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some_stars) wrote2009-08-22 05:36 pm
some_stars) wrote2009-08-22 05:36 pm
Anatomy of a Tarot Reading
in step by step format with, i predict, many many lengthy digressions.
So here is how I do it. I wait until I have privacy and time, am not actively sleepy, and feel the need to do one--it's coming out to a handful per year, right now. I don't do it a lot because it takes a LOT of energy/time to analyze; I'm still working on one I started like a week ago.
1. Get cards, cloth, book, piece of quartz or some other pretty rock. This last reading I brought some sage, which calmed me down when I smelled it. What I want is calm and clarity. And calm.
2. Shuffle cards 3 times, cut them a lot. Spread them all out on the floor and jumble them around if I feel like it.
3. Sniff whatever scents I brought and look at the quartz and try to calm down and focus. Rocks are good because they have a million tiny details and the light reflecting makes it easy to get lost in looking at them and they feel good to hold.
4. Talk out loud about why I'm doing the reading, what I want help with. Be as clear as I can--not in a yes/no question way but making sure I'm consciously, specifically aware of what I'm asking, so I can understand the results in that specific context and also just because I'm very bad at articulating in my head the way I feel about things or even that I feel about things.
5. Hold the deck for a minute. Sniff some more scented stuff maybe. Slowly lay out the cards on the cloth and announce each one. I do the Celtic Cross, and I like to use traditional or traditional-sounding descriptions with the understanding that it's a metaphor and the position has several different possible meanings. The feeling of ritual and connection with history/other people makes it easier for me to let go of my intense irony shield and actually feel stuff. These are what I say:
This is you/This is your heart
This covers you, crosses you (I am departing a bit drastically from orthodoxy here but this interpretation makes more intrinsic sense to me)
This is beneath you/under you.
This is behind you.
This is your crown/this is above you.
This is before you.
After laying out the circle portion I pause and look at the cards. I'm not analyzing yet, just taking everything in and feeling my immediate instinctive responses. Then I do the staff portion:
This is your mirror. (I'm still figuring out exactly what to do with this position, how to differentiate it from the first card. The crucial point is that it's outward--the traditional interpretation is 'you as others see you' although that's too narrow for my purposes. 'Mirror' is what I used for this last reading and I think I will probably stick with it.)
This is your house.
This is your key.
This is what you're pointing towards.
In analyzing I am really really really big on the difference between the circle and the staff portions. The most important factor in my readings is the four elemental energies--elemental of course being a poetic/natural-at-the-time way to describe different ways of being. Cups/water/emotion/inwardness/receptiveness/passivity, for instance. (Obviously there is all kinds of gendered unpleasantness associated with this stuff but I feel comfortable using it for my own purposes. My last reading had a massive ton of wands, which have nothing particularly to do with masculinity; they're about creative energy and activity and DOING and outwardness and fire.)
So with the CC spread, it's a unified whole containing two parts (and the cross contanis a smaller cross within it), one more inward-turning, one more outward-turning. Two aspects of the same person and the same problem and the same situation.
Okay, so after doing my initial look, focus, feel at the layout, I do a quick sketch of what's where, and then I start writing down my initial analysis of each card. I haven't memorized the deck yet but I'm a lot more comfortable/familiar with it than I used to be, so I'd say my interpretations are anywhere from 50-70% me and the rest from the awesome book that has been made from that site I linked to above. I love it because it's very matter of fact and offers a wide range of meanings for each card and position but not randomly, they all make sense and are actually useful in readings.
Things that come into play besides "what is the meaning of this card": its position in the spread, the other cards--do I have a lot of wands? an unusual number of major arcana, or reversals, or cards with violence?--and its relation to the card(s) it's linked with, like 3 and 5 in the CC, and just generally what I feel and intuit looking closely at the image. The Rider-Waite deck is a LOT richer and more detailed and emotional and evocative than it seems at first.
And of course I bring my own history with the cards to each new reading. I have a ~relationship~ as it were with the Strength card--it was a kind of silly numerology thing but it clicked with me SO HARD and so fast that I knew I needed to hang on to it--and so in other cards where there are two people, or a persona nd an animal, or a person vs another group, I often bring that dynamic into my reading where I wouldn't think of the card that way at all if it were for another person. I really love the cards with more than a solo person on them, actually, because it makes me THINK--which of these am I? or am I the relationship between them, or am I not in this card? What exactly is going on between them? There's so much room for interpretation/projection in the RW deck.
After analyzing each card then it's basically just a process of aggregation and creating narratives. What do the circle/cross cards say, as a whole? the staff? the whole reading?
And actually all of that takes place over the next few days or even weeks. After I record my initial reading of each card and have more or less gotten down my thoughts, I put the cards away. I kiss them and thank them one by one--sometimes I've already done this if there was a card that resonated particularly strongly with me--and the same for the rock and anything else I brought. I try to make the thanks specific if I can but I don't stress over it. Then I put everything away and back where it belongs, and I WAIT at least a half hour before starting the next phase of analysis. Usually I wait until the next day.
Okay, that's all I can think of right now,, but as this is extremely haphazard I'm sure I've left out something large and obvious. Feel free to ask questions!
So here is how I do it. I wait until I have privacy and time, am not actively sleepy, and feel the need to do one--it's coming out to a handful per year, right now. I don't do it a lot because it takes a LOT of energy/time to analyze; I'm still working on one I started like a week ago.
1. Get cards, cloth, book, piece of quartz or some other pretty rock. This last reading I brought some sage, which calmed me down when I smelled it. What I want is calm and clarity. And calm.
2. Shuffle cards 3 times, cut them a lot. Spread them all out on the floor and jumble them around if I feel like it.
3. Sniff whatever scents I brought and look at the quartz and try to calm down and focus. Rocks are good because they have a million tiny details and the light reflecting makes it easy to get lost in looking at them and they feel good to hold.
4. Talk out loud about why I'm doing the reading, what I want help with. Be as clear as I can--not in a yes/no question way but making sure I'm consciously, specifically aware of what I'm asking, so I can understand the results in that specific context and also just because I'm very bad at articulating in my head the way I feel about things or even that I feel about things.
5. Hold the deck for a minute. Sniff some more scented stuff maybe. Slowly lay out the cards on the cloth and announce each one. I do the Celtic Cross, and I like to use traditional or traditional-sounding descriptions with the understanding that it's a metaphor and the position has several different possible meanings. The feeling of ritual and connection with history/other people makes it easier for me to let go of my intense irony shield and actually feel stuff. These are what I say:
This is you/This is your heart
This covers you, crosses you (I am departing a bit drastically from orthodoxy here but this interpretation makes more intrinsic sense to me)
This is beneath you/under you.
This is behind you.
This is your crown/this is above you.
This is before you.
After laying out the circle portion I pause and look at the cards. I'm not analyzing yet, just taking everything in and feeling my immediate instinctive responses. Then I do the staff portion:
This is your mirror. (I'm still figuring out exactly what to do with this position, how to differentiate it from the first card. The crucial point is that it's outward--the traditional interpretation is 'you as others see you' although that's too narrow for my purposes. 'Mirror' is what I used for this last reading and I think I will probably stick with it.)
This is your house.
This is your key.
This is what you're pointing towards.
In analyzing I am really really really big on the difference between the circle and the staff portions. The most important factor in my readings is the four elemental energies--elemental of course being a poetic/natural-at-the-time way to describe different ways of being. Cups/water/emotion/inwardness/receptiveness/passivity, for instance. (Obviously there is all kinds of gendered unpleasantness associated with this stuff but I feel comfortable using it for my own purposes. My last reading had a massive ton of wands, which have nothing particularly to do with masculinity; they're about creative energy and activity and DOING and outwardness and fire.)
So with the CC spread, it's a unified whole containing two parts (and the cross contanis a smaller cross within it), one more inward-turning, one more outward-turning. Two aspects of the same person and the same problem and the same situation.
Okay, so after doing my initial look, focus, feel at the layout, I do a quick sketch of what's where, and then I start writing down my initial analysis of each card. I haven't memorized the deck yet but I'm a lot more comfortable/familiar with it than I used to be, so I'd say my interpretations are anywhere from 50-70% me and the rest from the awesome book that has been made from that site I linked to above. I love it because it's very matter of fact and offers a wide range of meanings for each card and position but not randomly, they all make sense and are actually useful in readings.
Things that come into play besides "what is the meaning of this card": its position in the spread, the other cards--do I have a lot of wands? an unusual number of major arcana, or reversals, or cards with violence?--and its relation to the card(s) it's linked with, like 3 and 5 in the CC, and just generally what I feel and intuit looking closely at the image. The Rider-Waite deck is a LOT richer and more detailed and emotional and evocative than it seems at first.
And of course I bring my own history with the cards to each new reading. I have a ~relationship~ as it were with the Strength card--it was a kind of silly numerology thing but it clicked with me SO HARD and so fast that I knew I needed to hang on to it--and so in other cards where there are two people, or a persona nd an animal, or a person vs another group, I often bring that dynamic into my reading where I wouldn't think of the card that way at all if it were for another person. I really love the cards with more than a solo person on them, actually, because it makes me THINK--which of these am I? or am I the relationship between them, or am I not in this card? What exactly is going on between them? There's so much room for interpretation/projection in the RW deck.
After analyzing each card then it's basically just a process of aggregation and creating narratives. What do the circle/cross cards say, as a whole? the staff? the whole reading?
And actually all of that takes place over the next few days or even weeks. After I record my initial reading of each card and have more or less gotten down my thoughts, I put the cards away. I kiss them and thank them one by one--sometimes I've already done this if there was a card that resonated particularly strongly with me--and the same for the rock and anything else I brought. I try to make the thanks specific if I can but I don't stress over it. Then I put everything away and back where it belongs, and I WAIT at least a half hour before starting the next phase of analysis. Usually I wait until the next day.
Okay, that's all I can think of right now,, but as this is extremely haphazard I'm sure I've left out something large and obvious. Feel free to ask questions!