves spiritual. I’m sorry I’m genuinely confused as to what you’re saying.
Then you just answered your own question. You really are confused, it’s okay to admit it.
I read Tarot as a mild hobby - I love collecting decks and paraphernalia and then using them. But for me it’s like any other creative impetus randomizer machine (scenes from a hat in improv, the artists way, oblique strategies…) - you pull a series of images and then talk about how it makes you feel.
it’s not spiritual at all for me.
Same except I’m pretty sure that’s what spirituality is, or can be, anyway. I’ve worked hospitals where atheist chaplains are a thing. Even atheists need help coming to terms with death sometimes. Not feeling inherently connected to anything in particular is still a belief about how you relate the the universe. And tbh I think a lot of the shit atheists get is due to it not adequately being recognized as a spirituality. They’re not actually missing one, it just looks different.
And I wholeheartedly respect that - I know people who view it as a means to enable meditative reflection on their actions, and people who hold to the messages in the cards as truth from the universe. But either way you should be straight with your friends when you see them making a bad call.
I mean, if they’re doing what the meme depicts, they’ve probably already had that conversation in a straightforward way. It does say “the 8th time” after all. If someone is repeatedly asking for your advice and then ignoring your advice, I think a little snark is reasonable.
That’s certainly a valid interpretation - though in that case I’d question why they’re resorting to snark while continuing to treat with their friend on the issue.
They are about as religious as a paper fortune game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller
Even among people who take their cards “seriously” they aren’t religious in nature. It’s that “I’m spiritual, not religious” line because there’s basically no religion that’s welcoming to Tarot.
It’s a hundreds year old Italian & French card game that has a reputation. You can play standard card games like War and Go Fish with tarot and you can lay a reading with Grandma’s bridge deck.
I am aware of what Tarot is - to quote wikipedia:
Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, ethics, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.
It is not a spiritual practice or religious belief because of the deck of cards it uses - it’s because tarot reading is a supernatural means of generating prophecies.
So is the Groundhog:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/02/groundhog-day-2026-shadow-results/88393885007/
We read prophecies all the time. They made a whole industry out of betting on such things.
I don’t disagree? While I doubt there are many who truly believe in the prediction of punxsutawney phil, it would absolutely be a spiritual or religious observance/ritual for those that do.
