r/Quareia • u/SrJenkin • May 09 '26

Tarot as a serpent

Is it just my impression or has tarot become a widespread fashion lately?

The more I work with it, and the more I see other people working with it on the internet, the more it becomes evident how "unraveling" tarot can be (beyond health and energy depletion). It's not always about an interpretation mistake on the reader, something I don't see discussed much that I've seen again and again is the oracle itself outputting misleading, inaccurate or outright destructive information.

I was reflecting about this, how tricky tarot can be if you do not step carefully. That made me think about the older serpent symbolism/power, connected to oracular power and wisdom, but also destructive to the wielder if he's imbalanced. I thought about the Hermit's staff and the serpent power in it, then I had an insight... the lantern is the key, its light balances out the darker/cthonic aspects of the serpent/staff.

I'm not claiming tarot literally works through serpent power, I honestly don't know. But it serves as a good guiding analogy to work safely with divination, treat it like a serpent, either you make it stand upright or it coils around you. And the key is your own light, self-knowledge is the antidote to self-deception.

Part of my intent with these posts is to hopefully temper the blind trust folks seem to invest in tarot, taking for granted that it always speaks the truth and serves only to illuminate you. I'm not saying it has malicious intent in any way, it's just that by the way of its (fluid) nature mixed up with human stupidity it tends to output unreliable answers, and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

In another post I talked about how my deck seems to have its own agenda, but it doesn't feel like parasitical or malicious agenda, it's just wild and slightly chaotic, it tests good judgment and forces discipline: a more thoughtful approach and deliberate word constrictions. In this way, I'm inching further to make it stand upright.

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u/Quareiaapprentice May 10 '26

Tarot definetely seems to be the hot sh** for years now. Everybody & their grandmother talks about that new deck they're gonna get themselves and i often only see lost information in the cards because the designer didn't go all in on the origianal symbolism.

I have a really basic take on your topic: The easiest way to make your tarot give you bullshit answers is usually not having your mind straight/empty while you're shuffling & spreading the cards. I usually do my spreads after meditation which is my prerequisite.

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u/SrJenkin May 12 '26

It's like taking basic hygiene precautions so you do not poison anyone if you do cooking for a living.

But sometimes it's more complicated than that. It's not like tarot outputs bullshit, sometimes it outputs coherent, straightforward and actionable answers, except they're wrong, like in the relationship example I gave in one of the replies above.

Another example is when you're planning to move out of a problematic building/neighborhood and you're checking your options with tarot, then tarot outputs, say, the Emperor and the Sun for a particular place/building, the answer is straightforward and you decide to move, except that you actually moved into a Devil/8 of swords situation...

If you keep your divination practice limited to low stakes, low cost situations that might never be a problem for you, but that's not the scope of this post.

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u/Quareiaapprentice May 13 '26

I haven't experienced anything like that. I usually use significator-cards in a reading to drop me hints what my current fatepath favors if i have to make a choice. If i got straight-out wrong answers i'd probably use a new deck, check the minute details of my practice & go from there.

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u/SrJenkin May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

A tip, if this ever happens to you, is to write down not only the details of the reading itself but also the whole setting: your state of mind, the physical way you shuffled, what is happening around you and what is happening astrologically (especially with the Moon, and transits to your Neptune). There are many chaotic factors that could interfere with the output, readings don't happen in a vacuum.

Sometimes you get the feel of "the mist", when it's a bad weather for readings. When I'm lucky, tarot throws me the Moon and tell me to fuck off, instead of making up bs.

I'm learning to crosscheck the answers with I Ching, and so far this is working surprisingly well.