EnriqueEnriquez
Hooked on TdM said:
This really pleases me. I think that there is a world of difference between seeing and not seeing. Our culture has rendered us eye-deaf.
I am very happy to know this is working out for you.
Best,
EE
Marseilles Seekers Thread (Second Exercise)
This really pleases me. I think that there is a world of difference between seeing and not seeing. Our culture has rendered us eye-deaf.
I am very happy to know this is working out for you.
Best,
EE
EnriqueEnriquez
SilentBreeze said:
Hello SilentBreeze. You did beautifuly.
Couppes equal cups
Batons equal wands
Espees equal swords
Deniers equal coins
I think it is easier to name them in English. When I am reading in Spanish I name them in Spanish, and when I am reading in English, I name them in English. That way the person I am reading for -which isn’t often French- can understand.
SilentBreeze said:
Excellent. Looking alternatively at both kings left hand I wonder if the kind of swords ‘borrowed’ that sword from the king of cups, who seems to be missing it.
SilentBreeze said:
Amazing how even the feet are identical. They are perhaps the most kinesthetic part of these cards, hence the auditory emphasis you signaled.
SilentBreeze said:
In think it is important to notice how the whole narrative you create is based on the figure cards. We, human beings, automatically do that. We set the focus of an action of the humane-humanized characters of anything that is presented to us. If the story is about humans-human-like characters, then the story is about us.
Since we started this thread I have been re-reading Italo Calvino's "The Castle of Crossed destinies". I recommend you to get it and read it, starting at the second part: The Tavern of Crossed Destinies, which is the one based on the Marseille deck. Calvino mentions that the idea for the book was given to him by Paolo Fabbri’s paper titled “The Story of Cartomancy and the Language of Emblems”. This is part of an interview Fabbri gave: "I realizad that cartomancy builds up a narrative by placing one card after the other. The contiguity of elements gave place to a narartive sequence that was created by selecting from two kinds of images: a kind of image which can be found as a constitutive part of the card, and some other that would however represent explicit contents. For examples, in some cases the death card will represent death but in some others the cartomancer would select figurative aspect which didn’t belong to the card’s content itself, for example, the scythe, which could be seen as a scythe or as a seven. As a consequence of this I pointed out that the narration was built by taking into account both the card’s content-elements and expressive-elements, and the cartomancer would amplify her narration by choosing, based on her narrative needs, either content-elements or expressive elements. Later on I discovered that the act of placing one card aside the next one constituted a syntax, even if there weren’t elements that could be defined as specifically grammatical. Something similar to what happens with surrealist poetry, in which we place one word after the other one, and even if there is no semantic connexion between them, these words will create dependences and oppositions, building up an implicit narrative grammar. I also noticed, with surprise, that some of the trumps had an additional function beyond expressing content, since they also had a syntaxtic function. Lets take as an example the Devil card. Sometimes it represents the devil’s concept, but some other times it has a commutative function, acting as a catalyst or modifier of the action”.
I was amazed of finding something that explains so clearly the way I look at the cards. But the most important thing here is that idea of both images as content and images as expressive elements (which mirrors the eye-rhymes + semantic field idea I shared with you), and then, the idea of images that are catalysts of the action. Usually these images are the figurative ones, which give accent and context to the cards depicting non-animated objects.
SilentBreeze said:
SilentBreeze said:
This is fantastic. I like what you did here. I couldn’t help but noticing the king of cups is holding a cup just like the ones we see on the four of cups, and I wonder if he just took it from there. Perhaps he is playing a practical joke on the king of swords, who seems to be guarding these cups and will be surprised to find that the central cup is missing, and in its place there is a cocky flower.
Best,
EE
EnriqueEnriquez
Hey Firefrost!
I agree with you in that there is a rising rhythm. There is indeed a crescendo from the four of wands to the seven, and then a ‘release’ in the sun. The two wands in the two of wands rhyme with the two characters in the sun. In both cases the y are ‘teaming up’. The seven of wands reinforces the idea of this union becoming readier to evolve into something bigger.
In general terms I have no use for the numerological meaning of the pips. This is, I have no use for numbers-as-symbols. Within the context of the pips numbers indicate an ascendant progression, from one to ten. So, 2 won’t represent duality, but “more than 1” and “less than 3”. (The idea of an ascending progression gets reinforced by the panoramic each suit offers if we place it in sequence. We can clearly see a crescendo in each one of the series when they are aligned from one to ten.In this case, the fact that this crescendo goes from 4 to 7 doesn’t negates the crescendo. We don’t need the whole series to understand the progression). That is a numerical value I can see in the cards, while the numerological one -albeit useful sometimes- feels more of an imposition. This understanding allow us to read rhythms and patterns, even if we get cards of different suits mixed on a sequence. This is very important. In this case the sequence is very clean since we have wands following wands, but if instead of the 7 of wands we would have had the 7 of swords, of the 7 of cups, the same ascendant rhythm could have been read in the sequence. It is only that certain eye-rhymes would have changed.
(I understand this is not the way we are taught to look at the cards, but to be totally honest, when it comes to the Marseille the way we are taught to look at the cards haven’t taken us too far. Please, anybody who has troubles understanding this, or find it problematic, ask.)
Reading the pips is like ridding a bicycle. We can only do it in motion. If we stop, we fall. ‘Motion’ in this case has to be understood as the arrangement of random sequences. Arguing about the symbolic meaning of a sole pip may be exciting, but is not useful. A single pip, a single court card, a single trump, are like a vowel or a consonant. Their attributes are very limited unless we combine them with more cards.
GREAT! I am so happy to read that!
We can find most cards in the other cards.
I used to think that the pips and the trumps should be kept separately. Now I am aware of that being a mistake. The difference between cards is an intellectual one, not a visual one.
The sun is a very ambiguous card. Depending on the context the two characters may be getting closer, or they may be saying goodbye. I like the way you interpreted the eye rhymes as some sort of ‘emancipation’, yet I see no collapse in the relationship. The fact you have all these wands being interwoven reinforces the idea of expansion/evolution that only occurs in agreement. These are very hot cards, lost of heat being built up. Even so, I can’t see anything that would lead me to worry about the fate of these two characters. If they separate, it will be with a fanfare.
Well done!
EE
firefrost said:
I agree with you in that there is a rising rhythm. There is indeed a crescendo from the four of wands to the seven, and then a ‘release’ in the sun. The two wands in the two of wands rhyme with the two characters in the sun. In both cases the y are ‘teaming up’. The seven of wands reinforces the idea of this union becoming readier to evolve into something bigger.
In general terms I have no use for the numerological meaning of the pips. This is, I have no use for numbers-as-symbols. Within the context of the pips numbers indicate an ascendant progression, from one to ten. So, 2 won’t represent duality, but “more than 1” and “less than 3”. (The idea of an ascending progression gets reinforced by the panoramic each suit offers if we place it in sequence. We can clearly see a crescendo in each one of the series when they are aligned from one to ten.In this case, the fact that this crescendo goes from 4 to 7 doesn’t negates the crescendo. We don’t need the whole series to understand the progression). That is a numerical value I can see in the cards, while the numerological one -albeit useful sometimes- feels more of an imposition. This understanding allow us to read rhythms and patterns, even if we get cards of different suits mixed on a sequence. This is very important. In this case the sequence is very clean since we have wands following wands, but if instead of the 7 of wands we would have had the 7 of swords, of the 7 of cups, the same ascendant rhythm could have been read in the sequence. It is only that certain eye-rhymes would have changed.
(I understand this is not the way we are taught to look at the cards, but to be totally honest, when it comes to the Marseille the way we are taught to look at the cards haven’t taken us too far. Please, anybody who has troubles understanding this, or find it problematic, ask.)
Reading the pips is like ridding a bicycle. We can only do it in motion. If we stop, we fall. ‘Motion’ in this case has to be understood as the arrangement of random sequences. Arguing about the symbolic meaning of a sole pip may be exciting, but is not useful. A single pip, a single court card, a single trump, are like a vowel or a consonant. Their attributes are very limited unless we combine them with more cards.
firefrost said:
GREAT! I am so happy to read that!
We can find most cards in the other cards.
I used to think that the pips and the trumps should be kept separately. Now I am aware of that being a mistake. The difference between cards is an intellectual one, not a visual one.
firefrost said:
The sun is a very ambiguous card. Depending on the context the two characters may be getting closer, or they may be saying goodbye. I like the way you interpreted the eye rhymes as some sort of ‘emancipation’, yet I see no collapse in the relationship. The fact you have all these wands being interwoven reinforces the idea of expansion/evolution that only occurs in agreement. These are very hot cards, lost of heat being built up. Even so, I can’t see anything that would lead me to worry about the fate of these two characters. If they separate, it will be with a fanfare.
Well done!
EE
EnriqueEnriquez
Bernice said:
Bernice, I would like to use your example to bring an idea to the ‘table’.
German artist Joseph Beuys defined five processes -grouping ten qualities for matter into binary opposites- he used to craft his sculptures:
ORDER-CHAOS
DETERMINED-UNDETERMINED
ORGANIC-CRYSTALLINE
WARM-COLD
EXPANSION-CONTRACTION
The bridge between any of these bipolar opposites was the concept of movement, which Beuys defined as: the artist's will at work, or, the channeling of organic energy.
I find interesting the use of the word movement as a substitute for change. Change is a word that makes people nervous, but movement has no such negative connotations. The artist as an agent of movement, or the diviner as an agent of movement, is a very attractive proposition.
Now, consider this: just as we have these five processes, we have the eight root metaphors we know as the basis for the I Ching:
HEAVEN-EARTH
FIRE-WATER
THUNDER-WIND
MOUNTAIN-LAKE
If we define a person as our "matter", we could see how the person, at any given time, can be represented by any of these eight root metaphors. This is, a person can be a mountain, or a lake, or a thunder, therefore adopting, by analogies, the qualities of that natural event. These qualities can also be extended at a symbolic level: a mountain would be a leader, or a hermit, or both; it would be male, active, and obstacle, and so on. But as metaphors, these natural events are somehow static. A mountain is a mountain, and it exist in tension with a lake. Now, when we contrast/combine these root metaphors with Beuys' estates for an sculpture, the combination render the I Ching's root metaphor into a noun, and Beuys' process metaphor become some sort of an adjective.
For Beuys, part of the process defined as 'a sculpture' occurred when matter moved from one of these estates into its opposite. Here, it is important to notice that Beuys used very raw, time sensitive, materials in his work: iron, copper, sulphur, fat, honey. Under specific circumstances, the artist's will, defined by Beuys as movement, will transform the sculpture's materials, taking it from one extreme to its opposite within the aforementioned bipolar opposites. (If we think on fat, for example, we will see that fat will naturally melt, becoming warmer, of a further undetermined shape, in a chaotic, organic, expansive way.)
Something very interesting is that most of the time, such materials were used as metaphors for these processes. This is, the transformation would be hinted by the material's own nature. The idea was to elicit in the viewer a certain feeling, or revelation.
Quite magical.
This interest me because we also work with 'raw', time sensitive, material: we work with people. The interesting thing is that these five bipolar processes are also metaphors, and a peculiar characteristic of these metaphors is that they have a dynamic quality. These are catalyst-metaphors. They suggest an action. So, we have a set of ten metaphors, grouped in binary opposites, and just as Beuys used these processes to modify matter, we can use them -as metaphors- to describe a person's situation and to suggest a certain movement towards its bipolar opposite. A person could be crystallizing, therefore needing to become more organic. A person could be expanding, therefore needing to contract. A person could be cold, therefore needing to warm up, a person could be in total order, therefore needing to break onto chaos, etc.
How do we know whether a person is contracting, expanding, etc?
That is what the pips are telling us.
When we look at the pips we can always notice if the sequence goes from ORDER to CHAOS, from DETERMINED to UNDETERMINED, from ORGANIC to CRYSTALLINE, from WARM to COLD, or from EXPANSION to CONTRACTION. On broader terms Wands and swords contract -in that they evolve by generating a solid shape in the middle of the card- while Cups and Coins expand -in that they spread across the card’s surface- Even so, we can see that Swords are expanding if we compare them with wands, and we can also see that coins have a particular point of view that makes them expand over a horizontal plane, while cups ‘pile up’ or expand on a vertical plane. All these are indications of movement, and such movement will give us, by analogy, an insight into the process a person is experiencing.
Shape becomes meaning, rhythm becomes message.
Back to Bernice’s example there is a clear sense of expansion from the Emperor to the 4 of coins, and specially, in the progression from 2 of Cups to 2 of coins. Bernice signals something vital: she makes a point on noticing the ground, or lack of ground, in the whole composition. I would see the 4C, not ass a lack of ground tough, but as THE ground. This is, as a category of groundness that goes beyond what The Emperor or the 2C represent, because the horizontal expansion the 4C represents takes the idea of being grounded way further. If you read back what she wrote you will see how this idea of grounded expansion is present there.
franniee
HEy! How did I miss this? Bummer! did we just skip the fb on the other one and come over here?
Satori
EE said:
Holy Bat $h!%! That is amazing!
EnriqueEnriquez
Hello Lark,
As you pointed out, the hands are very important. The Emperor’s hands rhymes with the Ace of wands. It seems as if death has severed the emperor’s hand, and by doing so, the scepter turned alive.
Your example shows lots of attention to detail, which is great. It ios a pleasure to see what you see. This is absolutely extraordinary:
!!!!
That’s pure and perfect analogical thinking. A perfect example of objective observation prompting intuitive insight!
What you experienced is exactly what we are after: we look, we let the details reveal their rhymes to us, and looking prompts a sudden revelation that then we can share with our client, or ‘trace back’ by exploring the eye rhymes. The rhyme between the scepter and the wand implies that death incision will have a healing quality, yet the scepter’s semantic field -the scepter as symbol of power- suggest that the Emperor won’t surrender the scepter that easy. But then again, is not that we go around offering our aorta to the first guy with a knife who wants it.
Beautifully done!
EE
lark said:
As you pointed out, the hands are very important. The Emperor’s hands rhymes with the Ace of wands. It seems as if death has severed the emperor’s hand, and by doing so, the scepter turned alive.
Your example shows lots of attention to detail, which is great. It ios a pleasure to see what you see. This is absolutely extraordinary:
lark said:
!!!!
That’s pure and perfect analogical thinking. A perfect example of objective observation prompting intuitive insight!
What you experienced is exactly what we are after: we look, we let the details reveal their rhymes to us, and looking prompts a sudden revelation that then we can share with our client, or ‘trace back’ by exploring the eye rhymes. The rhyme between the scepter and the wand implies that death incision will have a healing quality, yet the scepter’s semantic field -the scepter as symbol of power- suggest that the Emperor won’t surrender the scepter that easy. But then again, is not that we go around offering our aorta to the first guy with a knife who wants it.
Beautifully done!
EE
EnriqueEnriquez
franniee said:
Hey Franniee.
Yes,
I came straight to work on my feedback here.
We still have until Saturday to work on this one!
Best,
EE
Satori
Forgive my outburst. I was on the way out the door and I stopped to look at the thread, and I found that post. It just triggered..something. I meant no disrespect to the group or the group leader.
lark, when I read your post the first time I realized something....since you have no fear of saying what you see to the client you See Truly. I'm a bit afraid of giving health readings. Perhaps I don't trust myself to See Truly, and so I'm afraid to say to someone, have your doctors looked at your aorta lately?
It seems a whole new world is opening up here, a world that I want to see...See. Just thinking about it makes My heart....pound.
Also, lark, my Dad just had an aortic valve replacement surgery along with triple bypass. I kept looking at that reading....and well I think it was a message for me. I've been so fearful that Death was coming to collect my Dad...but your reading gave me strength. My apologies for not revealing this sooner....it really didn't hit me fully until now. Your reading had been up for days....my Dad had his surgery last Friday, five days ago. I remember I thought...how strange that lark would write/See that. Truly, I think you were connecting some dots for me, and I was so much in fear that I couldn't even see the message screaming in my face.
Over and over again reading the cards is about surrender for me. This theme of surrendering myself to the process, to divination, trusting that the message will be there, trusting that understanding will be there, recognizing the message, all of it, has been such a struggle at times for me. I have always done it, I have always said, Ok Tarot, let's go, let's do this. But then I step back into the shade, back under the safe shady tree, or under the canopy. And always I'm being led out...asked to come out and be like the children in the Sun card. Exposed, vulnerable. I am a Gemini so when I am under the sun I must trust that something else is there with me, that some other divine entity or force is there beside me. And when I stop to think about it, when you read for another person you are never alone. There are eyes across the table from you. And they have all the same wonders about life as you do.
This has turned confessional and personal. I didn't mean to carry on. I was just very moved by the last several posts.
lark, when I read your post the first time I realized something....since you have no fear of saying what you see to the client you See Truly. I'm a bit afraid of giving health readings. Perhaps I don't trust myself to See Truly, and so I'm afraid to say to someone, have your doctors looked at your aorta lately?
It seems a whole new world is opening up here, a world that I want to see...See. Just thinking about it makes My heart....pound.
Also, lark, my Dad just had an aortic valve replacement surgery along with triple bypass. I kept looking at that reading....and well I think it was a message for me. I've been so fearful that Death was coming to collect my Dad...but your reading gave me strength. My apologies for not revealing this sooner....it really didn't hit me fully until now. Your reading had been up for days....my Dad had his surgery last Friday, five days ago. I remember I thought...how strange that lark would write/See that. Truly, I think you were connecting some dots for me, and I was so much in fear that I couldn't even see the message screaming in my face.
Over and over again reading the cards is about surrender for me. This theme of surrendering myself to the process, to divination, trusting that the message will be there, trusting that understanding will be there, recognizing the message, all of it, has been such a struggle at times for me. I have always done it, I have always said, Ok Tarot, let's go, let's do this. But then I step back into the shade, back under the safe shady tree, or under the canopy. And always I'm being led out...asked to come out and be like the children in the Sun card. Exposed, vulnerable. I am a Gemini so when I am under the sun I must trust that something else is there with me, that some other divine entity or force is there beside me. And when I stop to think about it, when you read for another person you are never alone. There are eyes across the table from you. And they have all the same wonders about life as you do.
This has turned confessional and personal. I didn't mean to carry on. I was just very moved by the last several posts.
EnriqueEnriquez
stella01904 said:
Very good! This is in fact a beautiful progression, although sometimes I wonder if there could ever be an ugly one.
Just as in Lark’s case, you objectively observed all what was there to observe, but then you basically constructed your answer to the last question (What do you think is happening?) you went for one main rhyme to construct meaning. This is specially easy to do when whole characters rhyme, as is the case with the horses here.
stella01904 said:
YES!!! That is exactly what this is about. Beautiful.
stella01904 said:I see the IIII Coins as a small, steady income. (I am using the Noblet, but I remember Jodo put a phoenix on this card.) We are only at 4, but the material is stable because it is continually renewed. A small, but adequate flow. It's like a little paycheck every week from a day job that is not demanding and gives you time to pursue the things you love (Chevalier de Coupe) during your time off.
The Chevalier loves what he does and he's very good at it! Maybe someday the money will pour in, but even if it never does, he's still managed to enjoy his life.
Contrast him with the Chariot. Here, it could be a promotion. Say you took a position as manager, and there was more money and marginally more prestige, but you would have to be there six days a week, eight or more hours a day. You would have to enforce policies that you know are stupid, move where and when they told you to go, and be rah-rah patriotic about a company that you know isn't ethical at all. The wheels roll in two different directions. The Chariot driver is in a box way up high, above the shield from the IIII Deniers that's become a mere company logo, removed from his horses, he isn't at one with them like a rider would be. He looks so stiff in that armor. He's even cut his hair, and it's not golden anymore, it's that pinky color that passes for "flesh." He's looking back at his Chevalier days and wanting to return to that.
So this spread might advise a person not to take a job or promotion simply for money but to continue to do the things they love. You can't take it with you.
MUCH more incisive than the conventional "You've been in a financial bind but there is a new romance coming that will make everything all better" - !!!
ETA: As a rule, the Chariot is one of the cards I most like to see, but with the Chevalier riding away from it, it seemed to reek of restriction and imposed order.
I like the metaphor of pairing the pink horse in the Chariot as a loss of independence. Here we can see how an eye rhyme -in this case 1 horse rhyming with 2 horses- can be given a narrative dimension. The rhyme makes the story advance, or in other words, the rhyme tells the story.
And you told a terrific ‘story’ here. Well done!
stella01904 said:This deck is alive....
;-)
