Nemia
Maybe I'm hyper-sensitive but some of the "rules" for court cards in groups irk me because of their gender stereotyping, like in the OP's example. More than one queen - gossip or rivalry. More than one king - important men. I smell some distrust against powerful females in such "rules".
Some tarot writers like Katz and Goodwin, whose books are very interesting otherwise, try to find a shortcut in one of their books by treating tarot like Lenormand - they assign keywords so you can build sentences. Can't even remember which book it was. If that was all there is to tarot, it wouldn't interest me for more than a week. IMO, two queens in a spread can mean so many different things, depending on the spread, the question, the number of other cards, their suits, their context, the birth sign and gender identity of the querent etc - how can one keyword contain all that?
I see tarot as an art form, i.e., the artist chooses which rules to follow. There are many different "schools" nowadays. I personally like to expand my background knowledge of esoteric teachings like astrology, kabbalah, alchemy, symbols, mythology etc all the time because even if I don't use it directly in a reading, it feeds my ability to connect to the cards intuitively.
And don't underestimate LWBs - some are really good and interesting. I always read them, and I keep them with the decks, each in their bag.
And like Nisaba, I keep my own rules: no "private eye" or gossip questions, no return questions when no time has passed since the last reading about the same topic, no yes-or-no questions, no questions that are based on the assumption that the querent is a helpless victim of inevitable fate.
Over time, the cards have slowly developed their own "faces" for me, and I hope to be one time able to read, like Nisaba, with every deck thrown at me. I'm not quite there yet :-(
Some tarot writers like Katz and Goodwin, whose books are very interesting otherwise, try to find a shortcut in one of their books by treating tarot like Lenormand - they assign keywords so you can build sentences. Can't even remember which book it was. If that was all there is to tarot, it wouldn't interest me for more than a week. IMO, two queens in a spread can mean so many different things, depending on the spread, the question, the number of other cards, their suits, their context, the birth sign and gender identity of the querent etc - how can one keyword contain all that?
I see tarot as an art form, i.e., the artist chooses which rules to follow. There are many different "schools" nowadays. I personally like to expand my background knowledge of esoteric teachings like astrology, kabbalah, alchemy, symbols, mythology etc all the time because even if I don't use it directly in a reading, it feeds my ability to connect to the cards intuitively.
And don't underestimate LWBs - some are really good and interesting. I always read them, and I keep them with the decks, each in their bag.
And like Nisaba, I keep my own rules: no "private eye" or gossip questions, no return questions when no time has passed since the last reading about the same topic, no yes-or-no questions, no questions that are based on the assumption that the querent is a helpless victim of inevitable fate.
Over time, the cards have slowly developed their own "faces" for me, and I hope to be one time able to read, like Nisaba, with every deck thrown at me. I'm not quite there yet :-(