Has anyone left tarot behind permenantly in favour of a different kind of oracle?

I am just wondering how many people have actually done this?

I have been studying, playing and reading tarot for about ten years.

And sometimes, I think I have learnt nothing at all. Well, of course that is not true. I could probably go on 'You Bet' and identify many hundreds of decks, from one card. But as for reading them, I have never been that confident about merging cards interpretations and giving confident readings.

I have felt like this before. I took a break. I went back. It has made little difference.

The Victorian Romantic was my last chance, I thought, but it did not stir anything in me when I got it - even after persistance. I felt nothing for it, even though I could see and respected the hard work and vision that went into it. It was just not for me. There is still a possibility that the Sheridan Douglas could be my very last stab at tarot, but I have decided to put off working with it for a couple of months.

There seems to be a new tarot deck born every minute. And I think that this in itself is dampening my enthusiasm for it all. The 'Jane Austen's' and 'UFO's' are taking tarot to a place that I don't want to be. Of course, I don't have to go there. But it is just another nail in my tarot coffin. I came from a place where I didn't even realise there was more than one deck. Now, they are flinging past my ears at a rapid pace. And I don't like what I see most of the time. We all like different things and I respect that and your choices. Maybe it is too much tarot. Too much choice. Too much interferance.

So I am now considering taking off my tarot hat and moving on. Not a million miles away. I have found playing cards and they excite me in the same way that tarot once did. They are mysterious. They talk and they move. They can scare me and reassure me.

So I am trying my best to get better aquainted with them. I ordered Deborah Leigh's book today for deeper reading. Because I want to go deeper and further. I want to adapt them and use them well.

What I am asking is this. Did you ever feel this way? Did you down your tarot tools and find an alternative, never to return? The I-Ching? Playing Cards? A specific oracle?

What provoked the change? How are things different now?

Really interested to find out from you all. My feelings seem so final, but I realise now that this has been coming on for some time. I have been posting in threads about tarot far less. And my readings have not felt particularly inspiring. The decks I have been interested in (The Enochian, Voodoo, Buddha) have moved far enough away from tarot that I don't even consider all of them to be 'tarot'. I think they were major hints.

What do you think?

LB

Well, I am in love with the Victorian Romantic, so Tarot will never be left behind. But I'm really intrigued with these Lenormand cards, they show me a new way of reading, and it is a stimulation.

Generally if I am bored with tarot (and I have gone through long periods of that) it is because I am not reading for others. As soon as I start reading for others (online) and experimenting, my mind starts jumping out crazy excited wacked out amazed fascinated in love with the cards again.

I'd love to hear more about what intrigues you with playing cards.

P.S. I have never permanently abandonned a friend.

I think change is growth LB, and for me personally, if I'm not growing I'm not learning and that is somewhere I don't want to be. To walk the same path till I have a rut freaks me out, but I understand the comfort zone many live in.

I do know that two times I have taken nearly a year 'off', from one of my great lifetime passions...just walked away...and when the time was right I went back to it renewed, re-impassioned, as if the well was refilled. I don't know where all the new creativity and ideas were seeded from, to me it seemed I was a million miles away, but I make no excuses for the time off, and treat that need and the results as a blessing.

Blessed be your journey!

LB - that is all very well (poor BBC ) but a word of warning. It won't work - there are just as many oracle decks coming out every minute.

I have been watching your struggle, as you know - and I truly think this is NOT the answer you are looking for..... Sorry. I don't think it's about the quantity. I think you are thinking too hard and looking at too much. Maybe take a REAL break (the last one wasn't very long, when it came down to it....) and come back to a couple of decks (tarot or oracle - I don't think that's the issue here) and just don't LOOK at any others. (Did you join in the one deck exercise, for instance ? It might have helped.... No, I didn't !!!)

You remind me of something said by a psychiatrist I was once stuck with, who informed me that I had a brilliant butterfly mind (I don't know about the brilliant, but the butterfly bit was right !) I fear you may be the same. Get the butterfly to fold its wings for a while. A good long while. Good luck !

I think that what excites me about playing cards, to begin with, is the unknown. Being able to look at what appears to be six black dots on a bit of cardboard next to three hearts on another and being able to build a feasible story. I like their code-like simplicity. When you work out a system, it gives you a direct answer without being ambiguous; without wondering if a court is you, someone else or something completely different. The majors in tarot were always a headache for me. What did the 'High Priestess' really mean? There were some cards, however much I meditated, however much I read, that still, a decade later, I can not grasp a meaning from.

When I first met tarot, I was entranced. But now, those images (RWS especially) are engraved on my brain - so much that they have ceased to work anymore. And I think I am just sick of seeing them reproduced, over and over again, year after year - as vikings, as gnomes, based on books and films, adapted to represent artistic works, manga and even the Kama Sutra. What next? The more variety that we have, the more I have felt that tarot has taken another few steps back into the shadows, leaving this flimsy 'mask' there in it's place. This is not intended to hurt anyone's feelings, believe me. It is just how I feel.

But I also love how playing cards can be read in trios. Tarot can be read like that too, but often I think that their meanings are a little harder to combine - unless, maybe, you use a Marseille or pip deck. And reading in trios adds so much movement. It gives punctuation to sentences. Reading courts by position gives them feelings, emotions and lets you know when they have been telling lies, just by where they stand in a group of three. There is no confusion about whether this is you or someone else. There is blatant evidence to support that it is him that is keeping a secret from you, lol. And I like this straight talking. It makes me think and it makes me look at my life. It magnifies some of the really small stuff that I may not have noticed. As an example, today it reminded me to be sensitive to a guy that I am seeing. He is not as brash as me, naturally, and the cards reminded me to not rush in there like I usually do, but to open him up carefully and with respect for 'his way of doing things'.

I was always so eager to read with the Marseille. But I just needed a good concrete base. I didn't want to throw RWS meanings onto those cards, but I also couldn't find a way of reading them that worked myself. And nobody else ever produced a system that I could follow effectively. But in playing cards, there are systems. And some of them work better for me. It is almost like finding a nation that speaks your language.

I looked at astrology. I tried (really hard) to work with Froud's blessed faeries, but they didn't want to play.

Does any of that make sense?

I know I can often be a bit like a bull at a gate with my ideas and feelings, but I don't mean to come across saying 'my games better than your game'. I am just interested to see if anyone made the transition so successfully that they never went back. I have heard of people going from oracle to tarot and sticking, but not the other way around.

LB

I have been working with tarot only about a year and a half, and I am continuing to find nuances in the Rider Waite meanings, and to a lesser extent, in the imagery -- my "other" deck is purportedly based on the Rider Waite meanings, but the dark, obscure, sometimes violent imagery has led me to a rather abstracted kind of reading, not much connected to imagery -- and I have found reading with playing cards to be quite satisfying: almost zero imagery, majors not directly present but only implied by combinations of numbers, no knights (or knights subsumed into pages), reversals not visible but perhaps still there . . . but all this is (for me) built on tarot and if anything serves to build my connection with the two tarot decks.

What I do see as a possibility, over time, is that the work with the cards will sufficiently open up my (2) priestess capacities that I do not "need" the cards to go there. But that is a ways off yet.

zb

I think you have always understood me very well Gregory. I think this butterfly doesn't need to fold up his wings. I think he needs them cut off.

And I am trying the one deck study now - in that I am using just the playing cards and nothing else. I looked at the Archeon (sp?) Tarot and then withdrew my fingers from the keyboard quickly. I have put off ordering the Sheridan Douglas. I decided to just work with the playing cards. At least until Christmas and see how things go. I have been doing my daily draws here with Phoenix Rising, Al'Sira and Leo. And we are all exploring and supporting. And it is great.

In terms of oracles, I don't want any others. I tried the Soul Cards and I hated them. I have looked at this and that, but nothing really interests me. Maybe playing cards are the way to go for me. I will continue with them. And they are kind of different than tarot in that their illustrations do not vary so widely. I could never work out which tradition I wanted to work with and I think that that helped confuse me even more. Playing cards are playing cards, nothing more, nothing less.

LB

LittleBuddha said:

I like their code-like simplicity.

Click to expand...

Wow, that's really cool. That's a little bit kinda sorta what I was saying about the lenormand cards in my thread ... is this a like a cold that's catching?

When I first met tarot, I was entranced.[...]. And I think I am just sick of seeing them reproduced, over and over again, year after year - as vikings, as gnomes, based on books and films, adapted to represent artistic works, manga and even the Kama Sutra. What next?

Click to expand...

hahahahahaha. I love how you put t hat. That is really funny. That's why I prefer decks that have their own ideas of art, not just RWS redrawn with bears, or cats, or whatever.

I was always so eager to read with the Marseille. But I just needed a good concrete base. I didn't want to throw RWS meanings onto those cards, but I also couldn't find a way of reading them that worked myself. And nobody else ever produced a system that I could follow effectively. But in playing cards, there are systems. And some of them work better for me. It is almost like finding a nation that speaks your language.

Click to expand...

Didn't nobody never done tell you, you just have to make it up?

I have watched your self torture from the roadside LB. A couple of times I have predicted that you would do this or that, I knew you take a run with Oracles, but mostly I knew you would try cartomancy with playing cards. Why? Because you like to stretch you mind with symbols. You like mysteries and systems, puzzles, mind maps etc;and how other people respond to the same. Mostly it seems you want to help others find answers.
I have a male friend who is the most lettered person in Health I know. He is a Medical Doctor,Psychiatrist,Hypnotherapist,Osteopath, Alternative practioner,herbalist- the list goes on and it has taken over forty five years to get all these letters. He was like a broken record with "Is this the ultimate way?" "Is the the real truth?" Finally he realised there is no one answer- he was just interested in learning about man and Health and how to help. I do not think he will ever settle into one system and his whole life will be about learning. At the moment he is in China learning about Acupunture. He appears to no longer torture himself with wondering if he has chosen the right path-he goes down the road- takes a look- takes all he has learned before- stays a while, then tries another path. I say THERE IS NOTHING AMISS HERE- NOTHING TO BE GUILTY ABOUT.
To answer your question have I changed from Tarot to another system? No, but I have incorporated different systems into my life under the banner 'Symbols and what they mean' I am learning I Ching, can follow Playing card divination, Numbers (as in dice), Biblomancy, as they all interest me. History interests me, as does Miniature Art and Geography, Social anthropology, Architecture, World Religions. I am good at most things, but I am Master of none. Mostly I am a collector of Cards, and a Tarot enthusiaist and happy wanderer around the fields of Mysticism. Go with the flow LB and enjoy what ever takes your fancy- you are also allowed to be bored and try another tack- that is one of things that makes a Forum rich with ideas and experience. ~Rosanne

firemaiden said:

Didn't nobody never done tell you, you just have to make it up?

Click to expand...

Haha. Great minds think alike, FM. I just suggested that in another thread. Sometimes, I feel that I could just be searching for ever and never know what was intended in those pips. However enlightening some may find seeing something completely different in a picture every time, I want some kind of foundation to work from.

I think I fly better in a plane than by flapping my arms.

LB