What card suggests what - or not ?

[Aulruna]

As I said in another thread somewhere here - tarot seems to work; magazines seem to NOT work; and as I said there - I think the archetypal symbols the creators take the trouble to put in tap into something in us. If you see a snail you think slow, whether or not you say it. But they are only symbols. That the Empress is often shown as pregnant does NOT necessarily mean the sitter is; that the thing you are drawn to one day on the RWS system 8 Pents (I think... oops) is the coin UNDER the table and the next day it is the chisel on the window ledge and so on.... All these things are symbols that kick in - but on any given day, it may be a different one that rings true. The Empress might suggest starting a pomegranate orchard this time next week. The pomegranate is there for a reason, but not always the reason that one instantly thinks of when thinking Empress....

If you see what I mean ?

Precisely!
I couldn't agree more!!

But the recognition of those symbols stems from studying them first and building correspondence systems - at least, that is how it worked for me. A pomegranate meant zilch to me when I saw it for the first time, you couldn't even buy them at supermarkets back then...
Children and newbies usually start literal and then develop the cognitive skills to branch out into the abstract.

And that is why I still find it very insightful to know what others see in a particular card for a particular situation.

 

[gregory]

I cannot get a word out of an oracle deck either. That is just me and maybe my loss. But it does suggest that it isn't just "knowing the meanings"/seeing all hell in the 10 Swords etc that makes tarot special. There is stuff in a tarot deck that works. I have no real idea how; therein lies the joy of mystery, IMHO - but it is NOT any "what card signifies" stuff; of that I am certain in my own mind....

 

[gregory]

And that is why I still find it very insightful to know what others see in a particular card for a particular situation.

WHAT OTHERS SEE !!!!!

Fine. SEE !!!! "Particular situation". Yes.

What "this card by definition means carved in granite" - no.

ETA I didn't study the symbols a whole lot till after I started to read. But a pomegranate sort of looks like a fruit, and looks sort of bursting, don't you think As a newb reader I started by just looking at the pictures... there was this cloud (thinks first ever reading after the book using disaster of 1978 ) and this planet or something - I'd have to check....) And actually - from that description, I bet you don't even know which card it was. But the reading was apparently spot on; I was AMAZED !

 

[Aulruna]

didn't study the symbols a whole lot till after I started to read. But a pomegranate sort of looks like a fruit, and looks sort of bursting, don't you think As a newb reader I started by just looking at the pictures... there was this cloud (thinks first ever reading after the book using disaster of 1978 ) and this planet or something - I'd have to check....) And actually - from that description, I bet you don't even know which card it was. But the reading was apparently spot on; I was AMAZED !

Hmmmm. With me, it was absolutely the other way round (and by now, I can read lots of things - not magazines though, I guess the visual material in there shows too clearly it was created with a different purpose in mind ... so let's say I can read anything that was meant to be read, like Oracles, or that is somewhat neutral in nature, like pebbles or coffee beans).

A friend of mine reads beautifully with the Thoth without even knowing Uncle Al existed. She also reads random fractal images.

I needed to have a reference. And the pomegranate looked like a bag of old chewing gums to me, which didn't get me very far.
I never connected birds with the soul.
Or even pregnancy with creative fertility.
(But maybe this had to do with me being 15 when I started with the Tarot, so there was simply less life experience to draw on.)

I'd really be interested if the mostly intuitive readers also find the Tarot reads better than an Oracle.

 

[Grizabella]

I'll make a separate thread for the Tarot vs. Oracle thing because I wonder, too, but I think it would probably warrant its own thread so it can be found more easily later.

I think a lot of the "what card means this?" questions are asked by people hopeful of finding THE cards that would mean what they want to know in readings without having to spend all the time learning how Tarot really works. And I also suspect that a variation on the theme: "I got X card as indicating his feelings for me, what does it mean?" is a way to sneak past the "no free readings" rule by just cutting to the chase on what they really wanted to know from a spread.

But back to what we're discussing here:

I don't know what it is about the Victorian Romantic, Bohemian Gothic and Druidcraft that works better for me than RWS or some others, but I just get a whole lot more out of them a lot more easily than I get from other kinds of cards. The Druidcraft relies on Celtic beliefs, which I'm not very familiar with, but I haven't had much trouble familiarizing myself with them enough to "get" the deck.

There are decks that just fall flat for me. I think it's because maybe the author didn't spend enough time looking for universal symbolism to include in each card. They may have relied too heavily on the symbolism that was personal to them or on works of fiction that the reader would need to be very familiar with. Maybe they didn't really know Tarot at all so, in creating their deck, they didn't have much of a clue as to what elements are really needed in a deck to make it eloquent to the greatest number of people.

 

[balenciaga]

I am one of those readers who believes one should only read what is in front of them at the given moment; we can assume each reading will be different among the 78. But, AT is here to teach, and how else are we to go about explaining the deck to beginners (little pages of pentacles ) if we did not use a pictoral language/description as least to start with (RWS in most cases, but not all)? Otherwise, we would all continually say, as I do continously, "Read what it is you see if front of you."

PS: a page of pentacles comes up for me a lot as "a recipe"

 

[gregory]

I'll make a separate thread for the Tarot vs. Oracle thing because I wonder, too, but I think it would probably warrant its own thread so it can be found more easily later.

Thanks; I get really depressed when oracles get into tarot threads.... Seriously - they are SO different that even if I did use them the discussion gets very muddy !

 

[gregory]

I am one of those readers who believes one should only read what is in front of them at the given moment; we can assume each reading will be different among the 78. But, AT is here to teach, and how else are we to go about explaining the deck to beginners (little pages of pentacles ) if we did not use a pictoral language/description as least to start with (RWS in most cases, but not all)? Otherwise, we would all continually say, as I do continously, "Read what it is you see if front of you."

PS: a page of pentacles comes up for me a lot as "a recipe"

I agree in a way - BUT - if you tell someone that the page of pents "means" a recipe (you started it !!! ) then you end up with a thread that says what card signifies a recipe and then.....

I was dead lucky here; my refusal to read began to annoy one member so much that she dragged me in to the circle where no-one DOES explain in terms of the books. OK - I do actually know more of the books now than I did then - but even so, had it not been for that, I really would never have started.

There are all those journal promoting threads saying just take a card and write down everything about it and so on - I think that is part of what I see as the better way to work. WHAT I SEE AS - not the 78 commandments.

 

[Wendywu]

I am so with you on this one gregory.

I always tell sitters that the reading they get is my interpretation of how the cards fall for them that day. Another day, another sitter and the same cards would have a totally different interpretation.

Tarot is fluid, mysterious and is our joy - it is not to be categorised into x=y and so on. Otherwise why have readers - just get the book of meanings and look the damn things up.

We are there because the cards say what they have to say to our intuition and our hearts.

I learned the traditional meanings, and continue to learn all sorts of aspects of tarot but when it comes to reading, mostly I disengage my brain and my mouth just spouts off and it all gels - the traditional learning/intuition and understanding of placement. It seems to work just fine lol

My other bugbear is that it is hard to get over just how much placement, and the cards preceding and following make a difference in how one interprets any particular card.

This is a good thread - I too have noticed the proliferation of "if this, then this" threads and been thinking about it.

 

[greycats]

I can understand why a client would want to know "what card means I'm going to Afghanistan?" But the reader must read what's on the table which is not always what the client wants to know. More than a few times, I've had to say "I see no information in regard to your specific question. However, I do see . . .etc." Granted, a new reader might be looking for "travel" cards in this instance and ignore the Ace of Swords, but the tarot doesn't always answer the question that's asked. Not only the client but also the reader must accept this. That's one issue.

Another issue concerns how images differ from words. For a reader to try to read tarot images as if s/he were translating something from Latin into the client's vernacular is a mistake. The tarot is not a lexicon, but a set of images, each of which can generate thousands of words, each with multiple meanings. That's one reason that the tarot is so flexible and responsive. It's also the reason that the tarot is so daunting to some novices, who are understandably seeking certainties upon which to build understanding.

Which brings up a third issue: is there a better way to teach tarot so that these misunderstandings can be avoided?