Time is very fluid it can be stretched out to near infinity or compressed to a single point. There is also no reason why you can't run it backwards cause and effect would not be altered as long as you have effect then cause. For me the tarot has always been about asking on the consequences of following a particular course of action from the outcome of the reading you can modify your path and so the outcome.
People are very fond of saying there are an infinite number possibilities and choices. This is simply not true, while there is the 'potential' for infinite choice we are in reality very limited be it by knowledge, physical limitations or shear stubbornness. This could give the impression of a fixed path set out from birth that we cannot deviate from.
There is also the dreaded self fulfilling prophecy where the knowledge of the event is the cause. This would be something akin to the Hawthorne effect. We have to remember there are consequences to inaction as much as action. Just because you avoid a path you 'think' will lead to said outcome there is nothing to say that your choice to avoid it will not become the action that that gives said result.
Time is like a river we are all along for the ride from beginning to end but with a little help you can avoid the white water, rocks and strong eddies.
Now I am gonna include a little bit of a connection between the above and Tarot. Well at least expand upon it based on my personal beliefs which would be option NO.2.
In my experience with Tarot there are certain events which you will not be told, I consult my Tarot regularly and have noticed when I ask if there is anything I should know and low and behold a week or two weeks later something would occur. An example of this would be my grandfather was recently struck with lung cancer and I was in wonder that my Tarot hadn't told me. I believe that if there is something you can't change or is unavoidable. Now I want you to think about what you would do the cards showed your's a loved one's death what would you do? Keep them inside? To help avoid the inevitable. Well there is a story on that:
Once there was a soothsayer who could see the deaths of all those around him, but had yet to see his own. So the years rolled by and one day he predicted his death to the day. He locked himself in a bare room with no windows and a single door and sat in a corner and waited the whole day eating nothing, drinking nothing. Well he stayed up late into the night and when the clock reached 11:59 he laughed and laughed and laughed at his luck and how he had cheated Death and as soon as midnight came his heart gave out from the intensity of his laughter.
See the lesson here? Certain events are inevitable. So the Tarot isn't gonna waste our time trying to predict and tell us about it.
I thought about doing the whole river idea, but if I took time as a fluid concept, but I would determine it as more a lake in which all of time exists simultaneously. Which would mean we have choice, but we already made the choice. We are, we were and we will be all at the same time.
Personally I see time far more like a river than a lake. Imagine yourself as being on a boat in a fast flowing river. The past has happened and no matter how hard we try we can not revisit it, all we can do is look back. The future is ahead and as much as we can look down the river to see the likely events to come we can not be certain. We can move ourselves freely within that river to choose our own path and we can see the likely events of those choices but we can not change them once they've been made.
In this interpretation time becomes a concept of the now, the now is the only aspect of time we can change and so it is the only one we really need to be concerned about however it is connected to both the past and the future so in order to truly be aware of it you must also be aware of these. It means that our fate is not random and nor is it planned out, instead we make our own choices which may lead to events that seem unavoidable but ultimately it was our actions that brought us there.
Personally I prefer this interpretation as it discourages the attitude of "It's not my fault it's just fate" as I feel this attitude is both dismissive and lazy. Why lie down and accept a course of action rather than try to prevent, or at the very least to fix, it?
From my understanding and deep spiritual research, i have uncovered that time is more or less a spiral of events which reconnects at it's ends, thus what you do in this time-cycle you will do in the next and have already done in the one prior. however in each cycle of time 13 distinct changes are made from the previous, which in turn account multiple other changes within the time-cycle.
Your example of 'soothsayer who could see the deaths' is not an example of the inevitable. His own laughter is what gave him the heart attack. knowledge of his impending death and cheating it is what caused him to laugh.
His death was not inevitable more his course of action led to it. back to observer-expectancy effect, his knowledge of the expected outcome led to his death.
Interesting theories. In regards to the Tarot, I believe that we are not able to see for certain what will happen in the future. We can see what is likely to happen if we keep on the same path, but it is not absolute, and we can always change it.
There are all kinds of quantum ideas about time. I'm a more practical person in this sense. Time exists for us. Our conscious state does not operate at a level where all time is happening at once, or any of those other ideas. At some spiritual level or energetic level time may not be a controling factor. But here, for us, it is. I can't change how time works (And I lost the key to my TARDIS), so I don't think about it much.
I do think that things are planned out, but we also have free will. I think that when our spirit incarnated it knew what choices it would make. Now, we are making those choices of our own free will. they seem contradictory ideas, but that is only from our perspective.
Just the rambling thoughts of someone whose girlfriend decided to wake him up way too early on a Saturday. Good thing I love her. :)
