I have been asked....

.... how I do it - the one card readings that make them feel like I crawled into their heads and read their thoughts...

So there you have a querent. Someone who wants to know something. Someone who seeks an answer. Or just someone who wants the fun of a reading. Whatever.

You are going to read.

You choose a deck. For whatever reason - either because it is familiar to you, speaks to you or because you want to change. (My preference is for fully illustrated decks as unillustrated does not allow me the same way of reading - you'll see why.

A card is pulled. Just one.

Look at it. It is a window to another world.

This world might be familiar or strange, weird things might be happening in it or things you know well.

Remember, you chose that deck and pulled the card for your querent. It is his world you are looking into.

I do not let myself be bothered by fixed card meanings.

Try it: let yourself be drawn into the card, into the glimpse of the world shown there. The figures, animals, plants, landscapes, buildings shown there. The weather... the atmosphere. When you get drawn in, you will be more attracted by an element of the card - whatever it is - follow the attraction.

Feel. Is it a person? What does this person feel, think, want, dream, resent, love, hate, fear in the situation it is in? Same for any other element. Feel. Do not try to reason it.

Dress your feelings in words. Describe what you felt - not your thoughts. Let yourself be led by the card, not by what you think this card should mean. Let yourself be carried by this glimpse of a foreign world... (unillustrated does not work so well for me because I have nothing where I can dive into - but maybe after this post i will try it!)

Anyone up for a journey free of book meanings? You might discover that you get close to the book meanings after all, but coming from a new angle....

I have found this to be true as well. It seems when I have been most "on" while reading is when I allow myself to crawl into the cards like that. Sometimes I come up with what I think are the most outlandish things. Or maybe I think I'm being presumptuous. So I falter. I hold back. Then I regret it because inevitably the seeker will tell me more about their situation and what had just been on the tip of my tongue that I had swallowed back was precisely that which they tell me is happening. So I'm learning to just say what I see, come what may.

~Mercy

What a lovely post, Simone.

I have been trying to crawl into cards more, but I keep feeling trapped in my own head. I intellectualize too much, rather than letting the image speak to me. Your post has helped me understand the goal of doing exactly what I have been trying to do more: crawling into a card and getting to know the emotions of it. I'm looking forward to experimenting more.

I agree, I try to do the same as well in my readings, and some of them produce very good results.

Thanks Simone for the detailed algorithm of how to penetrate the veil. Will you have a study group to practice this technique?

jumptothemoonyea said:

Thanks Simone for the detailed algorithm of how to penetrate the veil. Will you have a study group to practice this technique?

Click to expand...

This is a wonderful idea! Simone....do you feel up to it?????? I'd love to participate!

~SA~

Hey all - thanks for your replies and for the idea of a "study group"!

Sounds fun, I'll think up some lighthearted fun exercises - you know how I always have those whacky ideas, right? - and then link the new thread here...

This sounds like a fantasic idea! The last two decks I've gotten... I haven't even cracked the book once (which is a first!)... just let the images trigger "something"... the readings have been for me... so it was a bit subjective. But still pretty amazing what I got just from the images.

Still... I think you did crawl in my head.

I love this idea and would love to participate in such a study group if it could get organized.....This is how I prefer reading as well......I often get cards that give a certain sensation that might be entirely opposite what the regular book meaning says....still, I would rather go with my inuition and those readings are more than often quite accurate (especially for myself...hmm...)
Could this be done?! I'm game!!!!!!!

I love one-card readings - and I agree with you, Simone, they are one of the best ways in tarot to loosen up the imagination & the intuition. When I first started tarot, I would try these long spreads, that were more like neatly plotted stories. After a while, I decided to see how it worked with just one card at a time - my poor friends became guinea pigs - but it was fun. We'd have one-card sessions over dinner or at parties - and you really have to flow with the card. Later, I did a lot of that in the field, because we didn't always have time for more - and people need outlets & an imaginative understanding of themselve, of the situations they faced, etc.

Once you start to enter the card, there's nowhere it can't take you...it's not neatly plotted: just like a person's mind...logic really hasn't got much to do with it. It's like writing (or painting, I suppose, but I don't paint).

Something else I enjoy doing is pulling a card, opening a page of poetry at random, and read them together - for someone. It's uncanny the way they flow into each other, and let you have a glimpse of a person's mind.

In the 1960s youth revolutions, our parents used to claim - "power to the imagination" - and they were right: I'm not sure there is anything more powerful than imagination. Tarot - symbolic imagery in general - gives us many things, but this playful/serious use of the imagination to understand another human being is its greatest gift. We are a little less lonely on earth thanks to it.