Journey Cards Lead to Words for Tarot

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 11 Aug 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

darwinia	11 Aug 2004
I'm putting this in Talking Tarot because it's not always specific. Journey Cards by Barbara Courtney 24 Cards; 40 Word Tokens I saw these at Tarot Garden tonight, and the cards are unavailable but you can use the Search Service. They are a deck of 24 collage cards, rather long and thin and very beautiful as collage cards go, but they also come with 40 word tokens, that you use in conjunction with the cards for intuitive readings. I'm not sure if the word tokens are on cardstock or something heavier, and what the words are exactly, but it seemed like a great idea. This reminded me of an exercise I had read about in the excellent book "Poemcrazy" about buying a roll of admission tickets and randomly writing down words and expressions on the blank backs, separating the tickets, and then pulling them randomly from a bowl and using them in writing. Obviously the word token idea is similar, but paired with visual art. I've randomly used sentences and paragraphs from books with tarot cards, including poetry excerpts, lyrics, and single words from the dictionary, but by writing your own expressions and objects down, you get really odd combinations. Similarly, I have a deck of cards called the Inner Outings deck which are collaged cards with single words on them and used for journaling and writing. I have a deck called the Tea Leaf Fortune Cards which you could use in the same way, pulling several cards to use together as a creative exercise with a tarot card; I've paired used playing cards and meditation cards; I write short essays about historical or biographical information on art decks. People that know me, know that I prefer using tarot cards this way or creating my own artwork from the impetus of tarot cards, rather than doing conventional readings. I've always loved this sentence, which comes from an old Barron's Educational book called "Study Tips" by William H. Armstrong. He is speaking of motivation: "Each must find it for himself." Very true, and one reason I'm always baffled when someone says "What's the point?" about the work I do with tarot. I don't know, what's your point? I'm thinking for myself, it's called creativity and some live in the Celestial City of Imagination where motivation comes from wherever we see it. Each must find it for himself, use the gifts and talents you have and make a way, your way. In "Poemcrazy," author Susan Wooldridge cites a few examples, and you can see from this that they are very, very wild and creatively inspiring, with a little more juice to them than single words. The concept goes a bit further, some are even nonsensical taken together but they have this depth of expression that you have to discover and pull together. "Names are powerful. They influence our perception." Names of plants and herbs: twinflower, bedstraw, milkweed, shooting star, birdseye. Perceive: is the sky like bedstraw or milkweed? Objects: white water jug, red ball, black snow. Give colours to ideas and abstractions: Blue love, Chartreuse agreements, Silver deliberation, Magenta pride. Pair verbs with nouns, collect nouns and verbs. Lure, slink, trigger, release, spoon, spin, exiting, truth, wish. Truth trigger Spoon spin Wish release I say..... The silver deliberation of my spoon at breakfast, Grazing at the window, I leave birdseye wishes. I look around me now...... Churning dreams in Pentium characters, Churning dreams in fan paintbrushes, bristles askew, Churning dreams in beige MS-415 speaker, treble volume gazing at blue penpad, Churning music locked in churning dreams, silent, in chartreuse agreements. Imagine pulling such words and pairing them with tarot cards. You pick The High Priestess and gather words from your bowl of tickets. You get...grazing, hammer, window, squash, raspberry, water, cold. How is she like that? Her pillars cold, like the grazing hammer in a winter basement. She sits like a water jar of raspberries, Layered with magenta pride, releasing windows, Opening toward black earth of ripening squash.

darwinia	11 Aug 2004
Part Two : what about all those boffo paint chips in the hardware store? Another suggestion from Susan Wooldridge, even better than blank admission tickets to the theatre, cut apart paint chips and collage or glue random phrases or words onto them. I randomly pick the word "accused" from my book of Pablo Neruda poems and randomly stick my finger on the paint chip called "Shaded Pond." There's a story there. You pick Tom-Tom from the Phantasmagoric Theater Tarot with the colour strip Green Corinth and a phrase from Clifford Pickover's book "Strange Brains and Eccentric Genius" which is ready to hand as always by the computer..."intriguing feature" or maybe......."internal bleeding".........."an interest in cerebellum structure"........."influential geniuses." And then you write........."Tom-Tom watched the toy sailboat in the pond, the water a corinth of green with internal bleeding of blue. The boat's most intriguing feature was the way it skipped and danced over the water like an influential genius, enticing him, providing interest in his cerebellum structure. He knew he must take it." See. I dare ya.

The Journey Cards Lead to Words for Tarot thread was originally posted on 11 Aug 2004 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.