Marseilles Seekers Thread (First Exercise)

lark

3 card draw

Cavalier de Baton ~ Cavalier de Deniers ~ Lestoille

The first thing that popped into my head was the phrase.."You go your way and I'll go mine."
Yet dispite his determination to go his own way Cavalier de Baton is turning towards the Star .....and following the lead of Cavalier de Deniers who heads straight towards her.
They both look in her direction...even slightly downward as she is kneeling and they are high on their horses.

There is a hesitation then a feeling of flow...the blue of the Cavalier de Deniers horse's legs match the flow of the water out of Lestoille's water jugs...giving a feeling of movement... of something getting accomplished.

My attention is captured by the suspended wand...coin and star in the sky in each card....(yet Ch. Baston holds tightly on to his wand...where as the other two have released their's to float unrestricted.)
The little red star spur on Ch. Deniers heel, matches the red stars in Lestoilles's sky, and the star shaped belly button on Lestoille's stomach.
They are more intimately connected than Ch. Batons is.

Lestoille's pours out the water 'one for you and one for you'...one on land one in water....land matches the green of Ch. Baton's wand...so this is for you....water matches the blue of Ch. Deniers horse... so this is for you....she looks downward intent on her task.
The face of C. Denier's looks like the face of Lestoille as if they could be related...
But C. Batons is made of different stuff....he follows because he is curious and wants his share....but I feel he could change his mind at any minute and turn in the opposite direction.

Rhyme~ hesitation ~ flow ~ ending
 

stella01904

Second Exercise

EnriqueEnriquez said:
- Try to describe the first experiential feeling the cards elicit in you as soon as you look at them. This doesn’t have to be elaborate. A word, or a few words, will suffice.

- Define if the sequence follows a raising, falling, or steady rhythm.

- Try to detect as many eye rhymes as you can.

Exercise 2:

LESTOILLE - LESOLEIL - VI DENIERS

First impression: A lot of things that shine - almost glaring.

It's not really overt in this trio, but I think the sequence falls. The star zooms in closer and becomes the sun, and then they become coins that you can hold in your hand or drop on the sidewalk. The hills become a low brick wall and then drop away entirely. The little stars become drops, then leaves. The woman pouring water recedes a bit and even though she stands up, her face is still a little lower.

Eye rhymes:
Star-Sun-Coin - round, shiney things. Two trees and two jugs on XVII, two people on XVIIII, three pairs of coins, two pairs of leaves. Bare breasts on XVII and XVIIII, kind of round like the coins. Central flower on the coin card has points like the stars. It's the same color as the small one just above the big tree. All the coins circle around this central star-like flower, all the small stars circle around the big star. All the colors repeat, except that there is no dark blue or green on the coin card. All the people have white faces and hands. Star woman's left leg is bent. Sun woman's left leg is also slightly bent. Sun man's arms are in a similar position to Star woman's. The opening of Sun woman's skirt is shaped like the stems of the bottom set of leaves on the coin card.

I'm sure there's more....this looks like one of those things that, if you leave it and come back to it, it says more....

ETA: If I have to put an interpretation on it (and there's no question :D) I'd say that an act of generosity (Star) does a great deal of good (Sun) and flows both ways (VI Deniers pointing in two directions.) The skirt is an opening. The stems are an opening. When things circulate freely, without hoarding, there is usually enough for everyone.
 

franniee

eye Rhymes

Royne de bastons ~ 4 of cups ~ le Fou


She looks so sad, so melancholy. She is there with her baton in hand and unwavering. She is watching him thru the cups - watching him walk away and she is remorseful. She wants him to turn around and come to her. She doesn't want his back to her.

The green in her wand seems to have magically filled the four cups and the sack over the fool's shoulder. She is trying to will him to turn around and join her in cup or two. But as much as she is staring him down his head is elsewhere - his sites are set beyond. She even sent her dog to go chase him down but he doesn't even know the dog exists.

Her red nipples also filled the cups - they filled the cups with her heart. The red on the fool is his shoes.....walking away - giving no attention to where the red came from and what it took to get it. He is trampling her heart - her affections. He doesn't even know he is doing it. I don't believe he has malicious intent.

She has yellow and red and gray in her crown and he has the same on his hat. The queen has a floral looking crown - looks like it coincides with the vines in between the cups and the sprout on the fool's horizon.

If the beast gets the fool's genitals he may turn around and catch her gaze.... one more second and let's see how it goes. There is still hope.... always hope. :heart:

That is what I see.
 

indianstorm

3 card draw-- here we go--

Ozzie Wirth-

5 Pents- 4 wands- Cavalier Pents

hey says the 5 of pents-- i have a lonely coin in the middle-- bring more coins, 4 wands says-- I am only 4 but I am chilled and balanced-- cavalier with a coin in his hand says I'll loan you a coin 5 of Pents-- (this should make you happy).. let me trot over on my horse ( horse has one hoof bent ready to trot in style)..

i see this rhyme as sharing the wealth around-- wealth in question, balance wanted, aid is given..

stormy
 

Hooked on TdM

Found the first thread and article, EE.

Thanks! I'm keeping a copy of them too. :)

Hooked
 

Gavriela

I tried, but it went all terce rima and improv jazz on me.

Rodes-Sanchez - my hand just slipped and when I tried to grab the keyboard back, I'd hit 8d, but that's really not part of the reading.

But we have:

Valet de Deniers--10 Batons--9 Epées

The cool cat with the cool hat, looking o-so-nonchalantly at the coin in his hand. But is it up or down? Look at the belt that flows downward, to the right, where his other hand rests. He isn't looking, but he knows it's there. He's posing confidence, he's even feeling it, but the guy's a fake, even in his fancy red dancing shoes. The stitching on the belt repeats a pattern over and over - the top half of a diamond, as it goes lower and lower on his hip. This guy isn't the playground instructor, but he might be the killer.

And he didn't even notice the ball he dropped. But that doesn't need to concern us. Or does it?

Follow the diamond, that's where it's at, and where does it lead? Look at the next card, the 10 Batons - and there it is, diamond-tight middle in yellow, just like the belt, but this diamond is the real deal. All the batons are held in this structure, the flower stalks curve in to point: You are HERE. It looks strong, but the strength is false. And our man with the plan is looking the other way. He doesn't want to know. But I do.

And then we count down to 9, Epées. And we've got diamonds again all right, but this time at the top and bottom of the card, and they're shattering, they can't hold the swords together. Pressure, the Swords are curving out, it won't hold them. Look! Do you see the one in the middle that's burst through the top?

And when I was reading and rhyming, it came to me, don't trust him, don't do it, because it's all just a house of cards, babe.

If that belongs to anyone here besides me, feel free to grab it.

Sorry for the weird writing - I'm still sick, and the rhythm (and the rhyme) aren't quite back yet.
 

frelkins

Gavriela said:
This guy isn't the playground instructor, but he might be the killer.

This phrase alone is gold. If posts like this are your "bad writing," don't ever stop. Because it's fantastic stuff. :)
 

EnriqueEnriquez

Well,

It is clear that, due to the great responses, I will be working my way into each one of your post for the rest of the week! :) So, please, be patient.


Lets start with Firefrost first exercise:

firefrost said:
Slowly, I felt an enveloping-type force surround me, protecting me. I realised that I was holding myself stiff, so I forced relaxation. My left arm felt really heavy, and then so did my legs. So heavy, yet so grounded and safe.

Look at the floral elements in the 10 of Deniers. It is all in there!

firefrost said:
In my mind I saw myself back at the house where I grew up, in front of a very old mirror that was hung on the wall with a chain. I didn’t see my reflection. There was no-one else in the house.

This paragraph points me to the mirror-like quality of the 10 of Deniers. The cards is in itself a house of mirrors: the 3 coins at the top mirror the 3 coins at the bottom. Two coins at the right mirror the two coins at the left. The card is symmetrical if we divide it either vertically, or horizontally. It also presents four rooms, two with three people, two with two people. A full house although no one can see those who are in the other rooms.

There is also the legend of the 4 suits being linked to the 4 Christian virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude. Prudence is said to be holding a mirror, and Prudence is also represented by by suit of coins-as-mirrors.


firefrost said:
I was going to say that it’s the same either way up, so no reversals, which felt like no going back to any nostalgia, but on a closer inspection I see I was wrong, there are two slight differences. If you look at the card with the X on the left hand side, (which would be the right way up, imho)

Yes.

firefrost said:
the lines on the underside of the top leaves are longer. Also the top seed that has the two red shoots growing out of it is bigger than the underneath one. So it can be reversed! I did turn it over upright, though.

You will notice that all our pips can be reversed. Even so, I personally don’t use reversals. I find they distract me from looking at the eye-rhymes. Besides, I actually look at the whole card sequence upside down, since I like my cards to face the person I am reading for. Just as we see all these things in the cards, the client sees things too! Adding reversals to that mix will make things very confusing. The other thing is that, since I don’t assign any predetermined meaning to each card, but let the meaning be defined by context, there is actually no actual concept to “reverse”.

firefrost said:
I felt encompassed and grounded and safe, and I see plenty of these symbols in the card.

There is the centre flower, with its equal four petals that is surrounded and protected by everything on the card. The two deniers either side of the flower are protected by the stem system and leaves, as are the three at the top and bottom, though not quite so strongly. Actually, that puts in mind a balance. Life has to be balanced. Finally I see the four Deniers on each side protecting the card as a whole.

Excellent!

The 10 of Deniers is one iof my favorite pips. In the Noblet it is very expressive, since the coins are smaller than in the more typical Conver (Grimaud, Jodo-Cam, Hadar, Sanchez& Rodés).

I have little to add since I feel you did very well.

Best,

EE
 

EnriqueEnriquez

indianstorm said:
the card evoked a feeling of visual red and black swirls-- a feeling of void and being strangely at ease. i wondered what swirls were-- concentric with a black dot that appears and disappears and only to reappear-- it is a kind of an illusion -- can hear a colour, taste a sound--

interestingly-- the experience wasn't distressful-- it revealed a calmness to new experience and being at peace with strange sensations- acceptance is what comes to mind. The acceptance that a red swirling voids is just it, a void- where nothing evokes or provokes-- it just appears and then disappears..

now i will turn the card--6 of Cups..

hmm-- looking at the 6 of Cups-- in the Universal-- a lot of red in the goblets-- the vine in the middle has a central fleur with red circle with a black wave in the middle- sort of like how i visualised it--

Very good.

As you may have noticed, there is no right or wrong in this exercise, just as there is no right or wrong on a reading. What we have are levels of success with the revelations we obtain from the cards. I believe the Tarot is an irresistible illusion. It is irresistible because even if we are consciously aware of it being an illusion, the illusion entraps us. Look at this:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...s&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&cd=3

There you will find several optical illusions. If you look into any of these illusions you will see the illusory movement that is being proposed even if you are consciously aware of the experience being illusory. The tarot isn’t an optical illusion, but a cognitive one. It works because it operates under the coordinates of the human mind, and the human mind cannot accept randomness. Our mind search for patters, connexions an analogies in everything it touches. So, the cards will always be telling us: "this is how the universe acknowledges YOU..."

indianstorm said:
i think i must have had an epiphany while in the shower after writing the above-- the illusion of tasting colour and seeing sound-- is called synaesthesia-- a very particular type of hallucination :) the feeling of unprovoking void and the concentrics going away and coming back-- ironically has the same sensation of nostalgia where memories come flooding back which if you have come to terms with-- it would just be a recall of an experience-- non provoking-- just there to be appreciated and recognised-- like any experience-- i would like to think a tarot reader who is able to visualise the meaning of a card-- transalate a symbol to an emotion is an adept synaesthesiologist-- who can visualise the querants emotion or experience and take it from there--..

Brilliant! That is beautiful! That is the idea. We must decant the whole set of rational conceptions we have into a feeling, or an emotion, that expresses what the client is feeling. This is what I mean by going back to that point before the image turned into symbol. Symbols are dead metaphors. We need to make them become alive. But that also implies to take responsibility for our own metaphors. That sinaesthesic process you are describing is ours to make, and we must take whole responsibility for it. We won’t be telling a client certain things because a book we read says that the 6 of coupes means so and so, but because we are seeing these things here and now in an unique moment.

Beautifully done.

Best

EE
 

EnriqueEnriquez

What is going on with all these deniers you are all getting? :)

frelkins said:
I suddenly feel melancholy. Like a love-lorn ache.

Anybody who looks at the Royne de Denier will see that melancholy, which is also beautifully expressed in what you are describing below:

frelkins said:
She gazes down her aquiline nose at her coin with great concern, her mouth set and firm. Her hand seems bigger than her head, all the more to grasp her coin. Her scepter is topped with the fleur de lis, symbol of purity and faith, but it points away from her not towards her. Her crown is tipped with diamonds and a unique 6 pointed star. Her coin isn't making her happy.

I find specially appealing the way the yellow coin rhymes with the yellow fold in the queen’s cape, right under her left arm. The circular shape of the coin gets repeated in the lower portion of that yellow fold, anchoring the image in a diagonal line that goes from the card’s upper left to the card’s lower right corner. Usually a diagonal line is very dynamic, but this is not the case with this card, because the scepter is also suggesting a diagonal in the opposite direction, from the card’s upper right corner to the card’s lower left corner. The scepter only draws half of that diagonal, yet this is strong enough to suggest a huge X in the whole composition. That’s the language of the image makers talking! She is visually ‘canceled’, stuck in her aching, as if she were longing for what she already has.

Best,

EE