Have we over complicated the cards?

The recent threads on 9 of Cups have made we wonder this, do we overanalyse the cards? Do we look for meanings that really aren’t there, and ignore the pretty simple straightforward message they are giving us.

The 9 of Cups threads have highlighted it but I have seen it with other cards too.

For example, if someone pulls the Wheel in a relationship spread, more often than not someone will say its to do with cycles ending etc and new ones beginning. Why cant it be that you're just going to get some much needed good luck? When did the Wheel go from being the good luck card into something else?

I do wonder sometimes if all this study over complicates it … I used to get some pretty accurate meanings with my basic meanings! What do others think?

This is a very interesting question. I was recently reading a thread started by someone who thinks we don't look into them enough.

I think that there's a danger in overanalyzing the cards, certainly. Especially outside the context of a spread. Outside the context of a spread, a card can mean nearly anything depending on how you look at it. But, outside a spread all those countless possibilities are just that, possibilities. In a spread, the situation narrows it down, makes the card's interpretation more concrete, you know?

One thing the tarot has taught me is analyze the world more closely for signs, but then analyze those signs less for meaning. I take the first meaning that comes to me, because the more I analyze, the more ideas I get, the more I second-guess myself.

But then again, everytime a spread doesn't seem to follow any logic to me, often it means I haven't analyzed closely enough.

I guess analyzing "just enough" is simply one of those tricky tricks you learn with time, experience, and wisdom.

MissCW said:

...Do we look for meanings that really aren’t there, and ignore the pretty simple straightforward message they are giving us...

...I do wonder sometimes if all this study over complicates it … I used to get some pretty accurate meanings with my basic meanings!

Click to expand...

Yup.

Ultimately, when you’re doing a reading – what I thought or think of a card has zip all to do with your sitter at that moment in time…

Likewise when I’m doing a reading, what you think or thought about the 9 of Hedgehogs has nothing to do with my sitter.

Too much paying attention to what other people think, or what other people think about, will only obfuscate.

What matters – and this is why I have always suggested that one begin by journaling, and read the books later (and learn others opinions much much later) – is that Your Meanings (if firmly grasped), grow with time and use. Where you begin with one sentence on the Flat Tire of Whoopie, as time progresses, the meaning expands.

Each sitter brings new context.

But to take a Tarot card, impale it like a butterfly, and attempt to study it out of context is a waste of time.

Wanna learn the cards? Get out there and read for somebody!!!

What?

You can’t?

Now THAT deserves a study group.

just my opinion - don't get too excited...

When you are in a study situation you can not have too many idea's flying something good just might hit you in the head. When you are reading go with your intuition and do not over think it, your mind knows what meanings and idea's need to bubble up to the surface of your consciousness for you to use, trust that intuition. When I read I have a child like trust and the Magicians confidence in my abilities and my cards to mirror them.

Impossible question to answer because it's totally subjective and case-dependent.

Do some analyses go beyond the bounds of sense or sensibility? Sure. In every case? Obviously not. It's deck dependent, reader dependent, querent dependent, life dependent. I will say that I find far more people oversimplifying than overanalyzing, but that's because we live in a nonanalytical culture. We are encouraged to think in soundbites and thoughtbubbles. Simplicity can be seductive, both as wisdom and as laziness. It cuts both ways. Context is the thing.

Can you read without analyzing things into atoms? I dunno. That leads to about a hundred other questions about you that would have to be answered first: How good are you? How good do you want to be? How satisfied are your clients? What do you use Tarot for? What do you want to accomplish with the cards that you can't? Do you feel like you have completely mastered every possible meaning of the cards for your purposes? Has analyzing things in depth ever given you capacities you wouldn't have had otherwise? Has it ever hindered you? Do you feel that your knowledge is sufficient unto itself and will develop without any input from other people's knowledge? I ask these rhetorically, not to seem flip, but because at root your question is equally rhetorical: it cannot (and probably should not) be answered for you.

Now, I disagree with Umbrae about categorically rejecting study (which he knows full well ) but the point is, I disagree because of my personal experience and my personal skillset. I forget who said it but Advice is only a form of nostalgia. And at the end of the day, I agree passionately and vehemently with Umbrae's essential point: "to take a Tarot card, impale it like a butterfly, and attempt to study it out of context is a waste of time." But in essence I come at it from the other direction, I think the proper study arises from context, in the same way that Umbrae might say that abstract study imposes context whether or not its necessary or useful. So I think we agree, but from different contexts.

At the end of the day, if you can read and you read well, then you don't need to ask the question. "Overanalyzing" can be a way of meditatiing on something until it dissolves into its constituent elements: making your head blow up so that you experience a kind of gnosis about an image or a truth. But that doesn't work for everyone. If you want to grow as a reader, only you know how best you'll accomplish that.

As Umbrae said, just my opinion, and offered only in the spirit of discussion...

Scion

Scion pretty much said what I wanted to say but was too lazy to type out.

There is a time and place for everything but when doing a reading just go with it, don't try to dissect it. But when talking with others it is fun and enlightening to analyze and discuss, and thus learn new perspectives.

willowfox said:

There is a time and place for everything but when doing a reading just go with it, don't try to dissect it. But when talking with others it is fun and enlightening to analyze and discuss, and thus learn new perspectives.

Click to expand...

I am with Willow! If you want to chat about it for the fun of exploring it and debating then by all means let's go BUT in a reading the 9 of cups may take on a whole different meaning based on the querrent and the cards surrounding or a "mere psychic flash"

I believe, but hey this is me and it's how I do everything, that you should dive into a deck, play with it, read with it, work with it and afterward....much later, if you feel the need, read about it and study it. But if you do that too much before I feel you lose some of the magic that the deck will spur within you....

The more you study between readings the more options you will have. If I take the effort to really dig into a card and many possible reading or at least understand the source of the information I will better be able to assist the end user.

Then after i understand the card and its many facets my intuition will pull the correct information from a pool of possible meanings.