Marseilles Seekers Thread (Second Exercise)

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Originally Posted by 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.

Satori, there is nothing to apologize for.

Health-readings are a delicate matter. The fact that you can detect health issues makes some clients hope you can diagnose them, which is as absurd as thinking that just because you can see in the tarot a problem with a house that means you can fix a pluming problem. For me the bottom line is that the tarot is good for SOUL PROBLEMS. Souls we can ‘fix’ (tongue in cheek). For the rest of things you need to consult the appropriate specialist. But in my experience, healing issues do come up strongly in the cards, or in other words, the cards are useful to point out when is time to go and have a check-up by a doctor, and perhaps, why.

In Lark’s case, the vital nature of the Ace of Wands suggest positive outcome, or a positive reason why that aorta needs to be cut open. But going back to the ‘soul problem’ notion, a reading like that would be more useful if it is focused on helping the person cope with such a heavy decision, than focusing on giving outcomes.

Satori, by all means, indulge in as many outburst as you feel like. :-)

Best,

EE

[lark]

Originally Posted by 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?

Thank you for saying that ...it means a lot to me.
And some say we shouldn't speak about health at all...but it is a huge concern for many people.
And it comes up all the time...I just try to comfort them, mostly they just want a place to voice their fear.
(And the way I'm set up I have to speak what I see or it haunts me like a bad dream.)

Originally Posted by Satori

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.

The reading was for your father, I knew it the minute I turned the 3 cards....I didn't say it because I didn't want to distract you or upset you...I figured you would recognise it if it really was or you.
I'm like one of those machines that picks up eathquakes when they are barely able to be felt...so it won't surprise me that the cards I draw in this study may carry messages for others in this study....
Just beacuse I can't read with a Marseille deck doesn't seem to stop me from seeing...if that makes any sense.
I also know by those cards your Dad is going to defeat this...look at how Death is surounded by the two hands of Emperor and Ace of Batons...Emperor looks like he's an inch away from bopping Death on the head with his septer!
And Ace of Batons has got his back...
Two strong hand that hold your father up and cradle him...it makes Death look wimpy doesn't it?

Originally Posted by Satori

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.

For me I have learned to release all control....I had to learn this because I thought and wrongly that to release control was to lose a part of myself...but in the release you find a calm center and in that center is the quiet place where you can listen to the pure truth that tarot wants to show you.
In the quiet was a Baton turned into aorta...and a message for you.
I never would have gotten there if I would have tried to control it.

[Bernice]

Bernice, I would like to use your example to bring an idea to the ‘table’.

Well, whether I read the cards rightly or wrongly, I'm quite stunned by your response (in an awed way...). You opened the door to a another treasure room! Thankyou.

Bee

Just re-read your response:
I'm now adding what I didn't say ('cos I thought it unecessary) for the final question; "What's happening?"

Because, (to me) the 4 Coins had no ground, the thing that is 'realised' will be a stand-alone thing, something in it's own right, independant of it's source. The 'impersonal' shield confirms this.

[franniee]

10 of coins * Royne despee * 6 of batons

The queen wants the coins. They are on monopolizing her thoughts. At first she just noticed them out of the corner of her eye but when she caught their glitter she became obsessed and raised her sword. She will have them. They are hers! She can concentrate on nothing else. They hold so much promise for her - her back is towards the 6 of batons and the way she can turn her desire into a reality.

I see the red in the handle of the sword and it corresponds to the red in the center of the coin and the red dot in the center of the baton. Also the red in her crown. She will will herself to those coins....she wants to take them by force but she will will them to her. Her hand is on her stomach - she is thinking..... she will find a way. I see the gray on the leaf of the vine in the coins corresponding to the gray stripes in her dress and the gray in her sword and this corresponds to the lattice on the batons card. She needs to be clever and optimistic and she will get the coins.

I feel her longing and her entitlement. She feels they are due her but in all of this she wavers a bit - she is hesitant - she is thinking..... this will allow the 6 of batons to permeate her thoughts and change her method to something more creative.

I like the flowers and the vines on both pip cards. I like the way the flowers looks as though they are floating down on the baton but on the coins they look as if they have woven the coins like a rose bush on a trellis. The trellis is on the batons cards.

I am astounded at her expression. She has such a sour dour look on her face. She is thinking hard - she can't see the beauty in the card. She can't see the trellis or the woven rose bush - she is missing it all! She is lost!

Not sure if this is what I am supposed to be doing ...

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Hello all,

I have a long day ahead of me today, and I will be posting more feedback tonight. In the meantime, here is an interview to German artist Anselm Kiefer that you may find interesting since some of the things he discusses have a lot to do with what we are doing here.

Enjoy!

Interview with Michael Auping and Anselm Kiefer: October 5, 2004 Barjac

Michael Auping: Titling an exhibition Heaven and Earth, as we have done here, requires little explanation. Perhaps we should just begin with the very simple question, do you believe in heaven?

Anselm Kiefer: The title Heaven and Earth is a paradox because heaven and earth don’t exist anymore. The earth is round. The cosmos has no up and down. It is moving constantly. We can no longer fix the stars to create an ideal place. This is our dilemma.

MA: And yet we keep trying to find new ways to get to “the ideal place,” the place we assume we came from — to find the right direction.

AK: It is natural to search for our beginnings, but not to assume it has one direction. We live in a scientific future that early philosophers and alchemists could not foresee, but they understood very fundamental relationships between heaven and earth that we have forgotten. In the Sefer Hechaloth, the ancient book that came before the kabbala, there is no worry of directions. It describes stages, metaphors, and symbols that float everywhere. Up and down were the same direction. The Hechaloth is the spiritual journey toward perfect cognition. North, south, east, and west, up and down are not issues. For me, this also relates to time. Past, present, and future are essentially the same direction. It is about finding symbols that move in all directions.

MA: Our religions all have heaven.

AK: We can’t escape religion, but there is a difference between religion and heaven, and one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.

MA: You have made reference to Speer’s buildings in a number of your works. Does Speer represent something specific for you?

AK: Speer’s architecture is interesting, but because of his connection to the Nazis he was not being discussed at the time I was using his images. There are many artists who run into trouble on their way to paradise, philosophers also: Marx, Hegel, Mao, Wagner. They have all looked for ways to find their place, their salvation, through philosophy, art, or religion.

MA: Could we go back and talk a little bit more about your education as an artist? You went to university in Freiburg.

AK: Yes. But first I had the nineteenth-century idea that the artist is a genius– that art comes out of him naturally and he doesn’t need any education. I had always thought this, even as a child. You could say that I had too much admiration for artists. I thought they came from heaven. Later I found out that artwork is only partly done by the artist, that the artist is part of a larger state of things– the public, history, memory, personal history– and he must just work to find a way through it all, to remain free but connected at the same time. Peter Dreher, and artist and professor at Freiburg, was very important for me in this way. I had come from law school and was trying to figure out the rules of this new world of art. Peter Dreher opened me to the freedom of thhis new world, to the milieu of the artist, and how to operate within this freedom. If you are a genius, you don’t need a milieu. So I figured out that maybe I wasn’t a genius. He said to me, “Do what you want.” And then we could talk about it later. He helped me to understand that first you have to work and then you can talk.

MA: In his interviews and writings, Beuys often evoked the word “spiritual.” How do you think he meant that?

AK: That is complicated. We were both in Germany at a certain time– a time when a dialogue about history and spirituality needed to begin. It was difficult to separate the two subjects. There was a sense of starting over. To evoke the spiritual not only looking at ourselves but into the history of our nation. It was not just a matter of critique. It had to be deeper than that. So yes, Beuys was a spiritual man. The artist is naturally spiritual because he is always searching for new beginnings.

MA: Your use of the artist’s palette image in many of your works seems to suggest various roles for the artist, not always spiritual in his effect.

AK: The palette represents the idea of the artist connecting heaven and earth. He works here but he looks up there. He is always moving between the two realms. The artists are like the shamans, who when they were meditating would sit in a tree in order to suspend themselves between heaven and earth. The palette can transform reality by suggesting new visions. Or you could say that the visionary experience finds its way to the material world through the palette.

MA: Sometimes your palettes are on the ground, a part of the earth, which is constantly referred to in your work, as a painted image or the material ground for painting.

AK: All stories of heaven begin on earth.

MA: In a number of works you have referred to The Hierarchy of the Angels, and the concept of a celestial hierarchy. Is there a hierarchy to your symbols and the materials you use when you refer to this idea?

AK: No. There is no strict hierarchy to my images. They seem to be always evolving from one from or condition to another. This relates to the thinking of the Greek saint Dionysius the Areopagite. Do you know about the ideas attributed to him?

MA: The idea that heaven is organized in orders of different forms of angels?

AK: Yes– angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim. More important was the concept that the spiritual realm is a spiral going up and down. So the spiritual realm is moving and twisting. This is important to the way I organize my pictures. I work with the concept that nothing is fixed in place and that symbols move in all directions. They change hierarchies depending on the context.

MA: An airplane propeller could be an angel or the spiral universe itself.

AK: Yes. And of course flying machines have played important roles in history, representing ambitions of transcendence or military power, from Icarus to moon rockets.

MA: I was also thinking about the different levels of spheres and subspheres in the kabbala that deal with the evolution or hierarchies between matter and spirit, and how that might relate to your use of materials. Your studios are warehouses of everything from dead plants and human teeth to sprawling stacks of lead. Are you suggesting a kind of symbolic ladder through your materials?

AK: Not that directly. I collect all of these things as I read and they find their way into my reconstructed stories, but I usually become attached to materials that have more than one side to their meaning. So they can be used to go up and down the ladder. Lead is a very good example. . . The large sheets of lead that support the 20 Years of Solitude books are from the roof of a cathedral. . . Lead can transform itself in all directions.

MA: I’ve also noticed that many of your paintings can be turned upside down and still carry their message, as if the heaven and the earth just switch identities. It seems to me the orientation is only fixed when you write on the canvas.

AK: I work on my paintings from all sides, so when I am working on them there is no up or down. The sky can be reflected in the water or material can come down from the sky. That is part of the content of the paintings. Heaven and earth are interchangeable. The writing is an attempt to fix a moment or a place, to suggest a fixed state, but the imagery denies. It is active.

MA: Like the stars, galaxies, and constellations you have been referring to — the Astral Serpent or the Milky Way.

AK: The title or language on my paintings is a starting point. The images should expand the meaning of the words. In Die Milchstrasse, I thought of the large cut in the land as a puddle of water. Then the clouds are reflected on its surface, it looks like milk. A puddle is a very simple thing, but it has the ability to reflect into something much larger. It could be the Pacific Ocean.

MA: On this canvas it look monumental, but it also looks like a wound in the belly of the earth.

AK: Yes. It could be. When you dig into the ground, you may find something– water, a buried meteorite, a piece of heaven. These kinds of pictures are always operating between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic. The lead strings reach to the sky and then converge down into the funnel, which dips into the puddle. the Milky Way, which has been observed for millenniums as a great and expansive constellation, is really a small thing in the cosmos. it is like a puddle in the cosmos. Establishing a heaven and earth is a way to try to orient ourselves, but cosmic space does not understand this. It is all relative. What is big can in fact be very small. What is up can be down.

MA: Recently you have made immense books the size of a human body that you can almost walk into, with the pages covered with stars. But you have given the stars numbers and connected them with lines. These star drawings have also appeared in huge paintings that include observatories and what look like navigation instruments.

AK: They are numbers given to stars by NASA scientists. Each number in the string of numbers indicates the distance, the color, the size, etc. This is the scientific heaven. But of course it is all illusion. All of the constellations are illusions or ghosts. They do not exist. The light we see today was emitted millions, billions of years ago and of course their source was constantly changing, moving, and dying. These lights we see, this heaven has nothing to do with our current reality. We are afraid, so we have to make sense of the world. We cannot stand not to have a heaven in our minds. If there really was a heaven, it would exist outside of science or religion. I am speaking of religions, with the plural; not just a religion.

MA: So the scientists are making up their own dome of heaven.

AK: Of course. They want to find heaven too, but their stars are always moving, always dying, and some breaking off, making new stars. Scientists are a little bit like artists. Their stars are like pieces of memory that find their way into a painting. You pull them out and stop them for a moment in the painting. It is stopped only for the instant you recognize it and then you change position and you see something else, another relationship in the image, but again, only for an instant. There are only glimpses.


EE

[Fire Cat]

Looking forward to it!

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Originally Posted by Kilted Kat

What did you notice? Enshrined red objects—a square in the Cups sides and circles in the branches of the wand and in the lid to the Queen’s cups. Light blue (not gray this time!) domes on the spires of the Ace mirrored with the Queen’s cups. The raindrops in the Ace are the exact opposite shape coming down from the sky.

I also like the way the two aces rhyme with the Queen: right hand holding an object (cup) rhymes with right hand holding an object (wand), and Cup rhymes with cup.

Then, there is another thing happening. The canopy on top of the queen resonates with the fire drops falling down in the Ace of wands. Rhyme and resonance are two different things, in that rhymes are visual repetitions of identical or similar elements, while a resonance happens when an object ‘calls‘ and another one ‘responds’, so the two of them activate a new meaning. Many times along our readings we will find both rhymes and resonances. Both of them conform a second layer of meaning after the whole rhythm of the sequence, to give us the three basic elements of our visual poetry: rhythm, rhyme, and resonance.

Originally Posted by Kilted Kat

What did you hear? A flowing melody in the curls of the cuffs in the Ace’s hand, like an undulating ostenato, contrasted by the sharp points or shagged sound, like percussion in the lines that superceded it (see attachment.) The Queen is listening to the same melody because her crown has the same flowing and jagged lines as the Ace’ hand’s cuff…

This is gorgeous. The importance of being able to hear the cards is that what we are hearing is also a metaphor. That ‘auditive’ information is part of our imaginal response to the cards, and therefore, valuable information we can give our clients. Here, I would like to make a precision. I tend to regard all imagery I get while working with a person as being about that person, but most important, I see all that imagery as a metaphor of the person’s situation, not necessarily as literal facts. This is what I find different between this kind of divination an d what people call being ‘psychic’. If I hear flames burning, that doesn’t means you will be invited to a barbecue. Fire could be a metaphor for creative urges, for passion, etc. This way the range of possibilities get amplified. I believe that, in order for divination to be fruitful, the client must take an active role at interpreting what the reader sees.


I believe it was painter Wassily Kandisnky (who may be credited as the ‘inventor’ of abstract painting) the one who composed some of his paintings looking to express the sounds of music. All very synesthetic.

Originally Posted by Kilted Kat

What did you admire? The Queen has a scepter that is fine gold and ebony carved. But she looks at the (seemingly worthless) cup made of copper. The flesh-tone is the gold and the yellow color is the copper because there is less of it, and therefore rarer, more valuable.

Great. Again, this narrative provides a terrific metaphor to describe to a client. One of the main points of this exercise is to show how these metaphors can come from several different ways of connecting with the cards.

Originally Posted by Kilted Kat

What astonished you? Looking deeper I see the hand holding the Wand is made of gold, perhaps divine. It is incorporeal, without a body, appearing from thin air. The contrast in background takes me aback in that there is no floor or basis in the Ace of Wands; the figures merely float above the ground. Inspiring, delicate, moving in space and time.

All your writing is very spirited, listening to you doing a reading has to be a pleasure!

Originally Posted by Kilted Kat

What did you think was happening? I think the Cup that the Queen holds is Cup from the Ace is being transformed as it passes under the Wand of the second Ace.

I would say that she is holding a cup but she is being offered a wand. The fact that we see the cup alone at the end suggests she accepted the wand. Since the cup is closed and the wand is open, we are seeing here a person being offered a more active role in a situation. It could also be a person acting upon her urges, like someone who would go from platonic love to actual sex. At the same time, I find very suggestive the fact that the cup, left on the table, grows leaves and flourishes like a city. The narrative here turns to be about trusting that the things we have transfered our personal power will take a life by themselves. Now, since you read it from right to left, I can see the cup resting, then being activated in the Ace of wands, and finally being accepted by the Queen. In that case I won’t see the cup she is holding as passive -although I would keep seeing the cup on the Ace of Cups as passive- but as an activated cup, accounting for active will.

Thanks.

EE

[Satori]

Originally Posted by EnriqueEnriquez

Hello all,

I have a long day ahead of me today, and I will be posting more feedback tonight. In the meantime, here is an interview to German artist Anselm Kiefer that you may find interesting since some of the things he discusses have a lot to do with what we are doing here.

Enjoy!

Interview with Michael Auping and Anselm Kiefer: October 5, 2004 Barjac

Michael Auping: Titling an exhibition Heaven and Earth, as we have done here, requires little explanation. Perhaps we should just begin with the very simple question, do you believe in heaven?

Anselm Kiefer: The title Heaven and Earth is a paradox because heaven and earth don’t exist anymore. The earth is round. The cosmos has no up and down. It is moving constantly. We can no longer fix the stars to create an ideal place. This is our dilemma.

MA: And yet we keep trying to find new ways to get to “the ideal place,” the place we assume we came from — to find the right direction.

AK: It is natural to search for our beginnings, but not to assume it has one direction. We live in a scientific future that early philosophers and alchemists could not foresee, but they understood very fundamental relationships between heaven and earth that we have forgotten. In the Sefer Hechaloth, the ancient book that came before the kabbala, there is no worry of directions. It describes stages, metaphors, and symbols that float everywhere. Up and down were the same direction. The Hechaloth is the spiritual journey toward perfect cognition. North, south, east, and west, up and down are not issues. For me, this also relates to time. Past, present, and future are essentially the same direction. It is about finding symbols that move in all directions.

MA: Our religions all have heaven.

AK: We can’t escape religion, but there is a difference between religion and heaven, and one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.

MA: You have made reference to Speer’s buildings in a number of your works. Does Speer represent something specific for you?

AK: Speer’s architecture is interesting, but because of his connection to the Nazis he was not being discussed at the time I was using his images. There are many artists who run into trouble on their way to paradise, philosophers also: Marx, Hegel, Mao, Wagner. They have all looked for ways to find their place, their salvation, through philosophy, art, or religion.

MA: Could we go back and talk a little bit more about your education as an artist? You went to university in Freiburg.

AK: Yes. But first I had the nineteenth-century idea that the artist is a genius– that art comes out of him naturally and he doesn’t need any education. I had always thought this, even as a child. You could say that I had too much admiration for artists. I thought they came from heaven. Later I found out that artwork is only partly done by the artist, that the artist is part of a larger state of things– the public, history, memory, personal history– and he must just work to find a way through it all, to remain free but connected at the same time. Peter Dreher, and artist and professor at Freiburg, was very important for me in this way. I had come from law school and was trying to figure out the rules of this new world of art. Peter Dreher opened me to the freedom of thhis new world, to the milieu of the artist, and how to operate within this freedom. If you are a genius, you don’t need a milieu. So I figured out that maybe I wasn’t a genius. He said to me, “Do what you want.” And then we could talk about it later. He helped me to understand that first you have to work and then you can talk.

MA: In his interviews and writings, Beuys often evoked the word “spiritual.” How do you think he meant that?

AK: That is complicated. We were both in Germany at a certain time– a time when a dialogue about history and spirituality needed to begin. It was difficult to separate the two subjects. There was a sense of starting over. To evoke the spiritual not only looking at ourselves but into the history of our nation. It was not just a matter of critique. It had to be deeper than that. So yes, Beuys was a spiritual man. The artist is naturally spiritual because he is always searching for new beginnings.

MA: Your use of the artist’s palette image in many of your works seems to suggest various roles for the artist, not always spiritual in his effect.

AK: The palette represents the idea of the artist connecting heaven and earth. He works here but he looks up there. He is always moving between the two realms. The artists are like the shamans, who when they were meditating would sit in a tree in order to suspend themselves between heaven and earth. The palette can transform reality by suggesting new visions. Or you could say that the visionary experience finds its way to the material world through the palette.

MA: Sometimes your palettes are on the ground, a part of the earth, which is constantly referred to in your work, as a painted image or the material ground for painting.

AK: All stories of heaven begin on earth.

MA: In a number of works you have referred to The Hierarchy of the Angels, and the concept of a celestial hierarchy. Is there a hierarchy to your symbols and the materials you use when you refer to this idea?

AK: No. There is no strict hierarchy to my images. They seem to be always evolving from one from or condition to another. This relates to the thinking of the Greek saint Dionysius the Areopagite. Do you know about the ideas attributed to him?

MA: The idea that heaven is organized in orders of different forms of angels?

AK: Yes– angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim. More important was the concept that the spiritual realm is a spiral going up and down. So the spiritual realm is moving and twisting. This is important to the way I organize my pictures. I work with the concept that nothing is fixed in place and that symbols move in all directions. They change hierarchies depending on the context.

MA: An airplane propeller could be an angel or the spiral universe itself.

AK: Yes. And of course flying machines have played important roles in history, representing ambitions of transcendence or military power, from Icarus to moon rockets.

MA: I was also thinking about the different levels of spheres and subspheres in the kabbala that deal with the evolution or hierarchies between matter and spirit, and how that might relate to your use of materials. Your studios are warehouses of everything from dead plants and human teeth to sprawling stacks of lead. Are you suggesting a kind of symbolic ladder through your materials?

AK: Not that directly. I collect all of these things as I read and they find their way into my reconstructed stories, but I usually become attached to materials that have more than one side to their meaning. So they can be used to go up and down the ladder. Lead is a very good example. . . The large sheets of lead that support the 20 Years of Solitude books are from the roof of a cathedral. . . Lead can transform itself in all directions.

MA: I’ve also noticed that many of your paintings can be turned upside down and still carry their message, as if the heaven and the earth just switch identities. It seems to me the orientation is only fixed when you write on the canvas.

AK: I work on my paintings from all sides, so when I am working on them there is no up or down. The sky can be reflected in the water or material can come down from the sky. That is part of the content of the paintings. Heaven and earth are interchangeable. The writing is an attempt to fix a moment or a place, to suggest a fixed state, but the imagery denies. It is active.

MA: Like the stars, galaxies, and constellations you have been referring to — the Astral Serpent or the Milky Way.

AK: The title or language on my paintings is a starting point. The images should expand the meaning of the words. In Die Milchstrasse, I thought of the large cut in the land as a puddle of water. Then the clouds are reflected on its surface, it looks like milk. A puddle is a very simple thing, but it has the ability to reflect into something much larger. It could be the Pacific Ocean.

MA: On this canvas it look monumental, but it also looks like a wound in the belly of the earth.

AK: Yes. It could be. When you dig into the ground, you may find something– water, a buried meteorite, a piece of heaven. These kinds of pictures are always operating between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic. The lead strings reach to the sky and then converge down into the funnel, which dips into the puddle. the Milky Way, which has been observed for millenniums as a great and expansive constellation, is really a small thing in the cosmos. it is like a puddle in the cosmos. Establishing a heaven and earth is a way to try to orient ourselves, but cosmic space does not understand this. It is all relative. What is big can in fact be very small. What is up can be down.

MA: Recently you have made immense books the size of a human body that you can almost walk into, with the pages covered with stars. But you have given the stars numbers and connected them with lines. These star drawings have also appeared in huge paintings that include observatories and what look like navigation instruments.

AK: They are numbers given to stars by NASA scientists. Each number in the string of numbers indicates the distance, the color, the size, etc. This is the scientific heaven. But of course it is all illusion. All of the constellations are illusions or ghosts. They do not exist. The light we see today was emitted millions, billions of years ago and of course their source was constantly changing, moving, and dying. These lights we see, this heaven has nothing to do with our current reality. We are afraid, so we have to make sense of the world. We cannot stand not to have a heaven in our minds. If there really was a heaven, it would exist outside of science or religion. I am speaking of religions, with the plural; not just a religion.

MA: So the scientists are making up their own dome of heaven.

AK: Of course. They want to find heaven too, but their stars are always moving, always dying, and some breaking off, making new stars. Scientists are a little bit like artists. Their stars are like pieces of memory that find their way into a painting. You pull them out and stop them for a moment in the painting. It is stopped only for the instant you recognize it and then you change position and you see something else, another relationship in the image, but again, only for an instant. There are only glimpses.


EE

I had several thoughts when I read this, and I'm not sure they will all connect, but in the end everything is connected to everything else, so we shall see.

The first thing that struck me was the idea of directions. InNative American Indian culture directions are very important, and each direction has a spiritual meaning. Now, since we are discussing art and the sacred perhaps the Native didn't influence Western thought and fix the importance of direction into our consciousness...because direction and navigation was already very important. So not sure where else to go with this, other than to just mention it.

Then I was thinking about symbols floating around, in that pre-Kabbalistic text you mentioned. This really intrigued me. In Reiki we are taught that in the human energy field we already have the symbols that are said to be activated during a Reiki attunement. So Reiki is Universal Love, an energy that is available to all of us, but when you are attuned you then are able to channel that love as a healing energy beam, and offer it to others by laying your hands on them. And by imagining the symbols...

What intrigues me about the last part of the discussion, is that for the first time I thought, what does the sky really look like. If scientists were to plot the starts that they think still exist, if they do at all, that are real, not just echos of what once was, what would the sky really look like? And what does that say about most of us who never think of that at all.

I was taught this as a child, that the stars are dead, that the light is just now reaching us, but that the stars themselves are not really there anymore....does that matter? And if it does, what matters about it?

I think I am looking at things that don't relate to Tarot or to what you maybe wanted us to get out of the passage, but those are some of the thoughts that occurred to me.

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Originally Posted by franniee

The queen wants the coins. They are on monopolizing her thoughts. At first she just noticed them out of the corner of her eye but when she caught their glitter she became obsessed and raised her sword. She will have them. They are hers! She can concentrate on nothing else. They hold so much promise for her - her back is towards the 6 of batons and the way she can turn her desire into a reality.

Wow, a very inspired narrative. I am sure that, if you feel it with such passion, you will be able to make it feel like that to the people you read for.

Originally Posted by franniee

I see the red in the handle of the sword and it corresponds to the red in the center of the coin and the red dot in the center of the baton. Also the red in her crown. She will will herself to those coins....she wants to take them by force but she will will them to her. Her hand is on her stomach - she is thinking..... she will find a way. I see the gray on the leaf of the vine in the coins corresponding to the gray stripes in her dress and the gray in her sword and this corresponds to the lattice on the batons card. She needs to be clever and optimistic and she will get the coins.

Good.

The first thing I notice is that we are looking at a steady rhythm. There is no rising nor falling motion but the cards remain pretty much the same. This is given aways by the rhyme between the floral ornament in 10 of coins, and the six crossed wands in 6 of wands. Both of these structures have an X shape, so we have a rhythm that goes: XIX. One X, a figure, one X.

The rhythm is the first thing we look at because that is what give us the feeling of the reading. As it stands, it seems as if nothing is going to change much. Since in this case we have one court card and two pips, our eye defines the court card as the focus of the progression. The story is about that woman we call the Queen of Swords. And as you say, that queen wants the coins, or perhaps she wants to belong to a certain order (imagine each coin being a person). In either case she shows her sword, an one fears she may not be showing her best side. Perhaps her anxiety, or her nervousness, makes her be too forceful when being diplomatic would work better.

Now, I notice a resonance: suppose I get rid of all the coins on 10C, and bring the flowers on 6W to the 10C. See how the vine gets completed? We have the trunk in one cards and the flowers in the other one. The fact that she is turning her back to the flowers reinforces the idea suggested by her swords: she is too forceful and she has to soften up.

If the rhythm would tell me how things are going to go, rhyme and resonance would tell me why. In this case, nothing will be changing soon, no matter how much she wants these coins -or whatever we decide the 10C represents- because she seems to be stuck in a forceful pattern, while ignoring her kindest side.

Notice who we haven’t deal with meanings, suits, astrological deities, elements. We are extracting all our information from the way shape ‘moves’ along the card’s sequence.

Originally Posted by franniee

I feel her longing and her entitlement. She feels they are due her but in all of this she wavers a bit - she is hesitant - she is thinking..... this will allow the 6 of batons to permeate her thoughts and change her method to something more creative.

Great. You are a very good storyteller. :-)

Cartomancy is conceptually close to storytelling. We could even say storytelling and cartomancy are sisters. This is something we can talk about here, since it is clearly understandable at an intellectual level, but regular people hates the idea. They reject the connexion between cartomancy and storytelling because they don’t want to be told stories when they go for a reading. After all, our culture situates stories and truth as bipolar opposites.

Even so, every reader needs to cultivate his/her skills as storyteller.

Originally Posted by franniee

I am astounded at her expression. She has such a sour dour look on her face. She is thinking hard - she can't see the beauty in the card. She can't see the trellis or the woven rose bush - she is missing it all! She is lost!

Perfect. She is missing half of the equation. That is why she looks so tense. :-)


Thanks,

EE

[Satori]

Originally Posted by EE

Enrique’s Method of Reading:


1. Why the Marseille Tarot? The Marseille Tarot, the tarot of the image-makers, carries the power of the cathedrals to move the human psyche, and therefore, its’ language carries the power to re-build each one of us as a sacred space.

2. Look at three cards, four maximum. This is the poem.

3. Why do I call any sequence of cards a ‘poem’? Because like a written poem, the tarot speaks the language of shape. We need to let ourselves be taken into the poem’s shape by observing its accent and rhythm.

4. The first thing the cards – each and every sequence of cards - has to tell us is that the riddle we solve on the table gives us the ability to solve one riddle in our lives. “Similia similibus curentur”. An act of magic.

5. If the character in a card is looking outside of the spread, I place a new card in front of him/her to know what she/he is looking at and to close the spread.). More cards than that and I start feeling confused. I don't work with spreads because, as I pointed out before, there is no intrinsic meaning in each specific card, nor in its position.

6. First we look for a general rhythm: raising, falling, constant. Then we look for rhymes.

7. What are Eye Rhymes? Eye rhymes originate in poetry. The notion that two words with a similar sound can be exchanged to create a play of words. This is the idea of two words sharing a similar shape that can be used interchangeably for amusement or communicative purposes, and led me to think that if the tarot's shape isn't auditive but visual many images have a similar "sound" that can be appreciated at plain sight. They are rhymes for the eye. I saw this represented for the first time in Temperance and Le Bateleur, in the form their posture, arms, heads, hats, etc, they rhyme!

8. The only thing relevant in a single card is what rhymes with other cards. Rhymes define the active attributes of each card in a given sequence. We ignore the passive attributes.

9. We don't know what a single card means, nor do we need to worry about that. (Later) we will talk about my suspicion of what does each card elicits, but that will always be a provisional idea, useless in the context of a reading.

10. I would go so far as to say that each tarot card is an image looking to be turned into a metaphor when the viewer, based on his or her own experience, finds a referent for it. The image in the card isn’t a metaphor, but it wants to be a metaphor. Since the referent always changes, meaning will always be transitory.

11. We can only understand a card by contrasting it with the other cards in a sequence.

12. Trumps, pips and court cards are all part of a whole. Trumps and court cards aren't more 'valuable' than pips, but they may provide focus to our narrative since they depict human characters.

13. The cards of a sequence don't depict separate events. We read the whole sequence as one single sentence/idea. As a sequence/story line we understand the cards going from past-left to future-right, but it is all part of one single motion.

14. As a consequence of the previous points, we don't base our first glance on the card's attributes, suits, or numerological values of the pips.

15. The purpose of looking at the cards in this way is to get visions. We see things that weren't there before. Revelations. Looking at the tarot in this way is about taking a detour to find a straight answer.

16. There is a verse from medieval times, attributed to Nicholas de Lyra, which accounts for the four levels in which a text could be interpreted. "Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia" this is: "The letter teaches the actions, the allegory teaches what you believe, the moral teaches you how you act, and the anagogy teaches where you are going."

17. We need to be familiar with the principle of analogy. The tarot is an analogical machine. Any card, or any sequence of cards, can be linked to our personal experience by analogy. The important thing here is for us to have a frame of reference. In this case, we had all these feelings we experienced before actually looking at the card. In some cases, our frame of reference will be a question. In some others, our frame of reference will be our mind state. Our client also brings her mind state to the table, and her mind will draw analogies between whatever we say, or whatever she looks in the cards, and her mind state. A non-theoretical approach to the cards will always produce analogical meaning.

18. Our frame of reference is what tells us what to look for. It also asks for each reader to take responsibility for her/his own metaphors.

19. Every time we look at the cards we are (attempting) to recognize our question or concern in the images we have in front of us.

20. 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.

21. How do we know whether a person is contracting, expanding, etc? That is what the pips are telling us.


22. 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.

23. On broader terms Wands and Swords contract -in that they evolve by generating a solid shape in the middle of the card.

24. Cups and Coins expand -in that they spread across the card’s surface.

25. 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.

26. Shape becomes meaning and rhythm becomes message.

I spent a little time today trying to put together a road map of what Enrique has been teaching. I needed to play with the concepts to set them in my mind, and I was copying some of his posts into an MS Word file, and then I created this set of bulleted items. I don't know if it will help anyone, but here it is.