Can Tarot Predict the Future? Tarot Fortune Telling Explained

One of the most common questions people ask about tarot card reading is simple: Can tarot cards predict the future? Or, put another way: is fortune telling with tarot real, or is it just reflecting back my own subconscious?

As an online tarot reader, I hear this all the time. Some people are excited by the idea of tarot as fortune-telling. Others are wary, or have heard modern readers insist the cards can only reflect your subconscious. So, which is it?

In this blog, I’ll explore how tarot has been used historically, how psychology and mysticism both play a role, and why I believe it’s more ethical to acknowledge tarot as a predictive, divinatory practice.

Tarot as Psychology: The Modern Trend

In recent years, many good tarot readers have shifted towards describing tarot as a purely psychological tool. They focus on tarot as a mirror of the querent’s subconscious, a way to uncover blocks, patterns, and inner truths.

This is often framed in Jungian terms - archetypes, the collective unconscious, shadow work. And there’s real value in that. Carl Jung’s ideas of synchronicity and archetypes map beautifully onto how tarot works.

But here’s the problem: too many modern readers use psychotherapeutic language without actually being trained therapists. They talk about trauma, “parts work,” or “inner child healing” as if tarot were a substitute for counselling. 

To me, that’s less ethical than simply saying what tarot really is: a spiritual and mystical tool, one that has been used for fortune-telling for centuries.

Carl Jung Wasn’t Just a Scientist

It’s worth remembering that Jung himself was not a materialist scientist in the modern sense. In its earliest days, psychology was not a respected scientific field as it is now. It was in fact, often viewed as only a few steps away from divinatory practices. Jung’s writing on archetypes described them as forces that exist beyond individual human minds, real, independent energies that shape us. His work was deeply mystical, even magical.

In these early days of psychology, thinkers like Jung blurred the line between scientific enquiry and esoteric exploration. Even Freud started off with more mystically informed ideas, initially talking about libido as a ‘psychic energy’ - even if he did walk that back and re-define what he ‘really’ meant to say when the scientific community got the heebie-jeebies over the idea of ‘psychic energy!’ 

Over time, psychology stripped out the mystical bits to gain respectability as a science. But in doing so, it lost some of the richness that made tarot such a natural companion to psychological thought.

So when modern readers dismiss the idea of prediction and insist tarot can only reflect your own subconscious, I think they’re not only limiting the cards and the potential for creating connection, they’re misrepresenting the traditions that shaped them.

The Tradition of Tarot as Divination

Tarot has been used as a divinatory tool for centuries before decks like the Rider Waite Smith or Thoth decks ever saw the light of day. The idea of psychology didn’t even exist when the RWS deck was published, so it definitely was not part of the deck creator’s intentions (that’s to say nothing of Tarot de Marseille or even older decks like the Sforza decks). 

When the Golden Dawn and other esoteric societies built the symbolic systems behind the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, they weren’t doing it to help people talk through their mommy complexes! They were performing rituals with archangels, elemental spirits, astrology, and the Kabbalah to access divine truth.

They fully believed tarot could reveal what was hidden, what was coming, and what forces were at work. In other words, they saw tarot as a tool of magic and yes…fortune telling.  

To suggest otherwise, to reduce tarot purely to self-reflection, in my opinion, disrespects the tradition. Tarot was, and still is, about connecting with archetypal forces that exist outside us, and using that connection to guide decisions about the future.

Sidenote: The Golden Dawn and thinkers like Aleister Crowley saw tarot as a way of connecting with the divine and would likely be quite snobbish about the idea of mundane ‘fortune-telling.’ They believed ‘their’ versions of tarot were a ‘higher’ level of divination than folk cartomancy and skills like tea-leaf reading but nonetheless, they did sit with people and make predictions about the future and give them insights into third-party points of view. 

Of course, I think Aleister Crowley would probably have a conniption if he saw his amazing Thoth deck being used to answer questions about whether a 19 year old from Slough should get back together with a lad she met on holiday in Ayia Napa but… we are where we are…

How Tarot Fortune Telling Works (My Perspective)

So, can tarot predict the future? My answer is yes, but not in the fatalistic way people sometimes imagine. Tarot doesn’t hand you a fixed destiny carved in stone. It shows the influences and energies shaping your current path.

Think of it like a weather forecast. If storm clouds are gathering, the cards may reflect tension, conflict, or endings. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be struck by lightning. It means you can bring an umbrella, seek shelter, or even choose a different route.

I’ve seen readings reveal what another person is feeling, or hint at what’s unfolding in another place that the querent could never have known. I’ll admit that the further we get from the querent the more blurry the cards answers can be but I feel this is because we’re looking together at the gravitational fields around the querent. These include the spiritual gravity of people in their lives but those signals are not as strong as the forces acting on the querent. 

So can tarot be 100% accurate in predicting the future? Of course not. No one, not even the best tarot readers can claim to be right all of the time (and if you see someone claiming to have 100% accuracy in reading tarot for someone then RUN A MILE!). 

But if I’m 90% correct for 90% of clients, that’s a pretty damn good hit rate. 

For me, I’d rather be honest about tarot’s mystical, predictive nature than hide behind pop-psychology or ill-informed therapy-speak I’m not qualified to use because this isn’t a science, it's an art. Knowledge of that (on both sides) creates MORE safety for the querent than using diagnostic language that can really influence someone’s inner world.

How does tarot predict the future?

So here’s how I understand how tarot works as a divinatory practice and I’ve gone into more detail in previous blogs. and of course in my podcast, 'Tarot for Fools.'

In the Western Hermetic tradition, reality is layered through the Four Worlds of the Qabbalah:

• Assiah — the physical world (where the card you draw exists).

• Yetzirah — the world of symbols (where the image on the card belongs).

• Briah — the archetypal world (where the meaning of that symbol originates).

• Atziluth — the world of pure divine energy.

The Hermetic principle of ‘As Above So Below, As Below So Above’ means that what is happening on this level of reality is happening simultaneously on a higher level. So when you ask a question and pull a card, you’re not just choosing cardboard sheets at random. You’re participating in a process that draws meaning down through these levels of reality.

I often describe it with a metaphor: imagine your soul as a comet flying through space. Its path is influenced by the gravitational pull of planets - archetypal forces like love, aggression, growth, or restriction. The card you draw is a reflection of those influences, translated into a physical image.

That’s why tarot can glimpse the future. It shows the trajectory of your “soul-comet” based on current influences. But just like a comet’s path can shift with a new gravitational tug, your future can change depending on your choices.

Fortune Telling vs. Fatalism

One of the biggest misconceptions about tarot fortune telling is that it locks you into fate. But tarot doesn’t say: “this will definitely happen.” It says: “this is the most likely outcome if things continue as they are.”

That means you have agency. You can change direction, make new choices, and influence the path ahead. For me, that’s the empowering part of prediction. It’s not about scaring people with doom-and-gloom forecasts. It’s about showing where things are headed, and how to steer.

Why using Tarot as fortune telling is more ethical...

Some readers say they reject prediction because it feels more ethical. They prefer to frame tarot as therapy but to me, that's an effort to make their practice seem more 'respectable' because they are still hung up on the 'shame' of being seen as a fortune teller because that term is usually used with derision. But I see it differently.

If you’re not trained as a therapist, it’s more misleading to use psychotherapeutic jargon than to be upfront that tarot is a mystical practice. When I tell a client, “This is divination, this is fortune telling, this is a prediction based on my interpretation of a set of ancient symbols,” I’m being clear. They know exactly what they’re getting.

As a professional tarot reader, my role isn’t to diagnose, analyse, and treat. My role is to interpret the cards honestly, blending symbolism, intuition, and tradition and to do so in a personable and empathic way. That, to me, is more ethical than pretending tarot is a kind of counselling that I’m frankly, not qualified to give.

Can Tarot Predict the Future (my conclusion).

Yes. Tarot can predict the future, but not as a fixed destiny. It shows you the currents you’re caught in, the archetypal forces shaping your path, and the most likely outcomes if nothing changes.

For me, that’s the beauty of tarot. It connects us to archetypal truths, a sense that there is more to the universe than just this chaotic physical reality and it offers practical guidance - not diagnosis and prescriptions. Tarot reminds us that the future is always shaped by both fate and free will.

If you’d like to experience tarot fortune telling for yourself, I offer accessible and affordable tarot readings online. As a professional tarot reader, I work with clients worldwide, bringing together tradition, intuition, and lived experience to shed light on some of life's more difficult situations or to help you take control of your own path through the universe.