the camoin method

nuttyprofessor

I just received the ISIS version. It went very easily through PayPal, and it took only 5 days! They are beautiful cards, and the light colors work well for my mood.

This problem and text I presented yesterday in the TdM forum, but I don't expect to get a lot of response, as it has a lot less viewers than this forum. The thing is this:

The artist has given the personages lively eyes, and the recommendation is to give meaning to the direction into which they are looking. Using the direction of the face feels very natural to me, as the cards get more of a personality.

However, the images look to the left, right and forward. It seems this results in an interpretative bias, because two left looking cards will never face each other, like with a left and right looking couple, and a forward looking card will never take a stance towards another card.

Am I too mathematical, or do I have a point?
 

madhatter00o

Reading with this TdM usually involves directional aspecting, so it's quite important to notice which directions the figures in the cards are gazing.

The left side of the card (and the relational left in the spread) is usually associated with receptivity/passivity and the past.

The right side of the card (and the relational right in the spread) is usually associated with activity and the future.

If, to use the example you mentioned, two figures are looking to the left, you can interpret it as a heavy focus on receptivity/passivity or retrospect (looking at the past).

Alternatively, you can interpret it as one figure (the one on the right) looking at the other figure (the one on the left), but the left figure is ignoring/doesn't realize the right figure's attention because s/he is too focused on something that happened in the past.

Ultimately, it all depends on what you see in the cards and the intuitive pulls you're feeling during the reading.
 

Tanga

How interesting.

I've always sort of wondered about that - when people point out to me that so-and-so are looking to the left, so it means it's in the past, and things like this.
But... I think at the end of the day, it's up to you to decide, as there are of course, no set rules that you have to stick to a particular idea. And I always think readings are a bit of an exploration, because with so many possible interpretations you have to "feel your way" to finding the one that best "fits" in a helpful manner for the querent.

Sorry - not much more to say than this.
 

nuttyprofessor

When a card is looking to his neighbour, as a rule I would like to combine their meanings, e.g. the reversed Fool left of the Pope could be a nutty professor. However, a neutral card like the Wheel of Fortune can't be combined with a Lovers Card or pipcard, because it is looking in no particular direction.
 

Tyldwick

I'm not totally familiar with the Camoin Method. Do you incorporate reversals into your readings? To me this is the obvious way to mix up the facings; two figures looking the same direction will suddenly be facing each other if one is reversed.
 

worstofthewurst

Yoav Ben-Dov discusses this quite a bit in his "Open Reading" book. Additionally, Ben-Dov was a student of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who created the Camoin deck in collaboration with Philippe Camion. In his book, Jodorowsky goes into greater details about directionality of cards, and has a nice section on pairs of cards that develops this feature quite a bit.
 

Barleywine

As far as left or right facing, I use the common notion that left means "toward the past" and right means "toward the future." The "outward-facing" court cards are an interesting conundrum. Since I mainly read with the Celtic Cross, in which there are always vertical as well as horizontal dimensions, I decided to treat the outward-facing cards - those with no suggestive "body language" to go by - as looking toward the card above when they're upright, and toward the card below if they're reversed. This obviously wouldn't work in line spreads unless you give "up" and "down" specific meanings (like maybe focusing on conscious or subconscious factors?). I've read through The Open Reading twice now but don't recall much about the facing discussed in it. Lisa Boswell had an excellent site for reading the Grand Etteilla cards that covered court card facing in a detailed and interesting way that incorporated reversals, but the link to the site seems to be broken now.
 

worstofthewurst

I've read through The Open Reading twice now but don't recall much about the facing discussed in it.

I could be confounding a few things I read together at the same time! Regardless, both are good complements to the Camoin dynamic reading system.
 

FriendlyFool

I have been using reversals as a way to free the cards from this predicament. I read with rehearsed cards but do not brand them as negative. They simply display different information.


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