WHen a reading is someone else's

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 09 Aug 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Francesca	09 Aug 2004
This morning very early, I threw a 3-card spread and I got The Moon, the 6 of Swords, and the 6 of Cups. I see the 6's as more troubled than anything. Full of hidden agendas and ambiguities. The 6's represent 2 minds--as in "I'm of two minds on that"--that haven't come together and reconciled. So between the moon and the 6's I wrote about amiguities and deception and two opinions or minds not coming to gether. This is not exactly the place I am in right now--I'm haveing a really good summer! A little later I went downstairs where my roommate was making breakfast. She had come in late from a trip to visit some relatives and she told me how she spent an hour and a half fighting a panic attack while driving on the freeway at night. It's a rural state so you can drive a good while with no signs of civilization except the road. She had worked out a route home for herself that would only have her on the freeway for about half an hour, but her uncle very innocently suggested she take the freeway the whole way since it would take less time. So she did. It must have been some strong energy flowing through the house this morning for me to give myself a reading that was actually hers. THis happens often to me, that I'll end up with someone else's reading. Francesca

Thirteen	09 Aug 2004
I'm mystified by two things: 1) Why you read the 6's as negative. Look at your reading: Moon = confusion, illusions, etc. 6/Swords = (would indicate to me, at least), finding a way to the other shore, escaping confusion. A logical answer that calms all that emotional maddness of the Moon. 6/Cups = Coming into a peaceful, emotional haven, meeting up with old friends or relations and feeling secure and happy, as in childhood. So why DO you see the 6's as being "of two minds"? I've never heard this interpetation of that number, especially in Tarot. 6 is often seen as equalibrium, a merging of two triangles. It is seen, in short, as very stable. 2) Why did you read this as being your friend's reading given her story? The 6/Cups is often relatives--but it's the last card--as a 3/card reading (past, present, future) this would be "The future"! She went to see the relatives FIRST. The Moon, madness, would have come in the middle (panic attack) and traveling, with the 6/Swords at the end, arriving at home to relief of the mind. These cards are all mixed up for that reading. That all said, in my experience, there's only two reasons why the cards would give you another person's reading: 1) It's important you know this information. 2) You did a reading for this person, let them handle the cards, and their "residue" is still on the cards--which means you didn't shuffle them/cleanse them well enough (some readers don't believe cards hold onto a person's "aura" some do. That's for you to decide).

juju	09 Aug 2004
I also find it interesting because rarely do you get readings for someone else unless, as Thirteen said, it was necessary for you to know that information. And even if you gave your roommate a reading, I still believe the cards are affected by whomever is reading them. The 6s usually pertain to the past. The 6 of swords is movement mentally from a situation from the past that is frustrating and hectic and the 6 of cups are a time of nostalgia and family. So I also don't see them as negative. The moon is also the first card (right?) so this would be a past element that is affecting the 6s. Of course, the tarot is individual interpretation - so if your strong gut reaction tells you that this is your roommate's reading then perhaps it very well could be.

Francesca	09 Aug 2004
One day I laid out all the pips according to number so I put all the 6's side by side to see what I could learn--this is the RW deck. In the 6 of S all the faces are hidden and one side of the watrer is choppy while the other is smooth. I suppose it could indicate that the other shore is an escape from confusion, but I would think another card would indicate that. This six only shows the actual trip. In the 6 of C the girl's hands are hidden and it is unclear if the boy's flowers are a gift of if she must pay for them. IN the 6 of W the horse is looking out while the rider's face is hidden and it could be an image of a cheering crowd or an angry mob. The 6 of pentacles shows a wealthy man giving--but not really in the the spirit of giving because he is weighing it out first. One of the emblems of the number 6 is the star of David--two triangles one representing the female principle, the other the male. So often the two principles don't really coalesce as completely and smoothly as we might wish. So to me 6's represent two forces (2 three's) that have come together but are not completely comfortable. I've never heard that interpretation before. It came out of my intuition and observations. I don't really buy it about other people's energy remaining on the cards. But the house is full of energy of all kinds--it's old. And we have lived there together for a year and some change so I imagine it has built up. And she was still very shaken this morning when I talked to her. Also, when I do a 3 card reading, any reading, I am loosey goosey about the positions. I sort of look over it generally first then see if the positions fit and how.

allibee	09 Aug 2004
Why does the Moon have to relate to night time? Sure it can physically but on a much deeper level it is also a card of opening yourself to your imagination and your intuition ... in which case the 6 Swords is the metaphysical journey you are on - moving on the tide and going with the flow, going where things can look a little differently (The moon) And as for the 6 cups "In the 6 of C the girl's hands are hidden and it is unclear if the boy's flowers are a gift of if she must pay for them" or maybe whether she should accept them - - - if you want to interpret them soley from the picture. The 6 cups isn't just a card of nostalgia ... it's a card of going deeper than the 2 cups, with more familiarity, being in the comfort zone, feeling at ease with the journey you are on All in all it's a very positive reading if you don't try and 'make them fit' some preconceived notions

Thirteen	09 Aug 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Francesca In the 6 of S all the faces are hidden and one side of the watrer is choppy while the other is smooth. It sounds to me as if the RW deck might be locking you into certain, negative interpetations. Have you ever used the Crowley deck or given his interpetations of the cards a look? In Crowley's the six swords meet at the center of a Rose Cross--it looks very much like the swords of knights set down upon a round table, points touching as if, well, as if everyone gets the point ;) Crowley interpets this card as the "central secret of scientific truth," as success afer difficulty--a reward well earned, in particular, a mental reward. The reason I mention this is because your "two-faced" interpetation seems heavy on the negative, as if the positive was completely erased. I apologize in advance if I'm very wrong about this--I only have your two posts to go on, but take this: Quote: In the 6 of C the girl's hands are hidden and it is unclear if the boy's flowers are a gift of if she must pay for them. There was a long and even heated discussion on this card--but why view the girl's hands as "hidden" rather than being kept warm? If it's winter, and it's cold, she'd got mittens on. Which would seem logical. Wouldn't you send out your little girl with her mittens on to keep her hands warm in winter? Nothing "hidden" about it. And if we go back to your logic about the 6/swords (i.e. that the image shows the boat on the river, not reaching shore) then we should do the same for 6/cups, shouldn't we? We see ONLY the hand off of the flower--no indication of payment asked or required--so why presume it MUST be made? Why even think about it? This is what makes me feel you're pushing the negative ajenda. You won't consider the boat in 6/swords reaching a shore (a possible future occurance that would make the card positive), but you're quick to consider payment for the flowers (a possible future occurance that makes the card negative). And this: Quote: IN the 6 of W the horse is looking out while the rider's face is hidden and it could be an image of a cheering crowd or an angry mob Could be...if you completely ignore the laurel wreath which symbolizes victory. Not saying the card doesn't have another side to it. But angry mob doesn't seem really plausable. The victorious man's being applauded--the down side is, he might now need applause to feel fulfilled. Or may feel, as some rock stars do, that he can't go anywhere without fans hounding him. Or he might lose that applause in the future to someone else--fame, after all, is fleeting and we can't rest on our laurels. But for now, the card says, he's won. He gets all the good and bad of that win. Adulation. No angry mob in sight. My point is this: YES, all cards, even the 6's, have positive and negative aspects. But the negative aspects you've assigned sound paranoid rather than reasonable. You looked at that spread and the first thing to come to mind was: "Can't be MY reading. I'm having a good summer!" And when your friend had a bad time, "Must be HER reading!" You concluded those 6's were negative and could only apply to a negative event; you never gave the positive a chance, and you say you concluded this because of the Rider-Waite images. So...perhaps those images are no longer giving you much interpetative range? Another deck might give you a new and refreshing point of view--not only on 6's and the Moon, but tarot readings as a whole? I don't mean Pollyanna positive--I just mean different. Perhaps...those three cards were all about this discussion? Moon = delving into psychic powers, interpeations, tarot mysticism--seeing things by the light of the moon? Opening the creative mind? Swords = communication and words and symbols on tarot cards--and coming to a different shore. 6/Cups = Not holding too tight to those old cards--however nostolgic you might feel about them? Just a thought.

Vincent	10 Aug 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Thirteen Crowley interpets this card as the "central secret of scientific truth," No, he doesn't. What he says is; "The hilts of the Swords, which are very ornamental, are in the form of the hexagram. Their points touch the outer petals of a red rose upon a golden cross of six squares, thus showing the Rosy Cross as the central secret of scientific truth. He is clearly referring to the symbol of the "Rosy Cross", not the card. He says of the card itself; "...it is intelligence which has won to the goal." And he sums this up by referring to the card as "Science" This is, however, not the major point. I have heard many people refer to the Six of Swords from the Waite deck at least, as meaning depression, or the 'blues'. For example, this list comes from the Joan Bunning website; feeling the blues experiencing a low-level sadness just keeping your head above water working to get through the day feeling somewhat depressed avoiding the lows, but also the highs feeling listless functioning, but not much more Personally, I think that Earned Success, or Science, is a much better description of the function of Tiphareth in the World of Formation, but if you don't wish to pursue these ideas, then something like Waite's Six of Swords, which plainly illustrates one of the "arbitrary" divinatory meanings ("journey by water"), is open to any sort of interpretation the reader's intuition may arrive at. Joan Bunning herself advises her pupils to use the illustration on the card as a sort of Rorschach test. In short, if the readers intuition says it is a negative card, (and the distinguished Joan Bunning agrees), who are you to say it isn't? Now, changing the deck, may give a new positive interpretation of this card, but why should that be desirable? Vincent

allibee	10 Aug 2004
I have to agree with you totally there Thirteen, as I too wondered why such a negative spin was being put onto the cards. Vincent, yes, Joan Bunning has a wonderful and very excellent site for starting people off on their tarot journey, but please don't for one minute think that is the be all and end all of tarot meanings please. I'm sure Joan would be very sad to think that people thought hers were the 'only' options/answers Yes, you are right, a person's intuition is a valuable form of reference, but their intuition needs to be 'open' to all possibilities, not just a set few.

Francesca	10 Aug 2004
I try hard not to think of cards as 'negative' or 'bad'. THat puts a judgement on them. It's like saying the night is negative or bad while daytime is positive and good when they are what they are. I wouldn't mind using negative and positive, except that those words immediately connote good and bad. One is considered better than the other. So if a card or a point of one's journey is troubled then it is what it is. If you look at the pips Ace through ten as a progression, there are going to be some difficult spots. Five strikes me as an ustable number, as if the traveler were about to go to the point of no return. So the sixes seem like a natural point where you've learned a lot about a lot of stuff, but you still have a long way to go to reconciling everything, which would be the nine with the ten as a topper. There's a duality that needs to be reconciled and just becasue it isn't YET reconciled, doesn't mean it can't be and doesn't make it negative. For myself, I think of the cards as dark and light. Fine and wonderful things happen in both the dark and the light, during the night and during the day. Horrible things happen in both as well. They are what they are, not good or bad or negative or positive. Thirteen suggests that the 6 of C is a picture of a winter scape. Perhaps an early autumn scape--no snow and fresh flowers! I don't think that it is negative to buy flowers. It's nice if they are gift, but it's nice to get paid too. It's just unclear to me exactly what is going on. As for the RW 6 of S, it's hard to shine a nice light spin on that one. You have to imagine beyond the card, what they see on the other side. If you've laid out the 5 of P or the 10 of S next to it, well, I'd say it's gonna be a long hard road to The Sun! Francesca

juju	10 Aug 2004
I DO believe we are open to our own interpretations but I also believe that there are two sides. I did not at first glance see your reading as negative at all but you did - and your assumption was your roommate and her day. Do you use reversals? If not I can see why you would think of a negative aspect of positive cards and vice versa. Because I do not use reversals, I make sure to connect all the cards and get teh sense of energy from them. Was your honest reaction negative or was it fully based on these pictures? And do you always tend to see the 6s as two-faced... because if so - I would reconsider the meanings.

Thirteen	10 Aug 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Francesca I try hard not to think of cards as 'negative' or 'bad'. THat puts a judgement on them. Fair enough. But if that's so, why did you assume this reading was for your roommate because you've had a "GOOD" summer and she'd had a panic attack? You're the one who used "good" in describing your summer. Why not assume that something had to be reconsiled about that good side, instead of seeing the panic attack as something to be reconsiled? I'm not trying to say you're wrong--I'm just trying to understand. Why didn't you apply these cards to yourself? Quote: Thirteen suggests that the 6 of C is a picture of a winter scape. Perhaps an early autumn scape--no snow and fresh flowers! I've always assumed that it was eary spring. It's loves first blossom, that first wild flower that a young boy might hand to a young girl shyly. It's a frozen moment in time, the weather still crisp and cold, but the promise of green, flowering beauty to come. There's an old belief in the "quickening"--a moment when people know winter is at an end and spring about to begin. It relates to birth, to when the baby kicks. 6/Cups seems to me to be that moment. Frozen in time, we look back on that innocent heartbeat of our life with nostolgia, with longing. Because it was that beautiful, perfect second when we were both child and not-child. We were innocent, yet we felt something...more. A kick, a quickening. And yes, there is the dark aspect to the light--because after this moment, childhood is over. And that's good, in that there are wonderful things in that time of being a teenager, of Spring--but with the flowers will also come thunderstorms and mud, a thawing out. With love we risk heartbreak, with growth we deal with transformations. That's what the card says to me. Quote: As for the RW 6 of S, it's hard to shine a nice light spin on that one. You have to imagine beyond the card You DON'T have to shine a light on this card--in fact, you don't want to. The dark is where you find the balance, the power. Let me explain: There's a fantastic, true story about a black man, a slave who joined the underground railway. His one job was to row escaped slaves in a boat from the slave state on one shore to the free state on the other shore. But here's the interesting part--he could only do it on moonless nights. And no one dared say a word, for fear they'd be heard. So into his boat would step frightened, tired, desperate slaves he could hardly see. And neither one of them can speak, not boatman or passanger(s). And he rows, with, perhaps, dogs howling and sniffing for the escaped slave, and men searching in the distance, and lanterns flashing. On a dark river, in the dark of night, he rows. This man got every one of his passangers to safety and freedom on the other side--but they never knew who he was, this mysterious man who rowed them that last, important length from slavery to freedom. You talk about seeing only partial faces in the sixes, but far from making this card "two-faced," in this card, you WANT that. You don't want faces seen, you don't want a word said. The dark is safety and silence is the way to freedom. I see the passangers like that--right there in the middle of the river, frightened, but determined. And the boatman: they don't know who he is, they can't see him or ask him who he is, can't even thank him, but they know he wants to help them. It's a lot like the 6/Cups come to that, a frozen moment. A giving of a selfless gift. Even if they don't reach that other shore, they have that amazing relization right there, in the middle of the water--someone cares. Someone is helping them. It has been done, it can be done. That's what matters.

Vincent	10 Aug 2004
Quote: Originally posted by allibee Vincent, yes, Joan Bunning has a wonderful and very excellent site for starting people off on their tarot journey, but please don't for one minute think that is the be all and end all of tarot meanings please. I'm sure Joan would be very sad to think that people thought hers were the 'only' options/answers Yes, I would l be as equally sad if it were. Joan Bunning's example was simply that; an example. Quote: Originally posted by allibee Yes, you are right, a person's intuition is a valuable form of reference, but their intuition needs to be 'open' to all possibilities, not just a set few. Unless, of course, your intuition told you otherwise. But I'm sure you are right, Joan Bunning would agree. It is so much easier to learn Tarot once you realise that any card can have any meaning in any position. Vincent

allibee	10 Aug 2004
Which is why tarot is an ever-learning process ...

Ace	12 Aug 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Vincent It is so much easier to learn Tarot once you realise that any card can have any meaning in any position. Which is why I question the "meaning" of this spread. You did this reading, Francesca, without directing a question, and got a confused answer, which you then said "Had" to be in answer to your roommate. I think it was just what it was: a confused reading without direction. Maybe it really was about the feeling you have about this summer: it is going so well, when will it screw up? Double check who the reading is "for" by checking what you were seeking when you threw the cards-when you get someone else's reading, are you perhaps denying something in yourself? Barb

The WHen a reading is someone else's thread was originally posted on 09 Aug 2004 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.