Differences In Decks- How Do You Read Them?

Cerulean

Dear Futuremoth....just some thoughts...

...when I choose the new deck, there is something in the interplay in the words, pictures and where I am at that will help me to learn the deck. So I take my learning deck-by-deck.

Some people refer to Joan Bunning's free learntarot.com site and find among the options and choices of meanings, there's a something that appeals to them. They come up with their own collection of meanings based on learning the content at the site and also their own tarot deck to work with their choices. You are probably familiar with standard meanings--I was when I first
read through her text--but I liked her information to help supplement my own approaches at the time.

Some decks have text that specifically work with the structure of the deck--my favored Celestial have the Princesses embody a season of the year and it works wonderfully for me. However another deck with the same artist, Kay Steventon, has the pages as all children with an elemental association more strongly depicted in the image (Page of Cups, Water for instance)--her Spiral Tarot differs in theme and structure and image, so my approach to that deck is quite different. Each of these decks has it's own theme and while some people see the art motifs as similar, I now do not agree with that view. When the Celestial first came out, I thought her choice of images in both decks were going to be similar enough, that I'd just wanted to choose one deck. But now I see the different decks so specifically unique, I like having both.

The Celestial's constellation theme and book author really sheds light on the images in a different way--so this is an instance where I would say a book really does make a difference and improves how I read with this deck!

If it is specifically courts and you don't see a system in the deck text or how it's structured, then options might range from checking a specific book (say Tarot Court cards with Mary Greer/Tom Tadforlittle) and using the variety of information to apply to all decks...or narrowing how you approach courts and minors and majors by how you read with the deck. There are some decks that you will pick that you might only use one way...say to build a fantasy story...or do love and family relational readings...and so the approaches may be different. A fantasy story deck might have lovers between queens and kings or triangles with pages and other courts...a relationally-read deck might just show a sword king as an older authority in the realm of solving problems and a sword queen as a fierce, but sympathetic person to serve as a guide in helping clear your path.

I'm only suggesting from what I've been doing lately--so hopefully it is a bit helpful!

I tend to associate suits with different aspects of my life, elements, and the courts might be attributes of the human psyche or an outside person--but most likely I see tarot readings as reflections for the person that is being read or who requested guidance/knowledge based on the reading. How you approach readings might show what works best for your choices in interpreting courts and their influences in a reading.

Best wishes,

Cerulean
 

Umbrae

Scion said:
I know that you, Umbrae, personally read with Golden Dawn decks. I also know that there are shades within the Golden Dawn meaning structure. I'm not sure why you think that's evidence that they are meaningLESS. But answer my question: why read with an occult deck at all if it's all bullshit? Frankly, why read Tarot if it's all bullshit? I am seriously dying to know. It puts me in mind of Jewish Nazis and military intelligence and other oxymoronic modern marvels. Of course all this gets back to the mechanics of divination and what each of us believes about the power behind the practice.

But, before we get there... I want to take this in stages: if the Golden Dawn system is wank, then why are you even looking at their images?

Answer me that and then we'll get to the rest. :D

Can’t. It’s a trick question. Just because something is fallacious does not mean that it is ineffectual.

Crowley’s writing tells us that he agreed.

Sure I can read a GD designed oracle and PERHAPS adopt some aspects into my own belief system. On the other hand I LOVE reading with the Crowley Thoth. But I’m not a thelemite.

To imply that by using one system you authenticate and validate another that incorporates the former is an impossible leap of logic.

I can state, “I use aspects of the Golden Dawn system, because it works. It is not the only approach that works. There are others. Even though I believe the Golden Dawn system is as effective as it is erroneous.”

“It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results will follow. Students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”

Aleister Crowley

Scion said:
But the fact is, people use those meaninggs successfully, so even if you don't agree with them or use them doesn't emean that they are useless or silly. More importantly, the idea that using a GD deck can occur with out absorbing their symbolic structure is strange. That is exactly how we learn: we observe patterns and assemble patterns within those patterns. Rinse repeat. The point is that when people "just read" (as you like to say) the Three of Swords as Suffering they are studying the Golden Dawn's system whetrher they know it or not. Since most decks created regurgitate the GD system in varying degrees of success, to claim that one can use those decks without learning the GD system is bizarre... like claiming you can learn to speak French phonetically but that even once you can have a conversation, you refuse to know what the sounds mean.

I’m not arguing that people do not use the system successfully, or that the meanings are silly or useless.

And of course that’s how we learn. But you’ve mixed two arguments into one statement and it loses all impact. One: To claim that any and all users who agree that the 3 of Swrds is suffering is automatically studying GD systems is a huge leap. It assumes that each and every user will arrive at identical ‘meanings’ (suffering) without any guidance. Well it’s a lovely statement. And cannot be proved either way. But it is lovely!

Two: speaking French phonetically say what? We’ve got metaphor salad.

Scion said:
I'll ask you this: Why bother reading with a Tarot deck if it's nothing special?

Brilliant! Because it works. So do Toothpicks.

Scion said:
If you believe an occult system doesn't work then why are you using it as if it does? And if it does work as it was intended, then how can you say its creators were deluded charlatans?

Cuz that’s confusing the issue! IT DOES WORK AS INTENDED! BUT FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS!!!

Scion said:
But, before we get there... I want to take this in stages: if the Golden Dawn system is wank, then why are you even looking at their images?

Just because something is fallacious does not mean that it is ineffectual.

What is the trigger…what is it that makes magic happen? What’s the mechanism?

It ain’t robes. It ain’t angels. It ain’t even the Kowboy Kowbella. Don’t matter if you use Tarot or Toothpicks…confusing the oracle with the mechanism is always a bad idea.

And by golly we can dress up the oracle however we please.

But some things we can get to work easier.

Why?

Perhaps Sheldrake WAS right after all?
 

Scion

valeria said:
This sounds like just because the Golden Dawn attributed a particular meaning to a card that they now "own" it forever on... especially a "common" or easily intuited. I'm no scholar, but I am pretty sure there were Tarot decks with 3 of Swords, and therefore interpretations of the 3 of Swords that included suffering long before the Golden Dawn was even a tiny speck of inspiration in someone's head.
But that's the thing, Val...

Etteilla factors into all of the GD meanings (cf. the article I linked above) , which I pointed out above to Umbrae. Actually 3 is a very positive number for most of occult (and Christian) history. Why on earth would anyone intuit Suffering from the Three of Swords but not from the 4 or 5 or 6 or 10? It is natural to assume that Swords weren't the happiest of suits for obvious reasons, and from everything we can tell they weren't. But far as the research tells us, the idea of suffering doesn't get attached to the 3 of Swords until Etteilla, and it's the GD that carries that interpretation from Etteilla's system as they braided it into astrology and Qabalah. Etteilla is now a pivotal footnote to cartomantic history, which would have been forgotten but for Mathers and Waite's cooption of many of his interps. Unless someone has access to some long lost book of interpretation that they haven't published, 3 of Swords is only suffering in Golden Dawn land. :)

So my point is not that the GD "invented" the Suffering interpretation out of whole cloth, but rather the fact that they synthesized their system out of reams of forgotten tradition... some of it incorrectly and whether we realize it or not, most modern decks reference the Golden Dawn. When people are using "Suffering" interpretation for the card, they are referencing (wittingly or no) the Golden Dawn system. The simplest proof of this is to look at interpretations of the 3 of Swords in continental Tarot neither via Levi, Christian, etc... (even just glancing through the TdM threads is a clear indicator) which adamantly refuse to interpret the 3 of Swords as Suffering. So that interpretation is something of a genetic tag in cartomancy which identifies the GD influence quickly in a deck.

So I'm gonna disagree with you affectionately. Someone else may have once upon a time interepreted the 3 Swords that way, but if they did, the interp is long gone. For our purposes, the source of that is the GD and their synthesis of esoterica.

X

Scion
 

Umbrae

Scion said:
...3 of Swords is only suffering in Golden Dawn land. :)

...When people are using "Suffering" interpretation for the card, they are referencing (wittingly or no) the Golden Dawn system. The simplest proof of this is to look at interpretations of the 3 of Swords in continental Tarot neither via Levi, Christian, etc... (even just glancing through the TdM threads is a clear indicator) which adamantly refuse to interpret the 3 of Swords as Suffering. So that interpretation is something of a genetic tag in cartomancy which identifies the GD influence quickly in a deck.

I'm in complete agreement.
 

Scion

Umbrae said:
Can’t. It’s a trick question. Just because something is fallacious does not mean that it is ineffectual.

Crowley’s writing tells us that he agreed.

Sure I can read a GD designed oracle and PERHAPS adopt some aspects into my own belief system. On the other hand I LOVE reading with the Crowley Thoth. But I’m not a thelemite.

To imply that by using one system you authenticate and validate another that incorporates the former is an impossible leap of logic.

Perhaps Sheldrake WAS right after all?
Well, now that's a bite in the ass, because you just agreed with me. :( I agree with practically all of that. I didn't say I believed that it was the ONLY system that worked. I KNOW that's not the case. I just said it worked. I read with the Thoth a LOT but I'm not a thelemite either. The leap of logic you're describing isn't one I've ever made. I don't need to. I never said they were right, I said they were effective. That's all I'm concerned with. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." More and more the Chaotes seem to be on the right track, though in general and in practice they're a lazy, sloppy lot. The bottom line: it must get results.

BUT you've sidestepped the question, sly boots. You read with it because it works but then you come back and say that it works for a reason. Do you seriously believe that someone gets as deep or meaningful a reading out of a system by faffing their way through it? Ignoring the system and pretending ignorance imparts some kind of mastery is bizarre. But that's abstract again...

Let me ask another baseline question: what makes a GD deck work and how can it be made to work better?

Your turn...

:D

Scion
 

SunChariot

FutureMoth said:
This question is undoubtably going to put me pretty far down on the novice-meter but I am a novice, so I guess I may as well ask.

So, I have become pretty familiar with the Rider-Waite deck. Very familiar with the Minor Arcana, however less so with the Court Cards. I am still learning more and more about the Major Arcana. However, I am intersted in buying a new deck or two. But I have some questions.
The meanings of cards, obviously differs from deck to deck. I have learned the meanings of the Rider-Waite deck by reading about them and then using them a bunch to gain my own fuller understanding. Is there a good way to go about learning the meanings of a new deck? There is no "Official Meanings" page for other decks on this website, for example. What would be the best way to go about learning the meanings of a new deck?

Well every one of us here has been a novice. We all started at some point knowing nothing about Tarot, asked a lot of novice questions...and learnt. So there's nothing wrong with that. :grin:

My answer, and there are many answers and ways of reading, is that I don't read by learning card meanings. I have 57 decks now and use them all--they all read well enough for me. I do not have the energy or time or patience to learn each card 57 times, as you can well imagine.

So, my answer is that I personally don't ready by learning card meanings. I know the very very basic Major card meaning, and the basic meanings of the Suits and that's it. I read 95 % by looking at the card image and seeing and feeling what it is saying to me, and how that relates back to the question. Sometimes that means breaking the image into parts. Like if the character in the card is wearing shorts, and the question is about how long someone will keep their job. Shorts=short-they will only be able to keep it for a short time. ..and the rest of the image will fill in the rest of the answer.

You just have to open your mind and heart and imagination and let the card images speak to you, and follow where they lead. That is not the only way, but that is my answer. I don't learn the cards, I open up inside, let them speak and just listen to them. As each card has a unique image, each has a different story to tell if you learn to listen. And each time the story will change a bit.

Babs
 

SunChariot

gregory said:
I don't hold any generic meaning in my mind. But whatever - I can draw the same card from the same deck 2 days in a row and get something completely different from it ! Which is why I really think you have to trust what you see in front of you.

Very much agree with this, gregory. That is just my experience too! The same card from the same deck almost never means the same thing to be twice either.
 

Sheri

Scion said:
But that's the thing, Val...

Etteilla factors into all of the GD meanings (cf. the article I linked above) , which I pointed out above to Umbrae. Actually 3 is a very positive number for most of occult (and Christian) history. Why on earth would anyone intuit Suffering from the Three of Swords but not from the 4 or 5 or 6 or 10? It is natural to assume that Swords weren't the happiest of suits for obvious reasons, and from everything we can tell they weren't. But far as the research tells us, the idea of suffering doesn't get attached to the 3 of Swords until Etteilla, and it's the GD that carries that interpretation from Etteilla's system as they braided it into astrology and Qabalah. Etteilla is now a pivotal footnote to cartomantic history, which would have been forgotten but for Mathers and Waite's cooption of many of his interps. Unless someone has access to some long lost book of interpretation that they haven't published, 3 of Swords is only suffering in Golden Dawn land. :)

So my point is not that the GD "invented" the Suffering interpretation out of whole cloth, but rather the fact that they synthesized their system out of reams of forgotten tradition... some of it incorrectly and whether we realize it or not, most modern decks reference the Golden Dawn. When people are using "Suffering" interpretation for the card, they are referencing (wittingly or no) the Golden Dawn system. The simplest proof of this is to look at interpretations of the 3 of Swords in continental Tarot neither via Levi, Christian, etc... (even just glancing through the TdM threads is a clear indicator) which adamantly refuse to interpret the 3 of Swords as Suffering. So that interpretation is something of a genetic tag in cartomancy which identifies the GD influence quickly in a deck.

So I'm gonna disagree with you affectionately. Someone else may have once upon a time interepreted the 3 Swords that way, but if they did, the interp is long gone. For our purposes, the source of that is the GD and their synthesis of esoterica.

X

Scion

Ahhh.... I was actually using the 3 of S as an example, but I see (and more importantly understand) what you mean now :D Thanks for clarifying things for me, I can be thick sometimes!

:love: valeria
 

Scion

That is a load! LOL You have never been thick, V. But asking the question made me think about why I was sounding like such a bossy boots in my opinion. Always good to articulate things. :)