Kosjitov
I've often seen keywords listed for several cards, some "universally accepted" attributes to each. However, do you feel that these key meanings can take a back seat to some illustration on the card/based on the deck, a dialect of sorts?
How do you differentiate *when* that becomes appropriate for you?
Totally, absolutely and in every other way ditto.For me, always. I always, always, always trust my intuitive read of the image over any keyword or book meaning. The keywords are so very limiting when compared to the wealth of possibilities inherent in the image.
I think I remember reading in a thread a couple of months ago that keywords eventually become automatic springboards towards other, more nuanced and richer meanings. I would venture to guess that many, if not most of us, learned the Tarot with a book or two (or two hundred). Most books offer keyword associations. At some point, when we become comfortable enough with the deck we use and the basic meanings of the cards, our minds gradually start accepting, rejecting or tweaking the meanings as we see fit, depending on the reading. For me this process happened unconsciously.
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For me the "canned" meanings (from keywords to detailed written descriptions and the books both came from) were the basic vocabulary and intellectual "training wheels" that formed the nucleus of my early learning. But the imagery and its encoded symbolism called to my intuition and imagination right from the start and gradually I melded the verbal with the non-verbal by synthesizing them in a more holistic way, ready to be instantly (at least it is hoped ) evoked by the fall of a card in the spread. This was imperative since I have always read face-to-face, and it's gauche to drag out a text or other crutch and pore over it while the sitter wonders. I once had a doctor do that while I was sitting on the examining table. She went to her office and brought back a medical text to describe to me some symptom or other (I swear I could almost see her index finger tracking along the text and her lips moving silently as she reviewed it!). Needless to say, my confidence evaporated and I found another doctor.
For me the "canned" meanings (from keywords to detailed written descriptions and the books both came from) were the basic vocabulary and intellectual "training wheels" that formed the nucleus of my early learning. But the imagery and its encoded symbolism called to my intuition and imagination right from the start and gradually I melded the verbal with the non-verbal by synthesizing them in a more holistic way, ready to be instantly (at least it is hoped ) evoked by the fall of a card in the spread.