"Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough"

Water Lady

I love the quote, thank you for posting it.
I agree it means to focus on, to learn by paying attention to. I love lots of things but not in a romantic way and learn by that 'love'
I love Tarot for what I have learned about myself.
 

6 Haunted Days

Forest of Souls

Rachel Pollack goes into this in her wonderful book "Forest of Souls". About tarot being about "loving the image"....an in-depth essay. Also she talks about the love affair one has with the Tarot, how it can be compared to a passionate "in-love" type relationship. Also about it giving up it's secrets when you embrace it etc.

An excellent read in many respects, if you haven't read it, get it!
 

Alissa

I love this idea...

I think Tarot is like a beautiful and exotic woman... if you love her enough and she will begin to reveal her secrets, but she never reveals quite *all* of her secrets to you.

Just enough to keep you intrigued and searching, passionate for more.
 

Shadow Wolf

I agree that love means paying attention, which is what we do in any love
relationship. The more attention we pay to something, the more work we put into the relationship the more rewarding that relationship will be.

The same applies to tarot.
 

Moonbow

If you love something or someone then the hard work is never a chore. With Tarot, it's a daily experience and study, whether that be in reading the cards or studying the history, or both. As with anything that you love, it's a pleasure to partake in and will consistantly open up more and bring new surprises and delight

Only when something becomes a grind to do, do you realise that there is no love involved.
 

willowfox

Love to do something, such as love to learn about the tarot which will then lead one to understanding it.
 

Cerulean

Funny, what I hear and funnier what I feel...

...sheer beauty of all your words and thoughts are enough to enchant those who have tarot doubts.

To me, the older tarots feel like an ever-so-young grandmother with Latin suits and spicy tastes, telling me, "when I was young and cloistered, I never thought I'd travel so far...but as I grew...and of course I did what we all did so long ago..." I had grandmothers who never dreamed they would travel far or live so long...and that their grandchildren would speak other words, follow different paths...that is what I think of older tarots and the tales they tell.

It all runs back to tarocchi verses, to me, like a song that traces its roots back to a poem or a picture to the words that first gave the idea a visual framework. But it is younger than my heart thought, so I say grandmother...as my grandmothers were really quite a bit younger...and I think of playing cards as a grandfather's thing...and may over time be the older of the two in my funny old head. This is not a fact, nor even wishful thinking--it's simply romantic tweedle-dum-dee-dum humming on a cool summer evening.

As far as reinterpreting the tarot, it's a little too shiny a mirror for me right now; we all have ways of reflecting ourselves and creativity and the brightness of this mirror can be a little too telling, tiring or same-same sometimes...I'm looking at a few smokier mirrors at the moment...

Incense emblems that over time became a deck and had a consequent 52 or 54 emblem-and-card mirroring in the Tale of Genji...who would have thought the greatest grandfather tales intoned on a biwa or being the witness to a prayer with a delicate whiff of sandelwood or aloewood (spelling) would touch on something that remind me of playing cards...the smoky mirror is where my nose is at these days and maybe it will love me back enough...I'm taking it a little at a time as I walk backwards.

And in a way, it pulls me back to my first deck: the Ukiyoe Tarot. Of course many smiled at the pretty 'art' deck that seemed to really seemed to have nothing but a cheerful Asian art motif--but in some ways, it has touched on many a lovely thing that I count as fulfilling, charming and curiously apt as echoes of grandfather tales well remembered.

Cards as charming pathways have been good things to me.

Best wishes and thanks for posting on all your beautiful thoughts--they do make one enjoy the feel of the cards on a fresh summer night...

Cerulean