rivertail said:
Hi
I think I have over stretched my brain. Very briefly: I have taken up tarot with the Thoth deck, taken a little time and done one reading for myself (plus a few daily cards to get used to them).
In between I have been reading up on the Thoth, Kabbalah (Daniel Matt book) and other aspect that I can draw on to supplement my understanding of the tarot. And now I am beginning to see some influences and draw a few tentative correlations between them.
However, this 'bottom-up' approach to learning is not doing me any good. Just because I can take the engine apart does not mean I can drive. Or that's how it feels right now. It is certainly an 'in at the deep end' approach using my chosen cards, but they do feel right. Even though there is lots going on, there is an element of clarity to it all. Which in itself is very strange.
So, any advice on the next step really. Should I just get on and famliarise myself with the cards and their influences, and get stuck in? Feel a bit like I am in a terrain with no maps or too many maps I can't tell!
Thanks
From what you're saying it sounds like it's time the method you have been using has not been working as well as expected for you and that it's time to put your focus more on using the cards than on studying Tarot.
I think you probably have too many maps. I sure never put that much memory work into learning to read. The thing about books on Tarot technique, and they are useful and even necessary in the beginning, is that they can only give you the author's views on how to do things. And if you read enough books, you start to see that there are almost as many viewpoints on how to read as there are authors.
The thing is, in Tarot, you have to develop your own style, way of reading, and find inside yourself what works for you. No book can do that for you, not even the book written by the deck's creator that comes with the deck.
Books can gives us hints on potential ways to do things, especially in the beginning. But they are not law. We have to find our own ways and meet the decks one on one and form our relationships with them,
I have never been one of those who studied Tarot. I read a lot of books in teh beginning out of an insatiable curiousity about Tarot, but I never studied it. I just learnt a few essentials like the main meanings of the Majors and their numbering, the meanign of the suits. And then I got to work with the cards and developed my own methods.
To me no book can tell you what the best way to read is for you, and no one else can tell you either. It's an individual thing that comes from your heart and soul and you feel it deep inside when you find somethign that is part of your path.
And to me, I don't believe in set symbolism. I prefer to feel inside me what a symbol means to me personally each time it comes up in a card.
The best way of course to get to know the cards and to find how they best work for you is to use them, often and repeatedly, and to keep a journal and look back months later and see what you can learn.
But, to me, in the end, you learn a lot more by using teh cards and through trial and error than through any book.
And anyway, books are just suggestions mainly. There are so many ways to read and so many books saying their way is they way....really you have to at some point put that aside and find inside you what works. That is all that matters in the end, what works well between your deck and yourself, not what someone else says had worked for them.
The best way to understand the Tarot and to get better and better at it is to just use it and learn by experience.
Tarot, btw, is a lot about intuition. And no book can teach you that. And that, to me seems to be the missing ingrediant as to why you can't yet put the engine together yet.
Maybe a good next step for you might be to pull out your deck and really LOOK at the images. And see what you sense and feel the symbols on it might mean in different cirumctances and for different questions. Like, choose one card and think up different questions for it and really look at the image and sense inside you what that card could mean in answer to each question.
Another good excercise might be to look at the card and the image (or just part of it) and ask yourself if were a sound what would it sound like, if it were an odor what would it smell like....It may sound a bit silly LOL, but it might help your intuition grow in relation to the cards.
By the way, and for what it's worth, when I first got the Thoth deck I thought you were supposed to study it too, I tried for a short time and it made me miserable and my readigns were worse. It was only when I realized inside that I was better off just using it intuitively and sensing what the images were trying to tell me that the deck took off for me and worked well. It was a disaster for me personally when I tried studying it. But then that is just the kind of reader that I personally am...
Well those are some suggestions.
Babs
