“I know the trap of prescience . . . to know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. It’s a subtle and powerful thing, prescience. The future becomes now.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the above quote, Dune author Frank Herbert expressed fear of being trapped in a future that looks just like the present and knowing in advance that it’s going to happen. As a life-long practitioner of divination, after I set aside his qualifier “absolutely” (which sounds fatalistic to me) I think this caveat is exaggerated.

Apart from failing health, and barring other evidence of decline or interference by other people, our near-term future will almost always reprise the present if we don’t do anything to change our ways in the interim (it’s called “daily routine”). Thoughtless repetition will guarantee Herbert’s long-range outcome, we will just be a little older when we get there unless we’re caught in a time-loop like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I’m more intrigued by Dean Radin’s idea that the future “conditions” the present by reaching back in time and shaping current circumstances to suit its ends (Radin calls it retrocausation), even if it does resemble a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” It may have been what happened to Bill Murray.

Not long ago I posted an essay titled “Predisposition” in Tarot Reading that went into Radin’s theories in some depth. The Herbert quote came from a more recent r/occult sub-reddit thread, and most of those who responded (except me) agreed with him. As I approach it, the whole purpose of cultivating prescience is to be able to view the probable future with clarity so we can prepare for it before it arrives. If we don’t like what we think we see, we can always work to alter our path so it takes us to a different destination. If we don’t do so, we will just have to live with whatever happens. Resigning ourselves to “looking through a glass darkly” implies that we are merely trying to avoid encountering an unpleasant truth.

This is where I find the most value in predictive fortune-telling. Even if we don’t nail down forthcoming events and circumstances with “absolute” precision, we can offer insights about what may transpire so querents can position themselves to deal with it if it does. As I’ve said before, as long as they don’t waste a fortune prepping for something that doesn’t occur, nothing will have been sacrificed except the time and mental effort spent in pondering it. I tell them to take my observations “under advisement” and consider the input part of an overall defensive strategy that includes more conventional decision-making techniques. “Forewarned is forearmed” doesn’t have to be limited to those threats that can be quantified, it’s what hypothetical risk-assessment is all about.

“We need all the help we can get” is not a bad way to characterize our vulnerability to being blindsided by unexpected conditions. If someone sits for a reading with just that in mind, I will do my best to give them as much information as I can glean from the cards. As long as they’ve put an honest effort into concentrating on their question or topic during the shuffle, they should receive something they can work with in the way of subconscious foreknowledge. Then they can commence with the “what-iffing” in earnest.