Umbrae
“Behold, Mouthpiece of Ooolatek the Seditious One Who Speaks Only Lies, Keeper of the Despicable Temple of Divine Evil is about to speak, tremble ye heretics...nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.”
Most of this has been said before – but heck…it’s my six thousandth post.
Wassily Kandinsky begins his work, Concerning The Spiritual in Art with the words,
I once said, that I often think of Tarot as high art. Not art framed, stagnant on some white gallery wall, but art we can touch, handle, and share.
Many readers are (imo) like Kandinsky’s vulgar herd, wandering in a building divided into many rooms. Every wall of every room is covered with pictures of various sizes; they number seventy eight. They represent in colour a bit of nature…. All this carefully printed in a book – name of artist – name of picture. People with these books in their hands go from wall to wall, turning over pages, reading the names. Then they go away, neither richer nor poorer than when they came, and are absorbed at once in their business, which has nothing to do with art. Why did they come? In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joy.
Tarot Reading is art.
Look around you, heck – you may even want to look at yourself. Many people now have a TV that runs when nobody’s watching, a radio blares in the background, IPods clamor for attention over the sounds of life. Plugged in, good to go, got the tunes…
Music is art only when it’s live. A recording is a copy. Nowadays it’s nothing but ones and zeros. Ones and zeros are not art. What you’re listening to is not art anymore than sheet music is art. Sheet music is a recipe (“follow these directions and you may come close to what I had in mind” says the composer).
When I was a child, my family took me to the World’s Fair in Seattle (1962). I was dragged around and forced to look at stuff. Then we entered the Hall of Modern Art. My family was aghast, they laughed and pointed.
Then I saw it. A Kinetic Sculpture – it was huge – perhaps a hundred long flexible arms with stuff attached, like a willow tree of junk. And if you pressed the button, an electric motor made it jump and sway (and stuff would clang together and make noise).
It was wonderful.
When you pushed the button – it was never the same twice! It was different each and every time!
I was in love! My family laughed.
But that was art. It was dynamic. Not static bits of something stuck in somebody else’s time.
John Cage (1912-1992) was a brilliant composer, went to the Cornish School of Arts here in Seattle. My favorite work is entitled 4’33”.
He told the story of going into a sound-proof (or sound absorbing) room at Harvard one day, he entered the room expecting silence. Later he said that he "heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." Cage had gone to a place where he expected there to be no sound, and yet…
4’33” is a performance piece (sort of). The performer enters, opens the key board lid on the Piano, and appears to sit doing nothing for four minutes and thirty three seconds, then closes the lid and exits.
It’s freaking brilliant! The performer is not the music, nor is the piano the instrument being played. The instrument is the audience and the hall. The cough from the man two rows down, the woman who whispers five rows back, the squeak of the pneumatic door closer, perhaps a far off siren, the patter of rain on the windows...these are the instruments.
Nobody listens to silence anymore – we’re wired for sound…and experience no art, no music. Listening to math…ones and zeroes.
We’ve turned ourselves into spectators on our own stage of life.
I am talking about Tarot Reading by the way…walking around with our Tarot Programs, “Oh, I love the way he’s bent over his work – being diligent, I wonder what the program says? Oh…he’s bent over his work being diligent. Sure glad I bought the book.”
Art exists in the moment. That’s it. Then it’s gone. Painting and sculpture are dead. They don’t move. Sure Mona Lisa’s lovely, but she’s dead. At best, I can be a spectator. Yeah Jackson Pollack may have expressed himself well – but the paint’s dry – it’s over, done, that was then, this is now.
Art should move me to become a participant. Art should make me be a participant. I don’t want to be in the past tense, I live in the present tense.
So you know that question I asked? “Why do you read Tarot for others?” As I said, it defines your intent. It’s also a question whose answer should change many times over the course of your life.
But your intent, that’s important, right? Well let’s dig a little.
Why do they come to us? I once said something like; they come to us for something that they cannot get anywhere else. They don’t call plumbers to have their cards read, we don’t work as electricians and say, “oh by the way…” They come to card readers…they may go to church, science, family, lawyers, and the modern world of entertainment…But if they got what they were searching for there – we would not be here…
…They come to us. Why? They come to get, what they think we have to offer. What they are unable to get anywhere else… They often think we know, we are psychic – we have the cards. We could re-educate – but is it our job to tell them there is not Santa Claus? Or is there Seriously…why do they come to us?
We may care about history, artwork, and tradition; but what we care about is unimportant. This has nothing to do with us..
What does the sitter see? They don’t give a fig about what that little symbol means. They care about their life.
We know why we read (each of us individually), but the sitter comes to us with their own set of ideas and concepts, and they come with their own sets of life issues.
They sit down across from us. We may be way over in the ‘hearing voices’ crowd, or way over in the psycho-therapeutic aspect of Tarot and discovery – but what do we do to re-gear ourselves for their needs? (side note - I think both systems are equally valid).
Or do we say “To blazes with the sitter, they’re wrong – I’m right.”
See – we have to be in the moment – we have to show up.
We have to get out of our own way. What we think (about Tarot) has zip all to do with how to reach them (the sitter).
We have to be in the moment. But then, isn’t being in the moment – the goal of most (if not ultimately all) spiritual paths? Or paths of psychoanalytical analysis?
What does this have to do with art?
Real art, is in the moment. As it was discussed back in February, listening to a recording of an opera, and being there are two different things. Walking around wired for sound…you’re a spectator. Listening to a recording, watching TV, you’re a spectator. Sitting at the opera – you get carried away. Music, when live, forces you to become a participant. There is a connection between the artist, and the audience. That connection – that’s the key….
There was a world of difference between listening to a recording of The Grateful Dead, and being there….
Ever think about what was so wonderful about Cosmic Toaster readings? They were text, they were internet…but people clamored to be a part of those threads. I’ve seen Firemaiden post that she doesn’t really believe in Tarot readings – but she’s hands down one of the best readers around. And no, she doesn’t read face to face. What makes her Cosmic Toaster readings so special?
Firemaiden writes them from a creative story telling point of view. They are fun, and they are spookily accurate. What makes the threads so wonderful is the participation. Sitters are not passive, they are not spectators.
That’s why the 13th Door series didn’t really work as well, it placed the sitters into a passive, non-participatory role.
The Green Gargoyle worked kinda well, but once again, sitters were relegated to passive, non-participatory roles.
The threads The Blonde Bar Maid and the Rubber Chicken read with the Fantastic Menagerie... and Firemaiden seeks ..., both ‘Cosmic toaster’ threads were huge – because participation was encouraged (the latter found me serving Spotted Dick to participants). Firemaiden tenders the Spoof Shingle, and awaits a victim.... is also worth note.
And the readings were done from the creative side of the mind. They are free form, they are anything but static. They do not resonate with the sound of the “cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoisseurs admire the ‘skill’ (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the “quality of painting” (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away”
“…To harmonize the whole is the task of the art.” Yes! And it’s the task of the reader. That’s what you’ll find in Firemaiden’s readings.
When you read face to face for a stranger, the sitter has expectations. How do we meet them, and how can we turn the sitter from a spectator to a participant (especially when they sit with their arms crossed and never move a muscle)?
As a tangential insertion, one of the best books you should own in my opinion is “21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card” by Mary K. Greer.
Sitter has expectations. The Sitter has their own agenda.
Picture yourself at a table with your favorite deck. What do you look like? You walk up to yourself and sit down. What do you sound like? What do you say?
You can wander through your room of 78 paintings and read from the book, or you can leave the book and wander through the rooms.
Some people find keywords on cards limiting (think Thoth). Some may find it a tool to expand into what are literally, cold reading paragraphs. However when this same principal is applied to oracles, such as runes – it seems okay? Then some folks find the keywords as doorways that open into really cool magical worlds.
Reading…expectations…art…
What are the first words out of your mouth? How are they phrased?
When I was active as a Shriner Clown, one of the first things you learn when you’re wandering through the Children’s Hospital and Burn Ward is you don’t walk up to a horribly sick child and say, “And how are you today?” Could be the last day of this kid’s life and that’s the last thing we want to ask them - how they are?
The sitter has an agenda. And you have to get out of your own way, to be in the moment, and provide what the sitter needs.
If we say, “How can I help you”, we’ve just implied that we can do (help), something that they cannot do for themselves. It puts us in a linguistic place of power.
Or some waitron it a restaurant, as they take you to your table asks, “How has your day been?” the answer, “The funeral was, as most funerals go, very tragic and sad…” asking how a day has been, is akin to asking the old timer, “Lived here all your life?” “Not yet…”
“It’s good to see you.” That’s what I prefer. For first words out of my mouth – it’s short, sweet, conveys everything I need to express right now.
There used to be a member here that was an admitted cold reader. They thought that anybody who took a spiritual or esoteric approach to the cards was self delusional.
And how were they as a reader? Absolutly brilliant. I’d pay money to have him read my cards!
And by the way, who am I to give out grades, or the the very coveted Black Star, who am I to tell any of you who the real readers are?
Each of you can do, or choose not to do that for yourselves.
Why was that cold reader so damned good? Was it a quality that can be copied? What does it have in common with other readers?
Intent.
Magic is the practice and result of intent.
I don’t care if you’re God or the Pope of Rome – if you use Tarot to try to up-sell me something, to convince me to buy another product, a candle, a blessed gris-gris bag, one of those cheesy monographs, a stone blessed by the monks in Tibet, a red string dipped in the river, if you’re using tarot to keep the customer on the phone-line for more minutes – pack your bags, please stand on the trap door…
Up-selling is evil.
What made that cold reader so cool, is that you knew when you sat down you were going to pay $40 for the ride. That’s it. You knew at the onset. There was no up-sell, or add-ons. And he’d give you your money’s worth.
He knew, ‘Why he read Tarot for others”, and he knew “Why they come to us.” You may not agree with his answers, but he knew.
That moved him into another class.
He was also really good – and accurate.
Yup. Some would say he was that.
You see there isn’t one kind of reading. There is no one path.
Intent. That’s it. It’s the vehicle that gets you there.
Now you can intend (to be a good reader), and still be floundering around causing a commotion, flapping shallow water into the faces of others…clueless.
If you intend – then you have to do some homework to elevate your craft to the level of art – where you don’t question the flow of words coming out your mouth – where you’ve moved past the fear of looking silly, or caring about what others may think.
What matters is your approach. How to get from where you are, to where you want to be. For starters, you have to have clear insight for where you want to be. And where you are.
If your approach is that of psycho-analytical-whatever, don’t pull out a deck filled with Hermetic symbolism. Your deck is the bridge between ‘Why you Read’ and ‘Why they Come’.
If your approach is deep dark and magical, don’t hit me with the Sunny Bunny’s Magical Love Tarot. If you’re gonna talk the heavy stuff, you’d dang well better be using a Lombardy Zeroth or something close.
And you’re not going to flinch or apologize when you pull the deck out. Or when I ask you what you do…you’ll not hem and haw…you’ll say, “I read Tarot.”
And you’ll make revealing the deck - part of the sitting.
“It’s good to see you today…”
Don’t give them a choice of decks in lovely silk bags. You tell them ‘it’s good to see them’; and pull out the deck that closely reflects your view. Today. Now.
Now you’re ready to do a reading.
You’re also ready to move to the front of the class.
But first – you have to tell me if you’re a real reader or not…
Henry Ford said, “Think you can, think you can’t, either way you’re right.”
And sometimes we take ourselves so danged seriously.
And sometimes logic doesn’t provide the best path for growth.
And yeah – sometimes the sitter needs a bit of a show, sometimes they need you to be in costume, light a candle (sticking out of the top of a skull), other times not.
But those of you out here selling the Black Candles of Ooolatek, and Seditious Gris-Gris (made by Boudreaux’s wife Clotile), knock it off. That’s unlicensed, counterfeit merchandise.
Class dismissed. Have a good holiday!
Most of this has been said before – but heck…it’s my six thousandth post.
Wassily Kandinsky begins his work, Concerning The Spiritual in Art with the words,
Later he writes
I once said, that I often think of Tarot as high art. Not art framed, stagnant on some white gallery wall, but art we can touch, handle, and share.
Many readers are (imo) like Kandinsky’s vulgar herd, wandering in a building divided into many rooms. Every wall of every room is covered with pictures of various sizes; they number seventy eight. They represent in colour a bit of nature…. All this carefully printed in a book – name of artist – name of picture. People with these books in their hands go from wall to wall, turning over pages, reading the names. Then they go away, neither richer nor poorer than when they came, and are absorbed at once in their business, which has nothing to do with art. Why did they come? In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joy.
Tarot Reading is art.
Look around you, heck – you may even want to look at yourself. Many people now have a TV that runs when nobody’s watching, a radio blares in the background, IPods clamor for attention over the sounds of life. Plugged in, good to go, got the tunes…
Music is art only when it’s live. A recording is a copy. Nowadays it’s nothing but ones and zeros. Ones and zeros are not art. What you’re listening to is not art anymore than sheet music is art. Sheet music is a recipe (“follow these directions and you may come close to what I had in mind” says the composer).
When I was a child, my family took me to the World’s Fair in Seattle (1962). I was dragged around and forced to look at stuff. Then we entered the Hall of Modern Art. My family was aghast, they laughed and pointed.
Then I saw it. A Kinetic Sculpture – it was huge – perhaps a hundred long flexible arms with stuff attached, like a willow tree of junk. And if you pressed the button, an electric motor made it jump and sway (and stuff would clang together and make noise).
It was wonderful.
When you pushed the button – it was never the same twice! It was different each and every time!
I was in love! My family laughed.
But that was art. It was dynamic. Not static bits of something stuck in somebody else’s time.
John Cage (1912-1992) was a brilliant composer, went to the Cornish School of Arts here in Seattle. My favorite work is entitled 4’33”.
He told the story of going into a sound-proof (or sound absorbing) room at Harvard one day, he entered the room expecting silence. Later he said that he "heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." Cage had gone to a place where he expected there to be no sound, and yet…
4’33” is a performance piece (sort of). The performer enters, opens the key board lid on the Piano, and appears to sit doing nothing for four minutes and thirty three seconds, then closes the lid and exits.
It’s freaking brilliant! The performer is not the music, nor is the piano the instrument being played. The instrument is the audience and the hall. The cough from the man two rows down, the woman who whispers five rows back, the squeak of the pneumatic door closer, perhaps a far off siren, the patter of rain on the windows...these are the instruments.
Nobody listens to silence anymore – we’re wired for sound…and experience no art, no music. Listening to math…ones and zeroes.
We’ve turned ourselves into spectators on our own stage of life.
I am talking about Tarot Reading by the way…walking around with our Tarot Programs, “Oh, I love the way he’s bent over his work – being diligent, I wonder what the program says? Oh…he’s bent over his work being diligent. Sure glad I bought the book.”
Art exists in the moment. That’s it. Then it’s gone. Painting and sculpture are dead. They don’t move. Sure Mona Lisa’s lovely, but she’s dead. At best, I can be a spectator. Yeah Jackson Pollack may have expressed himself well – but the paint’s dry – it’s over, done, that was then, this is now.
Art should move me to become a participant. Art should make me be a participant. I don’t want to be in the past tense, I live in the present tense.
So you know that question I asked? “Why do you read Tarot for others?” As I said, it defines your intent. It’s also a question whose answer should change many times over the course of your life.
But your intent, that’s important, right? Well let’s dig a little.
Why do they come to us? I once said something like; they come to us for something that they cannot get anywhere else. They don’t call plumbers to have their cards read, we don’t work as electricians and say, “oh by the way…” They come to card readers…they may go to church, science, family, lawyers, and the modern world of entertainment…But if they got what they were searching for there – we would not be here…
…They come to us. Why? They come to get, what they think we have to offer. What they are unable to get anywhere else… They often think we know, we are psychic – we have the cards. We could re-educate – but is it our job to tell them there is not Santa Claus? Or is there Seriously…why do they come to us?
We may care about history, artwork, and tradition; but what we care about is unimportant. This has nothing to do with us..
What does the sitter see? They don’t give a fig about what that little symbol means. They care about their life.
We know why we read (each of us individually), but the sitter comes to us with their own set of ideas and concepts, and they come with their own sets of life issues.
They sit down across from us. We may be way over in the ‘hearing voices’ crowd, or way over in the psycho-therapeutic aspect of Tarot and discovery – but what do we do to re-gear ourselves for their needs? (side note - I think both systems are equally valid).
Or do we say “To blazes with the sitter, they’re wrong – I’m right.”
See – we have to be in the moment – we have to show up.
We have to get out of our own way. What we think (about Tarot) has zip all to do with how to reach them (the sitter).
We have to be in the moment. But then, isn’t being in the moment – the goal of most (if not ultimately all) spiritual paths? Or paths of psychoanalytical analysis?
What does this have to do with art?
Real art, is in the moment. As it was discussed back in February, listening to a recording of an opera, and being there are two different things. Walking around wired for sound…you’re a spectator. Listening to a recording, watching TV, you’re a spectator. Sitting at the opera – you get carried away. Music, when live, forces you to become a participant. There is a connection between the artist, and the audience. That connection – that’s the key….
There was a world of difference between listening to a recording of The Grateful Dead, and being there….
Ever think about what was so wonderful about Cosmic Toaster readings? They were text, they were internet…but people clamored to be a part of those threads. I’ve seen Firemaiden post that she doesn’t really believe in Tarot readings – but she’s hands down one of the best readers around. And no, she doesn’t read face to face. What makes her Cosmic Toaster readings so special?
Firemaiden writes them from a creative story telling point of view. They are fun, and they are spookily accurate. What makes the threads so wonderful is the participation. Sitters are not passive, they are not spectators.
That’s why the 13th Door series didn’t really work as well, it placed the sitters into a passive, non-participatory role.
The Green Gargoyle worked kinda well, but once again, sitters were relegated to passive, non-participatory roles.
The threads The Blonde Bar Maid and the Rubber Chicken read with the Fantastic Menagerie... and Firemaiden seeks ..., both ‘Cosmic toaster’ threads were huge – because participation was encouraged (the latter found me serving Spotted Dick to participants). Firemaiden tenders the Spoof Shingle, and awaits a victim.... is also worth note.
And the readings were done from the creative side of the mind. They are free form, they are anything but static. They do not resonate with the sound of the “cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoisseurs admire the ‘skill’ (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the “quality of painting” (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away”
“…To harmonize the whole is the task of the art.” Yes! And it’s the task of the reader. That’s what you’ll find in Firemaiden’s readings.
When you read face to face for a stranger, the sitter has expectations. How do we meet them, and how can we turn the sitter from a spectator to a participant (especially when they sit with their arms crossed and never move a muscle)?
franniee said:
As a tangential insertion, one of the best books you should own in my opinion is “21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card” by Mary K. Greer.
Sitter has expectations. The Sitter has their own agenda.
Picture yourself at a table with your favorite deck. What do you look like? You walk up to yourself and sit down. What do you sound like? What do you say?
You can wander through your room of 78 paintings and read from the book, or you can leave the book and wander through the rooms.
Some people find keywords on cards limiting (think Thoth). Some may find it a tool to expand into what are literally, cold reading paragraphs. However when this same principal is applied to oracles, such as runes – it seems okay? Then some folks find the keywords as doorways that open into really cool magical worlds.
Reading…expectations…art…
What are the first words out of your mouth? How are they phrased?
When I was active as a Shriner Clown, one of the first things you learn when you’re wandering through the Children’s Hospital and Burn Ward is you don’t walk up to a horribly sick child and say, “And how are you today?” Could be the last day of this kid’s life and that’s the last thing we want to ask them - how they are?
The sitter has an agenda. And you have to get out of your own way, to be in the moment, and provide what the sitter needs.
If we say, “How can I help you”, we’ve just implied that we can do (help), something that they cannot do for themselves. It puts us in a linguistic place of power.
Or some waitron it a restaurant, as they take you to your table asks, “How has your day been?” the answer, “The funeral was, as most funerals go, very tragic and sad…” asking how a day has been, is akin to asking the old timer, “Lived here all your life?” “Not yet…”
“It’s good to see you.” That’s what I prefer. For first words out of my mouth – it’s short, sweet, conveys everything I need to express right now.
There used to be a member here that was an admitted cold reader. They thought that anybody who took a spiritual or esoteric approach to the cards was self delusional.
And how were they as a reader? Absolutly brilliant. I’d pay money to have him read my cards!
And by the way, who am I to give out grades, or the the very coveted Black Star, who am I to tell any of you who the real readers are?
Each of you can do, or choose not to do that for yourselves.
Why was that cold reader so damned good? Was it a quality that can be copied? What does it have in common with other readers?
Intent.
Magic is the practice and result of intent.
I don’t care if you’re God or the Pope of Rome – if you use Tarot to try to up-sell me something, to convince me to buy another product, a candle, a blessed gris-gris bag, one of those cheesy monographs, a stone blessed by the monks in Tibet, a red string dipped in the river, if you’re using tarot to keep the customer on the phone-line for more minutes – pack your bags, please stand on the trap door…
Up-selling is evil.
What made that cold reader so cool, is that you knew when you sat down you were going to pay $40 for the ride. That’s it. You knew at the onset. There was no up-sell, or add-ons. And he’d give you your money’s worth.
He knew, ‘Why he read Tarot for others”, and he knew “Why they come to us.” You may not agree with his answers, but he knew.
That moved him into another class.
He was also really good – and accurate.
Ayumi said:
Yup. Some would say he was that.
You see there isn’t one kind of reading. There is no one path.
Intent. That’s it. It’s the vehicle that gets you there.
Now you can intend (to be a good reader), and still be floundering around causing a commotion, flapping shallow water into the faces of others…clueless.
If you intend – then you have to do some homework to elevate your craft to the level of art – where you don’t question the flow of words coming out your mouth – where you’ve moved past the fear of looking silly, or caring about what others may think.
What matters is your approach. How to get from where you are, to where you want to be. For starters, you have to have clear insight for where you want to be. And where you are.
If your approach is that of psycho-analytical-whatever, don’t pull out a deck filled with Hermetic symbolism. Your deck is the bridge between ‘Why you Read’ and ‘Why they Come’.
If your approach is deep dark and magical, don’t hit me with the Sunny Bunny’s Magical Love Tarot. If you’re gonna talk the heavy stuff, you’d dang well better be using a Lombardy Zeroth or something close.
And you’re not going to flinch or apologize when you pull the deck out. Or when I ask you what you do…you’ll not hem and haw…you’ll say, “I read Tarot.”
And you’ll make revealing the deck - part of the sitting.
“It’s good to see you today…”
Don’t give them a choice of decks in lovely silk bags. You tell them ‘it’s good to see them’; and pull out the deck that closely reflects your view. Today. Now.
Now you’re ready to do a reading.
You’re also ready to move to the front of the class.
But first – you have to tell me if you’re a real reader or not…
Henry Ford said, “Think you can, think you can’t, either way you’re right.”
And sometimes we take ourselves so danged seriously.
And sometimes logic doesn’t provide the best path for growth.
And yeah – sometimes the sitter needs a bit of a show, sometimes they need you to be in costume, light a candle (sticking out of the top of a skull), other times not.
But those of you out here selling the Black Candles of Ooolatek, and Seditious Gris-Gris (made by Boudreaux’s wife Clotile), knock it off. That’s unlicensed, counterfeit merchandise.
Class dismissed. Have a good holiday!
