Major Arcana only decks

[Cassandra022]

Don't know. There are quite a few majors only decks I find quite beautiful, but I can't bring myself to get them...it just seems like...too few cards to really be able to read the same way. But then again, I'm kind of compulsive about sameness sometimes...I've yet to bring myself to try out oracles, or lenormands, or well anything but straight up 78 card tarot decks. Its like, I have this compulsive need for all my decks to be structurally the *same*, and then I keep them in the same place in the same looking bags even though it makes it really hard to find a particular deck, because...samesamesame :0

lol

 

[teomat]

I know many people just use the majors for reading, but I'm curious about what these kind of readings are like. From what I understand, reading the minors is a relatively new practice and up until the RWS came out, most people read the majors only. And many still do today.

Do you think the reader has to be more intuitive (or dare I say 'psychic') to perform a reading with just the majors? I mean this in terms of not having the minors to fill in the details. How do they do a 'full reading' without all the details that the minors (and courts) provide? How do they get that extra info? Since it IS possible to read with just the majors, these readers do manage it somehow (and have done for decades).

I guess it is possible for all the RWS minors to be represented by the majors - perhaps incorporating reversals and card combinations. It's something I'm experimenting on with the majors in my Fergus Hall, and I feel myself drawing away from the minors more and more. I get the feeling that all the 'answers' can be found from the majors only and I guess (or hope in the case of my Fergus Hall where the minors do nothing for me) that it's only a matter of practice before I can rely on them only for a reading.

 

[SunChariot]

I don't personally think you need to be more intuitive, I just think Majors only deck are more limited in scope. While in theory when reading intuitively the card images can tell us almost anything, we don't usually read only by intuition. Less cards=less things the cards can tell you, to me.

Also since Majors for me are about very inportant life lessons...not everything can be that in life, so if all cards are Majors...how do you tell whats a life lesson from what's not?

Babs

 

[Oink]

Also since Majors for me are about very inportant life lessons...not everything can be that in life, so if all cards are Majors...how do you tell whats a life lesson from what's not?

I tend to think about the majors this way (to certain extent at least) as well, but that's exactly why I think there's a place for majors only decks/readings. If the query is about a "big picture" life issue, rather than a temporal or day-to-day thing, why not read with the set of cards that you feel speaks to that type of issue?

 

[Debra]

Having only 21 cards limits the types of answers and advice you can get. The 56 others aren't equivalent to the majors unless you fuddle around with some kind of numerology, which ultimately takes everything down to one of ten digits. I never draw more than 3 cards and usually just one, as a brief bit of advice. So I wouldn't use majors-only for a question like, "How should I proceed with this project?" or "Why didn't he answer my text?" In other words, the majors are Major and the minors...aren't.