The Great Card Memorization War!

[mrsjvan]

Teal,

Thanks for your comments. They were encouraging for me. I will stick with it and try to discipline myself to put it into words. I, like you, read mostly for myself and don't get the practice of talking it out.

thanks again

mrsjvan

 

[Teal]

You're very welcome. Would it help any if you were to write the thoughts out? That might help the words to come. I know lots of people keep what they call a tarot journal and write out their spreads in them.

 

[Jenny-Li]

To me learning by books isn't the same as memorizing - well, it doesn't have to be at least. Personally I am against memorizing, have been ever since I started, but I have done what many others here have done - read basically everything I could get my hands on, eating the words rather than just reading them...! But my aim in doing that is gaining understanding and inspiration.

How can somebody elses interpretations make any sense to me, when I come from a completely different world (culturally, experience-wise etc, etc) and have a completely different frame of recerence? There's where I may be inspired by other people's writings, but memorizing them isn't going to do me any good. I have to make the meanings my own, making sense in my world, or I will be lost when doing the reading anyway.

As some of you know, I've recently acquired the Cosmic Tribe Tarot, and after working solely with RW-clones since I started studying the Tarot, it is very different than the decks I've got used to. So in a way it is a little like starting all over again! In this case I've decided to be as thorough as I can, and therefore I start by asking myself what I really see in the cards, and what I associate that to, based on what I have learned about symbolism in Tarot (and generally, of course), and THEN I turn to the books, the Aeclectic study group etc for additional input and reference. I try not to screw up my own throught by reading up on the cards in advance, but I find even my OWN thoughts gain depth when I read up on what the artist had in mind when creating the card. And that deepened insight is what will stick in my mind, the mix between my own interpretation and the book.

To me this is a great way to work (even though it takes a loooot of time!), and it makes sense to gain knowledge this way, both from inside and outside.

Light and love,
Jenny

 

[Jenny-Li]

Then I got the World Spirit deck, and suddenly I found myself reading the cards like a picture book...

That's exactly what happened when I got that deck, it was an amazing joy ride, all of a sudden the cards almost read themselves!

Jenny

 

[wakeboarder]

Memorizing is bad; Understanding is good; Intuition is the best. It's as simple as that. The only problem is that intuition isn't as natural as memorizing and understanding. Sometimes you just don't get that "feeling". Memorizing is only good if you want to be a robot. It is considered the lowest thought process because even a dog can memorize "poop" means lets go outside so I can go the bathroom. The dog doesn't understand why poop means to go the bathroom, but it does know that is what happens.

Understanding lends itself to intuition because you will be scared of the tarot unless you understand it. If you have fear in you or you are unsure of it, then you will not be focused enough to read it intuitively. You also will never be sure enough of your own intuitiveness (unless you're some kind of zen master or something). Then, even if you don't have that "feeling", you can always fall back on your understanding of the cards. The combination of intuition/understanding is truly the best way to go.

As a youngster myself, I am not truly understanding of the tarot, but I learn more every day (basically from this site) which will allow me to overcome the need for memorization. So, my vote is definately going towards only using basic meanings until you understand the tarot enough to begin to use your intuition.

~Wakeboarder

 

[Khatruman]

Memorization

The idea that a bunch of knowledge must be memorized is what turned me off tarot many years ago. I think one has to just acquire knowledge relationships, study archetypes but not be rigid in interpretation. Get experience and feel about cards. If you memorize books, you tend to pigeon hole meaning.

Peace!

 

[Jewel]

Jenny-Li,

I have been following your work in the Cosmic Tribe study group and love reading your posts. I am gaining a lot of insight through them. I also switched from a RWS based decks to the CT (Robin Wood & Tarot of the Old Path), interestingly enough the CT and I totally got along from day 1. I find it easier to read with than any other deck I own. I also find it quite parallel to tarot itself as it seems like a journey not only of the cards but of human nature ... one that I continually learn from. (Can you tell I love this deck? ). Like you, I have used my intuition with the cards and then gone to the book to deepen my understanding of them, and combined that with what I have learned over the years.

But going back to this thread, you do not memorize, you read, internalize and then apply knowledge. That is also how I learn best.

 

[juice]

Intuition is needed. But if you don't read it is like dealing out blank pieces of paper and saying that is enough. Or, if you don't learn enough about the meanings, memorize at least a little bit, it is a little like saying that talking to people to get their take on the cards is a waste of time. No child grows in a vacuum. There is a rule in writing, something like needing to know what the rules are before you can break them and get away with it. Memorizing is learning the rules in the first place.

You will forget what you think you know about breathing. Now you will "LEARN" to breathe.

Most of the argument is actually a fight over what people think others are doing when they say they are memorizing. I still can't list off the meanings of every card because I'm not memorizing them. I'm MEMORIZING them. One very famous author, I forgot which one, said in an interview that he never learned alphabetical order or how to diagram a sentence.

 

[Talisman]

Here I was, ready to go to war

"One very famous author, I forgot which one, said in an interview that he never learned alphabetical order or how to diagram a sentence." -- Juice

Well of course, that famous author was the ever modest Talisman.

'Lo all,

Oh, boy! Here Rhiannon declares a war and I'm ready to speed off to the battlefield like a little kid off to recess. Whooping and hollering.

But Rhiannon took the wind out of my sails with the very first post in this thread, 'cause I agree with it. Sigh.

I think memorizing things is getting a bad rap in this thread.

Sometimes there is just no better way.

Remember when you were a little kid and had to memorize the multiplication tables? There was just no way around it; you needed sheer brute memorization to be spared adding and subtracting in your mind, or counting on your fingers. But the good thing was, once you had memorized this stuff, you could just forget about it. You had it forever.

I would never suggest that beginners take a new Tarot deck and "memorize" each of 78 cards -- staring at each one until little beads of blood form on their foreheads. That's unnessary. Like trying to hammer a broom straw through a brick.

There's a far easier way to memorize these things, and you guys know what it is.

But if you have an idea why the suite of Wands is different that Swords -- Hey! somewhere along the line you've "memorized" this. The 4 of Wands will have a different meaning than the 4 of Swords, and if your intuition is so powerful it doesn't matter which card you look at, then, as Umbrae has suggested in some of his famous posts, you don't need a Tarot deck anyway. Throw it out the window.

I know a lot of things "memorized" are simply acquired by osmosis, working with the cards. But if you haven't taken the trouble to learn -- yeah, to memorize -- the general ideas and attributes associated with the cards, then your attempts at reading them will be like trying to drink coffee with a fork. Possible, but not the best method.

I think TANSTAAFL sums it up. ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.") You'll often get out of an intellectual endeavor just about what you put into it.

Hey, if I walk slower than you guys, I'll just have to walk longer to get to the same place. But, if I say tha'hell with it, and don't walk at all, I'll end up right where I started.

But -- here's the good news! Memory is like intuition, in that the more you use it and exercise it, the better it gets.

And memorization isn't really mindless. You'll find that committing ideas to memory vastly increases your understanding of them.

Talisman
**************
"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous." -- Confucius

 

[Alex]

does the deck matter that much?

Rhiannon

I see those pictures as a starting point to making associations rather than conveying "the meaning" of the card. Given that every card has a range of meanings compatible with the combination number/suit, every figure on display is somewhere on that range; but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to the interpreation itself.

Because I've learned with the Mythic deck first, I've been surprised to be able to offer a few "right on" interpretations on that forum, when the person had originally read with a R-W deck. The reason: a different deck offers an alternative association you tend not to consider when looking at a fixed picture.

If the pictoric deck is "serious", knowing the suit association should suffice: no memorization is necessary because the figure serves as a reference to associations only. Of course I only found that out somewhat late, when I'd wasted my time already, with keywords and such. However, as I've said before, as "starting points" pictures also limit one's ability to interpret the card in certain situations.

The advantage I see in the R-W deck is that most persons portrayed there are relatively genderless, they can be seen as man or woman. The problem I see with it: we tend to get caught in those figures and forgett, they do not contain, but are contained in "the range of meanings".

A good excercize is to compare picutes accross decks. Another one, to read with a RE deck of cards for a while.

So spoke Alex, the beginner ;-)))))))

Alex.

I also find myself not commenting on certain posts in the "your readings" section. If the person is using a deck that is RWS based, then I can reply with some confidence that I may have some idea of what I'm talking about. If they are using marseilles or thoth, I don't reply. I have no experience at all with either of those types of decks. Yet another reason to include the deck you are using in your posts, folks!