Inaugural Intensive Deck Study (IDS) Support Thread

Oddity

thorhammer said:
I'm struggling with daily draws. I draw a card in the morning to see if it has any bearing on the day ahead of me, and I keep it in mind all day and that evening I review my day, try and see how the card fits, and draw another card to look at the day from the other end. They're not working.

In fact, that approach has never worked for me. I rarely do a daily draw any more as I just don't get anything out of it, and unfortunately this seems to be the same. The shame of it is, I think that approach is very sensible and I should be getting something out of it, but the cards just don't make any sense. Also, I get the distinct sense that each card I draw has a huger implication, like it applies to my life in a more stretched-out way, over more time, but I don't see any reason that the Tarot in general and this deck in particular shouldn't have a more immediate application to my life.

For those of you who have done daily draws for ages, and those whose daily draws *work*, what am I doing wrong? I had hoped that this would be a great way to work with my deck in an immediate, intimate way, and that it would help me understand it better and bond with it, but I seriously think it's driving me away from it. Help!

\m/ Kat
Click to expand...
Drawing one card in the morning has never worked for me either, I tried for months and they rarely if ever made any sense. It was very frustrating and made me feel really bad, because it seemed sooo easy, and still I couldn't make it work. :(

Drawing one card in the evening, on the other hand, works great. I usually ask something like: "what do I bring from today, into tomorrow?" which can mean a lot of things like what did I learn, what energy was there, what do I still need to do... in short, a reflection of the day that was and a passage to the next. You could try that, and see if it works better, maybe?

Because I like to play with cards in the morning, I also do a short 5-card reading most mornings with my tea, and it usually makes sense. (I think it is because it's five cards, not just one single card that has to sum up the whole day.) And I read them in terms of actions and attitudes that would be more or less constructive for me to apply during the day. I find it's a lot easier to make the cards make sense if I read them in an "active" way like this. Before, I would just wait for the event in the card to happen, for the pieces to "fall into place", and they didn't... They only do that in hindsight, which is why the evening 1-card draw works so well for reflecting on the day that's passed, and the morning spread works for making plans.

Hope you find a way to do daily draws that work for you! :)
 

Oddity

Fudugazi said:
I am journalling my daily draws in a notebook, by hand. Part of my aim during this time is to re-access the more flowing, natural, non-mechanical part of me - the one that doesn't sit at a computer and organise everything in a left-brained manner.

So I journal by hand. I don't organised my daily draws, I let them rise - with a question, which might lead to another question, to be explored the next day, perhaps. There are so many questions, so many conversations to be had. I let them come out. I mix them with other stuff, reflections, contemplations, moments of realisation or confusion, poems, quotes, synchronicities. I throw it all into the cauldron of my reporter's notebook, and I've called it "Transformation". On days I don't have much time or energy, it might be a paragraph, a line. Last night I wrote 4 pages.

I am trying to let the Sidhe guide me into their world. Appropriately, the first card I drew was The Fool...
Click to expand...
This is very beautiful.
It sounds a little like a diary-type of journal, conversations with a deck, about whatever is on your mind... a lot of interesting stuff can arise that way, I'm sure.

Thank you for sharing this idea, I will keep it, perhaps try it sometime...
 

fluffy

Well I have trimmed my bosch and it looks great! Now i just have to learn to read them :)

Fluffy
xx
 

Oddity

I have not had much Internet time lately, but it's really nice to be here and read this thread, and see how everyone is doing!

I would also like to report on my own progress so far now that almost a week has gone by... The first week, only 15 left to go, and I'm not bored with my deck yet! Hooray! :D

Actually, I've not felt any desire so far to use a different deck than the Rider-Waite-Smith I've chosen for the IDS. I thought I would be bored out of my mind after three days at the most, but nope, I don't miss any of my other decks yet. Probably because I've got so much to do with the IDS, and it's a lot of fun, and I'm seeing progress already! (okay, not much progress, but it's there!)
Maybe in a couple of weeks I will start missing my favourites, but for now... everything is good. Also, the other decks are in a box under a lot of other stuff, in a part of the apartment that needs a real big spring cleaning before I can even get to them, so... that may be a reason why it's so easy to stay away from them. Maybe. :D

This is what I have been doing so far:
– I've been shuffling the deck so much it's already starting to fray at the edges a little. Okay, it wasn't totally new when I started, but still... I shudder to think what it will look like after three months. A bit worse for wear, that's for sure.

– I have been a very good student, journalling every day, with a fountain pen in a big hardcover notebook. (A fountain pen just felt right for writing these things.)
I have one big journal for marking progress every day, and one smaller journal for individual card studies. (I prefer writing these journals by hand, and my Internet time will be limited, so I won't post any of the Daily Draws here.)

– I have studied three individual cards so far, and written two pages on each of them in my small journal: 9 of Cups, the Priestess, Strength. (I draw these cards at random so I won't just read up on the ones I like and leave the boring ones until the end.)

– I have done a daily spread of five cards in the morning almost every day, and sometimes also one card in the evening to sum up the day.

– I have also done my very first reading with the Rider-Waite-Smith for somebody else :D

I will probably not be online so much, because I have a lot to do over the next three weeks and Internet time will be limited. But I'll pop in now and then to see what's going on, maybe comment a little if I have something to add, and I will take part in the Reading Circle as often as I can. You are warned though, after all I did choose the deck to sort out some problems I'm having with it, so I don't expect it to work perfectly the first times I try using it for real. ;)

Good luck everyone with your studies, wherever you are! :)

Oh, and I just noticed I have a lot of nice new avatars to choose from, I didnt have those before! Do you get them when you've been a member for a while or do they come after a certain number of posts? In any case, great! I think I will be a butterfly for a while now... :D
By the way I love the custom avatars some of you have, where you have images from your favourite deck. Those are really nice.
 

kisou

Oddity said:
Because I like to play with cards in the morning, I also do a short 5-card reading most mornings with my tea, and it usually makes sense. (I think it is because it's five cards, not just one single card that has to sum up the whole day.) And I read them in terms of actions and attitudes that would be more or less constructive for me to apply during the day. I find it's a lot easier to make the cards make sense if I read them in an "active" way like this.
Click to expand...

Oh, I do something very similar in general and it works for me so much better than regular "daily draws". Having the discipline to squeeze in a card for the day hardly ever works for me... but when I get back from class around noon, I sit down and have my lunch and pull out 3 or 5 cards and just read the cards ((mostly)) with no specific aim in mind, just general interpretation. After that, I pull a "final thoughts" card and I'm done with it.

It works really well for me because it's not so strict as following a specific regimen... but I get to see the cards in action and from there I get more of a feeling of how they "move" so to speak.

At the same time, I feel a little lazy for not choosing to focus like other people have!! I really really really can't suddenly have one-page per card... I don't journal like that at all. I do the reading, write about each card in the reading, going in depth ((one paragraph or two)) with how I feel about it at the time, etc., and that's it. From there I start to see the patterns from a particular card and if I ever feel confused about it, I go back and read all the readings where that card appeared, in context.
 

Alamaris

Hey, all! Just a quick update; I'm very brain-fried today so I'm not up for long posts.

I finally figured out a more structured way to do a daily draw -- drawing 3 cards instead of letting one or two fly out at me. #1 is "yesterday's theme/what did yesterday look like", #2 is "today's theme/what is today going to be like", and #3 is "tomorrow's theme/what is tomorrow going to look like". Quick, simple, to the point.

My secondary deck is still making its way through the postal service... I'm starting to get a tiny bit worried about it. Its still popping into my dreams every night, which just blows my mind! I've never had an image stay in my dreams this many times, let alone all in a row. Makes me wonder if its going to be a more powerful deck for me than the Universal Waite. I'll have to be patient and see.

Likely today (but possibly tomorrow if things go badly) I'm going to be doing my first large spread since... wow, a year or more. Either 5, 6, or 13 cards, depending on which one I decide to do first. I'm not sure if I'll post the results in one of the My Readings sub-forums, since the results are likely to be close to the vest.

(...at least, I'll get the spreads done if I can pry myself away from the video game emulator I just figured out how to work... *innocent look*)
 

oak_woman

I'm one of those (and I know I'm not alone!) who found it hard to get a good start on the IDS over the Easter weekend ... but it hasn't damped my enthusiasm and I know there's still plenty of time to make up for it.

Thorhammer, thank you so much for that supportive PM, I really appreciate your taking the time to contact those who have been a bit quiet on this thread.

Anyway, I'm still happy to be working with Waking the Wild Spirit. It's such a challenge as I really don't get along with the accompanying book and I want to look, to REALLY look at the images and get my own thing from them. The artwork is too beautiful for it to be meaningless to me just because I don't like some of the author's ideas/viewpoints/ideology/interpretations.

The first two cards I've drawn and journalled with are the Queen of Water: The Mermaid and Ten of Earth: Gone to Ground. Both of these are weird when compared with other tarot decks! The Queen of Water (Cups) is a dispassionate siren (although I've managed to see other sides to her!) and the Ten of Earth (Pents), like all the Tens in this deck, is a point of rest or stillness ready for the cycle to start again rather than a full, glorious culmination of the qualities of that suit.

I'm just writing in pencil in a spiral-bound A4 pad at the moment, so I feel I can go with a stream-of-consciousness thing without being too precious or feeling that anything I write is set in stone. Then I'll transfer it all to a nice A4 binder when I get a chance to choose one. Maybe one day I'll transpose some of the bits that seem most significant to a more formal journal, using pen. Or another idea I had was to use index cards and one of those box file things, a card per card. Perhaps a scanned image on the front and my own most pertinent keywords on the back, or something like that.

Hope everyone else is feeling good about their IDS this morning!

oaks xx
 

Scion

Feeling great! Weirdly, the writing, which I was worried would be distracting is totally invigorating. The most unsettling thing has been the repeated cards... I haven't done daily draws in a long time and now I htink I know why.
 

afrosaxon

One of the challenges is pulling my 3-card, Mind/Body/Spirit draw once I wake up...if not, I'll end up pulling it around 4 in the afternoon. :laugh:

I have pulled the same card in the "Spirit" position 2 days in a row (Possession rx, which is equivalent to Strength rx). I have to figure out what this means.

Otherwise, I'm having fun journaling by hand in my composition book.

T.
 
bad deck? One Deck for Everyone?