What card suggests what - or not ?

[ana luisa]

I believe time and practice and being an active observer of your readings and other people's is what ultimately helps you broaden the range of meanings. I kept drawing the Empress for the outcome of a health issue. In the end, it meant death. And only later did I understand that it meant "going back to MOTHER NATURE"...

 

[romanticdreamz]

I have been here a little while but still classify myself as a really "young" student. Having said that and speaking to a group of the longer-standing forum members and readers respectively, I thought I could share a couple of my personal opinions/experiences.

I did post a thread a earlier this week about "optimistic" readers and occasionally feeling like I was "getting nowhere" with Tarot. Now despite the fact that I have been suffering from really low esteem/mood this week which could explain that as well, the forum and responses there have been great and possibly saved me from selling all my decks and throwing in the spreadcloth. (To digress, I really should get a nice teatowel to read my Housewives on...)

The point of that paragraph was that AT has certainly helped and I do enjoy the "what does this mean or that mean" in that it can give me more things to think about and see about the cards. It's a great resource. I'm not one to say that various meanings are incorrect but what I did find on one occasion was that certain meanings didn't quite fit what I was seeing in the cards. This has helped me A) look at the cards more openly again but also that B) I am allowed to disagree on the meanings as that is what I'm seeing. It's not that the meaning is wrong, it is just different.

I've just brought to mind the musical "Wicked" when Fiyero says to Elphaba when she says that he's lying about her beauty: "I'm not lying. It's just looking at things another way." (I may have seen that a few times...)

The trouble I personally have is that with work and college and various other aspects, including trying to write my novel and have at least one other hobby, I struggle to find the time for Tarot which is my fault as much as anything. I also tend to get a bit restless and I do enjoy using different decks with my mood and what motivates me at the time. Which is why I haven't as yet studied one particular deck, which I will do at point in the future. This has, I feel, helped in some ways though, as different cards can have different symbology which again hasn't restricted me from the start in setting certain meanings to them. (My first ever deck was Gothic Tarot of the Vampire so combining that with RWS book interepretations was interesting! There really should be a book for that!) It's all just a little fluid.

Hope some of that made sense. Unless I'm writing creatively, I tend to ramble and not always express myself clearly...

 

[Aerin]

I think even my brain works better than that !!!

ETA do you remember what it was, she asked with interest ?????

No, I don't... next time I'm in the library I will see if they still have it. It looked relatively new, and after a few pages it made my brain hurt what with the 2 of coins combined with blah and blah meaning X and whatever. I was so glad I hadn't picked it up when I was just starting. I would have cried, as against crying with laughter.

Aerin

ps It was both lots of reading cards AND reading books that helped me start to get a feel for what TCO calls the theme of a card. Especially Mary Geer's Tarot Reversals. Loads of different ways of looking at a card - upright as well as reversed. It broadened my readings at the time.

 

[Lain_82]

After reading all the post I have a few disorganizes thoughts on the issue: (please be patient, english is not my native language)

I understand these kinds of threads. If I were an experienced reader, it would probably bother me to see the number of "what cards mean x,y,z" threads that have been started lately, because I would know that a tarot card doesn't work that way. I would also know that "true" understanding of a card is gained after a lot of work, patience and effort, that even now I, after "x" years of reading don't have all the anwsers and am still learning everyday.

However, many people don't know that. Many of us believe that the little LWB that comes with our fist deck HAS all the answers! I even thought that the only different thing about decks was the name of the author but that, if you knew how to read one, you could read them all.

Many of the great readers I've met here on AT got their first deck when the internet didn't exist, or when it wasn't as popular as it is today. Many started their own path alone, because their city had little to non tarot-related stuff. Their knowledge deepened in their own way, being the world a different thing then than it is now, and somehow, in threads like this, besides the great advices and inputs from different people, I sometimes feel like all this is ignored. "newbies" now are constantly surrounded by tons of books and courses and tv shows that tell you the "right" way to lear tarot, the problem now is not to find a single teacher or book, but to discern and somehow be able to pick the few valuables out of the rest.


If all I know from Tarot is what I see on a book I once bought or saw in someone's library, and it was cool, and I went and got a deck, and started reading like the book said it was done, and then I discover this forum and thought "wow, now I can share what I've been doing with more people" and suddendy started to see all these threads that tell me how to NOT do things, what to NOT post, and I see that I have been starting "forbidden" discussions and that my questions aren't OK then I guess that I would feel... well.... discouraged, to say the least.

I'm saying this not because it has happened to me, (thankfully AT members have shown me nothing but support and gidance) but because of what I read in other threads. People posting "what does X card mean" aren't in most cases lazy, they just think that this is the way to learn, maybe they have been doing it like that for years, Maybe they don't believe in "intuition" or don't even know what the word means, or think, on the other hand, that it's something that is given to very few, and they don't have the privilege.

The problem is not about if the members start to "lead", but about how they start to do it. If I were the thread starter of one of the discussions that you are talking about here, and saw that many of you think of me as lazy, ignorant and misguided, but don't have the courtesy of PM me saying "hey, I saw your post. I don't think cards have set in stone meanings, every card means that depending on the reading and the context. I know that you are learning, so please send me a message if you have questions, in this sticky note you can find many interesting threads started by others on that subject," or "Here are some links to interesting threads on that dck you are using". Then how do you think I would feel????? I would probably start to go through the forum rules to see if there are "Tarot" rules, or a document about the proper way to learn, and the proper questions to have.

Behind this questions are real people, with (in most cases) real desire to lear, and a very primitive idea on how to start, what the cards are, and how to read. If you had access to this source when you started to learn, what type of questions do you think you would ask??? what type of answers would you have wanted to receive? what sort of guidance would you have loved to get? Before we start to condemn we need to put ourselves in that person's shoes.

I'm not trying to attack anyone here, God knows I'm probably one of the most ignorant people on this thread. But as a newbie I've felt the need to post this, the last thing I'd want is for someone else to start another thread saying how lazy and misguided I am for posting that. As I've been trying to say, if you don't think that I'm doing things right, then don't just tell me so, but please give a few pointers or tips in how to improve myself.


(mmmm..... so..... that's it. Please don't take this the wrong way, I've read the entire thread and learned a lot, but my english is poor and my ideas are vague at most.)

 

[The crowned one]

But TCO - how does your post cover the days one pulls a card like 10 Swords (doom doom the end) and the next day pull it again and it gives a wholly positive message ?

To be honest it would take me an hour of typing to do your question Justice, not the minute I am about to alot ! But the short and skinny is: VERY GENERALLY: ten of swords for me is not doom and gloom. 10's are completion of a cycle not the end of an idea or problem, rather it is a phase. Life is not digital and 2 dimensional it is analog and multi dimensional.Snapshots in time that cover all aspects are difficult to take...Using your one card example: Mark a ball and roll it starting with the mark on the bottom when you see that mark wobble by, that is the 10 Swords or in this case the situation in its dynamic form, every rotation that is again the 10, an updated snap shot of a moment in time, to the degree that you understand it. Swords are what they are to you, add that into the above. Now take your question and take your response to the ten when you draw it, I can easily get a good or bad vib and respond accordingly based on the emotional and/or image symbolism that floats up to , or I grasp down to..in my mind ( in the simplest of terms, I have over reduced here and spaced my stepping stones rather far apart but I am sure you realize that).

Does this make sense or have I poorly described my "process"?

My answer is the equivalent to a child saying "a leaf is green" Thats not wrong in many cases, but a leaf has a texture, a temperature, a endless variation of colour, mid veins, veinlets ( a single mid sized leaf has about 700 ft of veins) weight etc... and these change constanly...I hope you get what I am saying ...

 

[le fey]

I've admittedly only read a portion of this thread (plan to put a lot more time to it as it is very interesting!), so ignore this if it is redundant.

For me the value of that type of spread is (or should be) the same value attached to an in-depth thesaurus entry... it offers a whole lot of varied options a reader can use to help them understand what the cards are expressing...and to help them express what they are seeing in the cards (translating symbolic language into verbal expression isn't always easy and suffers the same translation limitations as translating from one language to another always does... the bigger your vocabulary is, the more likely you are to pull off a decent translation).

Anyone who has ever seen a kid whip open a thesaurus, find a word they don't understand and cram it into an assigned essay knows that you can't just plug in meaning... you have to understand it to use it. So these lists of suggestions aren't mean to to be used as definitive "Card X has Definition Y" If you don't understand why the concept and card aren't related... then it ISN'T related, to you.

If - as in Rodney's example, you suddenly see the association of the 7 of Swords to marriage, when you start thinking of elopment... then that is an added element that may or may not turn up in a specific reading... that card became that much richer by imprinting that association - not to replace other symbolic meanings in that card, but enriching it.

Do I think there is danger in beginners not realizing the purpose of hearing varied impressions and thinking they are set in stone meanings? Absolutely.

Do I think that's a good reason to do away with those potentially hazardous threads... no way, anymore than I want to eliminate thesaurii from the hands of schoolchildren. I'd rather see a focus on making sure the beginner knows the intention of the tool than to keep them only to safe territory. I don't think its our call how much 'protection' they need on their own path of discovery and growth, and I would not have welcomed someone trying to keep me in the playpen when I was going through my various phases along the way (including some metaphorical 'thesaurus abuse'... it may be a necessary step - gotta fall off the cliff a couple of times if you're taking the path of the Fool).

 

[greycats]

It isn't CLIENTS posting this question here, it is READERS. I can see a client saying "where did you get that from" - when the cards are there on the table and you have said something that puzzles them - but to try and identify what cards will say some particular thing in advance.... no....

I absolutely agree that the readers are posing the questions. But what prompts these questions? That was the issue I was addressing. If a client comes with the question, "Am I going to Afghanistan?", how will the reader respond if the cards seem to be inapplicable to the query?

Let's say it's a single card: the three of pentacles. So you might get some reader initiated question on the forum about whether the three of pentacles can have anything to do with travel or war. Essentially, the three of pentacles does not have anything to do with those things. However if the person asking the Afghansitan question is in the army reserve, I think most of us could see an application via the craft of warfare. But maybe a newbie couldn't.

On the other hand, suppose the single card were the Hermit. What then? My first response would not be to grab some books or go on line with queries. I would talk to the client. Maybe the Hermit has some connection I can't see, or maybe the client is asking the wrong question or maybe the client ought to think long and hard about this issue or some other unrelated issue. In any case, no matter how extensive the meanings attributable to the Hermit are, I'm not going to find the answer in a list. The tarot is not a dictionary with 78 entries.

And, yet, I have considerable empathy with those who are learning tarot by memorizing meanings, because IMO you have to have a base upon which to build. But, and here is my point about tarot education, those memorized meanings are only a base. It's like learning the times tables before you do multiplication problems: the real goal is to do the problems, not to memorize the tables. It may be that we concentrate too much on the base and not enough on the problems.

 

[Aerin]

My immediate reaction to reading recent posts is

"I needed a peg to hang something on."

That's how I felt when I started. I wanted some kind of a fixed point from which to explore. Something to tie my rope to while I went wandering around a vast maze. Otherwise I just felt lost. The Majors I found far easier to get a starting point for than the pips. Those pips.

I didn't need a rote response, just a starting point... and it took me a while. I'm not sure if there would have been any substitute to immersing myself in the vast array of possible meanings and, from that, finding a focus that made some kind of sense to me.

Now that I have a much better sense of where I'm starting from and a Tarot GPS that enables me to wander around much more easily (because I can usually find my way back through a connection I can feel) it's easier.

At the start, everyone was telling me to throw the books and read intuitively and just do it etc and I couldn't because I didn't have any reference points. Personally, I needed some before I could start to make connections because otherwise the whole thing degenerated into blah and confusion. Starting from the issue and saying 'which cards' is interesting now I have the reference points as it does expand my mental map, but as a newbie this would have just confused me further.

Everyone's learning styles are different though, and we shouldn't forget that.

Aerin

ps gregory, book not in library.

 

[gregory]

My answer is the equivalent to a child saying "a leaf is green" Thats not wrong in many cases, but a leaf has a texture, a temperature, a endless variation of colour, mid veins, veinlets ( a single mid sized leaf has about 700 ft of veins) weight etc... and these change constanly...I hope you get what I am saying ...

To which (you say it fine) I would say there are a million shades of green....

 

[Nevada]

IMHO there are no cards that unequivocally represent anything; it all depends on the reading, the sitter, the other cards if any, the day you do it, even (maybe) what you had for breakfast.

I agree! Those questions bother me too -- a great deal.

I think this stems from trying to use one's thinking faculty too much when learning to read, from trying to memorize specifics.

It's one thing to have vague general set meanings in one's head -- from learning out of books. They can provide a nice springboard into the meanings in a reading, if one isn't too rigid in applying them. But it's another to try to assign set specific meanings to cards. That's in a sense attempting to turn the symbolic language of Tarot into a more cut and dried verbal language. Doesn't work. In fact I would think it could be more confusing than helpful to a new reader who really needs to develop their ability to see a reading as a whole, and as a unique event in itself. While it's great to get specific meaning out of a single reading, I find that doesn't translate into permanent specific meanings for cards.

The problem is misplaced specificity.