Sophie
tarot history vs tarot
To pick up zach bender's analogy of the violin, you don't need to know the history of the violin to play the violin, even to professional levels. But you do need to know your instrument very well, both technically and emotionally, and you need to learn music extremely well - again, both technically and emotionally, and a host of other learning, quite a bit of which you will have to do under guidance from masters.
Likewise, with the tarot, you don't need to know tarot history to read well. But you do need to learn the 78 cards, you do need to learn the symbolism - both technically and emotionally - and the structure of the tarot - a technical type of learning, and in the more modern packs, esoteric too - and you do need to learn what the creators, founders and important contributors to the tradition you are working in wrote about the cards you are working with. To repeat Robert's example, reading with the Thoth without bothering to find out what Crowley wrote about it in the Book of Thoth makes no sense. It would be like trying to play a Mozart concerto without Mozart's score and directions.
Learning the symbolism necessarily means learning the development of the symbol, and its rich layers. You can't know that ex nihilo, you have to learn it. Some symbols are easy - everyone knows what a wheel is, and thanks to some popular TV shows, we also know what a wheel of fortune is. Some you win, some you lose. Knowing its origin will simply add to our depth. Some symbols are far more difficult, not to say impossible to interpret without learning them. What is a camel doing on the Priestess card? What is the triple cross the Hierophant is holding? Why is the Emperor seated as he is? Or take colour symbolism: why is the High Priestess wearing blue? Why is the figure in the 3 of Wands wearing red and green? These were not random choices by the creators, and cannot be interpreted randomly (unless, to come back to my earlier analogy, we read tarot as rorsach ink spots). Now, the colour of the High Priestess's gown might or might not be relevant in any one reading - that's where your intuition kicks in - but if you don't know its link to Isis and to the Virgin Mary, or to the receptive principle, then you will always miss it, and always project your own idea of "blue". So you are, by definition, limiting your readings if you limit your learning of the tarot.
And alongside all that learning, we have to add, like for the violin, many hours of practice reading the cards, and exercising your skills in a variety of ways.
Rebecca: I hear you on the Golden Dawn. However, if you are to rely on a Golden Dawn pack (any one of them - and most modern packs are derived from GD), then studying their symbolism, philosophy and world-view, all embodied in the cards, starts to become necessary after working with the cards for a while if you want to keep improving. Maybe you want to explore a tradition that is not seeped in esoterica?
Rachel Pollack, a favourite author of mine, wrote wonderfully about the different types of reading in Forest of Souls, using the music analogy. Some people, she wrote, read like jazz players - they improvise, riff and take the cards to all sorts of levels, following their imagination and intuition. These are fabulous readers - we all know a few! - but they are trained, just as well and as seriously as the more conventional type of reader. To come back to the violin analogy - Jean-Luc Ponty knows his instrument and music every bit as well as Itzakh Perlman, and he didn't rely on his intution alone to become a great jazz violinist.
There has been - and continues to be - a great deal of confusion on this thread between "tarot history" - that is, "the history of the development of tarot as an artefact", and "tarot" that, is the symbolism, structure and internal coherence of the 78 cards of the tarot pack, which is our tool as readers.prudence said:
To pick up zach bender's analogy of the violin, you don't need to know the history of the violin to play the violin, even to professional levels. But you do need to know your instrument very well, both technically and emotionally, and you need to learn music extremely well - again, both technically and emotionally, and a host of other learning, quite a bit of which you will have to do under guidance from masters.
Likewise, with the tarot, you don't need to know tarot history to read well. But you do need to learn the 78 cards, you do need to learn the symbolism - both technically and emotionally - and the structure of the tarot - a technical type of learning, and in the more modern packs, esoteric too - and you do need to learn what the creators, founders and important contributors to the tradition you are working in wrote about the cards you are working with. To repeat Robert's example, reading with the Thoth without bothering to find out what Crowley wrote about it in the Book of Thoth makes no sense. It would be like trying to play a Mozart concerto without Mozart's score and directions.
Learning the symbolism necessarily means learning the development of the symbol, and its rich layers. You can't know that ex nihilo, you have to learn it. Some symbols are easy - everyone knows what a wheel is, and thanks to some popular TV shows, we also know what a wheel of fortune is. Some you win, some you lose. Knowing its origin will simply add to our depth. Some symbols are far more difficult, not to say impossible to interpret without learning them. What is a camel doing on the Priestess card? What is the triple cross the Hierophant is holding? Why is the Emperor seated as he is? Or take colour symbolism: why is the High Priestess wearing blue? Why is the figure in the 3 of Wands wearing red and green? These were not random choices by the creators, and cannot be interpreted randomly (unless, to come back to my earlier analogy, we read tarot as rorsach ink spots). Now, the colour of the High Priestess's gown might or might not be relevant in any one reading - that's where your intuition kicks in - but if you don't know its link to Isis and to the Virgin Mary, or to the receptive principle, then you will always miss it, and always project your own idea of "blue". So you are, by definition, limiting your readings if you limit your learning of the tarot.
And alongside all that learning, we have to add, like for the violin, many hours of practice reading the cards, and exercising your skills in a variety of ways.
Rebecca: I hear you on the Golden Dawn. However, if you are to rely on a Golden Dawn pack (any one of them - and most modern packs are derived from GD), then studying their symbolism, philosophy and world-view, all embodied in the cards, starts to become necessary after working with the cards for a while if you want to keep improving. Maybe you want to explore a tradition that is not seeped in esoterica?
Rachel Pollack, a favourite author of mine, wrote wonderfully about the different types of reading in Forest of Souls, using the music analogy. Some people, she wrote, read like jazz players - they improvise, riff and take the cards to all sorts of levels, following their imagination and intuition. These are fabulous readers - we all know a few! - but they are trained, just as well and as seriously as the more conventional type of reader. To come back to the violin analogy - Jean-Luc Ponty knows his instrument and music every bit as well as Itzakh Perlman, and he didn't rely on his intution alone to become a great jazz violinist.
