Traditional or Intuitionally

closrapexa said:

I read according to the different attributions such as astrology, Kabbalah, etc., and also incorporate intuitive thinking, although I like to complement myself that it is more directed and less random than pure intuition. In addition, I like to incorporate anything I can find to deepen the cards from myths from the Bible, Greek myths, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (although strangely, not Star Trek), assorted Crowley works, Golden Dawn rituals... really, any story can be told using Tarot.

Kabbalah isn't that hard, and it gives a great way of connecting cards and ideas, even in cards that aren't in the reading itself. You might be interested in a little post I wrote a while ago, that I unfortunately never got around to continuing (although I might some day!), Kabbalah for beginners. Ultimately all you need is a few basic definitions, and the rest is easy.

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Going to check your thread for sure. Step by step and I'll get hooked

I'm also mythology person, reading a lot about different cultures - Eastern are the closest to me. I feel connected with islamic mysticism and buddhism so I'm trying to include them in my readings. Not to mention I ching. I've never thought about Star Trek or Star Wars, and I'm a huge fan of space opera. Tarot and science fiction is awesome combination. I'd never thought of that, thank you so much

One way to look at Tarot is to see it as a language. A card is a card. A word is a word. A word is to be experienced, just as a card is to be experienced. It is up to you to define the limit of what a "word" means to you - what it reminds you of, what it evokes in you, how it inspires you, what you personally take away from it. We are all creative. There are many layers and levels of meaning in every card. By no means am I implying that we should each "re-invent the wheel," but I do believe that we may rightfully see ourselves as being just as capable of tapping into the beyond that is symbolized within the Tarot and understanding what we see in it for ourselves, and what it mirrors within our own being.

So it doesn't have to be one over the other. I combine intuition with knowledge. I pick up whatever knowledge clicks with me or that I feel drawn to learning, and I combine with it. The knowledge is internalized. And that never changes the fact that the cards are experienced... Personally, the accuracy and the beauty of my own experiences going largely by intuitive "free associations" have absolutely blown my mind, time and time again. It's our own choice to interpret something as "random" versus significant.

lalalibra said:

One way to look at Tarot is to see it as a language.

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And the QBL and astrology are different languages. They can be translated, but they are different languages. And think how hard it can be to translate poetry or song lyrics, getting the rhythm and rhyming pattern right as well as the meaning ...

Including them on cards is not essential to the card - it is giving hints about translation from one language to another if you feel the need to be bilingual.

I don't think that knowledge of the tradition and intuition are necessariely excluding each other. In the case of the RWS, I have studied the Golden Dawn correspondences, I don't know all of them by heart but big parts. But during an actual reading my intuition rules. I look at the spread as a whole and my brain delivers some story that makes sense in that moment. Sometimes it is built on traditional meanings and correspondences, sometimes on a detail in some picture, sometimes it seems to come from memories of past readings. But without the correspondences, especially from kabbala, my brain would have much less to work with, and my readings would be less rich. So I keep learning.
What I don't do is read books or consciously rehash correspondences during a reading. That would indeed feel like doing a puzzle to me. But this is just me.
I have to say that this method of reading was recommended in the only tarot book I owned when I was beginning. So probably I am biased.

Sometimes I think people that don't like or use correspondences or Kabbalah don't understand how the use of those things work or get accessed in a reading ... it is a very different process than talking about the connections, studying them, studying a card in depth. The knowledge accrued and embedded in the memory / unconscious and the comparative relationships of how all those things relate to each other and influence and modify each other, arises as do the simpler associations ; sometimes its partially conscious, but the bulk of the whole process isn't ... it arises as an 'intuition' as well.

To hold all that info consciously in the mind and calculate it step by step and then extract a meaning while doing a reading ... while the Querant waits or listens to the verbalisation of it all .... :urk: .

It is working the same as your other 'associations' and 'intuitions', except one has , by choice, increased the field and subject matter of the information that supplies 'intuitions'.

To me this is 'broadening the range' of one's 'sensory apparatus' .

nisaba said:

And the QBL and astrology are different languages. They can be translated, but they are different languages. And think how hard it can be to translate poetry or song lyrics, getting the rhythm and rhyming pattern right as well as the meaning ...

Including them on cards is not essential to the card - it is giving hints about translation from one language to another if you feel the need to be bilingual.

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Yes, agreed! And so once learned, one can understand and relate to poetry or song that much deeper, and use the same language to draw connections and write our own "poetry" ourselves too. It's a great analogy as there's a difference between reading a poem and truly understanding or experiencing that which can't really be contained in the words themselves... Same thing in how there's a difference between memorizing certain correspondences versus actually understanding their significance, as Ravenest mentioned.

This sort of distinction between "traditional" or "intuitive" reading certainly ignores the fact that when "traditional" knowledge is genuinely understood, it is internalized and it comes through in the process of reading -- fluidly and intuitively. It isn't any less creative of a process.

Aside (and another side to it); sometimes I have done readings for astrologers who don't read cards, but wanted their cards read ... so the 'bridge of understanding is there'. Often too with the general reader, a concept in a Tarot reading, or a dynamic between cards and position hasn't been understood and when I have used a basic astrological analogy they have understood it. This also might be because I rarely 'predict' but encourage the querent to apply the reading to their own specific details (sometimes they want to share and talk about that, sometimes they want to keep that private).

We all need a 'media' to relay the info in the reading, whether it a story by analogy, the querent's circumstances, predictions or 'energies', etc.

The advantage to using the Kabbalistic or astrological correspondences is that the Tarot cards become well-defined abstractions. Then you use your knowledge and intuition to figure out what is the meaning of a particular combination of abstractions.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy for this process. Like in science class, you can use a spectrograph to see what wavelengths of light a star is throwing off. If you know the different wavelengths, you can deduce the components of the star. Or if you know how weather systems work, you can guess where a storm is going to travel.

Personally I think reading based on the pictures is like a last, last, last resort. If it helps you overcome a quibble, great. But what happens when you start using a different deck? The beauty of knowing the Kabbalistic correspondences is you could pick up a deck of playing cards and still get a pretty in-depth reading.

Learning the Kabbalistic correspondences seems hard at first, but if you stick with it, it becomes second nature. You can find summaries of the Ten Sephirot almost anywhere. Crowley's introductory essay in "The Book of Thoth" is helpful. Learning the paths of the Major Arcana is tricky, but it opens whole new worlds... and once you know your Sephirot, you're halfway there.

Learning the astrological correspondences is a lot less important, in my opinion.

simple_biscuit said:

........Learning the astrological correspondences is a lot less important, in my opinion.

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They were important to the authors of the earliest extant Kabbalistic text, Sefer Yetzirah. Mathers' correlation of the pips with the astrological decans is the next logical step, and for me it is really helpful for the interpretation of the minors, revealing additional interrelationships between the trumps, courts, and pips.

I agree all the way that the layering of tarot onto the Qabalistic Tree of Life is the best way to get a handle on tarot as a coherent, consistent, meaningful unit, rather than tarot as a somewhat arbitrary aggregate of individual cards. There are inherent dynamic interrelationships between the cards that give far more stimulation to the intuition than the images alone.

The Rider-Waite deck has fairly reliable illustrations for the pips, which are interpretations of the decans, but, as simple_biscuit observed, these training wheels can be tossed away without detriment to one's reading of tarot. I am as comfortable with the Marseille as I am with Thoth or Rider-Waite, and I do not have to try to suck significance out of the purely decorative floral designs in the Marseille pips.

But that which makes us happy makes us wise. Tarot may be able to provide us with the so-called 'meaning of life,' but one does not necessarily have to go that route. Do what thou wilt, but make sure it is really what thou wilt, and remember that other wilts do not have to be your wilt.

Finding any meaning in the Court cards had always been a problem until I related them to their zodiacal and elemental attributes (as per Thoth); contemplation of these has allowed me to be intuitive, now I have a better understanding of them.