I'm from Texas myself... I think it might be Texan tenacity.
Folks down there always want to know what's what and how it got that way. And if they're nervous about "occult" stuff, it maybe they're reassuring themselves that nothing nefarious is at work. In those cases it's especially useful to have the facts at your fingertips.
Again, this is where doing a little research can go a long way. Often when a sitter asks about a symbol, I feel like they're trying to ask another question and a symbol is just a concrete focus for something less tangible. A sitter pointing at the winged lion in the Waite-Smith two of cups is letting me know where I should pay attention. And if I've done my homework, I know certain things about the gnostic (thence Mithraic/Zoroastrian) origins of the symbol and what it could mean in the spread. It doesn't mean it runcates my intuition;in the best of all possible worlds it works with my intuition like two halves of an oyster producing a pearl.
Of course it's possible that I could just look at a red winged lion's head and stab in the dark and hit something meaningful. But for the record: that stab is not intuition, because I'm looking at an image, which is sensory input, looking for meaning in it, which engages my reason, which by definition prohibits intuition.
Splunge, this is where I think following your own sense of what interests you can be enormously helpful. Too many peole approach "study" as if its something hideous and grinding: the foul harvest of a crappy educational experience. As with anything, easing into it, and following your instincts will uncover useful, meaningful information for each time you read.
Every time I see a winged lion, I don't need to dredge up what I know about Aeon, but there are times when it's been startlingly useful to be able to have a conversation about the layers of a symbol with a querent, because of the spark created when two minds intersect at a symbol. Those have been some of my richest and most uncanny readings.
Gregory said earlier that the books that have taught her most aren't necesarily Tarot books, but the process of study is something that enriches everything... not study of Tarot, but study, full stop. I don't think anyone in good conscience could equate regurgitating canned keywords with a reading, any more than making up things wholesale without any knowledge of the cards. As Master_margarita points out, the difficulty is infusing these two capacities in a meaningful way. We all do it differently. Gregory said it best: "
Intuition is bloody hard work." Whatever helps each of us train that "muscle" is precious and prized.
It's like learning how to tell a joke or create suspense in a story or how to kiss well. And I think that's Umbrae's point: you learn by doing. Which then begs the question: doing
what?
There are as many answers to that as there are readers...
Scion