Meaning & Image

Once upon a time there was another thread...
...and now it is lost... because those who were there (and I was there) had choosen *ignorance* rather then any other way.
I am now emotionally exausted... unable to sleep for the second night in a row... and understanding with clarity that once something (even a thread) is broken it will stay broken, and there is no way to mend it.

I will then speak in riddles, so it will be impossible to follow, and it will all be so strange than the usual frame will be of no use. And I, maybe, will be able to find sleep, knowing that I'm still trying to go in the right way.
Because, you see, there is a link between meaning and image.
And it is such, that it is quite different from the way we think it is.

Do you think it has any real sense to ask wheter the image or the meaning came first? Do we know the meaning? Do we interpret the image?

Someone - a long dead forum dweller - first asked if the means justified the ends? So the world divided, I am told, in two tribes called Pikachus and Bulbasaurs because they each had been thinking long and hard, and decided that they had found the correct answer.
And no one ever considered that the means and the ends are the very same thing.

So... it is the image that should follow the meanings?
And as no image will ever be able to follow them all, we will resort to memory, so much that the image will just be a bookmark: a pretty ribbon in a dusty book.
Or are the meanings that should follow the image?
And wonder, what would happen least they bring us to an unpleasant land?
(Blame the Pikachus. It always works).

And, maybe, just maybe, we do not cast our vote just yet.
We understand that everything goes both ways, and that the "we" is actually the subject and not the object.
We receive from the image, we give sense to the image.
Over and over and over...

What I wanted to say... is that we do not discover or learn the relationship between image and meaning: we *build* it.

r.

I agree I think. For me, meaning and image coexist and feed off each other, and the meanings that may have been present for the creator when creating the image may not be the meanings that spring for someone else observing the image, because a different set of experiences feed in. Some additional meanings emerge through discussion.

A sort of constructivist approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)

And then it probably depends on your take on realism vs relativism in Tarot

http://www.psy.dmu.ac.uk/michael/realism_and_relativism.htm

Personally I tend towards tarot relativism, I don't think I believe that the specific cards were already out there in the ether complete with meanings before they were put on paper.

Aerin

Well an image is an optical counterpart to something. The first part is there- and for some reason we need to represent it. So to me what is been represented already has a meaning and the image echoes that. You just have to be able to recognise the echo for what is it's counterpart.

WWWW or maybe ~~~~ optical counterpart or image of water
Water has meaning already that is understood.
You make/build image to reflect the meaning inherent in what you are representing. Now the image has meaning too, and directs the onlooker to the first something- in this case water.
Water of course is an easy thing to represent.

I am learning Interactive interpretative language- or sign language for the deaf.
This discussion is very interesting to me- because the image I signal has to have meaning- drawn from the first something I am representing. It gets harder to represent complex images and not have the echo become garbled or misunderstood, by what Aerin spoke of as 'different experiences'. Water is the same experience for everyone.
~Rosanne

Ric - how nice to see you again. For a while I was afraid - well, you know.

I agree with you. And I think whenever we look at a card - especially one we cannot "get" or which seems repellent to us for some reason - we need to look further and try to see where it came from. What could have persuaded the creator to do THIS to represent THAT ?

But then we can always go past that and read the card in the now, or what the now is for US as readers, in whatever way feels right to us. Because so much of the TdM is couched in religion, for instance (or so I understand it) does not mean that I - as a borderline atheist - cannot use it. But assuming that the historians are right and that's where the symbolism came from, in some people's minds, I should leave it alone, I think. There are feminist decks which repel me, too - and I'm a woman and believe in equality for all. On the other hand, the Gay deck reads well for me, even though I know experientially little of what it is like to be gay. All these things come from a position in life, in history, in society, and have to be taken as such as well as being taken for the images on their own, I think.

It seems to me that there is a creator here (I forget who) who was amazed to find something in her own deck (I do recall it was a woman !) that she had not intended - and which she now decided she would have intended if she had thought of it..... that's where other takes on the same imagery come in in spades ! It's like poetry - one reader takes from a poem a very different experience than another. So - I think both come first.

Chicken, meet egg. Egg, this is chicken

Works for me.

I think.....

Meanings were there before the images, as the universe knows all. It was up to people to come up with the images so that it could be a bit easier to decipher the messages. The "decoder ring" of paper.

RiccardoLS said:

Do you think it has any real sense to ask wheter the image or the meaning came first? Do we know the meaning? Do we interpret the image?
...
So... it is the image that should follow the meanings?
...
Or are the meanings that should follow the image?

Click to expand...

Ric, thanks for this post. These are interesting questions.

Like Gregory said, it is a chicken-and-egg conundrum. And my usual response to such questions is that I think it doesn't matter in the long run. They are both here now.

When I read, I take a quick skim of the cards in total, and the generic meanings pop into my head. But when I look back over them it is the images I pay attention to. So I often have difficulty in reading cards whose images differ greatly from the "standard" meanings. But I can usually reconcile them into something usable.

It really depends on the person, and their method of reading, which takes precedence - image or meaning.

Riccardo, i hope you feel better by now, to me these are 'storms in a glass of water' - really no need to loose one's sleep over it

I agree with everyone here (not my usual attitude though ) and i'd like to add...

jackdaw* said:

It really depends on the person, and their method of reading, which takes precedence - image or meaning.

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Couldn't agree more with Jackdaw. For me personally it's the meaning that goes first, i am an audio type, not a visual one and to me personally it's the word (meaning) that was in the beggining and still goes to the first place.
I hope i managed to express what i mean and if it isn't to someone's liking - well, it's their problem, not mine

The images (all images) have meaning. Where did the meaning come from ?

Oops.

*hangs herself.*

gregory said:

The images (all images) have meaning. Where did the meaning come from ?

Click to expand...

From a source that is far beyond limited human understanding

gregory said:

Oops.

*hangs herself.*

Click to expand...

*mdr is heartbroken because of ^^^*
... but hey, they say grannies from hell have more than one life

Ah, now there I think I disagree. Do you think they come from some kind of HIGHER source ? because that would perhaps knock out the idea that they come from the image creators in the time and society they live in....

Also if from a HIGHER source - would the creator even be able to explain whence they came ? or choose what to put in ? It almost sounds as if that would be a bit like automatic writing - something happens while you create, something that you have no control over - but the images just sort of EMERGE, previously formed. Or something. If you see what I mean ?