Function of a Tarot Reading

I just read the latest tarotstudies Newsletter that included responses to this topic from tarotforums. I went through the quotes and identified the following items, which I loosely organized into subheads. I realize they could have been organized in many different ways, there are overlaps, and some ideas could fit under more than one heading - but it was interesting to attempt an overview. Would appreciate comments, suggestions, additions, etc.

Function of a Tarot Reading (based on Tarot Newsletter #36)

•gives a framework for inquiry (question asking)
-facilitates identifying and exploring questions

•helps maintain focus/meditation (on issues)

•relieves anxiety
-explains things
-gives hope
-allows one to feel in control
-encourages responsibility

•offers insights
-gained perspective
-increased awareness/clarity
-seeing the “bigger picture”
-viewing personal issues in context of history & wisdom teachings
-bringing unconscious to consciousness
-reflecting on relation of metaphors & symbols to situation
-recognizing personal energy projections
-physicalizes (objectifies) what’s in your mind
-improving self (self-improvement)

•provides access to wisdom (other forms of ‘knowing’)
-clarifying messages from the gods
-facilitating dialog with higher self
-conversing with unconscious/collective unconscious

•gives facts, data and information
-identifies strengths and weaknesses
-identifies past/present/future locations on life path
-describes past/present/future events
-shows how actions affect results (if…then…)

•helps achieve desires and goals
-helps make choices/decisions
-provides information needed to produce desired outcomes
-solves problems
-identifies options/alternates
-proposes actions that will result in best/desired conclusions

•helps to meet whatever happens in the best possible way

Is THAT what I'm supposed to be doing? Talk about pressure! I just wanted to know whether my SO was going to get a raise or not...

Seriously, Teheuti, I don't get the newsletter but that is a very good summary and I have it bookmarked to refer back to. Thank you for doing that. I particularly like the businesslike tone. I'm going to show it to a relative who thinks Tarot is something scary and evil and maybe the 'corporate' approach will change her mind a little. Probably not but we'll see.

That's very cool Teheuti, thanks a lot for this post! I too am going to bookmark it as I think it sums up everything that the Tarot IS and would be a really good reference to answer those who think it's dark arts or just silly.

My tendency when looking at everyone's opinions about the function of a tarot reading was to look for where I agreed or disagreed with the other people posting - or with their way of phrasing it. Instead, I decided - what if we're all correct and what exactly are we all trying to say. That's when I put this list together - drawing from everyone. So, rather than looking at who was 'right' and who was 'wrong,' it was so much more exciting and powerful to look at all the ways we were all right. The result is such a full, rich image from which we can draw as needed.

Mary

This was the second time I decided to put together various quotes from numerous contributors about such 'basic' area of Tarot - and therefore an area ever so broad and difficult.. and recall the numerous reflective directions to which it lead me.

Those groupings and headings are a fantastic synopsis of the breadth covered. I have grabbed Teheuti's group headings and modified them for my own reflections... so,

putting just those (modified) headings together, we have that a tarot reading may provide:

If I tried and further 'narrow' these to broader headings, it seems to me that two principal characteristics emerge.

On the one hand there is the personal transformative aspect, in terms of enabling a re-thinking or re-viewing one's own situation in relation to a situation - an aspect of this is perhaps covered by that above the Temple at Delphi: Gnothi Seauton ('Know Thyself').

On the other hand is a broadened opening and understanding of the external world - an aspect of this may be characterised by the Genesis story of the naming of created beings, or perhaps simply that ever so important element in seeking to understand the world: Gnosis.

jmd said:

If I tried and further 'narrow' these to broader headings, it seems to me that two principal characteristics emerge. <snips>
•the personal transformative aspect
•a seeking to understand the world.

Click to expand...

Great job of reducing the material. Here's one further: help in knowing and transforming the inner and the outer.

I'd like to add that a major mode implied but not stated is: "through giving meaning to pattern perception."

Oh, I love doing this!!!

Mary