Tarot cards as words

[firemaiden]

For some reason I was drawn to the bookstore today, wherein I picked up a copy of the 2007 Lewellyn reader - in this book was an article, by an authoress whose name, to my great shame, I fail to remember, but I was struck and delighted by the content - about putting together sentences with tarot.

It was called the "Syntaxe of Tarot" or something like that. It was an absolutely wonderful article, showing how you could use certain cards for subjects, others for predicates, others for objects - a wonderfully cogent and creative article, about the very thing I have been interested in for Tarot. I specialise as I think you know, in interpreting the pictures, and making wacked-out random associations from them, but I also really enjoy putting cards together as sentence fragments, ever since I started experimenting (not very successfully) with the Lenormand deck -- It is cards as pictographs, cards as hieroglyphics, cards as secret code.

Has anyone read the wonderful article? Remember the writer's name? Like it? Does anyone read tarot this way as words to make sentences? Care to share a few examples?

 

[6 Haunted Days]

Actually I have been meaning too pick this book up (I usually get it every year) and now that I know there is such a fascinating article in it, I am going to see if I can find it today!

 

[Sakura Murasaki]

The article is called "The Grammar of Tarot" by Elizabeth Hazel. I have the book and I remember really liking that article, too, since I am a wannabe English major myself. I haven't tried it out yet, but I will.

 

[Apocalipstick]

Haven't read the article, or the heard of the book that Sakura mentioned, and now I'm kind of curious. Maybe I'll get around to looking them up.

But I have been doing this for a while now, so it's really interesting to hear more about it.

Mostly I use this to brainstorm, or to just make up sentences for no particular reason. I have rarely used it in a reading context, though.

As an example, I deal out three cards: subject, verb, object and take it from there. It can be a lot of fun.

Probably why I like the word association game.