reading with the marseille tarot

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 10 Aug 2002, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Maan	10 Aug 2002
I'm trying to read with my marseille deck but i don't know how. Do i just use the RW meanings on the pips or have the marseille pips different meanings????? Maybe working with some numerologie but how? Love and Light Maan

Lee	10 Aug 2002
Hi, Maan, check out this thread. People read "pip" decks like the Marseilles in different ways. As you say, you can use RWS-derived meanings, or you can use a numerological approach. -- Lee

Diana	10 Aug 2002
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Lee	10 Aug 2002
Hi Diana, could you please elaborate on the specificity and special things the Marseilles can offer? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Although I've tried repeatedly, I've found my numerological interpretations of Marseilles-type Minors to be rather vague and unhelpful. Could you explain a little more how you approach it? -- Lee

Cerulean	10 Aug 2002
Bad poetry. Read and edit at your own risk If Cups/Vessals are emotions and the heart, they contain water and softer feelings If Swords and the like are ideas and the mind they are as air and thoughts If Pentacles/Coins are material and matters they are as earth and the things of worth If Wands/Staves/Rods/Batons are activities and work they are as fire and movements that we do 1-The Ace is the place we start, with all strength of fresh and vivid force. 2-The two begins the pairing or the dueling. 3-The three ends the first stage, perhaps signals successful initiation, the beginning success of 'we' 4-The four can be a grasping, gathering or holding tight--in terms of pentacles, perhaps hoarding a miser's store 5. Signals active change, conflicts arise. 6. If it's staves, pick up the sticks. For others, at best, a time of rest. 7. In cups, the sadness not even the sight of heaven. In swords, a sneaky turn of luck. The building or blessing for your other suits.. 8. A stable state 9. Culminating stage, strong in all the suits. 10. The end of all roads that hint at the beginning of another. If your fortune was the cups, share your blessings with the other... Mari H.

Maan	10 Aug 2002
Quote: Originally posted by Lee Hi Diana, could you please elaborate on the specificity and special things the Marseilles can offer? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Although I've tried repeatedly, I've found my numerological interpretations of Marseilles-type Minors to be rather vague and unhelpful. Could you explain a little more how you approach it? -- Lee Yes Diana please share you knowledge...i'm intrigude. Maybe you know some good books on the subject? And Mari thanks i just wrote it down in my tarot journal

jema	11 Aug 2002
oh diana, i so envy you your ability to read in french! and i very much look forward to reading your method later on. when i used the marsielle i read it by refering to the LWB, numerology and elements, intuition. and if i may add - pure luck. beginners luck it was. it was my first deck and as all beginners i learnt by trial and error. one of the books i used a while was an old book on how to read with playing cards. i just translated that to the wands, coins, swords and cups. i can't say i was a good reader back then. if i did it now i would do it differently but then i had no knowledge or experience and just did it the way i thought was the best. in a way the readings with the marsielle was a lot more down to earth then my readings are now. it was all very clear cut and definite.

Maan	11 Aug 2002
Hi Diana I'll wait :) Its good for me cause patience is not one of my strong points ;) And i'm affraid that you have to tell my about the teachings in the book cause i can't speek french...i only had it for two years and than dissided that german and english where difficult enough and dropped it...if i only had known ;) Oh and i would love to study it further in a study group If anyone had told me a year back that i would extually like like the marseille i would have thought it impossible and look at me now :) Love and light Maan

Lee	11 Aug 2002
Thanks, Diana, we will be patient... :) I went and looked on French Amazon and this book is available... perhaps, based on what you write, I will order this book and try to make my way through it with my grade-school French. Might be a fun project... and a long one, it's listed as 510 pages(!). It would probably take me several years... :) It says it's the third book in the series, I wonder what the other book is besides the Minors and the Majors... -- Lee

catboxer	11 Aug 2002
"one of the books i used a while was an old book on how to read with playing cards. i just translated that to the wands, coins, swords and cups." --Jema That's what I do. I use Robert Camp's book, "Destiny Cards," for an interpretative system for the suited cards. The only problem with that is there are no knights in that scheme. This is a tricky subject, because the suited cards, unlike the trumps, could not have been endowed with any definite meaning in the early tarot decks. That's because they're really nothing more than a regular playing card deck that employs abstract patterns rather than symbolic pictures. So any meaning assigned to them is arbitrary, rather than something contained intrinsically in the cards.

Maan	27 Aug 2002
Hi Diana i was wondering if you forgot about this ....i'm really curious about you way of reading the pips... Hope you don't mind....and hope you will post Love and lght Maan

Diana	27 Aug 2002
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Maan	27 Aug 2002
wauw Diana that seems indeed very difficult...Thank you for the little tip of the vail :* I really like this idea of looking at the numbers from what they look like...you are looking at the shape of the arabic numbers and how they "feel" This actually makes alot of sence to me...but is the marseille not numbered with roman numbers? Or should i look in the way the symbols are drawn? Hmm the arabic numbers seems the most logical to me..so i think i will give it some thought and try to work my way trough the minors! Thank you very much:*

Diana	27 Aug 2002
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Maan	27 Aug 2002
As a child i have always had feelings with numbers...i hated math but i had some ideas about the numbers...i did not like the seven he seemed so fightlike and so did the five....six was my favourite number and 8 kindda felt like a mum ore somthing. So i think what you getting at..and i think i like it. And i use to put numbers in little dots like . . . . Four seems stable While seven had now nice patron Like . . . . . . . . . Made out of a five and a four! I'm rambeling a little but i think a can get real much from this

Diana	27 Aug 2002
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Lee	27 Aug 2002
This is very interesting, I never in a million years would have thought of using the shapes of the Arabic numbers to intuit meanings. Although the same question occurred to me as it did Maan, i.e. there aren't any Arabic numbers on Marseilles decks. It made me think of the Gill deck, which has great big Arabic numbers on each numbered cards. But it also has keywords, which wouldn't go well with the method. Thanks, Diana! I'll have to ruminate about that a little. I'm in the middle of the Qabalah right now, so I may have to hold off for now... my poor brain has its limits, after all! :) -- Lee

catboxer	27 Aug 2002
Here are some interesting comments Dr. Jung made in his essay, "Mandalas," concerning the number four. "Very frequently, (mandalas) contain a quaternity or a multiple of four, in the form of a cross, a star, a square, an octagon, etc. In alchemy we encounter this motif in the form of a quadratura circuli...the 'squaring of the circle' is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies...Indeed, it could even be called the 'archetype of wholeness.' Because of this significance, the 'quaternity of the one' is the schema for all images of God, as depicted in the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Enoch, and as the representation of Horus with his four sons also shows. The latter suggests an interesting differentiation, inasmuch as there are occasionally representations in which three of the sons have animals' heads and only one a human head, in keeping with the Old Testament visions as well as with the emblems of the seraphim which were transferred to the evangelists." (These latter two -- the Old Testament "beasts" of Ezekiel's vision, later appropriated as the symbols of the four evangelists by the Revelation of St. John the Divine -- are prominently featured on the tarot deck's two wheels, trumps X and XXI [db].) Elsewhere he speaks of "The profound significance of the quaternity with its singular process of differentiation extending over the centuries...the overwhelming majority (of mandalas) are characterized by the circle and the quaternity. In a few, however, the three or the five predominates, for which there are usually special reasons." All quotes are from Jung, CG: "Mandala Symbolism" (Princeton, NJ; Princeton U Press, 1972), pps. 3-5. Unfortunately, this study, which I think holds great value for tarot fans, is out of print and hard to get.

The reading with the marseille tarot thread was originally posted on 10 Aug 2002 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.