can we make our own rules in tarot?

ravenest

I like all of your post and ideas

JoyousGirl said:
Yes I think we can make our own rules in Tarot. It is a focal point for our intuition like a crystal ball, a black mirror, sheep entrails, the shape of clouds or whatever item you choose. There's someone around here who does readings with blank cards.

I believe that at some level everyone everywhere knows everything but it's this veil or abyss of materiality and ego that blinds us. The cards take our mind off the world view and awareness directing our attention away from our prejudices to the place where our all knowing selves can have "a-ha!" moments.

We can learn about this or that system, and each card can have 1,000,000 meanings or symbols associated with it, but ultimately the meanings, symbols or messages that pop into your head for that particular reading is your intuition

up to now .... where well, I still like it but I question it ?

JoyousGirl said:
which doesn't have a world view .

as I think it certainly can ... some studies suggest that

JoyousGirl said:
Maybe that's why intuition is sometimes incomprehensible - probably to escape the clutches of the ego and intellectual arrogance. It provides pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that we need to put together.

You do with the Tarot what feels right to you.

And this bit seems to support what I said ...

JoyousGirl said:
Your philosophies should be your own, developed through personal experiences

I think personal experience and world view 'feed and fertilize ' each other

JoyousGirl said:
that you can relate to the cards. We all have personal links to the "divine", and tarot is just one way to connect live to that link. Crowley, Waite and countless others created their own rules and most likely advocated we do the same.

"Most likely"

is that a guess ?

I got the impression they suggested a firm ground-working in the basics from which to understand how to adapt and create a personal system upon certain foundations.

That's where their rules came from, the, or based on the, traditions they were in and studying, they then adapted them ...

Some have suggested the following as justification for making up your own stuff;

" These rituals need not be slavishly imitated; on the contrary the student should do nothing the object of which he does not understand; also, if he have any capacity whatever, he will find his own crude rituals more effective than the highly polished ones of other people." Liber O - Crowley.

But it needs to be read in context.

E.g. Liber O gives great detail on the basic groundwork and things needed to be understood and certain practices one needs to uptake and precautions and things to be aware of, yet in the middle is this is that above quote.

The warning is on slavishly imitating, it isn't an encouragement to make up your own rules.

It doesn't say to throw the baby out with the bath water . The same with tarot; Crowley gives the OOTK , and the same would apply; here is the example, adapt it if you will.

I have never seen or read where Waite or Crowley ever said; just chuck out all the rules and use intuition.

tarotbear

Maybe 'RULES' was just the wrong choice of the word in English ... perhaps it could have been 'decisions,' 'meanings,' or 'interpretations.'

After all - there are some 'rules' - you have to take the cards out of the box, or unwrap them from their storage container, you have to shuffle them at least once - or cut them instead, and you have to take at least one of them out. The cards can do none of these things themselves.

What you do after that is totally up to you.

If the Three of Swords pops up and you see it as a 'triple by-pass operation,' and I see it as 'this is the third time he stabbed you in the heart - get rid of him,' and the next person sees it as 'the sun will come out tomorrow' - all of us are right and none of us are wrong.

JoyousGirl

ravenest said:
I think personal experience and world view 'feed and fertilize ' each other

They do. I suppose I should clarify (though it probably won't): my reference to world view referred to Yogi's comment "your intuition will depend on your mental luggage, which in turn decides your world view and awareness" I think mental luggage affects your personal world view but not your intuition. Intuition's tainted by one's doubting the message, not much else.

ravenest said:
"Most likely" is that a guess ?

Yes. I have read very little of either's written works. I'm sure they have a lot of interesting things to say, but I haven't been drawn to them. Both seemed a little full of themselves.

ravenest said:
That's where their rules came from, the, or based on the, traditions they were in and studying, they then adapted them ...

There was a lot of superstition in tradition in the early days - maybe this is where the rules came from. They probably adapted them to make them appear less bizarre. Also to show their methods as being superior to their former colleague's.

ravenest

tarotbear said:
Maybe 'RULES' was just the wrong choice of the word in English ... perhaps it could have been 'decisions,' 'meanings,' or 'interpretations.'

After all - there are some 'rules' - you have to take the cards out of the box, or unwrap them from their storage container, you have to shuffle them at least once - or cut them instead, and you have to take at least one of them out. The cards can do none of these things themselves.

What you do after that is totally up to you.

If the Three of Swords pops up and you see it as a 'triple by-pass operation,' and I see it as 'this is the third time he stabbed you in the heart - get rid of him,' and the next person sees it as 'the sun will come out tomorrow' - all of us are right and none of us are wrong.

Yep ... agreed TB ... agreed.

ravenest

JoyousGirl said:
They do. I suppose I should clarify (though it probably won't): my reference to world view referred to Yogi's comment "your intuition will depend on your mental luggage, which in turn decides your world view and awareness" I think mental luggage affects your personal world view but not your intuition. Intuition's tainted by one's doubting the message, not much else.

Clarified ... I get it

I just have a variant view, especially the last 3 words.

JoyousGirl said:
Yes. I have read very little of either's written works. I'm sure they have a lot of interesting things to say, but I haven't been drawn to them. Both seemed a little full of themselves.

They are for those of a specific mind set ... a framework for intuition and other things. Now if we were talking about some sort of 'natural magic' and were working to organise an out door Moon rite ... you might find my views quiet different from the world of Waite / Crowley ... and maybe even more refreshing.

May I blow my own trumpet here a bit; at least twice ... on a large major scale ... I have worked in that realm and it came of fantastically, I know because of the praise I got later (in real life, where I could look into their eyes), one was a spring Equinox ritual at a festival ... 300 people attended the ritual I helped to organise, the other a beautiful 'pageant' with costumes, dancers, a harp layer, an orator / bard ... and a great big maypole, about 45 people ... both had children involved. Both a manifestation of a joyous miracle ... outside in the beauty of nature.

Both frameworks are different and valid ways of expression as people are different.

I have found, IME, BOTH paths of expression that have people that seemed 'a little full of themselves'

(I will add that sometimes when I did 'theurgy' my 'pagan friends' had a problem with that ... and when I went 'pagan free-form' some of my 'fellow theurgists' turned up their nose at it)

JoyousGirl said:
There was a lot of superstition in tradition in the early days - maybe this is where the rules came from. They probably adapted them to make them appear less bizarre.

yeah ... maybe originally a lot of stuff had its origin in 'superstition' .

JoyousGirl said:
Also to show their methods as being superior to their former colleague's.

In some cases ... but there are much higher reasons for it as well. I have seen 'superiority battles' with people that ONLY do intuitive stuff with absolutely no regulation though.

Neither side is immune from the insidious intrusion of ego and power struggles IMO
but the structured form seems to try to address that more than the forms with no structure.

SunChariot

yogiman said:
There are numerous positional spreads, and on top of that we have the choice to use reversed cards, in what way to deal with elemental dignities, and how far to stretch the meaning of each card. Seems we can set a rule, and it becomes a tool in the hands of the divinatory gods to ease our way in the tarot labyrinth, or does it?

I can find at least one case which seems to reject this theory, and that is the yes/no question. In case the tarot could answer yes/no questions, even if not completely perfect, we could live in a near perfect world. So the question is: what is wrong with my thinking, and how should we adapt the theory.

To the first part, the title of the thread, absolutely! You are free to make your own rules and decisions anytime you want to, and even to invent totally new methods that no one has ever thought up before. The cards are your tool, so use as you wish. To use in the way that works best for you. If the cards and not doing for you something that you want them to....If you find yourself thinking that you wish your cards had a way to tell you this or that and they don't currently, invent one.

Some of the things that work best for me are things I invented myself. We are always free to do that. Anything that makes you a better reader goes.

I guess it becomes a bit of a compromise, between what rules you set and how the "divinatory gods" choose to answer. Each of use develops our own individual language with them. I don't have rules per se. My idea is that you try lots of different methods and through experience you find what works best for you. Put another way, by trying different things you find out how the cards (divinatory gods) prefer to answer you/send you the answers.

Then when you find a way that works for you, keep doing it,. But I don't have rules per se, in the sense that they are not to be broken. I agree to use certain methods as long as I find they are working well for me, giving me what I want from the cards. If they stop working well, then I will change them. I see even my methods I use as temporary and transitory. I think you evolve over time as a reader. What is the best method for you today, may not be years from now.

About yes/no questions, they don't work well for many readers, myself included. My personal belief in that is that it is not a problem with Tarot, just that they are notoriously hard to answer. Pretty much all yes/no questions are about the future. And the future is changeable. Other there just IS no yes no answer. Frequently it is a solid maybe. And even more confusingly (since the future is NOT set in stone and is changeable), often the truthful answer is simply that I if X happens YES the event will happen. And if Y happens then NO the event will happen. If the future is not yet set, it is not known for sure if X or Y will happen so the cards just can't answer.

When you ask in another format, eg instead of asking for example: "Will Joe ask me to the dance?", asking instead "What can you tell me about if Joe will ask me to the dance?" THEN you give the cards the change to TELL you that only if X happens he will.

But, the way I see it, that is not a sing that there is anything wrong with how the cards work. It is just the nature of the future that it can not always be pinned down definitively in advance.

My opinion is that yes if you set a rule of how you plan to use the cards, eg which method of reversals you will use, the cards will answer you in that way, so yes I believe that you set things in motion by doing so so that the answers come to you in that format. I agree with all this. I agree with your theory.

But in another sense, if you ask the cards to answer something that is unanswerable as you asked it, things will not go too well. We need to stick to questions that are answering in the format we asked them.

Eg if you ask why someone is angry at us, and the person is not angry, how can the cards tell you the reason why?

Or If you demand a yes or no answer from the cards and the answer is yes if this happens and no if that happens and it is not yes sure which will happen....again logically how can they answer with a simple yes or no when it might still be either?

It just kind of boils down to understanding the cards and how they work and not asking them things that may not be answerable in the format you asked them.

Babs

yogiman

SunChariot said:
. Pretty much all yes/no questions are about the future.

Thanks for your help, but this one i don't swallow.

There is the Jung vs Freud controversy about the disguising mechanism of dreams. Jung remarks rightly that dreams don't disguise, because the subconscious is unscrupulously honest like nature. In the same way i think we can associate tarot with nature, and nature is curved. The yes/no question goes against the nature of tarot, because the nature of yes/no is straight.

daphne

yogiman said:
and nature is curved.

What do you mean?

yogiman

Conscious or rational ego is related to the sun, is related to straight and clear difference.
The subconscious (tarot) is related to the moon, is related to curvation and nuance.

Yes/no is binary, and the opposite of nuance.

ravenest

This metaphor suggests that Tarot works in an a modulated wave form, like it is a signal that increases and decreases in strength and frequency; it is always 'on' and information is relayed in a pattern or code within the signal frequency. Yes / no suggests on / off binary or digital signal , little packets of 00110100100111001. Therefore yes / no isn't appropriate for tarot ... maybe I Ching ; solid line or broken line combinations . Tarot is not a divinatory system based on combinations of on / off like the I Ching is.

is that what you meant?

can we make our own rules in tarot?

ravenest

tarotbear

JoyousGirl

ravenest

ravenest

SunChariot

yogiman

daphne

yogiman

ravenest