"Memorization is a technique that has fallen out of favor"--Le Fanu

I hate to say it at this late date, but arguing the manner in which knowledge is gained and retained seems like "much ado about nothing" to me. I find tarot reading to be a supremely SYNTHETIC art that is much more than just stacking up bricks to make a structure. You can have a filing cabinet (or memory) full of all the keywords in world, drag them out and arrange them on your table, even put them in one of those Ishikawa "fishbone" diagrams the business types are so fond of, and still come up with an interpretation that is just as sterile as one a computer program would produce. Regardless of whether you memorize the meanings, look them up on-the-fly or choose to ignore them completely and go with spontaneous insights, it's how well you integrate the knowledge you've accumulated into the dynamic of the reading that matters most. I don't care how you may have learned it, it's how well you can use it that is the crux of a successful reading.

I would submit that eventually the "standard" meanings recede in your conscious awareness and are supplanted by the storehouse of personalized connotations that you have built up through long practice and that present themselves in a largely automatic fashion, immediately triggered by the sight of one card or another in the spread. All that remains is to blend their individual meanings, correspondences and positional values in a way that makes sense to the narrative. If this is "memorization," so be it; I simply see it as the way true understanding coalesces from the fragments of rote learning most of us encounter early in our trajectory.

Never mind it is OK

And it is. But if you can read this you are using your memory in a small way, and if you can reply are are using your memories in a big way.

Memorization can not fall out of favour as it is exactly how we learn, live and establish who we are and where we stand compared to you...

Apparently good writing can

personally, i find that the memorized meanings of the cards are a good foundation on which to then expand with intuition. like when i draw a card, i first think of the keyword type meaning, the meanings ive read in various books, then see what floats to mind for this particular situation, look at the card, see if anything specific draws me that way, and then start reading/writing my reading of that card/try to integrate it into the reading. like, i really find the memorized foundation useful, as opposed to purely intuitive reading, which is probably why i dont like/have no desire to read with oracles.

also, for me, i have periods where like...i cant do intuition. like recently. a lot of it is other emotional/mental issues of mine i think, but defacto, if i try to read intuitively, i really just cannot. mostly i put tarot aside during these times, but sometimes, when i really want to draw a few cards, having the memorized meanings to fall back on is really helpful.

then again, i always have had a thing for memorization games. i used to know all the US presidents in chronological order, memorized various poems i liked for my own amusement, memorized states, ongoing effort to memorize all the countries and capitals, etc....so i never found trying to memorize all the 78 meanings off-putting, though it did take me years to make real progress xP lol, attention issues much.

but yeah, personally i find both memorization and intuitive reading has its place/work best together for good tarot readings?