{"id":2971,"date":"2015-11-05T17:56:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T23:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=2971"},"modified":"2015-11-05T18:21:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T00:21:51","slug":"tarot-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=2971","title":{"rendered":"Tarot Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The past 4 years-ish of studying the Marseille Tarot has been mostly an academic pursuit, with minimal practical application. Occasionally I’d do readings for other people, attend workshops, have readings done for me to gain insight on other people’s methods etc… The biggest thing that stood in my way was this feeling of incomplete knowledge and the opaqueness of the Marseille’s minor arcana. <\/p>\n

For those of you who are less familiar, the minor arcana are (“is”? Someone help me with my grammar) the group of cards that closely resemble common playing cards, with numbers correlating with symbols [coins, cups, wands, swords = diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades(I think!)] along with the court cards: Pages, Knights, Queens, Kings. <\/p>\n

In the Marseille deck, the minor cards are intimidating to assign meaning, because of the lack of relatable human representation and the initial impression of similarity between say, a 4 of Coins, to a 6 of Coins. It looks like the same card with two more coins added! <\/p>\n

Trying to decode this shit and internalize it has been tripping me up for years and preventing me from using the entire deck in readings. That’s sort of what makes the RWS deck so revolutionary and accessible, because Waite and Smith managed to re-envision the minors to make them immediately understandable. <\/p>\n

For example, here’s the Marseille 8 of Coins on the left, compared to the RWS 8 of Coins on the Right. <\/p>\n

\n\"IMG_1793\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nA beginning Tarot reader wouldn’t know how to start interpreting the card on the left, whereas the RWS version leads your imagination with much less resistance. Is it because of our human narcissism? <\/p>\n

Anyway I’ve been re-reading Yoav Ben-Dov’s “Tarot – The Open Reading” and really getting a new sense of how to read from the entire Marseille deck. For the past couple weeks I’ve been doing full deck readings for myself based on a three card spread, one additional card from the bottom of the deck for further insight, and then pulling more cards as I see fit until the sequence feels like a complete idea. The method I’m using is basically Ben-Doav’s of looking at the spread as an entire picture where each card is intertwined and speaking to the other cards, rather than isolated messages of “past” “present” “obstacle” etc… This makes reading the minors much easier, although a bit of familiarity with numerology and occult symbols certainly helps. It also was an important step for me to internalize this idea that no meanings are fixed. The story of each card changes in the context of who is being read for, and the spread. That’s what makes the cards such a work of genius. <\/p>\n

I’ve also been experimenting with reversals, and have decided (like Jodorowsky) against them. I got some interesting readings from incorporating reversals but ultimately I don’t think they help all that much, and subtly reduce the nuance of a reading. <\/p>\n

My challenge in drawing these things, is deciding how to approach the minors: whether I will try to radically interpret the opaque Marseille into more accessible images, which could limit their potential meaning, or honor their original image. I’m leaning heavily toward interpreting, since it will be a fun and challenging exercise, and also since the Marseille will always be there to use. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past 4 years-ish of studying the Marseille Tarot has been mostly an academic pursuit, with minimal practical application. Occasionally I’d do readings for other people, attend workshops, have readings done for me to gain insight on other people’s methods etc… The biggest thing that stood in my way was this feeling of incomplete knowledge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2976,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions\/2976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}