How are you learning?

3ill.yazi

So I've read or am reading the major books mentioned here about TdM (Jodo, Ben Dov, JMD, Lee, and posts by EE) but I would like to hear how people are learning or have learned on their own or in conjunction with these.

I'm afraid I'm in a little bit of a muddle concerning the different approaches, and am not getting the same kind of feeling as I did with the RWS.

What methods and methods of learning have people found useful? Especially but not exclusive to those pips....

I'm loving studying the history, but I'm just not feeling the cards speak to me much yet....possibly too much study. But I'm a history buff.
 

dancing_moon

Personally, I'm learning a lot by doing actual spreads along with studying and deepening my understanding of the cards, especially the pips.

When I work with decks that have illustrated pips, I mostly interpret the cards in isolation from each other, and then work out the meaning of the spread by comparing various positions, like conscious desire vs unconscious desire, etc., so I form the big picture in my mind/from my own interpretations. In TdM, however, I try and see the dynamics between the cards, like who's looking at who/what, who's turning their back on who/what, etc., so the cards themselves form the big picture which I then examine. This is how they really open up to me. The 'analytic' approach works with TdM too but not as nicely as the 'visual' one, for me anyway. So yes, it's a feeling that's different from RWS/illustrated-pip decks.

Hope you're loving your TdM journey so far. :D
 

Miss Woo

I have a similar way of learning to dancing_moon...

What I do is I lay out three cards in a row and I interpret them as if they were some kind of scene, like a tapestry.
 

seedcake

Personally, I'm learning a lot by doing actual spreads along with studying and deepening my understanding of the cards, especially the pips.

When I work with decks that have illustrated pips, I mostly interpret the cards in isolation from each other, and then work out the meaning of the spread by comparing various positions, like conscious desire vs unconscious desire, etc., so I form the big picture in my mind/from my own interpretations. In TdM, however, I try and see the dynamics between the cards, like who's looking at who/what, who's turning their back on who/what, etc., so the cards themselves form the big picture which I then examine. This is how they really open up to me. The 'analytic' approach works with TdM too but not as nicely as the 'visual' one, for me anyway. So yes, it's a feeling that's different from RWS/illustrated-pip decks.

Hope you're loving your TdM journey so far. :D

My way of learning is so similar. The best way is to jump right into spreads. I'm a huge fan of 'visual' approach too. I love to see 'dynamic' in TdM - at who or what each figure is looking; sometimes I see that pips are pointing into some cards. When I don't know which deck to take for someone, I just go with TdM 'cause it's always working and bringing a lot of fresh ideas.

Some time ago I decided I won't read much Tarot books anymore. Sometimes I check a specific topic, but that's all. I want the journey only by myself ;)
 

Richard

The only thing I'm interested in learning is the iconography, and there's enough information in JMD's book to last for quite a while. As for reading methods, there is no right way. It is generous of EE, Ben-Dov, and Jodo to share their methods, but personally I'm not interested.
 

Dark Victory '39

The only thing I'm interested in learning is the iconography, and there's enough information in JMD's book to last for quite a while.

That JMD book is amazing. I've passed on and let go and sold a lot of books over the last six months, but that one is really an amazing creation.
 

Essence of Winter

So I've read or am reading the major books mentioned here about TdM (Jodo, Ben Dov, JMD, Lee, and posts by EE) but I would like to hear how people are learning or have learned on their own or in conjunction with these.

I'm afraid I'm in a little bit of a muddle concerning the different approaches, and am not getting the same kind of feeling as I did with the RWS.

What methods and methods of learning have people found useful? Especially but not exclusive to those pips....

I'm loving studying the history, but I'm just not feeling the cards speak to me much yet....possibly too much study. But I'm a history buff.

I think the first thing to do is to choose the approach you wish to try (you can, of course, always go back and try another approach if it doesn't work for you) and focus only on that methodology while you work with the cards. Which one is best is a question only you can really answer but in the interests of trying to help you to decide, this is the approach I took.

Although I also love history and read volumes about any subject in which I am interested, I decided to jump right in with the Marseille without reading any books. It's something I haven't really done before but the reason is that with my experience with the Thoth deck, I found that reading a book about it gave me the confidence that I felt I knew what I was doing but not much else. After I left the book behind, which had become a crutch, I started working with the deck more fully and opened up to it. Since confidence seemed to be the most important factor, I thought the best thing would be to use the Marseille with confidence and bypass the stage I went through with the Thoth.

I also get a different feeling with the Marseille compared to the Rider but that is to be expected as it is a different deck. With the Major Arcana, the meanings are basically the same but without the Golden Dawn symbolism adapted from the Qabalah. With the Minor Arcana, I would recommend leaving behind pretty much everything you have already learned with other decks and approach it afresh.

To use the Minor Arcana, I 'tune in' to the cards by looking at them and thinking about the feeling I get from them. I might ask myself questions about the details on the cards such as, with the Nine of Wands, 'What do the eight wands arranged symmetrically feel like? How does the ninth wand feel? How do their energies interplay and what is the dynamic taken as a whole?'. The Minor Arcana operates on a much more intuitive level than other Tarot decks, with the possible exception of the Thoth, and it can require practice to get the most out of it but I feel it is well worth it.

To start with, it might be worth doing some simple readings, perhaps three-card or even one-card spreads. Or, just pick a card at random and try seeing what impressions you get from it. Repeat the experiment until you start to develop interpretations and then move on to doing a reading. The main thing is to start working with the cards as the Marseille is one of those decks I believe benefits from practice more than preparation and research. I say this as someone who has only very recently started using the Marseille Tarot but no amount of reading could have prepared me for working with the cards when the skill relies upon the faculties we all have when we open ourselves up to them.
 

Richard

If you have no inclination to learn what has been conjectured about Tarot in the last 115 or so years, proceed to learn about it with a tabula rasa. It is a convenient subterfuge to pretend that the continuity of Tarot through the 20th century has no retroactive significance regarding the actual "original" Tarot. According to the current fashionable philosophy in this forum, the contributions of Levi, Mathers, Waite, Crowley, and others, is insignificant. It is as if the TdM is a different species of animal from the Golden Dawn, Waite, and Thoth Tarots, and its evolution ended around the end of the 19th c. It is a convenient assumption, because it renders unnecessary the (possibly painful) learning curve, which includes the Golden Dawn Tarot structure. If you believe that anything beyond the 19th century is absurd, then go ahead, have fun, and re-invent the wheel. :)
 

Essence of Winter

If you have no inclination to learn what has been conjectured about Tarot in the last 115 or so years, proceed to learn about it with a tabula rasa. It is a convenient subterfuge to pretend that the continuity of Tarot through the 20th century has no retroactive significance regarding the actual "original" Tarot. According to the current fashionable philosophy in this forum, the contributions of Levi, Mathers, Waite, Crowley, and others, is insignificant. It is as if the TdM is a different species of animal from the Golden Dawn, Waite, and Thoth Tarots, and its evolution ended around the end of the 19th c. It is a convenient assumption, because it renders unnecessary the (possibly painful) learning curve, which includes the Golden Dawn Tarot structure. If you believe that anything beyond the 19th century is absurd, then go ahead, have fun, and re-invent the wheel. :)

A number of people seem to use the Marseille alongside the Tarots inspired by the Golden Dawn as different (although not necessarily separate) systems. Where reinventing the wheel is concerned, a lot of the techniques people use to 'decode' the Marseille are very much in line with what Crowley was trying to achieve with the Thoth. In any event, the Golden Dawn system is not the only valid one.
 

Barleywine

A number of people seem to use the Marseille alongside the Tarots inspired by the Golden Dawn as different (although not necessarily separate) systems. Where reinventing the wheel is concerned, a lot of the techniques people use to 'decode' the Marseille are very much in line with what Crowley was trying to achieve with the Thoth. In any event, the Golden Dawn system is not the only valid one.

This debate is one that's worth keeping alive. I've considered what a "purist" approach to TdM would amount to, and it seems that those who have set out to "decode" it without reference to other systems of thought are striving mightily to make something out of "whole cloth" that doesn't seem to have any kind of "first principles" philosophical basis. (If I understand the history correctly, the "pip" cards came from a game-playing paradigm, not a contemplative or divinational one.) I've come to call it the "deconstructionist" approach because every little nuance in the imagery appears to have been given interpretive significance of some sort.

Personally, I take my cue from what Crowley and Frieda Harris did: take what are essentially "naked" pip cards and breathe life into them through use of various forms of symbolism (color, element, decan, number, etc.) along with a creative presentation of the "suit" emblems to achieve something more susceptible to interpretation that really doesn't fall all that far from the "TdM tree." These "semi-illustrated" pips definitely reveal their roots when you lay them out next to their TdM counterparts. I don't see that the RWS model came anywhere close to that remarkable achievement. Since there is no comprehensive historical foundation for pip card meanings, Crowley's approach seems as legitimate as any.

That said, I'm keeping an open mind until I get my hands on the rest of the available literature and assimilate it. That would be JMD's material and possibly Jodorowsky's to start (although the latter seems to get mixed reviews). I also want to expand my understanding of the Golden Dawn "precursor" knowledge base (Levi, Papus, Etteilla, etc.) to see what that holds. In the meantime, I plan to continue bringing elemental ("suit") and number symbolism - as a minumum - to bear on TdM interpretation.