switching from RWS -TdM.

cardwitch

3ill.yazi said:
I'm very curious about how people are doing readings while in a transitional period between RWS and TdM. Do you just study the heck out of TdM before you even try reading? I landed a copy of the Jodo book, and I've been following the Eye Rhymes threads here, but I still kinda lean on my personal associations of the RWS deck.

I'm still very new to the TdM, but I've just jumped right in, trying to read with my intuition while studying everything I can about it on the side. I've actually carried over a lot more from playing card cartomancy than the RWS, especially with Coins and Cups, because the arrangement of suit elements in those cards is nearly identical to playing cards. The Wands/Batons and Swords suits are more of a challenge (Especially Swords. They're all just so similar.).

LRichard said:
I don't believe that the understanding of Tarot is a fixed entity; it evolves. Some of the more recent expositions are by Ben-Dov, Enrique, and Jodorowsky. In earlier centuries there were important esoteric contributions by Etteilla, Gébelin, Levi, Wirth, Papus, Mathers, etc.

This is such a good point. Every generation reinterprets the Tarot. What we see in the cards says as much about us as it does them.

3ill.yazi

cardwitch said:
I'm still very new to the TdM, but I've just jumped right in, trying to read with my intuition while studying everything I can about it on the side. I've actually carried over a lot more from playing card cartomancy than the RWS, especially with Coins and Cups, because the arrangement of suit elements in those cards is nearly identical to playing cards. The Wands/Batons and Swords suits are more of a challenge (Especially Swords. They're all just so similar.).

I guess my issue is that I'm pretty comfortable with my RWS, those associations kind of scream out when I am trying to listen to my inner voice with the TdM. At some point it's still hard to parse out what is intuition from what is just thoroughly learned/memorized (and I don't like to use that term because I feel I still use intuitive reasoning with the RWS) associations.

FLizarraga

LRichard said:
It's always good to study Tarot. The more one knows, the better. I read and still often refer to Reading the Marseille Tarot because I am interested in Tarot iconography, as I think it is essential to consider in relation to tarot interpretation, but it does not pertain only to the TdM. Tarot is Tarot, whether it be Italian, French, Swiss, English, Japanese, Canadian, American, etc.

I don't believe that the understanding of Tarot is a fixed entity; it evolves. Some of the more recent expositions are by Ben-Dov, Enrique, and Jodorowsky. In earlier centuries there were important esoteric contributions by Etteilla, Gébelin, Levi, Wirth, Papus, Mathers, etc.

There had been few attempts at illustrating the Pips before Waite and Smith, who devised images (many adapted from Etteilla, Sola Busca, etc.) which apparently were intended to be memory joggers for Mathers' adaptation of the Picatrix Decans to the Pips. Unfortunately, this had the effect of bending the divinatory interpretation of the Pips to Waite and Smith's pictorial representations rather than their origin in the Picatrix.

The TdM thankfully frees the Pips from the strait jacket of the RWS illustrations, but there is no reason thereby to reject any of the historical understandings of Tarot. For new readers, the contributions of Jodorowsky, Enrique, and Ben-Dov give a refreshing new approach to the Tarot reading, but their tendency to gloss over, belittle, or misinterpret the contributions of earlier Tarot scholars is more an indication of their personal bias than of objectivity.

In a word, TdM offers you the opportunity for about as much freedom of interpretation as anyone should wish. Don't agonize over any imaginary 'right way' to read it. Pips as Trumps (for example, see Lee Bursten) gives an easy start, which may prove to be adequate for your needs, or maybe not. I think the main reason many reject it is due to a reluctance to memorize the first ten trumps.

Do what thou wilt.

Hear hear! :thumbsup:

cardwitch

3ill.yazi said:
I guess my issue is that I'm pretty comfortable with my RWS, those associations kind of scream out when I am trying to listen to my inner voice with the TdM. At some point it's still hard to parse out what is intuition from what is just thoroughly learned/memorized (and I don't like to use that term because I feel I still use intuitive reasoning with the RWS) associations.

It's been over a year since I last did a proper reading with the RWS and I still unconsciously fall back on it sometimes when I'm having trouble the TdM! The RWS "system" is just that deeply ingrained in my thinking.

Lately I've been developing my own pips-as-trumps method, and it's been extremely helpful. For example, all the sevens show a single pip singled out from the others in some way. If you connect them to the Chariot, you can see these cards as having to do with ambition, the ego, or individuality (I really like this association, since I read the sevens in PC cartomancy the same way).

Or take the threes. In the threes of Cups and Coins, you have a third pip apparently being created from the union of the other two pips. In Swords and Batons, the third central pip is crossing the other two. But in both cases, you can see the cards as relating to birth, creation, decision, natural progression, manifestation, etc....all ideas that can be associated with the third trump, The Empress

(And reversed or in darker readings, perhaps they can express the energy of the sinister thirteenth trump. This is an idea I'm still exploring

)

switching from RWS -TdM.

cardwitch

3ill.yazi

FLizarraga

cardwitch