What card suggests what - or not ?

This was originally posted in a thread about "what card means this ?" - where it was technically off topic, but I am troubled in my heart - this is an issue which is - apparently - coming up more and more often. So I've resurrected and slightly modified it for discussion.

I am beginning to be bothered by all these threads that start "which card represents x, y and/or z ?"

IMHO there are no cards that unequivocally represent anything; it all depends on the reading, the sitter, the other cards if any, the day you do it, even (maybe) what you had for breakfast.

Draw the Empress one day, and tell me that (as someone here has said some years back) it absolutely means that the sitter (they did say sitter, not someone they knew) is pregnant. If you have a male sitter in front of you - I dare you to tell him that....

I have often drawn the same card from the same deck for different sitters - even with a single card reading - and got a completely different message on the second pull.

I'd say look at the cards and see what you get. If you - say - pick up pregnancy - then perhaps you did indeed. But that isn't because you drew the Empress as such, it is because the sitter is pregnant and the cards fell in a way to tell you that. NOT because it was the Empress, which could - for another sitter - mean your new business will succeed - or even - if you are the sort of reader who just looks at the image, and are using a couple of decks I can think of - that you need to lose weight !

Views ?

Oooh what a very sensible question to ask. As you say, its impossible to give distinct meanings to any of the cards other than a sort of flowing narative of generalisations. When learning tarot most of us probably used a book that came with the deck or a 'learn tarot' book, even here on AT we have Thirteen's wonderful interpretations of the cards but I think what you are really getting at is that the art of real interpretation is the true art of the reader.

How we, as readers, pull the story from the spread, put the story or message together from past to future and put it in such a way that it leaves enough open to the sitter that they are empowered to make the next move. Thats the key isn't it?

No one card has one set meaning, as you say, it has a general area of meaning but its up to the reader to 'feel' it and pin it down.

Rather like different countries on the map, no one card means mother any more than Africa does.

Milfoil said:

No one card has one set meaning, as you say, it has a general area of meaning

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I don't know that I would even go that far. I have drawn 10 Swords and got a very positive meaning. Which the sitter was rather pleased with !

I have never understood the idea that one card 'definitely' means something. Nor do i understand how some see certain cards as total negatives, there are positives and negatives to every card of the tarot. When i pull a card, yes a few keywords may pop into my head, but you have to take into account a lot more, your own feelings, surrounding cards, where the card falls, the spread etc...to put together a good interpretation.

good topic!

one of the things that confused mee for years when i wanted to study tarot was "how can one card mean so many things, and which meaning to i pick", as i worked with tarot more and tapped into my psychic ability, i learned that the way you view a card can indeed change each time you see it.

the more readings i do the more bizzare meanings for cards come up, here are two recent examples:
Sun- sunburn
Queen Of Pents - Pregnancy

One of the hardest thingsto get your head around is that there is no stock answer, and the books are a guide. Nothing is postive all the time or negative all the time, it depends on how they fall

The books cannot be really; they are not there with you, in front of that sitter, and seeing the exact cards you drew and the question you were asked. That is my whole issue with all of this....

(Like the sunburn though..... )

How's 3 swords for marriage..... Don't ask..... but it worked ! It was the card that came up, that's what it said to me - and they are happily married now.....

gregory said:

I am beginning to be bothered by all these threads that start "which card represents x, y and/or z ?"

Click to expand...

I don't really have anything to add - just that hurrah for you for saying this. I agree totally and am sick of those threads. While the exercise is valuable in and of itself, I fear that it does encourage the Tarot student's mind into a sort of rut whereby each card exists in isolation in its own little box, where Three of Cups = x, y, and z, and a = 4 of Swords, Hermit, High Priestess . . . and so on.

The biggest problem that I have with this is that, at its root, it assumes, in a very Victorian "the whole world is white Anglo" sort of way, that we all know and acknowlege the RWS as the superior model of the Tarot paradigm.

I don't.

And I think that it feeds the same sort of mentality within the Your Readings forum, which is my bugbear.

\m/ Kat

I have another question to add.

Why do we choose Tarot as our medium to tap into the intuitive powers, if we just use it as jumping board to draw images from the psychic whatnot?

If we drop the system, anything else would yield the same result.

Why Tarot?

As I said in another thread somewhere here - tarot seems to work; magazines seem to NOT work; and as I said there - I think the archetypal symbols the creators take the trouble to put in tap into something in us. If you see a snail you think slow, whether or not you say it. But they are only symbols. That the Empress is often shown as pregnant does NOT necessarily mean the sitter is; that the thing you are drawn to one day on the RWS system 8 Pents (I think... oops) is the coin UNDER the table and the next day it is the chisel on the window ledge and so on.... All these things are symbols that kick in - but on any given day, it may be a different one that rings true. The Empress might suggest starting a pomegranate orchard this time next week. The pomegranate is there for a reason, but not always the reason that one instantly thinks of when thinking Empress....

If you see what I mean ?

Yes, totally, greggers. Which is why I'm always stressing to read within the system you're using, and read the cards that are in front of you, not the RWS equivalent.

*she said, emphatically*

\m/ Kat