"Core" tarot?

Mallah

Oh, same for me! Once it's "in there"....but I know as a fact that it's not necessary...and it actually has helped me to "ignore" it a lot of the time...it's just one map in a whole bag of tricks.
 

Richard

The Qabalistic Tree of Life, as a structural model for all levels of the cosmos, is universally applicable, not merely to Tarot. It is the foundation of my personal use of Tarot, but there is no need to force the Tarot-Qabalah connection if one is not so inclined. Indeed, there may be some legitimate issues with Qabalistic Tarot, such as, for example, whether to use the Levi scheme or that of HOGD or Thelema. Therefore, it may be best to avoid Qabalah in connection with the concept of a core Tarot.
 

novenovembre

And the "does it matter" begs the question, is TAROT superior to other forms of cartomancy?

I've asked myself that question very often. In Italy, 99.9 per cent of people who read cards don't use tarot, but plain playing cards or sibillae. When I first decided that I was going to learn to read cards, I wasn't sure whether I was going to use Tarot or other cards, so I started with the 2 which were most familiar to me, the RW Tarot (which I was familiar with thanks to my years of living in England) and Sybillae. As my learning progressed, I used the Sybillae less and less, because it seemed to me that tarot was so much deeper, so much more complex in their meanings and shades, that by comparison other cards were really unsatisfactory. But then again, in my experience as a client I've met some brilliant readers who used Sybillae, so maybe it's just that I didn't find enough literature about them, or didn't take as much to them, or whatever....so, I guess I agree with tarotbear, the means used for divination is only as good as the diviner......anyway, interesting subject.
 

Mallah

Yeah, I only ask the question "it tarot superior" as a side to this discussion, not really as part of it....i don't want to see this turn into a discussion of that. I was just pointing out that I don't want to downplay the cards my student already use...I just want to affirm the value of learning TAROT and that some decks will be better for doing that than others.

Thanks for your input!
 

novenovembre

Yes, I realized that.It could be interesting to discuss this elsewhere though.


PS And I apologize for trivializing this discussion, which I was perfectly aware of....it's just that for many years I wasn't able to exchange views on this subject, so I guess I've got a lot of catching up to do....
 

tarotbear

'Glombed on' is EXACTLY how I feel about a lot of 'Tarot affiliations' that may mean something to someone, but cannot mean the same thing to everyone. If you like astrology - which combines with tarot - go right ahead and combine them - but I do not need to know astrology to read Tarot. Same with Kabballah (however you wish to spell it), the GD, The Do Goodness to Banish Badness Society, The followers of Freud, Jung, Georgia O'Keefe - WHATEVER - !!!

The more complicated you make things, the more difficult it is to understand. K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple, Stupid.
 

novenovembre

I agree...
 

Richard

......The more complicated you make things, the more difficult it is to understand. K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple, Stupid.
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." --A. Einstein
 

Zephyros

The Qabalistic Tree of Life, as a structural model for all levels of the cosmos, is universally applicable, not merely to Tarot. It is the foundation of my personal use of Tarot, but there is no need to force the Tarot-Qabalah connection if one is not so inclined. Indeed, there may be some legitimate issues with Qabalistic Tarot, such as, for example, whether to use the Levi scheme or that of HOGD or Thelema. Therefore, it may be best to avoid Qabalah in connection with the concept of a core Tarot.

What you say may be true through modern eyes, but the occultists who dealt in these matters would argue they had unearthed the "true" attributions and meaning of Tarot. The 22+fourfold decimal structure+16 courts would certainly seem to support their theories, regardless of the school of thought they belonged to. While I don't believe it myself, the arguments they put forward as to the "happy coincidence" of the wedding of both systems truly are compelling. For all I know, they may be right. Even Crowley writes in the beginning of the Book of Thoth that the inventors of chess did not set out to develop the apotheosis of the strategy game, and they certainly didn't foresee the millions of strategies, but did "better than they knew."

Anecdotal evidence being, of course, the realm of the occultist, so obviously none of this would hold up to scrutiny.

Unless one is talking about the earliest pips decks, themselves amalgamations of previous arrangements, I fail to see the possibility of a core Tarot, especially as what we think of as the norm was solidified relatively late in Tarot history. There were several permutations and varieties over the years.