Surprising, unexpected or alternative card meanings

[Dave's Angel]

You know how Tarot readers always stress things like "The Death card doesn't really mean death" etc, to nervous readers who see it and think they're a gonner?

I think we sometimes get very used to looking beneath the surface, and sometimes a card jumps up and bites you because the meaning is stone cold literal.

A couple of years ago I was thinking of joining an organisation called Lifelines, it's basically a penpal scheme where you befriend inmates on US Death Row (many of whom are there for years on end). I was conscious of possible difficulties in the light of my own comparative youth and naivete at the time, and asked the cards if my joining up was a wise move.

I did a Celtic Cross spread, and the first card to come up - that is, the one that just covers the general circumstances of the question - was

THE HANGED MAN.

Just for once, forget all the imagery of sacrifice or development through enforced restrictions, it meant just that. A man sentenced to death.

That was cool!

 

[victoria.star]

what a nice idea

EnriqueEnriquez,
Thank you for the lovely image of the cards as friends, animals.
When I look at my cards with the goal of understanding them, instead of interpreting them, they seem to soften...seem to open up...

 

[EnriqueEnriquez]

My pleasure Victoria.

What you just wrote is beautiful.

Enrique

 

[Mi-Shell]

One of my favorite alternative meaning is
for the 10 of Swords: Negative thinking = dysfunctional thought patterns circling like vultures!= time to stop that!
Mi Shell

 

[Dave's Angel]

A friend of mine once looked at the Page of Cups in the Rider-Waite deck and remarked that he looked a bit camp. I hadn't noticed until then, but I've since started taking that to possibly mean a gay man, or possible gay tendencies, as it crossed my mind that if the cards wanted to say "gay!", how would they convey it.

 

[rebecca-smiles]

A friend of mine once looked at the Page of Cups in the Rider-Waite deck and remarked that he looked a bit camp. I hadn't noticed until then, but I've since started taking that to possibly mean a gay man, or possible gay tendencies, as it crossed my mind that if the cards wanted to say "gay!", how would they convey it.

HA! It hadn't escaped my attention, but i dismissed it. come to think of it, all the pages look a bit camp, don't they?

Enrique, that quote was so spot on and poetic i've kept it. YOu got any more pearls like that lying around?

 

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Rebbeca,

The following two quotes, also from James Hillman, may not be as poetical at the previous one, but you may like them since they are related with the same idea:

“When an image is realized -fully imagined as a living being other than myself- then it becomes a psychopompos, a guide with a soul having it’s own inherent limitations and necessities.”

“Unless we maintain this distinction between inherent significance and interpretative meaning, between insighting an image and hermeneutics, we shall not be able to stay with the image and let it give us what it bears.”

Best,

Enrique Enriquez

 

[EnriqueEnriquez]

Rebecca,

I just found two more quotes from an interview that Marianne Costa and Alejandro Jodorowsky gave to a newspaper in Spain, also related with this topic:

Marianne Costa: “I think Tarot Arcana are archetypes in a broader sense that the one defined by Jung. This makes possible to find surprising relationships in Tarot. For example, if you take your tarot to the museum of sacred art, in Florence, you will find incredible resonances and similarities. If you take it to Notre-Dame, you will experience the same thing. Tarot archetypes are universal. It can be said, as Alejandro does, that they constitute human psyche’s backbone”.

Alejandro Jodorowsky: “In the other hand, when we talk of Jung archetypes, we are talking about Jung’s comments on dreams, and to some archetypes he studied through dreams; like The Savage Mad Man, or The Barbarian; but it happens that in Tarot we aren’t talking about footnotes to dreams, but about these dreams themselves. The arcana aren’t interpretations. They are archetypes by themselves. Tarot is like a dream. It wasn’t born as a comment to anything else. Tarot is the thing itself”.

EE

 

[rebecca-smiles]

thanks Enrique, i guess i should check these authors out!

 

[poivre]

Years back I had read on a site where the Devil was a person
who was interested in the same sex. (this was NOT here)

We have a family member who is loaded with money,
travelled the world, and has had his share of female
friends. He is always happy but has the empty smile
look. I always wondered that he may be gay, but never
told it. After all he has more than many of us will ever
dream of having. I feel this emptiness that he shows,
MAY be that he is gay, but being a womanizer, he doesn't
want to give up the image.

So we go to their home one day and he wants his cards
read. The first card he picks...
The Devil!
I read the card as the bondage etc. but never said
a word about the other,
as I darn near fell off my chair!
This is one I won't forget.

I never read the Devil as being gay because
I'm interested in their reading, not that
personal part of it.

This could work as being chained to the
opposite sex when you want a same
sex partner.
And that's a whole new thread!