Tarot with astrology, or Astrology on some cards?

ravenest

I guess if I was an 'intuitive reader' or physic or primarily an artistic type then I would read just 'plain tarot' and probably not have a Thoth deck. But because Im not 'good enough' to just use the Tarot, and being a mental type as well, I find the astrology and Qabbalah (and at times I Ching) usefull.

It's like this for me ; A friend says, "Oh I am having a terrible day, everything is going wrong." We might talk about that and identify some problems and causes. If, from that process, I cant reach a conclusion, we might look at the persons astrology, transits, etc. to get a bigger picture. The astrology might show an influence that has made the person impatient and that could have been the root of the problems ... yet by looking closer at just their actions, without refering to astrology, the impatience might be detected.

Why not just use astrology cards? I thought ( 6 months after getting my Thoth at age 15) why not just use Qabbalah cards? I spent a lot of time making the cards 1 - 10 for each sephiroth in the four worlds and one for each path (22) and then ... by then I realised I was going to end up with a type of tarot deck anyway :laugh:

PS. Oh yeah ... thanx Scion ;)
 

Scion

ravenest said:
I guess if I was an 'intuitive reader' or physic or primarily an artistic type then I would read just 'plain tarot' and probably not have a Thoth deck. But because Im not 'good enough' to just use the Tarot, and being a mental type as well, I find the astrology and Qabbalah (and at times I Ching) usefull.
Click to expand...
Actually, I've been chewing on this one a bit ravenest...

What IS "plain" Tarot?

Is there such a thing as Tarot without cultural baggage? Three of the cards are celestial and all contain traditional symbolism in varying degrees of specificity... several of the symbols are explicitly Christian figures or post-Christian allegory... several people have made good cases for mythological and neoplatonic content. Not surprising: the 15th century loved embedded cleverness and allegory and symbolic content. Art wasn't decorative.

But what IS plain tarot? Is there a cartomantic tradition that doesn't involve astrology (or other systems)? I suppose sortilege, but then some of those walk a fine line between divination and "personality" tests. Etteilla is astrological, obviously all the 19th century French annd english occultists who write about divination. Not Levi, but he had other alephs to fry. The Decans hit the Minors with Pitois/Christian.

The thing is, Rif's original question does beg another: is it possible to read Traot without using an additional esoteric discipline as the spine, unknowingly or not? If your meanings come from Astrology, QBLH, Pythagoras... on some level you're really USING Tarot to read these other systems. The Tarot is a randomizing engine, but the content is partially borrowed. Even people who started with and only read the Visconti-Sforza (hands? anyone?) have 15th century symbolism which comes directly out of explicitly Christian, astrological, and Pythagorean (to name a few) traditions... Like the old Stone Soup story, we might say that Tarot is just a container for the additives that make it "nutritious" enough to be of any value. Unwittingly or no, we study these traditions through Tarot. It is a structured window and not a landscape.

Maybe a way to reask Rif's questioon would be, IS Tarot just the Stone in the Soup?
 

ravenest

It was a quote ( I guess I should have explained that).

A while back, when travelling, I went to a market to do some readings, nearby was a 'cool old dude', flambouyant clothes, knee high boots, excessive jewelery, he had a constant line up and I got 2 clients all morning.

I noticed he was reading with Thoth (also noticed all his clients seemed to be middle-aged women, there was a lot of flirting going on and other things).

I could have called it tailor-made tarot, but anyway I approached him when we were packing up, wanting to strike up some Thoth related conversation, astrology, qabalah, astrology, whatever, his response was," Oh I dont do any of that, just plain Tarot". He was an 'intuitive reader' and I guess, used the Thoth deck like a crystal ball ?

Regardless of what he thought, I believe he would have been adding whatever from his own cultural template, so I agree with you that " Even people who started with and only read the Visconti-Sforza (hands? anyone?) have 15th century symbolism which comes directly out of explicitly Christian, astrological, and Pythagorean (to name a few) traditions... ". In this persons 'tradition' replace the influences with new-age hodge-podge.
 
Book of Law Study Group 1.39 Question About Thoth Editions...