Morgan Greer - Gate Cards

Hemera

I love the threads Pipistrelle has started about the Couples Cards and Inside Cards. I think grouping cards in different ways is a useful approach to any deck one wants to study in depth.

I always try to find Gate Cards in my decks after I read about the concept in Rachel Pollack´s book 78 Degrees of Wisdom. Entering the cards and walking through those gates is a great way to meditate with tarot and to find deeper meaning in those cards. In Rachel´s words, they open an inner path to the inner level of archetypal experience.
Bill Vincent said:
Gate cards are a source of deep, rich inner dialogue, which lead to inner visualization scenarios in which you are part of the card. With all of the Tarot cards you can become part of the story, but gate cards make it even easier than most.

Sometimes the gates are more apparent and sometimes it takes a bit longer to see a gate in a card. Someone said that all tarot cards are gates and especially all Major Arcana cards are gates to the archetypes and I think they are right. However, I thought that for our purposes in a Study Group I´d check the more apparent gates in Morgan Greer.
Many are the “inside cards” that Pipistrelle has mentioned in that thread but there are gates that are outdoors as well.

I came up with the following:

1. Actual gates or gate looking structures:
The Hierophant
Ace of Pentacles
10 Pentacles
4 Swords

2. Buildings or walls that must have gates/doors, though not necessarily visible in the card:
The Magician
The Emperor
The Tower
The Sun
3 Pentacles
4 Pentacles
5 Pentacles
8 Pentacles
5 Cups

3. Structures that form a gate that can walk through:
The High Priestess (columns)
The Empress (trees)
The Chariot (the chariot)
Justice (columns)
The Hanged Man (tree trunks)
The Star (trees)
The Moon (towers)
The World (wreath)
3 Wands (the wands)
4 Wands (the wands)
8 Cups (mountains)
8 Swords (the Swords)
 

Pipistrelle

Hi Hemera,

I struggle with the notion of Gate Cards. Since first seeing your post, I read up about them in several threads here, and looked through my deck, but I still don't really get it. Perhaps it's because I don't use the cards for meditation. But if one came up in a reading, I'm not sure what I would do differently with it. *Puts on dunces hat.*

Anyhoo...That said, as I was looking through the deck, I did notice 8 cards where the image is 'open' at the front, as though the viewer could walk into it so I'm calling these my 'gate cards' to pretend that I know what I'm doing ;-). All but one of them (Temperance) are in your list below.

Temperance
The Moon
4 of Rods
Ace of Pentacles
10 of Pentacles
5 of Cups
8 of Cups
5 of Swords

Now I've identified them, I'm not really sure what to do with them though. Perhaps I should meditate on it ;-)
 

Hemera

Yes, I think meditation is the key here. I have used gate cards in meditation -although not this particular deck very much. But since I learned about them I always check out the gate cards in any new deck I get.

I once painted the M-G Ace of Pentacles gate in oils in a painting group. It was not an exact copy but I had this card in mind throughout the painting course. It was interesting because the card came alive after I had painted it and now I often "know" where the path could be leading.