American and European ways?

Greetings,

Talking to a friend who travelled abroad (I live in Brazil and I still haven't the pleasure to cross the Equator line), she told me she loves the "European" way of reading the cards while she was not so fond of the "American" way.

This made me ponder: are there such schools of thought regarding the tarot? My history with the tarot is over a decade long, but only recently I decided to become a member of this forum.

She explained to me the "European" way (is this really the way to call this?) splits the tarot deck into two piles of cards. On one, there are only the 22 Major Arcana. On the other, the 56 Minor Arcana. The two piles are shuffled in separate and for any spread one should use a Major Arcana AND a Minor Arcana to answer each position.

The "American" way doesn't split the deck. All 78 Arcana are shuffled together, using one card to answer each position of a spread -- and this is the way I've always read the cards. After all, if a tarot deck has all 78 Arcana, I don't see why I should split them in separate piles to see the big picture.

So, considering this forum has a lot of people all around the world, could someone jump in and tell me more about this?

I am from neither place and have never heard anything like this before. Even the Golden Dawn's pet spread, the Opening of the Key, doesn't separate the arcana.

It does sound interesting, however, and I may try it.

I know French who use tarot separate the majors and the minors, and view the minors as useless and rarely or never read them.

Some time, in the "French" way, only the majors are used, because the system of the minors from the classic deck (the Marseille) can be seen as pretty awful by a lot of people.

But most of the time, every people I know, even those who learned with the Marseille and are only using the Marseille tradition, well... either they use only the majors, or they use the entirety of the deck, major and minor together.

I heard of the "European" technique from a friend who used it, but she was the only person I knew who was using this. I used something like that once in my life (and it was with a RWS... a deck hard to find in France XD)

I have never heard of splitting the deck into two separate piles but it's an interesting idea and one I might have a go at.

Personally I have never found any difference between countries ...

I met readers from around the world ...
All used a personal reading ...

Reading Tarot has no flag ...
but I think we can define
Tradition ...
I met American readers who used the Russian tradition ...
And German readers who used to read Brazilian ...

:-D

Everything you said makes sense, but what troubles me is the fact my friend insists on considering those two "ways" (or "methods", or "traditions") as standard.

And this is not what I see here (and I know there are readers from many countries taking part on the monthly exchanges).

Maybe my friend is mistaken somehow?

@Fermmoylle - I had not heard of the European method of tarot reading until I read your post. Have you yourself tried it? What are you own thoughts on this way of reading?

I decided to do a reading earlier this evening using this method - I used the Victorian Romantic Tarot and I was surprised at how the cards fell ... really surprised - it was a great reading that flowed very easily. I will be experimenting with this method more often now.

Thanks for your post.

@Melia - No, I haven't. It seems strange to me to split the decks... Maybe I should try it, but the very thought of it doesn't make me eager to do it.

Fermmoylle said:

Everything you said makes sense, but what troubles me is the fact my friend insists on considering those two "ways" (or "methods", or "traditions") as standard.

And this is not what I see here (and I know there are readers from many countries taking part on the monthly exchanges).

Click to expand...

I know a reader who reads with the Tarot majors only ... then he follows this with a reading using standard playing cards (the Tarot minors are associated with the playing cards). Very often the 2nd reading he does confirms or touches on what was said in the 1st reading using the Tarot majors.

There are many ways to read. To me it doesn't matter if the method used is traditional or not, as long as it works for the reader.