Marseilles Seekers Thread (Fourth Exercise)

[Fire Cat]

Originally Posted by stella01904

Odd, since the word wasn't originally written in those characters.

There is a theory about language, that it originated as sign-language, with the hands mimicking the shapes the mouth took to formulate simple ideas and express them. The sign-language later became codified in the written form of language. From this theoretical perspective, the nationality or actual language takes a backseat. The shape of the word conveys its meaning, whether spoken in its original language or not.

[stella01904]

Originally Posted by Kilted Kat

There is a theory about language, that it originated as sign-language, with the hands mimicking the shapes the mouth took to formulate simple ideas and express them. The sign-language later became codified in the written form of language. From this theoretical perspective, the nationality or actual language takes a backseat. The shape of the word conveys its meaning, whether spoken in its original language or not.

Some of it may well have originated that way:
http://www.percepp.com/alphabet.htm

That couldn't be the whole show, though. People all over the world have used glyphs for barley, reeds, oxen, etc. that eventually became simpler and more abstract:
http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/writing/story/sto_set.html

A lot of letter/glyphs represent things. The Ur rune as the auroch, the Mayan symbol for "conjure" as a stylised hand grasping a stylised fish, Egyptian characters.... Hebrew has an interesting mix of letters that could be hands and mouths, but also letters that allude to other things.

[Fire Cat]

Kilted Kat
I like your looking at the letter shapes as Majors archetypes!

Like all good elementary teachers, am going to steal this one!

Bateleur, of course!

Well, here is mine. The last couple of days, there has been a "C" sound word on the tip of my tongue. Then, it finally came to me----Chris, the name of my departed friend from a year-and-a-half ago.

And, following lark's method...

C

This letter starts away from center, off the beaten path. No other letter like it. It "pretends" to come back your way and then veers off once you have it figured out.
II. LA PAPESSE

H

And once it winds its way back into its own la-la land, a point, an opinion, something understandable. It is coherent, with a beginning and an end. Taking a short while to share this reason and bridging Babble with Prose. A young life cut short abruptly, but not without leaving an impression behind.
XX. LEIVGEMENT

R

Importantly leaving an impression out of respect for ideas. Many an "aha" moment. This letter, like a head rising up off a neck as if to say, "Is that so?" Ears perked on top of head, light bulbs going off above.
IIII. LEMPEREVR

I

Ascension to higher realms, work well done here. A short life, the "H" uprooted and turned on end. A higher purpose, a greater plan. No mourning, only sweet memories, and a few dark memories too.
LE MONDE

S

Reincarnation, as this letter starts as the "C", continues to the median and suddenly switches paths. A lost soul, haunting old friends, or a return to the earth to finish what was unfinished.
LE FOV

[lark]

That is lovely, just like poetry to read.
What a beautiful tribute to your friend.

[Fire Cat]

Originally Posted by lark

That is lovely, just like poetry to read.
What a beautiful tribute to your friend.

Thank you

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Dear all,

This has been a very busy week for me. I will give more feedback to you on Saturday.

Best,

EE

[Satori]

Hi folks,
Just back from a few days away on Cape Cod. We had a nice time! Will need to read the thread and see what is up....

[Satori]

OK, popping back in to say that suddenly, I am seeing the vines from the Marseille evrywhere. The deck seems to be invading my conscious world. There are images from the deck everywhere it seems. I think I must be bonding with it.

Secondly, I have been looking at some of my other non-scenic pip cards or partially decorated pips, and I have to say that they don't seem to make as much sense to me as the Marseille. With the TdM there is a progression from card to card, suit to suit that makes sense. The vines and the flowers Work. Where as other decks, the decorations have no real meaning to me. They don't seem to make the same sense to me.

I can't explain it....but I also notice that my other decks are unused right now. I haven't looked at another deck to use since starting the study. I pulled out the Bizzarro, and I still love the court and the Majors, but the pips don't talk the same as the TdM. Strange. I wanted to see if looking at the pips could elicit the same kinds of ideas, and I was totally turned off from the cards!!!

Fascinating.

[mosaica]

I have had such a difficult time with the exercise this week. Choosing a word has been a challenge! (My indecisive nature comes out. That's why I love the chance aspect of tarot. You shuffle and take what you get.) I think it would have helped had I not read everyone else's examples. How many different meanings can one see in the forms of single letters? I kept seeing everyone else's meanings.

Random word generators didn't provide me with any inspirational words, so I picked a word from the game Jumble in today's newspaper. One of today's scrambled words is:

EUQUE

(You know the lame place where I'm going with this ): The first E holds out a U, a cup -- the Marseille deck and these threads -- in which we are each invited to line up and Q ("queue") a few cards at a time. We then pour the metaphors and analogies that we see into the cup and hand it back to him (EE). He responds, and through the repeated back and forth of these exercises, he teaches us to find the "cues" for new meaning in the cards, finally pointing us toward a future full of ever-new tarot reading possibilities in the final E.

Thank you, EE!

Mosaica

[Bernice]

EUQUE

Neat!