Do cards have fixed meanings?

[fishbrain]

I understand (1) cards have an assortment of traditional meanings: some quite varied, others quite similar; and (2) as you become more comfortable and experienced with tarot you trust your own judgment and intuition...

just curious...
is there anyone here who literally ignores (or is ignorant of) the traditional meanings of cards, and goes purely on their own instinct?


a lot of beginners basically want to memorize the meanings. is this a good starting point? or is this a hinderance in some respects?

(note: i figure i would class myself as "intermediate" - i'm not a novice, neither am i an expert) ie, i am not asking specifically from a personal point of view for help, just asking as a general question.

for me...
i like to study the cards, both meanings, and images. I've begun collecting more packs. i find it very stimulating and educational to study/meditate upon different styles/decks of cards. the juxtaposition of (sometimes rather wildly different) images and symbolism seems to help "unlock" the core meaning or principles of the card.

of course (like many, i imagine) my grounding is in learning and familiarising myself with a fairly standard deck, Rider-Waite. Which also means I tend to see other decks "in terms of" the Rider-Waite.

 

[LadySquee]

I believe I just answered a similar question here

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=97809

I hope it helps some!

 

[fishbrain]

It does... thanks

 

[Eddie]

As a beginner, I reveled in learning the meanings of the cards.
As I did so, I very soon noticed that I was getting too caught up and even confused by concentrating so much with the book meanings.
I had lost any instinctual feelings I'd had.
So i started to let the pictures speak first and then allow the book meanings to have their say.
I now realize that letting the pictures speak is a very usefully way of reading and it is a good exercise to do from time to time, this really exercises your instinct.
Having said all this, I don't think it is possible as a beginner to just read the cards instinctively without knowing any book meanings. You do need some sort of base knowledge to start with.
I am not saying its entirely impossible, there are some cards that even a stranger to tarot can look at them and tell you want they mean. Would these very people be able to give you an adequate reading?.... highly unlikely.
Eddie

 

[Thirteen]

is there anyone here who literally ignores (or is ignorant of) the traditional meanings of cards, and goes purely on their own instinct?

There are those who do, certainly. There are beginners who don't ever pick up a book and rely entirely on instinct from the first. But most of us learn to mix the two. The reason being that we'd really have a hard time talking to each other about the cards if we all relied on instinct and didn't have any agreed upon, traditional meanings to discuss.

a lot of beginners basically want to memorize the meanings. is this a good starting point? or is this a hinderance in some respects?

It's...the way most people start. And it's as good a place to start as any if it works for you. It's the same for a lot of other things. Learning music for example. Some folk can learn by ear or just pounding away at the keys as they please, but most learn the notes and how to read music and how to make cords on an instrument. As they get better and better, they pay less attention to what the written music tells them about how to play the song and they play it as they feel it should be played. Eventually, they may create their own cords, riffs, style, tunes.

Ultimately, whether memorization is a help or a hinderance is all up to the beginner. Some can't learn tarot that way. Other do. And even the kind of memorization required varies from beginner to beginner. Some need to do a real reading of the card's meanings, a whole chapter of a book for each card, and then sleep and think and write about it in their journal. Others go for flash-card key words. One word per card, the whole deck memorized by the end of the week. What works for you, works.

And once the beginner has gotten past that point, well, most of them tend to do exactly what you do at the intermediate stage. Collect packs, examine the differences, study other meanings and alternatives, etc. Expand their knowledge. And yeah, Rider-Waite dominates. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but that's the way it is. 90% of the decks out there, for better or worse, are Rider clones.

 

[raeanne]

Hi Fishbrain,
When I first learned Tarot, (which was many, many years before Internet), I lived in a small town with no bookstores and nothing in the local library on Tarot. I had purchased my deck on a weekend trip into the city. The only thing I had to go on was the Little White Book that came inside the box. Being young and not having anyone to talk to, I thought that those words were the only meanings for each card so I memorized the list of words given in the LWB. It was a lot of work because I don’t do well with memorization. There were about 5 words for each card. The problem with this method is that it didn’t teach me to READ Tarot. I would shuffle the cards and lay them out in a three card spread and all I had was 5 words, plus 5 words, plus 5 words. I didn’t have a clue what the answer to my question was. I was focusing so much on trying to remember the words that it kept me from using my own intuition. This was a BIG hindererance for me! It took me a long time to realize that Key Words are just that…KEYS. They aren’t meant to be exact; they are meant to unlock the meaning. You have to start somewhere and Key Words can help get you started but you really need to get beyond those few words if you expect to understand the language of Tarot. (At least that’s the way I see it.)

 

[starrystarrynight]

is there anyone here who literally ignores (or is ignorant of) the traditional meanings of cards, and goes purely on their own instinct?

I have done that probably exactly once (or so.) And it was fabulous NOT to rely on anything I had learned by rote about the cards' meanings and key words.

Mostly, though, I use a combination of the two, and sometimes the book meanings just don't fit in edgewise, so intuition has to rule. I, actually, love it when I "forget" what I have learned about a card or a combination of cards--due to some sort of mental block (which I know is not a mental block at all, but my intuition overriding my education)...and I have to rely only on the images on the cards and how those images make me feel.

It's a rush, and I wish I could do it all the time for all the cards in all my spreads.

 

[Sinduction]

For me, the cards hold an idea. Each card has a separate and distinct idea attached to it. But there are also many other things that add to that idea, numerology, astrology, colors, symbols. So I guess I'm really making my own ideas of the cards.

The reading part is how well *I* can make sense of the relationships between these cards.

I think reading has more to do with how you interpret the cards in a spread than what each card means. Does that make sense? You know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

In this way, I don't think book meanings are important at all. One can just interpret what they see between the players. Of course, this is where lots of art and symbols would help! But even then, one is reading off what the artist had in mind for the cards.

 

[frelkins]

I love all these glorious historical decks, 13. Lately I don't think I want to read with anything past, oh, Gummpenberg. And the weird decks, the Minchiates, the Mitellis, the Sola-Buscas, the Etteillas, the Mantegnas -- these are the best, the best, the best!!!! That so many never leave the RWS matrix seems sad to me; tarot has such a history, one that just blows RWS away. . .

 

[Demon Goddess]

When I first started learning to read I used playing cards as my teacher, my Grandmother did. I saw nothing in the cards but the pips, and had to function entirely on card meanings.

Then I got a Thoth and the card meanings were relegated to the background as I allowed the cards to speak to me.

Then I got a Revelations deck and card meanings went right out the window as the cards began to sing to me (literally).

I have since taken up two new decks, the Bright Ideas deck which is so far out in left field that many don't consider it a true tarot deck and the Navigators Deck based on the Golden Dawn, I haven't read the book for either of these cards and have no intention of ever doing so.

I prefer reading intuitively, because I am more accurate when I allow myself to read what the cards are saying as opposed to simply reading what someone else teaches me the should mean.

I believe that given the fact that deck designers are so true to using the "book meanings" of the cards with their designs it is highly possible to read intuitively from the get go with decks with lots of images, such as these decks that I read with, but RWS based decks or older antique decks that have simple images as a certain number of pips with no other image on them will be far more difficult for a pure intuitive to learn on without someone teaching them that this card means whatever.

If noone ever tells you that cups are about emotions, can you learn this intuitively? Maybe experience will eventually teach you this.

If noone ever tells you that a sword could represent a scalpel or a pen, can you learn this intuitively? Certainly experience will eventually teach you this...

Either way, intuitively or book learning... the only way to EVER read tarot is to learn every single card and how they interact together by reading the tarot.

IOW, it's the same way you get to Carnegie Hall... you practice, practice, practice.