Competition – something to think about

[Umbrae]

It’s near the close of 2007 (two thousand seven what? From when?) and you know, it’s time for us to get real and wrest Tarot from the hands of the gypsies/rom who never had it in the first place.

We have competition out there. And I’d really like to urge folks to think about this…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071205/ap_on_re_us/gypsy_turf_war

This is why we have to ‘break the mold’, we have to take Tarot out of the mire of the past and bring it into the future.

 

[Sinduction]

Ridiculous.

I like how a guy named Steve Stevens goes by the name Bob.

 

[AJ]

I worked around Gypsies in Portland for about 3 years, they have a fascinating culture. And like any group there were good and bad sides.

I can appreciate your point Umbrae but I think they are successful (or appear so) because people *like* to get a *real reading from a real Gypsy*. Tell you the truth I would too, just to see how he/she would read the cards, now that I am more familiar with them.

If you are connecting the Gypsies with readers who sell fear, they don't have a lock on the market, the world is full of those kind of readers. All I can do about it is read for one person at a time, without scaring them to death

 

[Grizabella]

Also, it was a non-Gypsy who started the myth about them having brought the deck and its secrets out of Egypt. No? So even though there are some disreputable Gypsies, I agree with AJ that they didn't corner the market. And I don't think they started the myth.

If these Gypsies are anchored in Newport Beach, they're some pretty wealthy Gypsies, I must say, and I venture to guess they've got more than their share of customers among the people living there or they wouldn't have set up shop in that area. Rent for their shop would be huge, I'd think.

Why would we want to generalize like that and try to wrest Tarot from the hands of any particular culture just because of the few who are scam artists? That doesn't mean they all are. That's a form of racial profiling, I think.

I do realize that Gypsies are stereotyped as being dishonest and shady and rip-off artists. But they aren't all those things any more than all black people can sing and dance or all Hispanics are illegals or all Native Americans live on a reservation. Maybe you should appeal to the Romany people to enlist them to help clean up that myth about their culture. I'm not being facetious---it would just probably do more good than for us to try to pry Tarot away from them.

 

[April]

Hasn't this same sort of thing been going on in Salem, Mass. of late?

Gypsies aside, I couldn't agree with you more, Umbrae. There's this... I don't know, reputation? that tarot has acquired because the rest of us don't speak up. Is this what you mean?

I think many of are too quiet, but how would YOU fix the problem, Umbrae? How DO we wrest the tarot away from those who are doing it harm (Gypsies or otherwise)?

Peace,
April

 

[philebus]

That's potentially a very tricky line you seem to want to take. It sounds not too unlike the sort of thing I read from some of my fellow card players, those who take a harder line than myself say that we should wrest tarot cards from the occultists and readers who never had them in the first place.

For myself, I suggest that the cards are what you make of them. So, there's room for us all to use them in whatever way we please. They do not belong to you, me, or them. I'm not saying don't explore this, just explore it with caution, as arguements of this kind just get turned around a little too easily.

 

[Embla]

Being Romani myself I can only speak of Romani culture in Sweden and Spain, which are the two countries where I have family.

In my opinion, tarot does not belong to Romani people more than it belongs to any other group or community, but it is important to keep in mind that fortune-telling has played a huge part historically in Romani culture. We used to live in a matriarchy where the woman was the main bread-winner in the family, because she made money telling people´s fortune. To my knowledge though, tarot cards were not as common as regular playing cards and palm-readings, among other methods that did not require any expensive tools. The purpose was to make a living, more than practise some kind of spirituality or religion. But, as any other group that is socially and economically dependent on a more traditionally powerful group in society, we learned to read and decipher human behavior and reflect that knowledge back at the people looking to be listened to, and were willing to pay for it.

Sadly, nowadays, many Roma are embarrassed of that part of our cultural heritage and want to leave it behind, and a lot of that shame is connected to the generalization of the Roma scam artist, that of course has been created interactively with the rest of society. A huge percentage of the Roma community in Sweden now belongs to different Christian churches were fortune-telling or soul-searching via tarot-cards is banned. What we as Roma don´t realize though is that if we forget about that part of our specific history, we lose part of our cultural identity, nomatter if we want to continue practise fortune-telling or not.

 

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Sorry for writing this words with a “heavy hand” but...

As part of my research as tarot reader, I have had several readings by gypsies in the past. There was no one single time in which the reader didn’t tried to transform the 10 dollars Tarot reading into a 250 to 1500 dollars cleanse.

Not a single one.

That doesn’t says anything about gypsies and their culture. It only says a lot about gypsy psychic parlors.

I make my life as a Tarot reader, and the main problem I have to put up with is the fact that the public image of my profession has been shaped by con-men and lunatics. A big part of what I do on the first 10 minutes of my sessions is dispelling all kind of fears and useless notions people brings to the table, based on previous negative experiences, or in the outrageous claims charlatans make when they advertise their “gift.”

But of course, charlatans come in all colors. Even so, I sympathize with Umbrae’s post. Tarot needs to be re-semantized. It is too useful to be perceived just as weird or “evil”.

All the best,

EE

 

[Umbrae]

I chose my words poorly.

See…there’s a whole other ‘world’ of fortune-tellers out there. They may be of any ancestry. But they live on the underside of the law and society (as EnriqueEnriquez illustrated so well).

There can be times when Regular Joe walk by and espy us with our Tarot Cards – and Regular Joe doesn’t see the years of work we put into our craft, he don’t see us staying awake reading Qabalistic tomes until dawn, learning decks, learning reading.

We get lumped into Fortune-Teller Archetype. We get convicted without a trial. There are times we even invite trouble…

We have to not appear to be a part of that archetypal image.

Does this make my position easier to understand?

 

[Grizabella]

I getcha.

I don't believe those charlatans who try to hook people getting a $10 reading into having a $250+ session of cleansing or whatever other scam they've got going are right at all. (Came back to edit because I forgot to finish that sentence.)

But in a way, aren't we sort of doing the same thing by just giving short, inexpensive teaser readings at parties and fairs while giving out our business cards to try to get people to come to us for much higher priced longer sessions? (I can hear all of you hissing and scratching at me already.) I'm not defending the scammers or being sympathetic to them for doing their outlandish rip-offs-----I'm saying if we want to distance ourselves, maybe we shouldn't use their tactics, even on a tiny scale.

Yeah, yeah---business practices and all that. But think about it.