A couple of weeks ago I received a message about the question of whether we, as readers, risk causing self-fulfilling prophecies with our predictions. For instance, if I tell a querent that the relationship she is in is going to end, I may end up causing the break-up. What follows is a slight elaboration on my response.

First off, we need to recognize that some things we can change or at least improve, others we can’t and they will happen regardless of what we do and what a reader tells us. Most people who go about their life with their brain switched on can recognize this. It is only when we get into delulu territory and body-mind-spirit-section pseudomysticism that we encounter people who deny the existence of unavoidable happenings.

On the other hand, sheer fatalism is also a gross misunderstanding. Consider simply this fact: if two people X and Y are exactly the same and go exactly through the same life experience, except that X also uses divination or consults a diviner, this is enough to tell them apart.

The fact that X knows about what is going to happen in advance is enough to make him a different individual, which in turn is enough to change the nature of his fate, because our ability to change a situation is contingent on our knowledge of what the situation truly is. Even if X cannot change a certain fact in any meaningful way, but knows about it enough in advance that he can make his peace with it, the same event Z won’t be the same if X’s attitude toward it changes, because X is part of the event that takes place in his life, and so if X change, the event changes. Even if X cannot bring himself to accept Z, his knowledge of Z is enough to change Z, because X with knowledge of Z is not equal to X without knowledge of Z.

Fate patterns are a difficult topic to tackle without a previous sound philosophical and occult discussion, and I plan on starting that discussion at some point, once I’ve organized my notes. For now, it suffices to say that we, as readers, can play a rather important role in the querent’s life if we are consulted at the right moment.

Yet, this doesn’t mean that we are capable of empowering querents to always turn their life around, and I don’t even think empowering is our mission: our mission is to provide information. On a number of occasions, especially when I was less experienced, I gave querents the wrong prediction on purpose because I didn’t want to disappoint them, even though the cards were clearly negative: Yes, you’ll get the job, yes the relationship is going to last and be wonderful. But it didn’t happen. 

On some of those occasions you may even think that because I didn’t bring up the negative aspects, the querent wasn’t prepared to tackle them, so my not bringing them up may have been just as bad as another diviner handing out negative predictions willy-nilly. That’s because I wasn’t able to give accurate information.

It is nice that some things can be changed even if some things can’t, but unfortunately we don’t always know which is which. Therefore, we must also recognize that we have a degree of power over our querent just by virtue of using odd, mysterious counters to give our predictions, and we must not abuse this power. 

Whenever possible, we should either frame our predictions as potentials and/or accompany them with positive suggestions. These suggestions, though, must ALWAYS be based on what the oracle describes, never on vague self-help platitudes. Sometimes (many times) it is best to highlight critical points so that the querent can become conscious of them (e.g., “you know, this relationship is headed down a pumpy road. You should address x, y and z if you want to try to make it work”) while avoiding drastic predictions unless necessary.

Furthermore, we must never frame our predictions in such way as to take away all hope. It is not our right to do so. Deluding and disillusioning are the two capital sins that we must avoid, even though striking the right balance is sometimes hard. There is plenty of space between being a pushover to our querent’s wishes and being an insufferable sassy tough-love prick.

If there are positive aspects to a situation, we should emphasize those and try to put them at the center of the querent’s life so that they can address the negative points more positively.

Finally, we ought to always remind our querent that diviners are people and are therefore fallible. In a world where doctors, lawyers, judges, scientists and bakers can get things wrong it would be absurd to expect diviners to always be right. Always encourage the querent to take your predictions as an additional input. 

MQS