can we make our own rules in tarot?

yogiman said:

But don't we all crave for a little bit of earth element? I don't like upswings and downswings of confidence in what i am doing. Crowley stated that belief should be replaced by science. The same topic i placed at the thoth tarot forum http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=204046, and to my utter disappointment i hardly got any reply. The golden dawn offers a system of astrology interwoven with tarot. Are there so few golden dawn/thelema fans here?

Could we create our own tarot, make our own pictures, card 1 a tree, card 2 a dustbin, card 3 a laptop ..., and forget about 22 trumps and make it into 19 trumps, and 32 minors instead of 40? Like Carl Jung said, we are no tabula rasa when we are born, but there is some apriori order (which should be fluent).

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But you seem to be forgetting that tarot has been around for a lot longer than the Golden Dawn... All the esoteric stuff are rules that someone has put onto tarot - they weren't there before.

For me, tarot has a system and that system is based on numbers and elements with the addition of 22 Trumps and that's it.. No esoteric stuff, no Quabbalah, no astrology, no 'Lord of this that' - as far as I'm concerned, those are rules written by someone who liked that sort of thing and found those rules worked for them and for others who were interested in the same stuff they were.. Those rules don't work for me so I don't use them..

It bothers me that people treat the Golden Dawn system as the only system and as the original one as if that is somehow at the core of what tarot is when I really think that it's not..

I think once you start using cards that have no system or one not related to number, element and 22 Trumps, you get into the realms of oracle decks that are great for those who use them but that aren't tarot at all and don't claim to be.

yogiman said:

....Could we create our own tarot, make our own pictures, card 1 a tree, card 2 a dustbin, card 3 a laptop ..., and forget about 22 trumps and make it into 19 trumps, and 32 minors instead of 40? Like Carl Jung said, we are no tabula rasa when we are born, but there is some apriori order (which should be fluent).

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Ideally, for a Magician, you would design your own deck, Trad GD was to be coloured in by the owner ... what you're suggesting are further step/s , you can do what you say, as long as it is a consistent scheme within itself.

When I was about 16 I made A deck (not a tarot deck as such but I wanted to make something different) ... I hit upon the idea of a Qabbalah deck ; I had a card for each sepiroth, , a Tree in each world, so four levels of 10, then I started to add the 22 paths and make cards and .... DOH! ... well, I was only 16 )

Now I have my own 'Tree' a rearrangement that helps me map out the psyche , better than the Tree of Life , some like it (especially if I get a chance to explain how it works ... and they have at least 1/2 a brain) some don't; " How Can Mars be down there? It's supposed to be up here" < tap tap> ... " supposed to be ??" (curious; that type finds it hard to say why it should be there)

If you just chose random numbers and objects IMO that wouldn't be how it works. You either need to have affinities or associations with the symbols , or learn them.

Tarot seems to lend itself to those sequences (maybe just because we are used to them?) so I wouldn't interfere, other number sets of associations are in different systems, so if I want to use a system based on another number I will use that system instead of inventing a sequence into tarot e.g. 2 , dualism, 3, The gunas, 4 elemental theory, 5 elemental theory with spirit, 7 planets and chakras. 10, maths, 12 astrological houses , 22 Cabbalah, 64 I ching.

I wouldn't make a 22 based I Ching ... I would use Tarot instead.

Metafizzypop said:

That's what I was thinking. Maybe rules do exist, but it's the rules that readers make up for themselves. What people are doing is developing their own style. If they don't do that, the cards won't resonate with them. They need a reading technique that jives with their personality. So yeah, making up your own rules is the only rule.

Oh wait, there's one more.

Shuffle the cards before you lay them out.

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Systems, people have systems for reading, they learn systems, you are describing a system. The rules are more physical in nature, that being 78 cards, 22 of them major, 1-10 and courts, in four suits.

I actually could read tarot before I joined this forum. The unknown is a real bliss. I never knew about astrology and Qabbalah (still don't) but the thought of learning it all (I don't consider myself that young anymore) is completely paralyzing me. For someone like me, I think, it's the best to follow the easiest rule of all - one's intuition.

Sulis said:

But you seem to be forgetting that tarot has been around for a lot longer than the Golden Dawn... All the esoteric stuff are rules that someone has put onto tarot - they weren't there before.........

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Well, if one wants to get technical, tarot was just a deck of playing cards before people 'globbed' (tarotbear's term) divinatory meanings onto them. They weren't there before.

ETA. Moreover, Wirth, Etteilla, de Gebelin, and Levi, among others, all contributed to esoteric tarot years before the Golden Dawn even existed.

I agree with TCO that the 'esoteric stuff' = systems

Rules = as he outlined : thread topic : what we were talking about

Some posts are about the 'rules' and some aren't.

[Do I detect some 'oh so subtle' GD / 'esoteric tarot' bashing up there ? ]

Aina said:

I actually could read tarot before I joined this forum. The unknown is a real bliss. I never knew about astrology and Qabbalah (still don't) but the thought of learning it all (I don't consider myself that young anymore) is completely paralyzing me. For someone like me, I think, it's the best to follow the easiest rule of all - one's intuition.

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Not so quick. I can remember that when i was young, that i was preoccupied who god was. Often i was boring with friends, because i tended to drift away towards the same topic. I studied hinduism, taoism, buddhism and i still kept puzzled. In one way or another, when i got to know qabalah (via tarot), i think deep within some of my questions have been answered, because since then my obsession has disappeared.

In a lot of ways Aleister Crowley is very different from me, but that makes it interesting. You can widen your horizon and "being" by influences that are very different from your own narrow circle. That could be the benefit of using some tarot system. Carl Jung said that the psychologist cannot help the client further than himself, and likely this also holds true for tarot. When you just rely on your intuition, your intuition will be dependend on your mental luggage, which on its turn decides your world view and awareness.

I believe a 'formwork' is needed to have 'clear' intuition.

Accepting intuition on face value without some type of objective framework is a subjective potential trap.

Just one e.g., how does one know that psychological imbalances or 'certain tendencies' aren't influencing intuition ?

Note; I said "some type of " .

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 which doesn't have a world view or ego. 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. Your philosophies should be your own, developed through personal experiences 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.

They do what now?

Blank cards ???

I know someone who does readings with a blank mind ... maybe they could meet up?