Tarot on the Brain.

[wolven7]

It's been on my mind, all day, since about 12.10 am.

Do you believe that divinatory processes have anything do teach us about anything?

Think of it this way: The images depicted on a tarot deck have certain meanings that go with them. Those meanings can then be arranged and used as a template to remind yourself of things you may have experienced, and taken in, but not perceived. When you take represent these things as an interlocking matrix of images, symbols, meanings, and interpretations, your mind clarifies certain possibilities, causalities, and modes. You explain a plan, to yourself.

Think of it this way: The Tarot is an ancient system of divination, tapping into the forces of the universe, that display to you the choices upon which you will come, in regards to some question or idea. Symbols, pictures, plans resonate with forces of destiny, fate, perception, and choice.

Where do these things exclude each other?

Perception. How do you want to look at it? Do you want to look at all of it?

It's a game, you know? Learn the rules.

I have to go to class.

Comments

[tribeofone.livejournal.com]

Do you believe that divinatory processes have anything do teach us about anything?

Yes.
In my own experiences I have mostly stopped doing reading for others, unless specificly requested. I got to the point where I truely used the tarot, runes, tea leaves, etc as a blind for the person requesting tth e reading and simply shifted my consciousness into a different gear. I was able to more acurately pick up what ever the card, tokens, leaves, or bones where saying without bothering to use them as a way to justify what I knew in that head space. I have been thinking of reopening that talent as I haven't used it in a while but I find few people want me to get that close to them and when I do they tend to freak a little and decide that others are talking about them behind their backs....

I am also preparing to return to my Tarot training. I think I have mentioned that I use the cards differently than most due to the Temple's training with them they function as a book of knowledge for me and allow me insights into things, in the non-divinatory area.

Of course I am suddenly finding myself dealing with waht I referto as the lost idiot occultists all over the place and getting very annoyed with them.... One of them, I think actually attempted to threaten me with something he lacks the mental disciple to think his way out of a papper bag so I am not concerned just ammused by it....

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Some people don't listen to mine, even when I explain that it's their own stuff telling them things.

Silly people.

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

It's odd. For others, I drop into this state like mentioned above, and don't remember shit when I get back. For myself...I just don't remember much later unless I write it down, and it never seems right, later, if I do. Being horribly out of practice doesn't help things much...It's still the only divination tool that's actually even Sort Of worked for me.

Still, I've always seen the use as coming between, or combining, the two approaches, depending on the state of mind approaching it, the person, and necessity. For me, there's always a hint of the outside influence, but the results would never make much sense if there wasn't anything of yourself to it.

[pallandrome.livejournal.com]

Meh, not really interested in Tarot, or any divination method. As Einstein once said, "I never think of the future, it comes soon enough."


whether or not divination comes from mystic forces or inside your own head doesn't really concern me since I'd rather find out the hard way. I do so love surprises after all. As to if the two are truly one and the same, this is more intruiging. I'd say they probably are. Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is after all indistinguishable from magic, and I do consider psychology a technology. Tarot cards are simply a highly advanced application of it. That's my mind, and point of view anyways. The other is probably just as correct. Or not. Makes no nevermind to me.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I think that it necessarily has roots in the mind, as, without the mind, how could we even approach it?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Right. A mirror is still a mirror, even when it doesn't reflect anything, so in reflecting anything, its self is still there.

[lupusfeuer.livejournal.com]

I think divination, whether through tarot or other methods can be valuable but, like so many other mental diciplines, people tend to get it ass backwards.

Film scholars, art critics and literary analists like to talk at great length about what directors, authors and artists intended to say as if they had some magical insight into the minds of creators that the lay public lacks. In reality the questions should be couched not as, "the artist intended" but rather, "this manifestation of art reveals," since, ultimately, virtually every utterance of human conciousness is merely a happy accident.

Divination is much the same in that there is much to be learned but the act of learning is often approached from an, if not incorrect, certainly oblique angle. It's not so much about knowing the future, which we can never do for certain, nor about seeing into the unseen, but seeing new connections between what is and what may be. In this sense divination from tarot to scrying to the reading of entrails are like word association, rorschack tests or doodling blindfolded, they may (though they just as likely may not) reveal interelationships we had previously ignored.

Also, like their more mundane cousins used in modern psychology, we must remember always that their outcomes are filtered through the educated guesswork of another person and are just as easily wrong as they are right and are often both and neither at once. Though there is a lesson to this in and of itself.

Life's too short to proofread.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

While I disagree that communication is accidental, I do agree that what we communicate and what people interpret are rarely the same. That's why I like the use of a medium, in cards, runes, etc. Multivalent.