nisaba
Le Fanu said:When what actually happened with me was that I studied meanings - yes, other people's meanings - then almost without noticing, the meanings had organically "bent" into meanings which made sense to me, morphed into something quite unique. But it is a long process. And - yes - why not - start with other people's meanings. A sharp mind will question anyway.
I like that.
When I teach, I do not give people 78 meanings to memorise. Most people don't have that sport of capacity for immediate information storage, anyway, and spending every lesson packing in a few cards would be boring as.
I tend to have hands-on activities in every lesson. In my first lesson I usually get the names of everyone who's willing, put them all into a hat (or a jar, usually), pull one out, and do a full reading for them in front of the class so show how I do it. I also spell out that I'm not interested in training up a whole bunch of little Nisabas, but I'm interested in teasing out their own personal style of reading.
I like everyone in teh class to have the same deck. That way, we are looking at the same images. I go around the room, getting people to tell me what they can see in the card/s in front of them, what people are doing, saying, thinking, what the surroundings remind them of. Nob ody is wrong, and I come down quickly and viciously on anyone in the class who says someone else is. I explain that this is a part of developing your own, unique relationship with Tarot. Somewhere (usually in a later lesson) I explain that when you have more than one deck, you will have more than one relationship and they will be quite different - and you'll end up with another relationship later, a relationship with Tarot itself overall, that encompasses all your relationships with single decks.
My students tend to end up happy. To get their Piece of Paper, they need to give me, a classmate, or someone else a competent reading that flows, under my supervision. I'm not concerned with how they read, as a whole, just that they work in a way that is consistent and right for them, and that the client is satisfied. I also don't haunt the client for weeks to make sure everything that is said "comes true".
Someone who is confident and happy with their cards will give good readings, even if they are readings that are very different to what I myself might give.