Has tarot been made to me more complex than it needs to be?

ravenest

How to read tarot cards;

Shuffle, lay some of the cards on a table and make up stories about them.

Gee ... maybe I should write a book.
 

Richard

How to read tarot cards;

Shuffle, lay some of the cards on a table and make up stories about them.

Gee ... maybe I should write a book.
That's pretty complicated. How about pulling a few cards and then saying the first thing that comes to mind? No, that would be an intuitive reading, wouldn't it? Maybe it's impossible to spoof tarot reading. :confused:
 

Zephyros

If you ask me (which nobody did, but so what) Tarot isn't complicated enough. People seem to think all the esoteric crap is artificially piled on their favorite deck, the RWS, and they pine nostalgically for simpler times. This is a fairly astounding exercise in selective history. Without esoteric stuff, there would be no RWS in the first place, so it was never actually a question of "just look at the cards and read." That occult material was "lost" for much of the 20th century (fell out of fashion) and its re-entry into popular culture over the past ten to twenty years, that is the actual restoration. The only truly intuitive school of decks that exists today is the Marseilles which, paradoxically, people don't use because it is seen in itself as a complication.

Plus, the fairly uniform vocabulary of meanings existing among so-called "intuitive" readers shows that far from "just looking," people actually learn by heart meanings constructed from "esoteric nonsense" while ignoring where they came from. Some even go so far as to call the meanings "traditional" when they're actually anything but. Add to that a certain ideology that claims Waite had nothing to do with the RWS, and only Pixie made the deck, and you have a nice, easy to digest, alternative universe version of Tarot that is positive, empowering, resonating and intuitive. And completely false. Rehashed PKT meanings are like chicken mcnuggets; you hope there's something in there that came from actual chicken, but you both doubt it, and also know that they have no nutritional value. You've purged the chicken of everything that made it good. However, they "resonate" with your "intuition" because it says in the name that they're "chicken," so that's alright then.

People should read however they want, just as they should do anything any which way they want. However,arguing that something doesn't exist when it does, just in front of you, is like scientists debating creationists. It's futile. Not that I have anything against truly intuitive reading, but for the sake of challenge and integrity I think people should burn all "meanings" books and look at the cards really intuitively.
 

Richard

Another curious thing is that many people who don't like "the esoteric stuff that has been piled on" really believe that tarot was invented originally for fortune telling. Therefore the divinatory meanings which they use has always been an integral part of tarot, not something that was added later.

I believe in live and let live as regards how one uses a deck of cards, but the way people keep blasting away at the esoteric approach, methinks they protest too much. I.e., their excessive defensiveness may mean that they feel threatened. For example, they may feel deep inside that there is something in Qabalah that may be good to know, and it worries them, because they don't want to go to the effort of learning whatever it is. Hence dissing it is a defensive maneuver designed to remove the threat.
 

ravenest

Oh man ..... those last two posts were FAR TOO complex !
 

Marie-Bernard

closrapexa, LRichard, ravenest, the three of you warm my heart. When I read your posts it's reconfirmed in my mind that I don't need to turn off my critical thinking skills to enjoy Tarot. Thank you.
 

Alta

Moderator note:

Please stay on topic. Some of these chatty posts should be via PM as they discourage others from posting on topic.

Alta
Moderator