Talking Tarot Cards

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 12 Jan 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Sara	12 Jan 2003
Hi everyone, I've been looking at a few books on tarot exercises lately, and woke up this morning with one that I wanted to try, inspired be the exercises I've been reading about. I don't remember which book (or possibly a web site) the inspiration for this came from, I thought the original activity came from Nina Lee Braden's "Tarot for Self-Discovery," but I can't find it in there. Anyway, wherever I saw the original exercise, it was basically like this--one chose a card from the deck, either by looking at the deck face up and choosing one or by drawing a card at random, and meditating on the card or "going into the card" imagining the character on it talking and describing itself. How would it describe itself, or what would it have to say about itself? Well, I thought of some variations on that, which I haven't seen anywhere else (but it doesn't mean that someone else hadn't already thought of them and described some, I don't know). What about drawing two cards, in whatever manner, and having the character on one card describing the other card, from it's perspective. Example, what would the King of swords have to say about the Hanged Man, or vice-versa? How would another card describe the Hanged Man, and how would it be different from what the King of Swords would have to say? What about a conversation between two card characters (or more)? What would they have to say to each other? I don't know if anyone can use this, but I thought I'd post it. I haven't tried it yey myself, but am planning on doing so. Anyway, hope it's useful to someone. Sara

zorya	12 Jan 2003
in the book, 'tarot for yourself', mary k greer suggests a similar excercise, called 'entering a card'. (pages 46-49) in this excercise (and variations) she suggests accepting a gift from the figure. ask yourself, what is the gift (s)he is offering me? she also suggests talking to the figure and asking it questions directly, including if there are messages for me. another one is asking what it is that disturbs you in the scene. i use this now and then to 'talk' with the various archetypes. i like your idea of having the cards communicate with each other. i plan on giving this a try myself, either with neighboring cards (in order), or cards that show up in the same spread. thanks :)

Ophiel	12 Jan 2003
This reminds me of another book that was published some years ago called "The Inner Guide Meditation" by Edwin Steinbrecher, and it's still in print. This book gives instructions for meeting with your inner guide and how to meet with a whole array of inner archetypes. The author also gives instructions for linking your astrological aspects with the Tarot cards with which they correspond, and to create dialogue with the energies. It's really quite a good book. The idea of entering a Tarot card (especially the Major Arcana) is not new at all. In fact, those involved in the modern magickal Kabalah have been doing this for many years. It is called 'scrying' the cards and details can be found in many books on Magick. Dennings/Phillips had a particularly good book called "Magical States of Consciousness." Unfortunately, it is out of print. However, there are others. Ted Andrews' "Simplified Magic Vol. 2" has quite a bit of information, as does Regardie's "Garden of Pomegranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life" (the newer edition edited by the Ciceros has a great deal more information than the original text.) I think Greer's "Paths of Wisdom" also includes some information on this, as do many other books. These are not new techniques. Modified perhaps, just not new.

firemaiden	17 Jan 2003
This is also a really good way to appreciate "art" in general. For some reason, we paradoxically don't see images as well with our eyes as with our words. I discovered this while attempting to teach some art history to a very under-achieving class of college freshmen in New Jersey. At first they HATED talking about paintings, but then, when I asked them to "enter in to the paintings" and put into words everything they saw, all of a sudden the found the paintings come alive for them, for us, all together.

The Talking Tarot Cards thread was originally posted on 12 Jan 2003 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.