What's your tarot story?

Aina

I just wanted to ask everyone: how did you end up doing tarot, what was the story? :)
 

AJ

courtesy says you must tell your story first since you asked the question.
Maybe you are typing as I speak....

each year I choose something new to learn. This year it was via an archaeology course free from Brown University.
Last year it was MesoAmerican history

One year I saw a course in tarot listed at Barnes and Nobel book site.
I thought Tarot would be interesting because I knew it's history and symbology go back so far. I was right. Still studying. and grateful I saw that class offer. I didn't take it but it has lead me down many paths and they all have been thought provoking.

Prior to that I'd never even seen a tarot deck, although I did know what they were from all the B movies death cards.
 

Aina

courtesy says you must tell your story first since you asked the question.
Maybe you are typing as I speak....

each year I choose something new to learn. This year it was via an archaeology course free from Brown University.
Last year it was MesoAmerican history

One year I saw a course in tarot listed at Barnes and Nobel book site.
I thought Tarot would be interesting because I knew it's history and symbology go back so far. I was right. Still studying. and grateful I saw that class offer. I didn't take it but it has lead me down many paths and they all have been thought provoking.

Prior to that I'd never even seen a tarot deck, although I did know what they were from all the B movies death cards.

Wow! Your tarot was indeed a thrilling one! I can't even tell you how much I enjoy reading stories like these! I hope someone else will tell one too :)

My story started with the art. I was self-teaching myself an ancient Indian folk art called Madhubani that was so ancient no one knew where it began. Madhubani was something I was going literally crazy about. Somewhere deep inside I believed that in the repetitions of folk patterns and the basic colors there lies the SECRET, the encoded information that contains all the wisdom about life. I believed that although the folk artists didn't know anything about it HAD to mean something! My problem was the lack of literature about Madhubani. As this is a tribal art, it has not been stored in some book or scroll or something like that. Itself it used to be destroyed every time the villagers would white wash their house walls because Madhubani is originally a mural. I also was not allowed to travel to the village to see how it looks and talk to some villagers because the place is full of baddies with guns.

So I decided not to give up anyway because I had to find out my SECRET. I saw that many symbols had the same connotations with the ones in the Western/global culture such as the SUN would be a good thing and a TREE would be something rooted, slow, the tree of life and the TURTLE would symbolize the long life, the FISH would definitely symbolize the money (just as in Lenormand). Madhubani is highly Hindu mythological but still I decided I wasn't a Hindu and I HAD to express myself through this form of folk art, so I decided to paint western ideas through an Indian medium (I'm not Indian but live in India). So I don't remember how the tarot came up but it was through Google search when I tried to find the religious cosmic SYMBOLS and so on. I did possess a tarot deck from before for fun and emergencies but it wasn't used a lot and it wasn't a RWS deck. After I realized about the bunch of useful symbols that were in the tarot, I started to study and my aim was to work out how did those who created tarot used symbols to encode metaphysical information. I want to do the same so I have to know how it works or feel it or something, I am not sure I know how to express it...:)
 

AJ

Cool story,thank you for sharing!

I suppose highly educated people glean some essential symbology in the course of their studies but much does seem to reach across time and cultures to boil down to some shared basics we can all pick up.

Great search great find!
 

Richard

I bought my first deck after reading John Fowles' magnificent (and enigmatic) novel, The Magus, which contains a quote from Waite's A Pictorial Key to the Tarot. (The quote was removed from later editions of The Magus.)
 

ravenest

I bought my first deck after reading John Fowles' magnificent (and enigmatic) novel, The Magus, which contains a quote from Waite's A Pictorial Key to the Tarot. (The quote was removed from later editions of The Magus.)

And ....

come on, if you are going to cluck you should lay the egg ... what was the quote?

I probably saw the later version (Anthony Quinn ? I think ... he came out with a few gems in that one.)
 

ravenest

Me? I guess I was just born this way. I seem quiet normal (to myself) :laugh: But not to many others, including family. I was immediately attracted from an early age to anything vaguely mystical, unusual, fascinating (or, from an outside perspective; weird strange and dangerous) ... poor Mum ... having to watch little ravenest tap dance on the edge of a volcano.

Before I was born ... I had a Galician ( related to the name of an ancient Celtic tribe ) grandmother (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia,_Spain ) who used to read tarot (but my straight and weird family suppressed all that … I never found out until about 10 years ago … something nasty happened to her , I think they locked her up in an institution , they used to do that with non-compliant women back then :mad: )

Perhaps my father picked up a ‘spirit germ baby’ from a waterhole in Arhnam Land (https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...s4GIAQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1012&bih=441&dpr=1 )
during a croc hunting trip (I have seen old photos of him with tribal people, at a corroboree , etc. in early 1950 - so my indigenous teachers suggest .. maybe ??? – I haven’t learnt enough about that yet) came home and ‘gave his wife a present’ (as the Aboriginals say) and at an early age I was ‘touched by the little people’ (local ones, not pixies or fairies ) as a child. http://yowiehunters.com.au/index.ph...-legends-frank-povah-1990&catid=95&Itemid=148

That’s the mix. The first time I saw anything remotely connected to the otherworld I jumped into it. At around 13 or 14 I was allowed to roam further, I started exploring and a short train journey away was a large regional library … with a large occult section – that kept me busy for a while. Around 15 or 16 I ended up in a very unusual shop (for those times) in Kings X in Sydney (no – not THAT sort ! ) and saw a Thoth tarot deck … “I need that! “. I didn’t have enough money so I had to do odd jobs and save up for the deck and some other stuff that wonderful shop had.

After that it was a wonderful kaleidoscope of tarot, magick , various occult everything, 1970’s explosion clear light LSD Leary Jung Taoism Tibetan Buddhism OTO GD Wicca magic mushrooms Indigenous shamanism etc and … here I am.

<waves> Hi.
 

Holly doll

Strange but true; I was born a little "out there" & was the despair of my family! They were extremely intuitive & blocked it through fear of what might happen - they used to tell me it was "all in my head" to stop me from wandering off into the "OMG - what will the neighbours think...? You are going to get yourself into SO much trouble...!" Always into anything mystical; blurting out from a young age about others private stuff - along with a couple of near death experiences - what's a girl supposed to do???!!!

I saw too many things that couldn't be explained & started reading... & reading... & reading... Wicca, healing, shamanism - you name it I was into it!

One day I was in a strange shop in a small town & feeling quite surprised to find it there at all; I walked past the Tarot display when this deck of cards literally fell at my feet, so thinking nothing of it I put it back on the display & went on perusing the books; when yet again the very same deck flung itself on the floor. I picked it up & checked the shelf to see if there was something preventing the deck from sitting in its place - there was nothing. So back it went & back I went to the book section. As I turned to leave, the SAME deck once again fell from the shelf at my feet; this time I gave up & took it to the counter. It's been a valued journey ever since...
 

Darkmage

Learning how to read cards was just something I did as a kid when we were snowed in and power was out. My mother had a deck she picked up in the late 60's/early 70's (University Press RWS) that she never used, so she gave it to me along with a copy of Eden Gray's Complete Guide to Tarot. It kept me amused for days.

Over time, I just continued with it and then got bit by the collecting bug. ;)

Sorry, there's not much to it other than this.