learn Tarot

...well, it seems to me that the quickest way to do this is to actually read cards. So I’ve been reading more often, but the difficulty is that I’m reading for myself only. The reason this is difficult is that it’s much easier just to see what I want in the cards…and also to get sucked into the illusion that they are predictive, which I don’t really believe. It’s much more difficult to maintain distance from my own issues and actually examine what symbols are popping up.

Something interesting in my more-frequent readings: I almost NEVER pull court cards. Which is fine, because I actually have trouble with these cards – I’m usually examining circumstances around specific people already, and the court cards often seem to be ‘extra people’ that don’t really fit.

I also seem to pull a preponderance of ‘major arcana’ cards, so anything beyond a 3-card reading seems to be fraught with BIG IDEAS. As if my internal narration wasn’t dramatic enough already…:D

I wanted to focus on the cards much more at first rather than trying to interpret them every day. I still pull them out and look at them every other day or so, trying to familiarize myself with them.

Also, I am reading a book on the history of Tarot by Robert M. Place and so far am very impressed by it. It’s very carefully researched and just fascinating! Very detailed examinations of the semiotics of the usual Rider-Waite images, which I love.

Roughly. Not writing anything yet; just shuffling the deck and picking a card at random, and then studying the picture for awhile. Then I check on possible interpretations with several different sources. Usually they are not all that far off from my own, which is gratifying. The cards are more obvious than I expected, if you have any background in or eye for symbols and semiotics. This method seems to be working OK, but I feel as though I am missing out on how to read relationships among cards. Plus, I am getting a bit impatient.

So…I think I am going to try something slightly different from now on, laying out a three-card spread every morning and revisiting it at night. This will allow me to start reading connections between cards, without overwhelming me with information.

I really like the way it looks – Illuminated Rider-Waite was the way to go (same pictures, more vibrant coloration). Not as happy with the tactile quality of the cards (too plastic-y), but that’s what I get for buying over the Net. Plus they are brand-new. Likely they will feel better the more that I handle them.

At the suggestion of a book I got from the library, I am going to begin a journal today, meditating on each card and writing about the feeling/thoughts I get from it as well as studying the traditional interpretations.

Well, I’ve been interested in the Tarot for quite a long time, just as an historical artifact. I’m a skeptic/agnostic as far as psychic abilities go (I don’t discount them, but I trust them about as much as any of my other senses, which is to say, they can be fooled), but archetypes really interest me. Setting aside the divination angle for a minute: the process of interpretation, the “reading” of the cards…very, very intriguing.

Please bear with me, those of you who really value this. I can’t help my skepticism; it’s just how I’m built. I don’t know if I believe that one can impart one’s vibrations to a shuffled deck and have the cards reveal what might/will happen. However, I do believe, deeply, in the power of stories and interpretation to reveal subconscious knowledge that may not be otherwise easily accessible. After all, we humans live by interpreting and telling stories. It’s how our brains work, how we make sense of things. Though I think objective truth exists in mathematics and science, I am not sure that objective truth applies to human experience. (Those of you who hate relativists, I’m not talking about morality here, just how humans perceive things, so chill out.) Our experiential truth is the story we tell ourselves. Whether the vibration thing really works (and how could it be tested or disproven, anyhow?) or not, I think the real worth comes from the reading of the story depicted, the interpretation, which has nothing to do with the cards themselves and everything to do with innate wisdom.

Anyhow – long story short – I’m looking for the right Rider-Waite type deck and a few other supplies. I’m not going to be reading spreads anytime soon, though. There are a lot of cards in the deck, and it’s going to take quite some time to familiarize myself with all of them.