Intensive Deck Study Support Thread ~ Part 2

Madame Squee

DruidCraft

Thanks for the encouragement, Emily. I need it, because I've tried IDS a couple of times in the past but never lasted more than a week.

This morning feels different, though. I'm feeling the flutter of anticipation, like I'm about to go visit with someone I love spending time with -- someone I enjoy talking with, who always has a lot of interesting stories to tell.

I think I'm going to last longer than a week this time! :laugh:

:heart:
 

Madame Squee

Llynn said:
My IDS with the DruidCraft and the Druid Animal Oracle finishes today and I can truthfully say that I have enjoyed it. I loved the DC but after trimming the cards to just the image a definite bond developed.
I totally agree -- I've also found that trimming away everything but the images has truly brought me closer to this deck. I've been using my DC (off and on) in its trimmed state for maybe two years. Then, yesterday, I sat down and trimmed a second one. This time, however, instead of rushing through the job to see the final results, I shuffled the cards and laid out the first seven in a spread and thought about what I was looking at. Then, I trimmed each card with a scissors and laid it back down and continued to watch the spread develop without borders. It was fascinating work. With this deck, however, I left the titles on, thinking I would dedicate it to public readings. Now, I'm actually not sure whether I'm going to keep those titles or not, but having them made me realize that I've used my images-only deck for so long that I had forgotten that the pages and knights in the DC are actually princesses and princes! A rose by any other name... :laugh:

Llynn said:
I am going to continue using the DC for spreads but I am leaving the IDS. I want to work through 'The Secret Language of Tarot' by the Amberstones, and I will want to compare the RWS with the DC in the flesh so to speak. I hope to rejoin the IDS at the September Equinox - probably with the Voyager.

I enjoyed reading all the posts, even though I was not a contributor, and I want to thank everyone who shared their experiences.

Best wishes to all those continuing or just starting out.
Thank you, and you have my best wishes, too, Llynn. Pursuing "The Secret Language of Tarot" with the Amberstones sounds like a very interesting and worthy project. Good luck & have fun!

:heart:
 

Onyx

Finally decided!

I have had some reservations about doing and IDS during the summer when the weather is so nice and my schedule is so busy. But in the end I know myself and I will be doing some tarot work as well so I might as well sign up.

The major thing for me is that I wanted to use a deck that was not going to overwhelm me and cause me to spend just hours trying to figure out every minor item on the cards when there are fish to catch and picnics to attend. I am just off a rather demanding study of the majors for a class I am going to help. I want to have fun with a deck and wanted to be more intutive than I am prone to be in the past.

I looked at the Circle of Life, the Mona Lisa as well as the Archeon and my new Dante. Then out of left field this morning comes my Revelations. The thought of that deck just made me laugh and my spirit to sing. This is an older deck in my collection that I studied card by card like two and a half years ago when it came out. I did a quick little three card spread about it. How will you treat me? How should I treat you? What will the end result? It was great.

So switch me from undecided (am I the last one?) to Revelations. Oh it is going to be a fun summer! Here we go! Hummmm . . . where is that book?

Allan
 

Owl Song

Llynn, good luck with "The Secret Language of Tarot." It looks like a great book. I may be on board for a second IDS in the fall. (Whoa Starlily, don't get ahead of yourself!) So I may be right there with you.

cronesayer, I trimmed my Druidcraft a while back and loved the result. I used a regular pair of scissors, trimmed very slowly and carefully, and was very pleased with the end result. My cards are borderless and have no titles. The deck is so much easier to handle in the smaller size.

Onyx, the Revelations Tarot is a vibrant, exciting deck. I love Zach's companion book, too. He did a superlative job with it. I don't think you will ever run out of things to think about with this intricate, yet straightforward deck.

Inspired by cronesayer and others who are journaling, I did start writing today. I'm creating my very own "Starlily's Fairytale Tarot Companion." I am using Microsoft Word. I'm going in the same order as the book, card by card. I came up with a very simple format.

Tale Highlights - Using bullets, I summarize the key elements of each story.
Meanings - I quote Karen's meanings from the book and then have a separate section of my own personal meanings, comments, and impressions.

Simple, straightforward. But I think this will help me immensely to have a snapshot of each story on hand as I really delve into the deck and this will help make the deck easier for me to use for longer readings down the road. I may put my writings up on a blog but am going to check first with Karen to ensure she's okay with me quoting her. :)

I feel very excited and energized. It will feel great to have something concrete (my writings) when my IDS is over--as well as the experience and knowledge I gain from the intensive study.

I hope I can do it! :)
 

Bloudwedd

OK, so I started it oout so well going over with the Fool first , then the Maigican etc and this deck (LS Pagan Tarot) is rally suited to do a chronological IDS with. So far so good.

But lately I have come to realise that I miss my daily card practice like a madman. I dont know what it is. I think it is because with a card of the day I can add one more dimension to the chosen card and get a deeper understanding for it. I also badly missing my tarot-blog that has been done since beginning of June but now up running again. But somehow I feel weird about starting blogging chronologically again, since I have allready begun the journe so to speak. So I am very much considering scipping the chronological stuff and go back to my daily card practice. But my deepest fear is that (and I know that it will happen sooner or later)I will draw too many duplicas or triplicas even from cards that really have a message to rub in and thus I wont be able to complete the entire deck till fall equinox.

Need advice - what do you think?

EDIT: Just realised the most clever thing would be to just rephrase my terms of completion. Instead of it ending around fall equinox I have it end when I have worked my way through all 78 cards. Will takes longer most certainly but have all the benefits as I wrote above! Duh!
 

rwcarter

Bloudwedd said:
So I am very much considering scipping the chronological stuff and go back to my daily card practice. But my deepest fear is that (and I know that it will happen sooner or later)I will draw too many duplicas or triplicas even from cards that really have a message to rub in and thus I wont be able to complete the entire deck till fall equinox.
Reoccurences of the cards will happen when doing daily draws. They usually either mean that there's a particular message that you need to pay attention to or that there's some other aspect of the card you need to understand.

My nemesis from my deck, the King Cups, kept coming up at the beginning of my first IDS to question my commitment. Once I proved my commitment (to myself? to the King Cups? to the Universe?) he stopped coming up.

Bloudwedd said:
EDIT: Just realised the most clever thing would be to just rephrase my terms of completion. Instead of it ending around fall equinox I have it end when I have worked my way through all 78 cards. Will takes longer most certainly but have all the benefits as I wrote above! Duh!
Depending on the type of question you ask with your daily draw, there are cards that you may never see. At some point you'll prob have to purposely pull those cards out of the deck to study them.

Tracking your draws will help you to figure out both the reoccuring cards and those that never appear. If you're interested in an Excel Spreadsheet that can help you with that, PM me with your email and I'll send it off. This offer goes to anyone who reads this post. A couple of people have already taken me up on it.

Rodney
 

Allure

The first thing I did with my cards was The Bodhi Eightfold Path of Enlightenment Spread.

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=89486

It was the most eye opening reading I've had in a long time. One of the cards that really hit home was "Flame of Innocence." In this deck the Innocence cards correspond to the Pages. This lead me to compare her to the rest of the "courts" in that suit. I liked how you could see the natural progression from Innocence to Resolving(corresponds to the Kings). IMO, this suit displayed that pattern best.

The author says the Flame cards address our creativity, source of inspiration, the manner in which we live out our chosen spiritual paths, our response to people who challenge our position on the things we feel passionate about, & whether or not we are using our gifts in a focused manner or have a lack of commitment.

...So I focused on the Flames suits for a while and journaled about them. I feel great about my deck choice. I can't put these cards down. I'm going to let my readings dictate what cards/suits to focus on next.
 

thorhammer

Bloudwedd said:
OK, so I started it oout so well going over with the Fool first , then the Maigican etc and this deck (LS Pagan Tarot) is rally suited to do a chronological IDS with. So far so good.

But lately I have come to realise that I miss my daily card practice like a madman. I dont know what it is. I think it is because with a card of the day I can add one more dimension to the chosen card and get a deeper understanding for it. I also badly missing my tarot-blog that has been done since beginning of June but now up running again. But somehow I feel weird about starting blogging chronologically again, since I have allready begun the journe so to speak. So I am very much considering scipping the chronological stuff and go back to my daily card practice. But my deepest fear is that (and I know that it will happen sooner or later)I will draw too many duplicas or triplicas even from cards that really have a message to rub in and thus I wont be able to complete the entire deck till fall equinox.

Need advice - what do you think?

EDIT: Just realised the most clever thing would be to just rephrase my terms of completion. Instead of it ending around fall equinox I have it end when I have worked my way through all 78 cards. Will takes longer most certainly but have all the benefits as I wrote above! Duh!
Can you do both, Bloudwedd? Draw and blog about your daily card, and journal on the cards in order from Fool onwards? Personally, I'm not a fan of following a deck in order (too forced for me) but if that structure helps you, then there's no reason to eliminate it. Likewise, I agree that daily draws can help to add a more concrete meaning to the card, as well as help to understand daily events. I think the two practices would be very complementary.

\m/ Kat
 

SolSionnach

Oh heck

I haven't even started, and I'm wondering if I've chosen the right deck!
Tonight I'm going to spend some time with Maat, Ukiyoe, Haindl, BBC, ORWS, and Tarot of the Master (Vachetta) to see which deck wants to spend the next 3 months with me. :bugeyed:

Update in the morning!

:)
 

Neely75

Hi fellow IDS'ers! Hope you're all enjoying your journeys so far.

I didn't have much of a chance to do much until this morning. I've been able to have more of a look at the cards and am pleased to see most of the LWB interpretations are very similar as mine. This morning I took a jump and did myself a new deck spread. If anyone is familiar with the Alchemical tarot and wants to have a look, it's in the Your Readings section. It actually felt good, the cards seemed to fit my circumstances almost perfectly and it made a lot of sense. I'm liking my deck even more right now!!

I'm really looking forward to doing the background study on the art. I'm not very familiar with the study of alchemy, so I have a lot to learn. While I can work out interpretations for most of the cards there were some I had no idea on, and I really want to know what all the symbolism means. There seems to be so much to learn, but I'm looking forward to it. :)