Tarot Cards (and Other Forms of Divination)

[Teresa Edgerton]

In my younger days (which always sound more colorful on paper than they actually were) I used to read Tarot cards professionally. For most of my adult life, actually, but about fifteen years ago I unconsciously started drifting away from the cards as writing absorbed more and more of my attention. So now it's been years since I've done a reading, although friends and family still ask occasionally. It's also been years since I bought a new deck, although I used to collect them.

But Sunday afternoon I was at Barnes & Noble, and they were selling a deck called The Dragon Tarot, and I couldn't resist. (Since I also had custody of the family debit-card at the moment, the temptation was just too much.) It's a very pretty deck, more aesthetically pleasing than actually useful I think, since the lower arcana cards are very plain. The thought occurred to me that it might be a sign that I should start using the cards again -- but I can say for certain that if I did it would not be with this deck.

Is anyone else here interested in the Tarot? Any dabblers or even long-time students of the art?

 

[Marky Lazer]

I once almost bought a Leonardo da Vinci deck, but then I realised I could also buy a CD of The Pogues for half the money... well, that's my whole Tarot history...

What I do think funny about them cards is, that I don't really belief them, but don't really not believe them. Well, that doesn't make sense, does it? It's like reading horoscopes without believing them, but you can't resist reading one when you see it lying open on the coffee table. I think.

 

[littlemissattitude]

I've never had a deck, although I am interested in Tarot, as I've always heard that one's first deck should be a gift and not acquired on one's own. I do have a friend who reads, and seems to do a good job of it. I've seen her do some readings that are very accurate. Don't know if that's because of the cards or because she has known the people she was reading for fairly well, but the readings were quite thorough and spot-on.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

What I do think funny about them cards is, that I don't really believe them, but don't really not believe them. Well, that doesn't make sense, does it?

It makes perfect sense to me. I felt pretty much the same way (although curious to find out more) when I bought my first deck.


I have never seen a Leonardo da Vinci deck -- many old Italian decks, but never one attributed to Leonardo. You interest me strangely. I can just see people searching through such a deck for some sort of key to the infamous "code." (And someone making millions of dollars writing a book about it. You may come to rue the day you chose to buy that CD instead, when inspiration for an international best seller was staring you in the face.)

 

[Paradox 99]

I parted ways with any form of spirituality a few years ago, but I am very interested in the method behind this craft. I'm sure I'd be fascinated by anything you had to share on the subject.

 

[Lissa]

I have had a friend of mine do a reading as well as paid for someone to do a reading. I think it is very interesting stuff but neither reading was very good to be honest. Amy let me know up front that she was an amateur and the other I paid for she seemed to do a lot of fishing. I would be interested in getting a professional (true) to do one. I have always thought it would be fun to get my palm read as well but have never done it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I have to stop spending so much time editing my messages ... crossposting with two other people is simply too much.

littlemiss, I've heard that many times, too, that the first deck should be a gift. I have no idea where that came from, but it didn't seem to affect my experience with the cards at all, the fact that I bought my own deck. I've known people who got around that by going to a store together, buying decks, and then exchanging them, but that doesn't make sense to me. If there were some supernatural reason why a deck should be given -- as though it might be that the deck should find you, rather than the other way around -- it doesn't seem like a person could cheat their way around it with such an obvious trick.

On the other hand, I have given used decks to people I was teaching to read the cards (and one time a crystal ball), and on a personal level that was very satisfying.

Paradox, in the beginning I bought a lot of books on the subject, searching for a sort of consensus on the meaning behind each of the cards. But the more I used the cards, and especially after I began to study the symbols from many different perspectives (as I was extremely interested in alchemy and mythology at the time, those naturally had the biggest influence) the more my own interpretations evolved. And in fact they never stopped changing during the whole twenty year period when I was doing readings.

It seemed to me that the cards served as a bridge between my conscious and subconscious mind, a way, really, for them to send each other coded messages -- because for some reason they aren't set up to communicate directly -- and the challenge was for me to translate those messages. Why these messages should turn out to have meaning for the person sitting on the other side of the table at the time I never understood. Nor could I ever quite decide whether it was a spiritual process or something quite natural (although I always said a prayer, just in case).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

And another crossposting, this time with Lissa! (Surprising, because no one seemed interested in the topic this morning.)

Lissa, I've traded readings with a number of other readers -- as well as observed other readings in progress -- and it's true that a lot of them seemed to do a lot of fishing. Which I always thought was pretty funny, because readings done that way were always less accurate than when I (or somebody else) just took the leap of faith and followed the cards without any regard to whether or not I was going to make a fool of myself.

So when I did a reading, I wouldn't even look at the other person or solicit any information until after I had drawn as much information as I could from the cards on my own (which was usually about 15-20 minutes of me just rattling off whatever the cards suggested to me), and then I would finally look up and ask, "Do you have any questions?" If they did, I would naturally end up learning more about them from the questions they asked, but by that time I had already said most of what I was going to say.

This, of course, was with people I didn't know. With friends, I used the same technique, but of course there were things I already knew (or thought I knew) that could have affected the reading. The challenge then was to ignore all that, because if I didn't it would really inhibit my ability to read the cards, as I tried to fit in what the cards said with what I assumed I already knew. It turned out that the cards always knew my friends better than I did, so I eventually learned to trust them.

 

[weaveworld]

Hi All

How are you ALL doing?

Great post Kelpie, like you in my youth (a bit colourful as well), I actually had a rune stones which I bought myself (I don't know the general feeling with regards to buying your own),I kept them in a black velvet bag. I only used them when I was having a bit of a dilemna. I sort of lost interest or I lost the runes (I can't remember). I read the runes for friends and family, I never had any complaints (well not to my face anyway).

I had a my tarot cards read once and I'll be honest - it scared me because everything became true.

 

[Marky Lazer]

Someone once offered me to read the cards for me through MSN, is that like a good thing?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Done it a few times myself in the past - the cards always seemed like a lense, an object for focus, rather than the object to focus on itself. Sort of like a way to tune in to indistinct forms and feelings, impressions, that focus with the cards was able to make more distinct.

A point to underline is to not take the cards too literally and place them in context - I remember a couple of years back I was thinking of going into business and moving house. My girlfriend read my cards, and they were all positive - except the last one, which was the Tower.

She was pretty distrubed by that - the tower is both and ending and a beginning, sort of like the Death/Mort card - but in the end, I went into business, we moved, and everything completely and utterly changed - for the better.

 

[GOLLUM]

I've had an interest in Tarot for a while but never really involved myself in it or had my own deck although Mr. Erikson seems to have used it as a theme in his books with his so-called Deck Of Dragons that directly influences the machinations of various Gods who inhabit his world.

Fascinating topic though.....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

A point to underline is to not take the cards too literally and place them in context

Yes, that's very important. Every card has different shades of meaning, and it's up to the reader to intuitively select the right one -- but also to interpret that card in terms of its position and in context with all the other cards.

Most readers will put down a card, talk about it, and then put down another -- which often requires them to go back and modify what they said about the previous card in light of the new card (and, if it's a fishing expedition, according to any reactions elicited by what they've said before). Or they will deal out the cards face-down and turn them over one at a time.

I always laid out the entire "Celtic Cross" before I started to speak, and started making connections between the various cards from the very beginning. It was like flipping a mental switch, or entering an altered state of consciousness (it's the same one that comes sometimes when I'm writing, and the writing is going particularly well), because my mind would start to race and be flooded with impressions, and I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

In fact, it was a lot like writing, the way I did it, because I always made it into a story with a beginning (the past), a middle (the present) and various alternative endings depending on how they dealt with any obstacles the cards identified.

 

[nixie]

I've looked at them in shops and find them fascinating, but wither I'd ever pluck up courage to ever have my cards read is a different matter

 

[scalem X]

I've never really bothered with them, but when someone told me she had cards and could use, I asked her if she could do that for me once for the fun. I'm still waiting. But oneday soon...

 

[Carolyn Hill]

About a decade ago, I spent a year playing around with various Tarot decks, doing readings for a limited number of people who I knew fairly well. The most successful readings were when the cards suddenly seemed to click together in my mind like the material for a story--the backstory, the motives of the characters, the central conflict, and so on. (Mind you, most of the time the cards didn't click, but it felt magical when they did.) Thinking of the cards like the component of a story, and looking at the person being read for as the central character, worked better for me than thinking of the cards as a divination tool.

Reading your thread today reminded me that certain Tarot readers are more in tune with one deck than with other decks. Maybe if I had had a deck where the illustrations on the cards were all drawn from science fiction and fantasy stories that I know well, I'd have experienced the click more often, because there'd be a direct connection from those stories to the story told by the cards. (Right now, I'd love a Firefly deck!)

Has anyone ever made their own deck?

Has anyone ever made a Tolkien deck?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've toyed with various concepts for my own deck over the years, and at one point Ann Maglinte and I were working on one together (she was doing the artwork, of course). But none of those projects went very far.

There is, in fact, a deck called the Tolkien deck, which I have seen in bookstores, but it didn't look very appealing.

Alis Rasmussen/Kate Elliott designed a deck for her first book The Labyrinth Gate, and I believe she had someone actually draw up the pictures.

It would be interesting to come up with a deck to go with "The Rune of Unmaking" books -- much too interesting -- by far too interesting -- just the sort of tangent I could go off on soooo easily.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've toyed with various concepts for my own deck over the years, and at one point Ann Maglinte and I were working on one together

I remember once wanting to create my own deck - but it would require re-creating some of the tarot deck - ie, removing some cards. Ultimately, the deck is based on key symbols, and some of them are plain repeated. To me, The Fool and the Hanged Man are simply different interpretations of the same symbols - ie, positive and negative aspects - and the need for two cards to relate to these becomes somewhat negated if you use the reverse interpretation idea of upturned/downturned cards in the Celtic Cross.

2c.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Hanged Man and the Fool are so different for me, that wouldn't be a problem. But certainly the idea would be to come up with a set of symbols that were personally meaningful and offered a wide range of interpretations between them.

I've always wanted to get my hands on one of those early decks with the additional trump cards -- the Tarot de Mantegna or the Minchiate Tarot -- to see what I could draw out of the extra symbols. They do replicate decks from that period (I have the Visconti-Sforza deck), but they always seem to be the standard 78 card packs.

 

[Jack Blackham]

The process to get a live tarot reading to get a very different nature, tarot online reading. Of course, you have to fix an appointment, but in addition there are some things you can do to ensure good read.

I've never really bothered with them, but when someone told me she had cards and could use, I asked her if she could do that for me once for the fun. I'm still waiting. But oneday soon...