Ah, this same Cartesian division pops up in a new form.
The study vs. intuition debate, my favorite.
frelkins said:
The Visconti deck was probably a wedding gift for rich people (which set of rich people may be in dispute), as Dummet tells us.
The only symbolism the Italian nobles likely thought about when it came to "understanding" them was how to bet on each trick!
Whoa nellie... Actually the idea of decorative art doesn't arise until the invention of the bourgeoisie. ALL art before the enlightenment (and much after) was not only expected to have meaning, the meaning was arguably more essential than the aesthetic value. Knowing that how could you expect to "read" an image that was created with a symbolic intent, however flattering or prosaic, and not take into consideration the worldview from which it sprang. In an era before literacy was common, images were what most people "read," witness catechisms in stained glass and allegorical reliefs. People looked at images for meaning, not prettiness. The cleverness of a beautiful object was what created the value.
Just look at the spontaneous, extempore poetry games played with cards in the Italian Renaissance, where players were expected not only to recognize symbolic tropes but be able to compose poems on the spot incorporating as much of the meaningful content as possible. As Fudugazi says, reading without making yourself aware of content isn't impossible, but it does limit the range of impressions that can be gleaned from the image. If education weren't essential, we would never move beyond the breast and the bottle and nappies. The simple fact is, our slackjawed culture has a kneejerk revulsion for the rigors of scholarship and has elevated the breast and the bottle to semi-divine status. Not to get all stroppy, but small wonder that we live in such a stupefying, stultefying cultural soup when we expect all other ages in history to live down to our televisual expectations... as if we are more advanced because we grew up defrosting meals and watching Gilligan's Island.
rebecca-smiles said:
perhaps for the book learned here all those meanings and layers and symbols compete with each other if contexts are not clearly defined?
I'll have to join others in saying no. Neither is it the case that when I am having a conversation, my knowledge and verbal experience render me mute. All the various forms and memories and awarenesses of a word actually ADD to my facility with the word, and with language in general. I have yet to have anyone actually explain why studying is somehow separate from intuition. And surprisingly, I've never heard people who champion studying saying intuition isn't essential. But there are (literally)
hundreds of threads on AT where people seek validation for the decision to just "wing it." That is of course a valid option, but why does it need validation if it works? And in what way is anyone able to rid themselves of EVERYTHING they've ever learned and approach the cards intuitively as a literal
tabula rasa? Study and intuition are inextricably bound up in each other, just as much as the past and the future.
I don't kowtow to the Golden Dawn worldview and I know how much their theories have been superceded and supplanted; I know these things because I studied them. And because I studied them, I also know the things that have
not been supplanted, that work in practice, that carry real heft in expression. Just because Einstein kicked Newton in the teeth doesn't mean no one should study Newton, and just because Schrödinger kicked Einstein in the teeth, ditto. Gnosis is limitless and completely personal. I would hope that all the nonsheep of the world want to "Gnow" for themselves. But perhaps that just makes me a different kind of sheep.
Baaa!
frelkins said:
I'm trying to imagine a future in which people look at Hallmark or other greeting cards for "esoteric meanings"!
In short, we give the cards meanings and structure every time we look at them. They themselves are just otherwise ink on paper, yes?
This strikes at something important, Frelkins. I do think we cannot escape our own preconceptions. But I think WE MUST TRY, or else we are not seeing, we are only looking. I think that the images aren't ink on paper, I think they are a matrix of ideas that are captured as ink on paper. Much like Shakespeare's body of work is not a book, but rather a matrix of 3 dimensional theatrical experiences captured as words that can be fixed to paper by means of type and print. The plays take on new meaning every time they are read or staged, but they are still Shakespeare (in varying degrees
).
David Macaulay wrote a delightful book called
Motel of the Mysteries in which an archaeologist in the 41st century goes to elaborate lengths to explain the religious significance of a dig at a 20th century temple... the irony being that the 20th century reader knows that he's unearthed a cheap motel. He sets about interpreting the detritus with comic leaps of logic until the toilet seat and do-not-disturb sign become objects of cosmic meaning. He's not an idiot, he just doesn't have the information at his disposal. For him, study and intuition cannot work in tandem. We know his logic to be completely mistaken, but he's done his research and his intuition is sound, because although he gets the facts completely wrong, his hunches actually reveal an enormous amount about his own time and preoccupations... which are almost identical to our own, natch.
There are as many styles of readers as there are readers, and I would never say anyone HAS to go learn something, because frankly either you're a reader or you aren't and that's between you and your clients. Nuff said. A proud confession: I believe my knowledge of philosophy and religion and history and art and literature actually make me a better reader. I believe that the ability to communicate thoughts between separate minds is the most magical thing in the world. I
believe in human civilization, which (along with reading and conversation and personal style) is increasingly unfashionable; I do get a little depressed when people start to announce in groups that "chucking it all" is the way to go and all that "old history and theory and stuff" is pointless. If it is, then so is civilization, and we should all go back to squatting in mud and banging rocks together.
For what it's worth, I haven't been using a lot of "traditional" spreads of late, cause I don't find I need them. But I'm not sure exactly what a "traditional" spread is, unless you mean the Celtic Cross which is only 100 years old and popularized in Waite's Pictorial Key. Every tradition starts as a study of the past that reinvents a subject for an imagined future. The pop psych sermonizing of the 70s threads through a LOT of current Tarot authorship for good or ill. And there are new trends too in younger authors. None of them are gospel, many are worth at least glancing over.
Buddhagoddess, I think spreads are a contextual tool that you will modify as you gain in expertise and daring. Rock out!
And don't let anyone tell you different, not even me.
Scion
