Marseilles Seekers Thread (First Exercise)

EnriqueEnriquez

Kilted Kat, I am assuming these are the feelings you experienced before looking at the cards:

Kilted Kat said:
Relaxed, supportive, calm, resourceful

right?

The last line in your description of the Chevalier de Bastons mirrors these feelings:

Kilted Kat said:
Together they can do anything as long as they work together. Cooperation is key in this card.

I can see you are all realizing how different is the actual act of finding yourselves in the card, and the act of putting it into words. Looking at the Chevalier de Bastons while reading your words, it all makes so much sense! Very often it happens to me that I can clearly see something in the cards, and I know how does it feels, but as easy as it is for me to know that, it is very hard to put it into words. That’s why I always feel words are provisional.

So far we haven’t concerned ourselves with how to turn these feelings into a message. We will work on that in some of the following exercises. So far, what is important is for you to open yourself to the idea of looking at the cards as independent events, whose meaning is self-contained.

Best,

EE
 

EnriqueEnriquez

Bernice said:
feels like the 'freshness' of cut fruit - apple came to mind.
Also smoothly shaped, like a curvy sculpture. Or maybe smooth walls of a cave (?) but no darkness - felt nice. In my mind thought of the word, "slicing", but no impression of 'cutting'.

I read your account and “EVE” from sculptor Fernando Botero comes to mind:

http://www.boteroinberlin.com/download/pic03_240.jpg

Perhaps, if we dare to imagine the empress naked, she will look like that. :)

Bernice said:
The CARD: The Empress (upright): She is rather cool looking , temperature-wise, maybe the 'freshness' ? And she does look like she has permanence - like a statue.

Great. I think all that can be easily found at first sight in that card.

Now, here:

Bernice said:
Examining her, I think she has an ordered outlook, don't know how that might fit in.

I feel I need to go back to the last part of your original impressions:

Bernice said:
In my mind thought of the word, "slicing", but no impression of 'cutting'.

I have a problem with the empress in the Noblet. She totally feels like an apple, or like that rounded sculpture you suggested and Botero crafted. But she is a cranky apple. For all her roundness, her face looks shows her pissed off. Perhaps the apple wants to fall from the tree, get naked like in Botero’s sculpture, and be bitten by a hungry mouth. It feels to me as if she is full of promise, and all these clothes, the shield, the scepter, the crown and the throne restrain her roundness. There is in the cards a promise of sensuality that hasn’t been fulfilled.

If I look at her face I feel that, if I bite that apple, my gums will bleed. Perhaps that’s the slicing you are feeling. :)

Bernice said:
But all-in-all I feel that the 'apple-feeling' fits with her O.K.

Indeed!

Notice how, when you talk about the empress as an apple, you are using a metaphor. The metaphor is very apt because an apple contains the essence of the empress. The essence of the empress is its meaning, a meaning we obtain at an experiential level and we express in metaphorical terms, so it is not rationally understood, but sensory perceived. Great!

Best,

EE
 

EnriqueEnriquez

Silent Breeze:

SilentBreeze said:
First I feel warmth, comforting warmth at first, then the feeling of being smothered, it gets hard to breathe, and it gets a little too warm, it feels heavy and trapping.

I look at the Royne de Bastons and it seems as if she is wearing a corset! You also tapped on that here:

SilentBreeze said:
Everything about her is very ambiguous. Is it a man trying to dress as woman, or a woman trying to dress as a man. She seems to be stuffed into a large extravagant costume, which she is stuck in.

Her breast are exposed but pressed down by that yellow belt. That would be a physical approach to what you originally felt. Such approach could be useful if we are been asked about health, for example, or if we need to tie the image to any physical sensation our seeker may be experiencing. Even so, I like a lot the fact that you went deeper than that, into a more metaphorical reading:

SilentBreeze said:
Connecting back to my initial feelings I suppose if she is stuck in a role that she is putting on as just for show, that would make her feel uncomfortable and trapped. Maybe at first this costume was meant to comfort her to keep her safe and protected, but now she has no room to move and is getting a hot in her fancy outfit, she wants out of this role.

I find peculiar how she almost looks like a puppet, controlled by a hand that we can’t see because its arm falls outside of the card.


With SilentBreeze we finish the first round. Tomorrow I will start giving you feedback on the second exercise.

In each case we have seen how the tarot’s illusion makes it possible to fit all of our impressions into the cards we randomly choose. This is an extreme way of showing that the elicitation of spontaneous meaning is as “right” as any set of predefined meaning. At the same time we have seen, and I mean, actually SEEN a single card, without distinguishing if it was a trump, a pip, or a court card. There is a lot so look at in each one of the 78 cards in the deck, all of them being already illustrated, and with enough narrative elements for us to craft our metaphors. We shouldn’t ‘fear’ any cards more than others.

Personally, I can only understand the cards in a group or storyline, with the meaning of each specific card being reshaped by its context. This first exercise, sort of a warm-up, would be the only one in which we will focus on a single card. For now on we will work with them in sequences.

If any of you have any question or comments, i will be more than happy to ‘hear’ them.

I will look into the second exercise tomorrow!

Best,

EE
 

Hooked on TdM

EE, you missed my first exercise!! :(

Hooked
 

EnriqueEnriquez

Don’t worry, I will look into it!

:)

EE
 

firecatpickles

Kilted Kat said:
Relaxed, supportive, calm, resourceful

EnriqueEnriquez said:
Kilted Kat, I am assuming these are the feelings you experienced before looking at the cards...right?

Yes, these were my imipressions before looking at the card, just concentrating on the prime number "23".

The last line in your description of the Chevalier de Bastons mirrors these feelings

Funny how it worked out that way, isn't it?
 

Satori

In reading more of Enrique's comments on the cards I see that this study is going to have to be more personal, more intimate and more about transparency. I have not been going as deeply as I think I will need to go in order to get the full benefit of the work. And that is a little scary.

It is interesting to see the range of people's discussions of the cards. I am slowly making my way through everyone's posts....there are so many great insights here.
 

EnriqueEnriquez

Hello Hooked,

I apologize for not seeing this before. But here I am.

Hooked on TdM said:
I got feelings of fear (more like an unsure fear, than scary fear), anxiety, trepidation, bloom (about meetings?) and shaky.

I counted out the card and it is the 7 Deniers.

Another Denier!

Hooked on TdM said:
I was puzzled. It felt strange. I got that off of a pip?

I would say that you can see all that in a pip. :)


Hooked on TdM said:
The 1st five coins are connected by the blooms but the last 2 are outside of it. This is the meeting. The two coins being outsiders are meeting with the five which causes trepidation, fear and anxiety. The bloom has no roots hence a shaky foundation.

This is fantastic! You did great.

There is a concept anthropologist use to talk about the way African diviners look at the small elements/figurines in their baskets (not that all African diviners use divination baskets, but among those who do use them). The concept is ‘micro-dramatics’. Micro dramatics stand for the relationships that can be established among each one of these elements when they are cast, so the closeness, the separation, the angle in which they fall, creates a story.


The idea of ‘micro-dramatics’ is very useful when we look at the pips. We use it also when we put two or more cards together, and we stop looking the sequence as cardA+cardB+cardC, and we see it as a whole ABC. In our work with the pips we pay attention to the way the elements in the card (this are almost always an element or elements that define the suit, plus a floral ornament) are ‘interacting’.

That is what you are doing here when you see the coins as people, and then, you see 5 of them as belonging to an order, while the other two are still in the outside. Then, we can almost see the floral element taking life: embracing, protecting and also ruling these five coins. Just as you projected your impressions into that micro drama, while reading for another person we can detect the micro drama and understand it as an analogy of that person’s situation.

Both the Noblet and the Jodo-Camoin present a very similat 7 de Deniers. The main difference being that the Noblet is ‘upside down’, this is, the two coins that remain outside the floral element’s embrace are at the bottom of the card. In that case, the foundations are even shackier. :)

Something important I feel I should mention is that both Tchalai Unger and Philippe Camoin explore the optical language of the cards in a similar way than this, the main difference being that in their view, the resonance and rhyme of elements among cards reveals secret knowledge, as if each element, each line, dot, stroke in the cards was conceived with some specific significance, and by looking for patterns we activate this knowledge. I don’t see it like that. I find hard to believe that the upper left leaf in the jodo-cam 7 of deniers has 15 black strokes inside because 15 is Le Diable, and the leaf is luring the two coins, or because Mary Magdalene was 15 when she joined Jesus. But I find very safe to see a micro drama evolving in the whole composition, as long as I remember that such micro drama will be activated in a certain specific analogy by the person I am reading the cards for.

I have to run and take my kids to school. I will be back late afternoon.

Best,

EE
 

Hooked on TdM

EnriqueEnriquez said:
Hello Hooked,

I apologize for not seeing this before. But here I am.

No apology necessary! :)


EnriqueEnriquez said:
There is a concept anthropologist use to talk about the way African diviners look at the small elements/figurines in their baskets (not that all African diviners use divination baskets, but among those who do use them). The concept is ‘micro-dramatics’. Micro dramatics stand for the relationships that can be established among each one of these elements when they are cast, so the closeness, the separation, the angle in which they fall, creates a story.

I did not know that! Not only is it very interesting, I can reflect back and see that I actually do this with the majors! I look for the relationships in each card, between the characters or the objects. It's great to discover this works with pips!

EnriqueEnriquez said:
Something important I feel I should mention is that both Tchalai Unger and Philippe Camoin explore the optical language of the cards in a similar way than this, the main difference being that in their view, the resonance and rhyme of elements among cards reveals secret knowledge, as if each element, each line, dot, stroke in the cards was conceived with some specific significance, and by looking for patterns we activate this knowledge. I don’t see it like that. I find hard to believe that the upper left leaf in the jodo-cam 7 of deniers has 15 black strokes inside because 15 is Le Diable, and the leaf is luring the two coins, or because Mary Magdalene was 15 when she joined Jesus. But I find very safe to see a micro drama evolving in the whole composition, as long as I remember that such micro drama will be activated in a certain specific analogy by the person I am reading the cards for.

I have tried counting out the dots and whatnot. All I find is that I get bogged down with these crazy numbers and it does nothing for me. I have even less of an idea of what a card means than I did when I opened the deck. It just doesn't work for me. I also haven't tried the Camoin Method. I actually got annoyed with him and his website. He alludes to having this secret to unlocking the Tarot but doesn't share it unless you can pay big bucks for his workshop. I call it ego and snobbery.

Thanks so much for letting me participate! I have a great feeling about learning with your method. :)

Hooked
 

frelkins

Hooked,

Won't defend Camoin here, but what I can read of his website in both French & English is pretty straightforward and easy to use. As for his supposed secrets, I can't judge, but hey everybody's gotta make a buck, right? So I'll forgive him that part of the hype, since a lot of the method appears to be open and free.

More details can be had in Jodo's French essay on the site, wherein you will learn that Jodo is rather Freudian in his interps, and Camoin believes that he hold original stencils with more accurate coloring -- I think his secrets are based on the stencils and the colors. You may not read with the colors, so this might be mean too much to you.

All I can say is Jodo/Camoin is working for me so far, as far as I can understand it from his site, using the Flornoy Noblet.

Good luck,
F