Working with tarot profiles - clarification

I'm looking for a little clarification certain aspects of calculating and interpreting Tarot profiles. I think I'm pretty close to mastering the most essential aspects of it, but my mind is still in a whirl and a couple of areas still elude me.

So far I've read:

• The Tarot Handbook (Angeles Arrien)
• Constellations: Patterns of Personal Destiny (Mary K. Greer) (out of print but available at places like www.abe-books.com)
• Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot (Lon Milo Duquette)
• The Shadow Card thread
• Personal Card thread
• Personality, Soul and Year Cards thread
• Your essential card thread
• Astrological Attributions of All Cards thread

I think I have a sound understanding of how to calculate personality symbol, soul symbol, growth symbols, cycles and charts and even shadow/teacher/hidden factor symbols (although I'm still digesting the latter).

I even get the name correspondences. I had to shelve the musical correspondences because I probably have enough to chew on for now.

I'm less clear about the following:

Duquette talked about how to calculate court cards and small cards, but didn't really explain the significance. This is also shown on the Astrological Attributions of All Cards thread). For instance a person born on July 1 would have a court card of Queen of Cups and a small card of Two of Cups (Love). I don't quite get what function these particular symbols are playing, when considered along side the personality and soul symbols.

Mary Greer's book mentioned that each person's soul symbol will correspond to four other Lessons & Opportunities cards, which are small cards of that same number in the deck. Here, I sort of understand the significance, but I don't understand how/when they actually come up. Is it simply the understanding of where our lessons and opportunities generally lie in life, or are there other uses for these L&O cards?

Mary Greer mentions that there is one exception to the rule involving the 19/10/1 combination, whereby both the 10s and the 1s count in this way; so is that referring to a person whose personality card is 19 Sun, or a person whose personality card is a 10 Fortune, or both?

And again for a 19/10/1 or 10/1 person, would the L&O cards be Aces or 11s or 10s? I would cautiously think Ace, however I'm not sure since the Ace is quite a bit different from the rest of its suit; it's not the essence of each suit element but is actually the seed of that essence. On the other hand, since Fortune (in Thoth anyway) signifies doing things originally and creatively, this kind of rings true with the Ace idea.

Sorry for the huge laundry list of questions! My brain is overflowing with symbols. Hopefully this will also be of use to someone else who's into this.

Edit:

(Removed a couple of questions as my confusion evaporated at last; edited for general clarity).

Sheesh, would you believe I have one more question?!

For the small cards which each represent one decan of an astrological sign, the idea occured to me last night that perhaps, the periods of time can also be used as a sort of a universal daily calendar. E.g. today being September 6 would make this a Nine of Disks cycle, and then on Sept. 12 we all go into an 11-day Ten of Disks (whoohoo!) cycle. I'm positive this has to be something that has come up many times for many people before but I had to ask.

I'm curious: Why do you think that the numbers used to identify your date of birth in a particular calendar system would have anything to do with your personality? I guess I just don't see the connection.

Baneemy

Hi Baneemy. That is a pretty big question and I'm sure we could fill quite a bit of space trying to answer/debate it here. Others have written volumes on the subject (see partial list above), and I'm sure there's much more that could be written. I guess this thread is as good a place as any to talk about that, but addressing the whole validity of it was not really what I had in mind when I started the thread. Right now I'm more interested in mastering these systems.

Forteana, no problem. I was just curious, because I've never heard of the Gregorian calendar having any particular esoteric significance. If it would take too long to explain, that's OK. Is there any book in particular you would recommend for someone like me who knows absolutely nothing about the subject?

Which particular system is being used may not be all that important, because if I understand the theory correctly, whatever calendar you (and your lineage) connect to on a deep level will tend to correspond with strong symbolic experiences. I'm sure Tarot and Astrological systems can and have been adapted to utilize other calendar systems (speaking of which, there are a couple of Mayan decks, although I'm not too familiar with them).

Basically, it's all about symbols and mythological systems. I believe these are the things which connect us to the collective unconscious. Maybe not scientifically provable right now, but perinormal at least I would say.

As for resources for understanding the theories, I'm afraid I've gleaned most of my own understanding via more intuitive means. I do feel strongly about the need to find common ground between metaphysical topics like these with Science (and in fact one of my long-term goals is to focus on the more academic side of these spiritual practices). I suspect that reading C.G. Jung, Joseph Campbell and Jean Gebser (specifically The Everpresent Origin) might be a step in the right direction, although that would perhaps be less specific than you would probably prefer.