Art Rosengarten is a psychotherapist who uses tarot cards in his practice to help his clients understand and transcend personal issues. He joined the program in the first half to discuss the lore, history, and meaning of the ancient practice of the tarot. Although it is known how the cards spread throughout the world in the last few hundred years, Rosengarten said that "no one truly knows the origin" of the enigmatic deck. Their original use was as a game or pastime, but they evolved into tools for self-learning, and eventually divination and fortune-telling. Rosengarten related that, contrary to popular belief, the Church did not outlaw their practice but did forbid regular playing cards because they were used for gambling. He described tarot cards as representations of "archetypes of transformation," or symbols of the human experience distilled into images that can be utilized to comment on our lives and provide perspective and guidance.
Rosengarten was first introduced to the tarot in college and became so interested in the cards' power and potential as a psychotherapy tool that he wrote his dissertation on the subject. He believes they are "very rich in psychological imagery and can be used to help a person pull out a lot of repressed material or open up new possibilities." With clients, he asks them to pick three cards to begin the session: The first represents "the way a situation appears," the second shows "what's really going on," and the third suggests what the client "needs to attend to now." This method, Rosengarten believes, is just as effective as dream interpretation or other traditional psychotherapeutic practices. In the second hour, he gave impromptu tarot readings for callers.
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During Open Lines in the latter half, Candice from Washington state pondered whether more people seem to be getting into subjects like paganism because of the pandemic quarantine. Mike from Colorado lamented that younger people "are spending too much time on social media," and Annie in Alabama mentioned "landlines that go out when the power goes out" and swore that she wouldn't sell her telephone landline "for a million dollars." Joe in California described his episodes of sleep paralysis and out of body travel, saying that a girlfriend saw him "in two different places" when he was in this state. She became frightened, but he said he was "able to get back into my body and calm her down."
Brendan in Texas recounted a few chilling experiences with Electro-Voice Phenomena (EVP) in his home, where he claimed he was picking up voices saying "the worst of the worst things." Yet, he also recorded what he believed was an "angel" saying "freeing them," which he took as a good sign. Joan in Missouri talked about a phone call on her old landline that showed up on caller ID as her own number. Wayne in Washington state pointed out that the "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918 originated, like COVID-19, in China. The last half-hour featured an encore presentation of an interview with skeptic Michael Shermer speaking about death and the afterlife.
News segment guests: Christian Wilde, Jeff Nelken, Kevin Randle