TdM - why not read it as other decks?

Lee

Moderator note:

To my horror, I discovered that due to my own error, a post of Barleywine's in this thread got deleted by me inadvertently. Fortunately FLizarraga has quoted much of the deleted post, and the conversation seems well on track, but I do apologize to everyone.

Lee, Marseille Moderator
 

Lee

Any such tome would obviously have to be a synthesis, but hopefully a well-reasoned one that takes all of your arguments into account. It obviously couldn't be a "cookbook," more a philosophical exploration with some suggested mingling of ideas for interpretation.
If you wanted to write such a book, I would be happy to read it!
 

Barleywine

Moderator note:

To my horror, I discovered that due to my own error, a post of Barleywine's in this thread got deleted by me inadvertently. Fortunately FLizarraga has quoted much of the deleted post, and the conversation seems well on track, but I do apologize to everyone.

Lee, Marseille Moderator

I figured that's why you quoted something from my post under Fliz's name. I don't think we missed a beat.
 

Barleywine

If you wanted to write such a book, I would be happy to read it!

I'm tempted, but I don't have all the available English-language source material at my fingertips. Maybe someday. It would be a lot more fun than rehashing the RWS and Thoth canons.
 

FLizarraga

Moderator note:

To my horror, I discovered that due to my own error, a post of Barleywine's in this thread got deleted by me inadvertently. Fortunately FLizarraga has quoted much of the deleted post, and the conversation seems well on track, but I do apologize to everyone.

Lee, Marseille Moderator

"The error, the error!"
 

Farzon

Thank you for posting these pages, Barleywine! I guess I have a new book on my to-read-list now. And I think it will be inevitable to read the whole thing and then spend a lot of time with the cards...

And that's what fascinates me about the Tarot de Marseilles, that it is pretty much like a blank space. That I'll have get back to the basics again, question what I've learnt so far or re-learn it. In some way also a boot frightening...
 

Farzon

Amen to that.

Looking at Marseille pips a la Enríquez or Ben-Dov has made me come up with my own visual ideas --like reading the coin pips as table settings, and the swords as lattice or trellis, or whatnot. But paradoxically that has also changed the way I read scenic RWS pips. Now all my Waite and Gray and Pollack tend to go to the background, and instead I start looking at stuff like the way those two children look at each other in the 6 of Cups, or whatever is in front of me.
I encountered a similar method of reading in the Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery. I don't know if Robert Place derived it from reading the Marseille... but I think a lot of illustrated decks lend themselves to this method, some more, some less. I was rather surprised when I first saw that it is a common method to read the Marseille!
 

Barleywine

I encountered a similar method of reading in the Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery. I don't know if Robert Place derived it from reading the Marseille... but I think a lot of illustrated decks lend themselves to this method, some more, some less. I was rather surprised when I first saw that it is a common method to read the Marseille!

I just got the Sevenfold Mystery, and the first thing I noticed is that some of the minor cards are sparsely illustrated, and others don't really have "narrative" scenes. I haven't started reading the LWB yet, but I'm looking forward to exploring the deck.
 

Lee

Yes, quite. :D

Barleywine said:
I just got the Sevenfold Mystery, and the first thing I noticed is that some of the minor cards are sparsely illustrated, and others don't really have "narrative" scenes. I haven't started reading the LWB yet, but I'm looking forward to exploring the deck.
Several of Place's decks have quasi-nonscenic pips, and one of his first decks, the Angels Tarot, has completely non-scenic pips, with playing-card suits no less.
 

Farzon

I just got the Sevenfold Mystery, and the first thing I noticed is that some of the minor cards are sparsely illustrated, and others don't really have "narrative" scenes. I haven't started reading the LWB yet, but I'm looking forward to exploring the deck.
Yes, much more symbolic than narrative... but they incorporate a lot of directional movement, much more than the RWS for example.

Looking at the Marseille minors, I see more and more of this movement here as well. But it's mostly symmetrical and I'm not quite sure how this will work out for me. Especially regarding drives and blocks, which I guess will come from courts and majors mostly...