My take on spreads (spontaneous/intuitive)

[Scion]

Hey Rebecca,

I hear you 100% and all those thoughts weren't directed at you specifically but more at what I perceived in that one quote about "booklearning." For whatever reason study-vs-intuition is a thread topic that is endlessly regurgitated here at AT, and A lot of times, the lone bookish inclusionists get swamped under a gush of "toss it, wing it" types. I wasn't suggesting that you were adamantly pro-wing-it. I was actually talking more directly to the conversation between Fudugazi & Frelkins about the importance of study and history and curiosity... your rhetorical question just provided a clean way to discuss the subject coherently. My post above should really be read contextually as part of the flow of the past page or so...

I also agree with you about getting the cards out and reading with them. The more you work with them the more they work with you. Crowley says something beautiful about this (and I can't think of the citation at the moment), that one should begin working with the Tarot as early as possible, and that by daily study and application, gradually an understanding of the cards will weave itself into the fabric of your being. Having a wealth of knowledge of Tarot is only so useful. There's history and math and myth and metallurgy, etc etc. And this is where Crowley is a smart man... the more you know, the more it tells you. Wanting to know everything doesn't mean you have to know it already (which no one does) and doesn't demand that you elect to study every single topic that someone else finds interesting (who would? ) In the opening sections of the Book of Thoth he even says that every person has to discover and grasp the Tarot for themselves. Gnosis, full stop.

Again, I'm sorry if I used a misjudged quote from your post a few pages back to make a point about the recurrent study-is-boring folderol... I didn't intend to implicate you so directly, which is why I quoted your question but then joined the conversation it had (partially) inspired. Inevitable internet crossfire, I s'pose. I certainly wasn't impugning your study ethic or your natural curiosity, and in a way I'm psyched that you were annoyed to think I had. I love when people fight for their own intellectual passions. I guess I don't think there's that wide a gap between 7 months and curious and several years and curious. The secret to life is paying attention... All the fascinating stuff we pick up on the journey. I learn crazy new stuff every day.

Knowledge is wide and we are small and we all creep over its face like ants on a statue.

Scion

 

[franniee]

Knowledge is wide and we are small and we all creep over its face like ants on a statue.

YUCK!

I think you could have picked a different visual.

 

[frelkins]

Look, the images on the Visconti -- I didn't choose this example! -- were common images of time, that had well-understood generic meanings. Exactly.

We all agree on this. There was zero secret Christian Neo-platonism in these cards. Nothing esoteric. They were "mere" commercial art.

Every Italian person of that time would have recognized these common Christian allegories from folktales, sayings, church sermons, stained glass windows. They would have all recognized the Virtues, and all that.

So sure, *any book of art history you can check out of the library can tell you what these symbols mean*; indeed, many of them are still in use today. Doves in a certain context meant the holy spirit then, and they mean the holy spirit now.

What I specifically queried Fudg. about what the Christian Neo-platonism. Because as Dummett tells us, it's not there. So why is she imposing it? Of course if she wants to do that, fine, that's great. It's her style and I won't question that, I will respect and defend that.

But her style is just a style, she has put these Neo-platonic meanings there. Her style no more or less "right" than Reb.'s freeform, wing it style.

So why not just let everyone do it as it appeals to them, unless you can actually prove, a la Dummett, that it's in the cards?

There is a common visual vocabulary to any age, as any art history student can tell you. For example, if I go buy a Mother's Day card on it, it might have a rose.

We all nowadays know what roses mean and why it's appropriate to have that on a Mother's Day card, and not, for example, a calla lily. But I guarantee you the artist at Hallmark did not have any esoteric, Neo-platonic, or Masonic allegory in mind when airbrushing the card!

So why put one there? Why do some people insist we *have* to study these esoteric things? (Not you, Fugd., not pointing any fingers in particular!) If you're into art history and estoerica, go there. But if not, well, dont'.

 

[Sophie]

What I specifically queried Fudg. about what the Christian Neo-platonism. Because as Dummett tells us, it's not there. So why is she imposing it? Of course if she wants to do that, fine, that's great. It's her style and I won't question that, I will respect and defend that.

I think Dummett is wrong in his analysis of the Visconti's allegorical import, it's as simple as that. Nor am I the only one to think that (see Robert Place's book, and O'Neill's). Dummett is an authority on language, and he's an authority on card games. As far as I know, he is no more an authority on Italian Renaissance art and artefacts than I am.

Christian neo-Platonic imagery was very common. And I am surprised that you should dismiss it it from the Visconti, because it is so very obvious in the sequence, despite the missing Virtue.

The Visconti was never a tavern game, made for "any Italian" of the 15th century. It is a high class object, made for a learned court where Christian neo-Platonism, among other hot topics, was popular and well known. There is no need to project esotericism onto it - the cards dealt with a subject and imagery that would have been familiar to the courtiers: and that includes the prevalent philosophy of the time. It is Christian neo-Platonic Lite, if you like

Why insist we have to study, including esoteric things? Well, personally I don't insist - it's everybody's right to be as ignorant as they choose about something they claim to enjoy (tarot cards). But I would have thought curiosity at the very least would bring most people who like tarot to study everything about it, including esoteric subjects (among which, by the way, I do not count Christian neo-Platonism: I would call it exoteric. But it is important to know if we are to understand the tarot trumps at all).

If you want to read Hallmark's Mother's Day cards, by all means, do so. We can read anything we choose as oracle, by assigning a meaning to it. But if you read tarot, you need to learn tarot, which is a subject, a language, a code in its own right and not just a random set of images, Hallmark cards in a rack.

 

[rebecca-smiles]

Geeze Scion! i wondered what i had unleashed with that sentence question! i have read through the thread, but because your commentary proceeded from quoting me.....

Anyhow, thankyou for the grace in your reply

it was a badly put question!

Frelkins, i have to concur with fudu here

But I would have thought curiosity at the very least would bring most people who like tarot to study everything about it

I'm not keen on bending over history books myself, and have plenty of impatience to want to 'get on with it' reading the cards (hence why i'm such a slow reader...read a page, cup to tea, read a page, play with cat...) and it is curiosity that is the push for me to read that history and symbolism stuff; i read some of the threads and feel like i'm missing out- i sense the quality and depth, but can't understand and join in. And i keep thinking 'Why?' about the symbols in the cards etc.

There may be a very apparent symbolic rose on a mother's day card, so i don't have to look that up, but what about the triangle on RWS temperance? the rose, with its own symbolic history has been kept current as a symbol, it seems much of tarot symbolism has never been so mainstream even way back when.

I can read well enough to do without the history, and i seem to develop ADS when sat in front of a historical book but i can't honestly say the very few things i have learned from symbolism, history and esotericism haven't served me well.

so this tiny ant is off to do some more yo-yo-reading on the sofa.

 

[frelkins]

seems much of tarot symbolism has never been so mainstream even way back when.

In your Waite example, that might be because -- as some would argue -- Waite made it all up from his personal synthesis of Mme. Blavatsky, 19th cent. Orientalism, pseudo-Masonry, etc.

Look, I'm not going bash Waite. A lot of people like him. If learning Golden Dawn/OTO/Rosicrucian stuff works for you, do it.

But personally, Waite has zero meaning for me, anything having to do with Theosophy makes me giggle, pictures of Crowley in the funny hat waggling his thumbs makes me cringe. . .That's just me.

And I suppose this is another reason I will never be a Real Reader. I feel no need to buy any of that. So now I'm feeling happier and happier about just collecting pretty decks for their conversational value.

Again, this is why I love Ric's LS cards, because he rarely forces any of that onto to you. He seems to have a vision of a more open tarot, more modern.

But I understand that for you all here, it constitutes "true Tarot," which is fine! I don't intend to hassle you about it. Good luck to you all!

 

[Scion]

Waite made it all up from his personal synthesis of Mme. Blavatsky, 19th cent. Orientalism, pseudo-Masonry, etc.

Look, I'm not going bash Waite. A lot of people like him. If learning Golden Dawn/OTO/Rosicrucian stuff works for you, do it.

I take your point, and it's valid.

But you're vaguely proving the point about study: Waite did not synthesize that stuff, he borrowed the structure given in the so-called "Cypher Manuscript." Knowing the history of the deck allows us to state this as a fact. Whatever synthesis led to the creation of the Waite-Smith deck, it was undertaken by Mathers & Westcott and the other founders of the Golden Dawn who were shameless Orientalist syncretists. But not Waite, who came much later. Even his Grail-focused, esoteric Christianity owes enormous amount to GD logic and inner order papers. He was just a member who got lucky with a deck he designed using their material (discretely) once the order had torn itself apart.

I agree with you about the weird, clinging obsession people have with the Golden Dawn, as if traditions don't evolve. But what exactly is Tarot to you if not a collection of organized symbols that suggest an esoteric interpretation? LS deck's are no less esoterically derived just because the artwork is more sophisticated. ANY tradition no matter how modern or open is an expression of structure and an invocation to deeper study. Is a Tarot just 78 random pictures, and if not doesn't the insistence on a given structure/symbol-set suggest a tradition that warrants study?

 

[Pao]

I have struggled with pre-set and traditional spreads from day one. I just feel like my intuition is caged in when I have to fight with the meaning I am getting with the card in terms of what position it's in the spread. So I have been doing what I call "intuitive spreads". I pull the cards and then I let me intuition just go to work, seeing if there are any connection to certain cards. Then I will rearrange the cards and group them according to the connection. Some cards may stay by themselves, others may get into a group of 2 or 3 or more. I find this to be much more helpful and it actually helps me to understand what the cards are saying. This may not be a new idea, but I just thought I would share. If this is confusing, I can give an example.

BG

i always wonderred if that can be done or if its done if it makes the reading less reliable. bc Ive seen readers place the cards where they seem to think it fits and it actually does but I never was sure if i could do that. interesting. I kinda dont like spreads either. and I thought maybe this way i could get accurate readings too but wasnt sure if that was ok to do or even if it would make sense. i learned something new!! great i dont feel so constricted now!

 

[frelkins]

the insistence on a given structure/symbol-set suggest a tradition that warrants study?

what insistence? who's insisting? and certainly -- in a situation where there is everything from the visconti to the santa fe to the rotlin to the m. petersen to the buongustaio to the vanessa -- would you say there is a "given" symbol set? that's prima facie untrue.

look, study if you want. it's your choice. but if others choose not to, so what? why is this such an issue for you?

 

[Scion]

...Because we live in a culture that is forfeiting every expression of literacy on a daily basis, and in a tradition like Tarot which is centered on paying attention, I can't fathom why people would choose not to.

Every artistic choice is an act of "insistence": "see it this way," "consider this myth," "explore these symbols." To use a deck based on unfamiliar tradition and then make up personal meanings without considering the source seems... strange to say the least; like walking into a library and thinking you were looking at shelves of toilet paper because you'd never seen a book. And that isn't a judgement. It's not wrong to take something at face value and reinvent it. You can use those pages to wipe, but it wasn't what was intended.

That said, I only spoke up because it's a minority position and I felt like someone ought to do so. I'm not personally invested in everyone's passion, diligence, or scholarship... It's just that scholarship, passion, and diligence are interesting to me, to the same degree that apathy, laziness, and ignorance are not.

People are rarely equal, so I would never expect anyone to adhere to my fixations any more than I would operate under someone else's. We aren't insects. I believe that everyone is always doing everything they can to be the best they can.

So... it's not an issue, it's just an old song with familiar lyrics.

Scion