thoth opening key spread

Jesse_mtl

hi guys first post, new to tarot. still feeling like a new baby, trying to use his eyes for the first time.

id like some help, with the method described in the book of thoth.. i have no idea what the card counting means... or how to perform it. it would help if i had visual representation, but a plain english verbal explanation would do...

thanx for your help. . second question without having to post again id lke to know if anyone knows how to do anything other than divination using tarot, maybe using the bio energetic attributations to each card...

that would help lots, but mostly the opening key spread explanation

thx

j
 

thinbuddha

Start here:

Search this site for "OOTK" & "opening key". There are quite a few threads (some quite recent) that discuss this spread.

Also check out this site: supertarot.co.uk - Lots of info on using this spread- not always the most user friendly presentation, but better than the Book of Thoth at explaining some of the less obvious points. You may have to buy the book (offered on that site) which goes into quite a bit of detail about card counting and other such things.

Card counting:

The basic idea is that you have a line of cards, and from significant cards, you start "counting" to other cards. For example, for a 5 of any suit, you would count five cards away and come to another card (say a 3) and count 3 cards from that card comming to yet another card. Continue with this until you start to duplicate yourself. From the resulting series of cards, you can make a story or timeline of events (depending on the subject of the reading). There are rules for how many cards to count from the court cards and majors (I don't follow these rules- I use my own rules). My opinion is that it is not important what the rule you use is as long as you are consistant in using it.

-tb
 

Jesse_mtl

thanks man, that in itself helps much, ill check for the ootk thing and im starting to realize how it works for myself... i have the book of thoth, i just liek to see how the thoth spread works.. and how does a method like that come into being ? i guess ill read more. but what do u mean by duplicate yourself ? the counting part seems coherent and makes more sense to me now, but i dont know what u mean by duplicating.. forgive my lack of knowledge :)


j
 

thinbuddha

Jesse_mtl said:
but what do u mean by duplicate yourself ?


Once any card is repeated in your sequence, you will keep looping back to it by repeating all the cards that came after it.

quick example:

A->B->C->D->B->C->D->B..... (you would stop counting once card "B" came up after "D")
 

Jesse_mtl

excellent. ok i wont keep this going, but im excited now some kind of sense is being made from this. 2 quick ones. do u count the significator as the first card. lets say my sig was a prince of something. would i could the specified number using him as the base?

secondly. with a thoth deck. the prince of cups faces downward. how would i pair cards on either side of him if hes facing down ?
 

Moonbow

Hi Jesse_mtl

Welcome to Aeclectic,

I see you already have help with the OOTK spread, but you may like to have a look around the Thoth Forum too, and also introduce yourself in New Members.

As for the second question, that would be better posted in a separate thread.

Moonbow*
 

thinbuddha

One place to start counting would be the sig. Also, majors, other court cards or any card that stands out for whatever reason. It might be that one of your pips stands out because when you count from the majors and courts, it is often one of the first cards that come up. Maybe it's the only card representing a given element. Maybe it's the only card linked to one of the sephora (in the tree of life) in the reading. It might be a card that doesn't come up at all when counting from other cards (which Paul Hughes Barlow views as making it an extremely important card with information that is hidden from the querent). Another aspect of this spread is the pairing of cards- sometimes pairing cards will reveal some interesting interactions (and may point to new "important" cards to start counting from).

I'd suggest to just do a spread and play with it- count starting from *every* card and see what happens. Play with different rues about changing counting directions. Spend an hour or two just seeing if you can find relationships with the cards. A pattern will start to emerge, and perhaps something will click with the reading through playing with it.

Jesse_mtl said:
secondly. with a thoth deck. the prince of cups faces downward. how would i pair cards on either side of him if hes facing down ?

I can't really help you with this one. I don't change directions in my counting (I count going in both directions, but never change directions in the middle of a count). Some people use reversals as an indicater when to change directions. Some people use the way a character on a card faces. I'm sure there is a rule in the GD about this, but I don't remember it if I ever saw it....

-tb
 

Jesse_mtl

ok thinbuddha man. thanx. i tried posting on thoth forum ill see wut comes up. i know from super tarot they mention using the ale or female position in the tree of life to figure out where to go.

here is a main point of my difficulty understanding the spread ( without a visual represntation ) :

after counting and selecting the first card ( lets say i get an ace, and count 11 as specifified ), do i set the card in the 11th position aside, and when i do, what is the next card to come from ? and what happens if i get to the ed of my horizontal line.

i appreciate ur input. and i will just try to mess around with it and se what happens.
 

thinbuddha

So imagine that you count from your ace 11 cards away is a 4Wands. Don't set this card aside (never set any of them aside). Instead, count 4 from the card (because it was a 4). Continue counting until you start getting the same cards showing up again.

http://supertarot.co.uk/ed/count.htm

I was hoping the above link would show visually what I was talking about, but....... it might help a bit (that grid makes it look much more complicated than it really is).

Don't look at the cards as a line- imagine that they are in a circle so that the 2 end cards are actually next to each other (so ifyou reach the end, you continue counting from the other end).
 

Jesse_mtl

thanx man, that sheds even more light on this spread... basically just trying to wrap my head around it, i guess i wont know for sure until i really mess around with it. point being, my experiments with various spreads before this thoth spread have just led me to feel that my attempts at divination using tarot were really superficial. example, using celtic cross... i would just give myself or others really vague reprensentations of what they were going thru, and even they commented, that any cards i pulled and the order they would go in, could have their meanings twisted to conform to their situation, failing to " impress " lol or give any new insights into their situation ? i know theres more to tarot that simply telling people what they already know... so my attempt at learning this spread is more for trying to prove to myself, if i can be more accurate.

does that make any sense ?