Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on the 23rd of June 2026, published on this website, this article is unrelated to and separate from any and all of my publications, it was published in the UK on this UK website and I the author am also from the UK and live in the UK; no AI was used in this or in any of my written works, this article/blog post contains 1764 words.
I have noticed how I, and also others are drawn towards doing tarot or rune readings when in situations where an understanding of future possibilities, outcomes and influences might be necessary.
Consistently I find that these readings however cannot always provide that information accurately. Instead they seem to reflect our current feelings and the limits of our own consciousness at any given time.
This is not to say that tarot and runes do not hold sacred knowledge. In terms of the runes I have discussed this much elsewhere, how runes were used to write Germanic languages in sacred contexts, and are explained generally as being Germanic, but that in a way the runes themselves are another “language”, a geometric, magical language and system of keys and principles, of which the known runic alphabets are one aspect of.
Furthermore when runes were used in Germanic society it seems not to have been individual runes that provided answers, but rather the way in which runes were arranged. And we have no idea what kind of meaning could be derived from that.
But, whilst the runes have wisdom and act as a divination system, I feel that they do so because they reflect our current Germanic reality and our current understanding of ourselves. They help to explain and verify and show to us the feelings we already have, and the decisions we have already made, or have mentally made, but they reflect exactly those things and that understanding. They cannot predict future outcomes because - in their original usage I think it unlikely that a concept of the “future” existed in the same way it does now.
And we also do not understand how they were originally used. Therefore the answers will always reflect the limited understanding of their knowledge that we do have, and will also be limited to our current reality and thought processes - because we are not accessing the knowledge or the system in the way intended, by trying to use them as a prediction system in terms of linear time.
This is why I think some religions cautioned against divination systems. It is not that the divination system is wrong, but rather that the way the human mind uses the system often misinterprets their usage, lacks the original knowledge, and thus we actually trap ourselves, conceal ourselves in the misunderstood wisdom of the runes - choosing to believe the conversation as an absolute truth. Which is flawed, because the runes are generally reflecting our current understanding of reality and are being used in the wrong way. Therefore by over reliance upon divination systems we actually limit the scope of our connection to the divine - rather than enhancing it.
I will make this statement here. You cannot use runes as a simple way of predicting the future and telling you what you should do. To truly understand what you should do, what is right and good in Spirit, you have to interact with spirit in a more direct, timeless and unified way than the limiting conversation between the runes and oneself - which was never one intended to be about predicting one's personal future.
To truly grasp the future and to work with it and know it - one has to grasp that within the self which is eternal. Only self knowledge and the need for true self understanding can in affect make useless the constraints of linear time and reality, and reveal to us the future in the sense of revealing to us that which is always true and real.
Divination systems in comparison cannot do that. They are beautiful, magical and have great knowledge - but cannot answer ultimate questions.
It seems that runes were originally intended to reveal things through a pattern. Rather akin to how one reads a pendulum through reading its pattern and motion. When we think of divination in terms of pattern and motion and not in terms of things that only we can decide and know as individuals- they make more sense I think.
Similarly of all the divination systems I think that pendulums are quite incredible. They cannot again answer the deepest questions about the self and about the future. The answers are only relevant if we are in a limited state of consciousness defined by external wisdom, with a socio-linguistic nature, rather like astrology. But in order to find our real personal truth we must look beyond those systems.
That's for us to do. But pendulums can be powerful tools. When used correctly, they can be used to predict things, things which are already in motion at least, and they can even be used to ask specific questions, for example “what percentage of that clouded bottle over there is full?” A pendulum when used correctly can answer this, down to accurate percentages.
Another thing I want to discuss in this blog post is what I think is another huge illusion perpetuated by the New Age spirituality community and by spirituality and psychology in general. The illusion of “experience”.
A lot of modern spiritual writings imply that humans are like “university students” going through experiences and learning from them. Erm, am I the only one who, first off, fundamentally feels that this idea is completely flawed?
Don't get me wrong. Humans experience. Humans learn. But we experience and learn to discover ourselves, our purpose and how to be kind in life. Period. The “experiences” are there for a purpose and it's about how we recognise them as being such.
Does this mean that everything a human experiences, every heartache, every pain and every sorrow, is a necessary part of this endless human university student experience of learning and learning and becoming more and more perfect?
Honestly, no. When you look at nature, and see an oak tree growing on a bank, does it exist to “experience” and to “learn”, or does it exist to be a tree, to be itself, and is that latter understanding much higher?
Spiritual learning, the ideas of karma, past lives and “lessons” all stem fundamentally from our understanding of time. These concepts can only exist and only control our consciousness when we try and understand time and consciousness through our modern, linear individualist view of reality.
What if the truth is something far more profound? What if our truth and purpose is to discover us and to be us? What if this process is not about time and lessons - but one of self actualisation? What if it doesn't take lifetimes to achieve this and merely a moment - the hardest thing being to understand that moment as our true self, across time and space, in a world that continually asks us to doubt it?
This concept utterly changes the notion of what “spiritual lessons” and the “university of life” actually are, and reveals both of the aforementioned concepts to be deeply flawed and quite frankly - often they become a trap, a loop, a cycle of spiritual learning that fails in its most fundamental aim of giving us enlightenment and sovereignty over our own lives.
In other words, the very ideas of “spiritual lessons” and that “we are on earth to experience” are concepts which mask and distract from us the true nature of our purpose. This is why the New Age spirituality community can in a sense function like a matrix in its own right, giving “knowledge” yet also trapping a person mentally within the perceived time cycles and socio-linguistic concepts of time and space that we interpret from it. It functions like a miniature matrix, a feedback loop that continually “teaches” yet very often “fails” to convey and to reveal that which is most important.
This stuff is relatively advanced because it means asking the daring question of how- certainly modern spirituality, can itself be the flaw and the schism, the inhibitor of our own senses and own spiritual actualisation. This is not to say that modern New Age spirituality does not have great wisdom and knowledge. But rather to say that this knowledge does not necessarily apply to us or to how we run our lives. No “knowledge” should overwhelm or mask our own journey in recognising ourselves and in recognising spirit, and our interlinked purposes.
Most knowledge is abstract and only provable under certain conditions and assumptions. We therefore can understand that the knowledge of runes, tarot, karma only functions as our reality as long as certain assumptions and linguistic perceptions are in place. These systems give space and meaning and form to ourselves and reality through these linguistic “programs” as it were, but these are not absolute and do not make sense to, or exist as a part of the consciousness of every individual.
In this sense tarot might work for one person. The concept is not incorrect or wrong when seen as aspects of the divine self through personal choice and spiritual self-realisation.
But tarot might not work for another person, who at a fundamental level does not interface with the aforementioned linguistic expressions of reality. And some more than others work in terms of expressionism and language and others work more in terms of non-abstract truth and might recognise the tarot as a system, and as an interpretation of something far more incomprehensible.
All of these things become confused when we allow the knowledge to mask or obscure the real movement and reality of things, to the point that they are no-longer expressions of beauty and divine will, intelligence and creation, and instead become gatekeepers, a mental and spiritual trap. Technology, and in fact material possession can be thought of in just the same way. Yet the modern spiritual communities, whilst often discussing the negative aspects of consumerism and materialism, often seem to fail to recognise how things like runes, enlightenment and “experience” can also become masks and “horcruxes” of our soul in their own right, when misunderstood or misused.
I hope that this blog post was an interesting read.
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