EPIPHANY! A New Take on the Major Arcana

dangerdork

Can you tell those who don't have Mythic (or those too lazy to go upstairs to get it and lay it out again) which gods are portrayed corresponding to which Trumps?

PS - It didn't hang together for me.
 

rwcarter

dangerdork said:
Can you tell those who don't have Mythic (or those too lazy to go upstairs to get it and lay it out again) which gods are portrayed corresponding to which Trumps?

PS - It didn't hang together for me.
It's not immediately jumping out at me either, but I haven't given up hope yet. I may have to use some of the lesser meanings of the Majors to see if this flows. But it's close to bedtime, so I know it won't happen tonight....

As for the associations of Gods and Goddesses, here ya go:

Fool - Dionysos
Magician - Hermes
Empress - Demeter
Emperor - Zeus
High Priestess - Persephone
Hierophant - Chiron
Lovers - Paris choosing between Hera, Aphrodite and Athena
Chariot - Ares
Justice - Athena
Temperance - Iris
Strength - Hercules
Hermit - Cronos
Wheel of Fortune - the Moirai (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos)
Hanged Man - Prometheus
Death - Hades
Devil - Pan
Tower - Poseidon
Star - Pandora
Moon - Hecate
Sun - Apollo
Judgement - Hermes
World - Hermaphroditus

Rodney
 

rwcarter

dangerdork said:
This is the only example I've looked at with a "re-ordered," or to be PC, "differently-ordered" deck from the TdM or RWS decks that I've seen, and the Seven Stations / Three Paths perspective seems not to be holding up. Which tells us... that this array IS somehow correlated to the Golden Dawn system(s)? or that it's just a coincidence that breaks down when you put the Majors back in their "real" order?
I still haven't had time to look at the Seven Stations Layout with the Mythic Tarot, but something occurred to me while getting ready this morning. If one were to do the Majors-only Seven Stations Spread and the cards happened to fall in the order that they appear in the Mythic Tarot, one would have to find the appropriate interpretation for each of the cards.

For example, in the GD-based layout of the cards, the Emperor falls in the position of Your Inspiration in the Outer Path. In the Mythic Tarot, the Emperor falls in the position of Your Inspiration in the Hidden Path. But if the Majors-only spread were done with GD-based cards and the Emperor appeared in that position in the Hidden Path, the Reader would be challenged to fit the meaning of the Emperor into Your Inspiration in the Hidden Path.

So each of the Major Arcana cards should be able to be placed in any of the paths and any of the stations and have a valid meaning applied to them. (And the cards that fall in each of the paths should be able to be read as a story/read with a flow). The GD-based arrangement of the cards seems to be the "easiest" to find meanings for/establish a flow with, but that doesn't mean that other arrangements of the cards are any more or less valid.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense here, so I'll stop now.
 

rwcarter

Seven Stations Spreads

dangerdork,

Since this is your baby (the rest of us are merely babysitters), I think it would be a good idea if you put up the various Seven Stations Spreads in the Spreads forum (and link back to this thread of course!). I'd be happy to do it if you like, but I don't want to appear to be stealing your thunder. I'm also still thinking of other spreads that could be created that utilize the Major and/or Minor layouts of the Seven Stations.

Rodney
 

dangerdork

Sorry I haven't been posting for a bit; got a lot going on at work and an ill-dignified Chariot on top of that... but I haven't forgotten y'all.

Hi Rodney - to address both your posts; they both address the spreads vs. the layout... in other words, you're looking at the divinatory / counseling aspects - the practical applications. I'm still geeking over the correspondences and associations - more of a historical / meditative / contemplative perspective. I certainly intend to put more focus back on the practical aspects... don't worry, I'll get there.

Here's a not-even-half-baked idea. Let's call it a cookie-dough idea. I was talking earlier about how much I like using the Jungian / Myers-Briggs typology to choose a Significator card. My preference is because this system is a user-feedback driven system. In other words, if you use numerology or astrology or pigmentation factors, you're kind of stuck with what you got at birth. It's the whole Determinism vs Free Will thing. I want some say in who my Significator is.

Well.. how do you get your MBPI personality type? You take a test, that's how.

Anybody out there a step ahead of me yet? That's right, I think we should invent our own Assessment, using the tarot itself to interact with the querent and determine if they Are Swords, Cups, Wands or Pents people; whether they're Outer or Inner Path; whether they're closer to Origin or Destiny.

And that's where we run into the "less-than-half-baked" part. I can kinda halfway envision shuffling the deck, laying down two cards at a time, and having the querent pick one or the other, and separating them into "yes" and "no" piles. Maybe even doing this "filtration process" more than once. Then you look at the piles at the end, and errrm, somehow they will tell you what Type your querent is. In theory.

It may not be much now, but we WILL get this developed and working. It would be fun if y'all would help.

One of our challenges is, how do we get the client to choose between the two cards? I mean, just about anybody would choose the Six of Pents over the Five, right? or the Four of Swords over the Three? So the trick is, we need to come up with questions to ask when comparing two cards that show us not which card the querent "likes" better, but which ones resonate more with their personality and Life Journey. Here are a few I've come up with:


Which one of these images is more intense?
Which one of these situations has happened to you?
If these two pictures were movie posters, which would you go see?
Look at these pictures and point to the character who represents you.
Which image is more interesting?

OK, kids, I expect to see some suggestions written on the chalkboard when I get back.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho...

DD

PS - Rodney - I was hoping to polish up the spreads and make handouts before posting in the Spreads section. We'll get there.

and ETA - Yes, your first post made sense; it feels a little funny to force those non-compliant decks into a system they don't match... but why not? If the system works for you, it should be a valid perspective to approach any deck. Kind of an interpretive lens that you can apply or not, at your discretion.
 

dangerdork

So I went to the local Tarot Meetup the other night, and was soooo stoked to show all this Seven Stations stuff to some actual live people who could appreciate what I was talking about. One of my new friends had even stumbled upon this thread, just that very day. The group's organizer is a Professional and ten times more knowledgeable than me about tarot, and after listening to my blather about patriarchal this and matriarchal that for just a couple minutes, she said, "Oh, the center row is a synthesis of the other two." A point which had taken me days to reach. So back to, as Scion would have it, our Hegelian Dialectic.

The Angels, the Virtues, The Inner Path, The Abyss. Those cards that inspired me to start this whole deal. Let's revisit them as the Synthesis portion of the triads we find in each of the Seven Stations.

The HP is the synthesis of the Magician and the Empress.

The Hierophant is the synthesis of the Emperor and the Lovers.

Strength is the synthesis of the Chariot and the Hermit.

Justice is the synthesis of the Wheel and the Hanged Man.

Temperance is the synthesis of the Death and the Devil.

The Star is the synthesis of the Tower and the Moon.

Judgement is the synthesis of the Sun and the World.


Is this working? I think debating any of the above statements would make a worthwhile activity. Would anyone care to begin? (I'm going to be busy making handouts).

OH, and by the way, as we look at these triads and I continue to ponder different "Seven Stages" or Phases or Steps of various initiatory traditions from Mithraism to Alchemy: I can't BELIEVE nobody commented on my Alchemical Wedding cryptogram. I ALSO can't believe that none of you touchy-feely crunchy granola New Agers didn't point out another obvious correlation that actually is very very interesting when applied to these triads of cards: Seven chakras. I mean, the colied-snake symbolism, secret tradition, SEVEN colors etc. A tradition which existed for more than a millenium before the first tarots. We can have some great fun with this. I feel a handout coming on.

And I should make another point: Maybe I've been trying too hard to correlate the Seven Stations with these different traditions. Why don't we just throw them out for now? (Not really, but let's put them in their box and wrap them in sik and place them over by the incense burner). We still have a 7x3 grid. Looking for ways to examine the seven triads we've defined doesn't have to be in terms of the categories dangerdork made up just a couple weeks ago, does it?

Have a look at this page, and see if you can't find some interesting correlations:

http://www.chakraenergy.com/seven.html

... and even if you can't, well... playing with this perspective on tarot just gave you an excuse to learn something.
 

dangerdork

dangerdork said:
All of those systems of thought have personae and archetypes and rituals and steps and procedures and Secrets... and ALL of those concepts can be broken down into the basic building blocks we find in the Tarot. The Tarot is a language that can be used to describe most, if not all, of the great religious and mythical and esoteric traditions.

It's like you have a little pile of those "refrigerator poetry" magnets that all say stuff like "Mother" and "Father" and "Love" and "Death" and "Hope" and "Tragedy." Of COURSE they will seem to make sense no matter how you arrange them...

and the more I look, the more they seem to resonate with SO many cultures and systems of thought stretching back thousands of years. It's like I've been playing solitaire with a deck of Cultural Anthropology Flash Cards... and I just won.

Joseph Campbell said:
It is amazing, but now undeniable, that the vocabulary of symbol is to such an extent constant through the world that it must be recognized to represent a single pictorial script, through which realizations of a tremendum experienced through life are given statement. Apparent also is the fact that not only in the higher cultures, but also among many of the priests and visionaries of the folk cultures, those symbols – or, as we so often say, "gods" – are not thought to be powers in themselves but are signs through which the powers of life and its revelations are recognized and released: powers of the soul as well as the living world.

Furthermore... the signs may be rearranged to make fresh poetic statements concerning the great themes of ultimate concern; and from such a pictorial poem new waves of realization ripple out through the whole range of the world heritage of myth... so that a polymorphic, cross-cultural discourse can be recognized to have been in progress from perhaps the dawn of human culture, opening realizations of the import inherent in both the symbols themselves and in the mysteries of life and thought to which they bring the mind to accord.

The Masks of God, Vol. III: Occidental Mythology, 1964.

He said it first, and he said it better.
 

dangerdork

Significator Assessment

Back to the MBPI-style Personality / Significator concept.

I was thinking, a strong negative reaction from a querent tells us just as much as a strong positive one, doesn't it? Don't our fears and contempt for certain principles motivate us just as powerfully as the more positive factors, if not more so? So shouldn't we look just as strongly at the cards the querent rejects as the ones they choose?

And maybe the polarity of a pair of cards where they keep one and reject one is a little bit too stark. What if they got a few more cards? At first I was thinking nine cards, and they would keep three, "reject" three, and leave three "neutral" so to speak. That seemed like a nice comfortable set for a while, but as the idea turned over in my head, for some reason I thought, why do all three bunches have to be the same? It's simpler if they keep and reject TWO cards... and then, all of the sudden that made a group of SEVEN cards.

So the picture begins to come together. You lay seven cards out before the querent. You tell them to remove two cards that they don't like, that they think don't belong, that bother them from the seven cards you've laid out. You set those cards aside in their own special little pile. Then you tell the querent to take two cards that they like especially, that they connect with, they they want to keep close to them. The querent keeps those cards in their own special pile.

Then you repeat the process until you've gone through the entire deck. If you've removed the Fool before hand, you will go through the process exactly eleven times. Which means that at the end of the procedure, you will have a "neutral" pile containing 33 cards... and both your "negative" and the querent's "positive" piles will contain... 22 cards. Gee, what can we associate with THAT?

OK, go back to Post # 14. Remember our Majors-only spread? Maybe we can modify it just slightly. First we'll add back in the Fool face-up to our 22-card pack (the "rejected" ones) and deal out just as in that spread. When the Fool shows up, face up, we will PULL the next card aside. We will deal out ALL of the cards and leave them face down as described in the spread. These will be our "ROOT" cards.

THEN, we'll turn the "displaced" card face up and add it to the querent's "keeper" group. We'll deal out the spread a second time, on top of the "root" cards. THIS time, when the "displaced" card shows up, we'll take the next card, and substitute it for the FOOL in the Root position where it is sitting.

OK, now[/] we're half-baked. That's as far as I've gotten so far.

Any comments? suggestions? Bueller? Bueller?
 

rwcarter

Mythic Tarot a No Go

rwcarter said:
The Outer Path contains 5 active elements and 2 passive elements. The Inner Path also contains 5 active elements and 2 passive elements. The Hidden path contains 6 passive elements and 1 active element. Both the Outer and Inner Paths end up being primarily Active, while the Hidden Path becomes overwhelming Passive.

In a way that makes sense to me. The Outer Path is what happens to you, while the Inner Path is how you react to what happens to you. It makes sense that both of those paths would be active. The Hidden Path is the spiritual path, which should be passive.
In Post 36 in this thread, I applied Elemental Associations to the Seven Stations Layout for the Major Arcana. (And as the theory currently stands, it's more accurately labelled the Seven Stations Layout for the Major Arcana in Golden Dawn-based decks.)

I've just spent a couple of hours trying to see how/if the Mythic Tarot fits with the Seven Stations Layout. I was able to make the Outer Path work for me, but I stumbled badly on the Inner Path. After banging my head against a brick wall for awhile and going through both the Mythic Tarot book and workbook, I decided to look at the Elemental Associations for the layout of the Mythic cards. (The author doesn't mention Elemental Associations in either book, so I'm assuming GD associations.)

The Outer Path contains 4 active and 3 passive elements. Not as strong as a GD-based deck, but I can live with that. The Inner Path has 4 passive elements and 3 active elements. Hold the presses! The GD-based deck has 5 active and 2 passive elements. That's almost a complete reversal. The Hidden Path has 4 active and 3 passive elements. Not quite a complete reversal from the GD-based deck, but a reversal nonetheless.

So, if the GD-based deck makes sense to me elementally because the Outer and Inner Paths are active and the Hidden Path is passive, the Mythic makes no sense to me at all because the Inner Path is passive and the Hidden Path is active. That's why I was struggling with the Inner Path.

But I'm not ready to declare the Seven Stations to be GD-specific. I have other decks that have changed the order of the Majors and/or the elemental associations of the cards, and I'm going to see how they hold up to the Seven Stations. Next on the chopping block is the Navigators Tarot of the Mystic SEA. If I don't report on it tonight, I will tomorrow morning.

Rodney