Well, as with so many other things, it depends upon the meaning you imbue them with. After all, ultimately, they're just cards, right? Pretty pictures, with numbers and symbols on them. I use them, and most people I know use them, as focusing tools for the mind. They can be a way to "talk" with your unconscious mind, or with "the universe" or "god" or whatever you choose to frame it as. Using the Rider-Waite deck, the most traditional, it helps to understand Medieval thought a bit, where Death was not feared in the same way that we fear it now, for instance, but embraced as just another part of life. Likewise, the idea of a King is a more day-to-day thing to the average medieval person, and automatically would invoke imagery that we probably don't have, and would have to learn (or choose not to engage with). So we moderners tend to overlay the cards with OUR meanings, which are different. To try to understand them as something from which to get ANSWERS is shortsighted in my opinion, much in the same way that I think people who try to get ANSWERS from the Bible are short sighted. From either of these, one gets QUESTIONS for further contemplation.
Given much smaller communities and political units, kings were probably more of a real presence then than, say the mayor of Palo Alto is today... even though 90,000 people would have populated a nice-sized medieval kingdom.
Looking at an online version, it seems to me that the card descriptions each have several interrelated strands of meaning, and I tend to pluck one or two of these to form broader, fuzzier patterns with the other cards. Of course, that's easy when they're explained on a website... ;).
Yes to all of that. Card readings are a matter of the overall picture as well as the individual meanings of the cards. So while "Death" for instance could mean an actual death, it's more likely to mean some sort of radical change, and that will be apparent with the cards surrounding it in the reading.
If you want a head-twisting experience sometime, ask abenn to do a reading for you. She's amazing. Of course, she doesn't actually need the cards (she can "download straight from her pineal gland" as she sometimes calls it), but YOU might. I know it's easier for me to remember some of what she says if I can write a reading down and look at it again later.
Me, I'd be farting around more like you apparently were with the on-line stuff. I'd need to look up the meanings of the individual cards, and then try to put them all together in some sort of mental pattern. Much slower than someone who's really good and experienced at it. But I'd still be willing to do it sometime, if you wish, just as a demonstration.
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Date: 2005-05-31 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-03 03:31 pm (UTC)Looking at an online version, it seems to me that the card descriptions each have several interrelated strands of meaning, and I tend to pluck one or two of these to form broader, fuzzier patterns with the other cards. Of course, that's easy when they're explained on a website... ;).
no subject
Date: 2005-06-03 04:17 pm (UTC)If you want a head-twisting experience sometime, ask
Me, I'd be farting around more like you apparently were with the on-line stuff. I'd need to look up the meanings of the individual cards, and then try to put them all together in some sort of mental pattern. Much slower than someone who's really good and experienced at it. But I'd still be willing to do it sometime, if you wish, just as a demonstration.