Umbrae said:
Here’s another one…
TV Vibrations affect the Tarot.
What? You mean it doesn’t? Really? Are you sure?
Used to be that folks said that living under High Tension lines (lines carrying huge amounts of electricity from power plants to cities) didn’t have any affect on humans either. They built schools under them…
Now the story is a tad different.
Air purifiers and air Ionizers…there’s a whole field of study just starting to come about, where we are discovering that all of our safe appliances are not so safe after all…
All I know is you can buy some cheap houses from the folks under the power-lines. (Don’t stare at the ‘children’).
Okay, here's the theme of energy again. Regardless of how energy does or does not affect the nonliving tarot cards (how various energy sources do or do not affect living beings really does not come into this-) why would energies possibly affecting cards have any bearing upon what cards are drawn? What cards are drawn is the key to how tarot works (how- though 'why' is not known). It would only have bearing upon what cards are drawn if a person draws their cards by waving their hand over individual cards and choosing them based upon the energy they might sense from that. If the cards are chosen by any other means- dealing after randomizing shuffling, drawing based upon anything other than sensing of energy- then the energy of the cards would have nothing to do with how they would work. The only other effect of any energy change in the cards would be any discomfort a theoretically sensitive person would feel from handling cards with altered energy.
I really don't understand all of the emphasis upon the energy state of the cards. Energy effects everything. Most people are not physically sensitive to many forms of it. Cards are no more special than anything else when it comes to interacting with energy, and are in fact less so because they are not living and are not made of conductive material.
On top of that, tarot divination works even without physical cards, as everyone who has used computerized drawing methods knows.
Anyone who might be sensitive to energies from objects, and who chooses which cards to draw based upon the energies they may sense from the cards, or who feels affected by the energy state of the cards in general, can easily test the "TV effecting the cards" theory by putting the cards on the TV for a while, then choosing cards or sensing the state of the cards after that.
For any tarot user who can't sense such energies- the question is really irrelevant.
Elf said:
I want to make up some Tarot myths.
Umbrae said:
Exactly why I suggest to every serious ‘reader’ to use the International Icon.
Presumably because the simplicity and lack of detail of the pictures (which are still RWS) is conducive to making things up?
Hey, let’s look at my favorite myth of all time...
The Death Card (XIII) does not mean death…
uh…so like uh…what does? Or is death not important in a person's life?
Mommy’s dead? Guess it don’t matter huh…
Strawman argument. Nobody thinks death is not important. And someone's saying that the Death card does not mean death has nothing to do with their views on the importance of death.
What does mean death aside from just the death card? As a single cards, the Tower could, Three of Swords could. As multiple cards-that is a question to be answered by those who are adept at putting together multiple cards into big picture reading.
Read a wonderful article on the Death card at another site (system will not allow me to link - and posting it gets astrisk'd out oh well). I’d like to quote, “if you know anything about Tarot…”
Well by golly lets check out some experts, shall we?
Pratesi’s Cartomancer (1750) Death
De Mellit (1781) Death
Court de Gébelin (1773-1782) Death
Lévi (1855) Death
Christian (1870) …In the physical world death…
Mathers( 1888) Death, change
Golden Dawn (188-96) Death
Waite (1910) Death, end…mortality
Well I’m glad we straightened that out (he said sarcastically) …The Death card does not mean death...Whew...
There's 'meanings' again. All of the decks I use have a non-death 'transition' option as part of their official death card meanings. What the guys of the old days said about the meaning of that card doesn't matter to me when I am drawing in the here and now. What matters to me when I draw in the here and now is that I know what the card means, and does not have to mean at the time that I use it.
On this forum, some have said that the death card has at times meant death in their experience. Some have said that it has never meant death in their experience.
Some have said that death has been indicated by the cards in their experience- but that it was not indicated by the Death card.
We're talking about falsifiability again. If the Death tarot card ever does not mean death when someone draws it, even once, then it is disproven that the death card always means death.
Which of course does not mean that it can never mean death.
In fact while I’m on the subject…
The meaning of this Tarot Card is…
Where do these meanings come from? A bunch of guys who have been dead in excess of 150 years? Does that give them more credence than say…you or me?
My only problem with "you and me" coming up with meanings is when it would become so ambiguous that one could not tell what the cards meant. (I suppose this is where we again should be referred to the famous "The Blank Spot" which I do not understand- uhh, peripheral vision, gaze off into space, don't be afraid of silence and darkness...yeah, okay, but one still wants to know what the cards are saying.)
Why do we assume that because Waite or Mathers lived back in the Victorian era that they are to be believed over modern authors? What gives their writing more weight? Why do we assume they had more wisdom, more intelligence than you and I?
Did they have better research?
Does not Eugene O’Neil’s Tarot Symbolism, no...wait...make that Robert O'Neil have more comprehensive information than Waite and or Crowley? Papus or Christian?
In fact, in reading A Wicked Pack of Cards (Dummett et al) we discover that essentially the meanings were often arbitrarily assigned based on personal rather than historical information.
Yes, that is amusing. I have also found that prior to a throw one can make up temporary meaning rules such as "I'm only going by the pictures" or "I'm only going by the written words" and the tarot will give one information based upon that.
While at the ATS conference I heard one speaker use the words (after presenting something questionable), “And we know this to be true because I received the information through initiation…”
Excuse me? WTF are you talking about? I know something to be true because of YOUR initiation? Excuse the bleep outta me I don’t buy it…
There's "initiation" again. But different, because it's not about the practice of using tarot, but about the meanings to be found in tarot. Initiation again doesn't have anything to do with whether "real, true" meanings exist in tarot.
Meanings…the very HISTORY of meanings…are mythology in themselves.
This is true. But when we use meanings in tarot, we are not practicing mythology in the sense of just talking about concepts; we are practicing matching life with concepts. If the throw did not fit the life of the person it was drawn for, then there would be no reason to use tarot. So in the use of tarot for divination, the practice and usefulness are important, but the history is not, except insofar as it mirrors the now.
So when someone tells us they don’t teach myths, they teach tarot…I have to say, ‘Excuse me? WTF are you talking about?”
I do think there is a difference, as I outlined above. Just as there is a difference between religious dogmas and religious practice, between the letter of a law and the spirit of a law, between talking about a thing and doing it, between having heard rules about how to do something and having had personal experience of doing it in one's own way.
Now I’ve looked at the practical examples behind myths. However I do believe there are deeper, and more significant levels and roots behind them.
I suggest a little time with Joseph Campbell, who once said, “I live with these myths, and they tell me this all the time. This is the problem that can be metaphorically understood as identifying with the Christ in you. The Christ in you doesn't die. The Christ in you survives death and resurrects. Or you can identify that with Shiva. I am Shiva-this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas...Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other,” is in order.
So here's the question of whether the myths have any existence outside of the experience/mind/body/energy of the individual. I don't know if they do. Not everything can be applied to every person- some myths are more close to universal, while some are more personal.
So the old question of how much people differ and how much they are the same arises, and so does the old question of how to bridge the gap between the experiences of individuals through communication- and the old question of how much to believe what people say.
Old questions.
) ... so, while I did break myself of the habit of turning page corners, now I am trying to break the habit of using cards as book marks.