“Well, if you can see into the future, why haven’t you won the lottery?” Gosh, if only it worked like that. Imagine a world where psychic ability was an on-demand, accurate and clear sense: we’d all be millionaires and never make mistakes! That being said, precognition is all about seeing possible futures. J.B. Rhine tried to study precognition using the famous Zener cards. The test subject would write down what order the cards would eventually be in once the tester shuffled the deck. Then the tester would shuffle the deck and turn the cards over from the top of the deck comparing them to the predicted order of the cards. If the test subject guessed correctly higher than statistical average through a series of runs, they would be considered a Precog. As with telepathy, there are levels of ability and accuracy depending on how skilled the Precog is.
What are Zener Cards?
When J.B. Rhine was developing the precognitive card test, he was originally using playing cards. Magicians have long known how to identify playing cards and so did some of the test subjects. As a result, J.B. created the Zener card deck which has five of each geometrical shape. Some decks also have the shapes colored to include one more possible variable. This prevented most of the cheating that had occurred with playing cards. Continue reading “Precognition”