Understanding the Tarot Court Study Group #7

Storytelling

The next suggested exercise for study of the court cards in society (from Understanding the Tarot Court by Greer & Little) is a storytelling spread. This one looks like fun, folks!

First you'll shuffle as usual. The lay out of this one is very fluid and individual since no one will get exactly the same cards. The idea is to have 3 rows of cards.

The top row is for the majors that you draw. These represent Themes.

The middle row is for minors. These represent Plot Points.

The bottom row is for court cards. The represent Characters.

You do not want to separate your deck into sections, just shuffle normally and see what you draw.

If you draw a few minors first, then make up that row. Then a court as your first character starts the bottom row. Another minor? Ok, add it to the middle row. Ah, a major card? Good, now you have a theme in the top row. Keep drawing until you have at least one card in each row. It is ok to have more than one theme and more than one character.

Now, try to read the cards as a story. Your court card will be going to school (8 of Pents) to learn about....????? I hope you get the idea.

If anyone has the book and can explain it better, please help! LOL I'll try to post one soon so that there's an example.

Enjoy!
R

Link to index: http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?threadid=32366

Themes:
Chariot, Wheel, Star, Magician, Tower, Hermit

Plot:
Ace of Wands, 5 of Pents, 8 of swords, 4 of Pents

Character:
Page of swords

Our Page of Swords is a young man who has a purpose. He is determined to make his way in the world. He sets off on his journey with hope and creativity on his side. He has a passion he wants to pursue.

Soon the tables turn and he is left lonely and desperate. He knows he can call his family for help, but he is still determined to make it on his own. He has hope that things will get better for him. He is a smart young man who knows how to use his resources to his best advantage, but at this point he has very few resources and feels trapped by these circumstances.

Soon he succumbs to his fate and realizes that he can’t beat these odds by himself. Too many things have gone wrong with his plan. He has squandered what resources he had and now he must ask for help and begin to rebuild his life.

He goes back to his family and licks his wounds and learns from them. He begins to replenish his resources and hold on to them. He puts money away for his future. He has learned a valuable lesson.

There were a whole lot of majors here! I know I didn't do this just right with the themes and plots getting all mixed up, but I don't think I did too badly. It was fun! I've always enjoyed creative writing. I tried to keep it short and not get too involved in a "story" but just the gist of how the story would go.

Did anyone else try this?
R

I liked your story Rhiannon With all those majors, it looked quite a challenge! I began to feel really sorry for the page of swords, but it all turned out ok in the end for him It reminds me of how the Tower isn't always about disaster, often it is about realisations that you make.

I am so behind on my homework! I am going to take as much of next week off work as I can. I am going to immerse myself in tarot, (it will be bliss!) and I will be able to catch up

Hi Rhiannon.

I tried it, too. Having often had trouble with court cards I looked a little into this study group to see if there could be a way to make friends with them. And it seems that I've at least started to

The spread was a short one for me though: The Fool, 3 of Wands, Page of Coins. Hmm.

The Page of Coins is thinking about a journey to learn more about foreign lands. But deeply rooted as he is in his homeland, he stays where he is and doesn't get any further but watching ships go by and reading up on the lands he wants to travel. But maybe one day...

Short, but I like it. I'm sure I'll do it more often. Thanks- you've done something for me

ooooh, this is going to be a tough one!!!

My character is the Queen of Swords, and getting to know her from the inside is going to be a challenge because as you may recall, I claimed her as my personal nemesis in exercise #1. Her adventure is only the 9 of Disks, and I'm going to have to get creative with a card I've always considered very static because I have three, yes, three themes! Not as tricky as Rhiannon's six, but I'll be working in The Chariot, The Lovers and The Hanged Man. Sex in a car with someone well endowed??? Not the Queen of Swords, surely??? She's far too uptight!

So I will have to give this one some thought and get back to you in a bit...

No, this is still not the story, which I have yet to write. This is just something funny that happened as I was trying to think up a story. Yesterday I was reading a book by a scientist named Richard Dawkins, who is best known for "The Selfish Gene" in which he argues that we are all just slaves to our genes, which fight for their own immortality. This gives you some sense of the flavor of scientist Dawkins is. In a strange case of the pot calling the kettle black, he has written his latest book, "Unweaving the Rainbow" about how some people describe life and society in very silly ways by using really stupid science metaphors. Like seeing the double helix of DNA as arms embracing each other.

He has a point though. Even though I pick on him, Dawkins is right that some people use science descriptions in really strange metaphors for human behavior, often in a new age context. So I'm reading the Wheel of Change book on the Nine of Disks, looking for something to spin into a love story for my Queen of Swords, and this description is just the most perfect example of demented metaphor. The card shows the planet earth in crossection, bombarded by comets. We are told that the atmosphere is our aura and social life, the comets are the brief but significant events that happen to us, the crust is our skin, the oceans our eyes, volcanos are either zits or arterial bleeding, it's a little vague, and the inner stuff below the crust (which, according to the author, is not yet well understood by science because people haven't yet been there), represents the mystery of our insides (which people used to explore through dissection without undertanding the roles of the various organs they uncovered.) All I can do is sputter. The molten core is maybe somehow our bones. This is one of the least elegant metaphors I've ever encountered!!!!

Okay, I've had fun describing this, but you are probably reading (if you are still reading), shaking your own heads and saying, WHAT is this post about????? Well, after I was done scowling at the Wheel of Change book (which otherwise I like quite a bit, by the way), I realized that I was acting, in my intellectual critisicm, just like the Queen of Swords, my erstwhile nemesis!

Just the universe's little way of keeping me humble.

Just thought I'd share that my little story turned out to not be a total work of fiction. I hadn't come back to this thread until just now to read what Gardener had posted, but I thought I'd re-read my own post to see what I'd said (terrible memory).

Well, in the last week my life has strangely resemebled that story. Without going too much into detail:

I am like the Page of Swords from the story. I would much prefer to be stubborn and do things on my own than to ask for help. But, I dug myself a financial hole that I couldn't climb out of and my circumstance were such that neither I nor my husband could take a second job or anything to try to help the situation.

I allowed the situation to go on for longer than I should have, to the point where it only got worse and worse. If I had asked for help in the beginning, alot of this could have been alleviated and the money problems would have been fairly small as opposed to the giant inconvenience that they are now.

My parents have offered to help and I have finally realized defeat and given in to them and accepted thier offer. So, like the Page, I am licking my wounds and rebuilding right now, but I've learned to ask when things start looking bad, instead of procrastinating and ignoring them until they get out of hand.

Coincidence?

You're right, of course, Gardener... but it's that stubborn Queen of Swords attitude I have....