Does tarot work b/c of magickal correspondences?

[XrabbitX]

I've been reading/watching info about magickal correspondences, and how Kabbalah is kind of obsessed with them, as well as Agrippa etc.  I was wondering if tarot "works" b/c of these correspondences being a fundamental feature of reality, or is it more that something is talking through the deck to you? 

[2dogs]

I couldn’t say about correspondences, the fundamental features of reality that read best for me are these.

 

[XrabbitX]

I find the idea that metaphysical reality is somehow less real than easily observable material reality a bit boring, to say the least 😉

[2dogs]

Well yes, but I get lost in metaphysical systems, there are so many to choose from.🤯

[XrabbitX]

Well that's the thing about magickal correspondences.   It's an overlapping idea in most Western religions and esoteric beliefs.  Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Christianity (On earth as it is in heaven), Hermeticism, the Agrippa (which is about magik from a Catholic perspective), Astrology, etc, all have their own version of "As above, so below."   In fact it's probably a near universal in Western esoteric thought.  

 

I don't know a lot about tarot or Kabbalah, but it sounds like corespondences can be important and powerful in both.  Each sphere of the sephiroth, and each qlippoth, have corresponding tarot cards.  

[2dogs]

Seeing the world as structured in line with Kabbalah and tarot seems to work well for some people. On the other hand other people appear to get results from different frameworks.

[2dogs]

This morning I was looking at The Empress in the Tabula Mundi Tarot app then my wife decided to visit a park we’d never been to before…

 

[Laurelverse]

I think esoteric tarot decks with metaphysical symbols and archetypes are a really useful tool for a modern occult practitioner to use in a variety of ways, but for basic cartomancy itself?  Having a deck designed by an occultist is pretty arbitrary.   

[Misterei]

On 7/16/2023 at 8:24 PM, XrabbitX said:

I've been reading/watching info about magickal correspondences, and how Kabbalah is kind of obsessed with them, as well as Agrippa etc.  I was wondering if tarot "works" b/c of these correspondences being a fundamental feature of reality, or is it more that something is talking through the deck to you? 

I don't know that we can give one definitive answer as to why Tarot "works". For a kabbalists it may work according to kabbalah. But I don't use kabbalah at all. I use numerology, vedic astrology, and alchemy with tarot.

For me, numbers are the fundamental feature of reality [inasmuch as we limited humans could ever understand reality].

Tarot often speaks to me in numbers.

People read in different ways applying various systems ... and yet tarot just keeps on working for all of them.

I think of Tarot as a language ... numerology, kabbalah, astrology ... all these are dialects of tarot  ... but it has it's OWN language which I don't mistake the dialect for the language [if that makes sense].

6 hours ago, Laurelverse said:

I think esoteric tarot decks with metaphysical symbols and archetypes are a really useful tool for a modern occult practitioner to use in a variety of ways, but for basic cartomancy itself?  Having a deck designed by an occultist is pretty arbitrary.   

Yes, arbitrary. So many layers of occultism have been folded into tarot ... it's fun ... but none of them is the "one true tarot".

Edited October 13, 2023 by Misterei

[Aeon418]

25 minutes ago, Misterei said:

For a kabbalists it may work according to kabbalah.

 

I came to Tarot through Hermetic Qabalah. Because of this approach it seems very natural to me to view Tarot as a pictorial extension and expression of the Hermetic Tree of Life. But after working with people coming from the opposite direction, Tarot to Hermetic Qabalah, it seems that they have to work harder to integrate, what appears to them, two seemingly separate systems. 

 

Going from Qabalah to Tarot it feels as if the correspondences inform the very nature of the imagery of the Tarot. But going from Tarot to Qabalah I can imagine the Tarot must feel like a complete and isolated system in its own right, with Qabalistic correspondences looking like an optional add on.  

[2dogs]

16 minutes ago, Aeon418 said:

Going from Qabalah to Tarot it feels as if the correspondences inform the very nature of the imagery of the Tarot.

Yes, I do feel it’s trying to push a system on me when all I want is a straight answer.

[Misterei]

24 minutes ago, Aeon418 said:

... Going from Qabalah to Tarot it feels as if the correspondences inform the very nature of the imagery of the Tarot. But going from Tarot to Qabalah I can imagine the Tarot must feel like a complete and isolated system in its own right, with Qabalistic correspondences looking like an optional add on.  

LOL I know just enough kabbalah to actually understand how a kabbalist will see everything / most things in Tarot as kabbalistic.

Especially the decks that were designed by kabbalah enthusiasts [GD, RWS, Thoth].

I like historic Italian Tarocchi decks which were NOT designed by kabbalists.

Yes ...  I'm a Tarot-reader first ... the other things are optional add-ons ...

Exception?

Numbers are God to me ... and Tarot [indeed all cards] are numeric ... so that's a deep, deep thing for me ... but not for other readers who don't share my love of numbers. Chacon a son gout!

Edited October 13, 2023 by Misterei

[Aeon418]

1 hour ago, Serpentwand said:

Yes, I do feel it’s trying to push a system on me when all I want is a straight answer.

 

Yes, but that straight answer is still based on a "correspondence" between a particular visual image and an associated chain of ideas, thoughts and feelings that are brought to conscious awareness by the image itself. Unless Tarot is completely arbitrary and random from one reading to the next, the Empress has the potential to elicit a very distinct set of associations that differentiates it from those connected to the Tower. Whether these associations and correspondences come from a formalised system such as Qabalah, or they are a highly personal and idiosyncratic set of associations, they are still correspondences.     

[Arania]

11 hours ago, Misterei said:

I know just enough kabbalah to actually understand how a kabbalist will see everything / most things in Tarot as kabbalistic.

So true. But I found it very helpful to learn the correspondences - now I can ignore them as I read intuitively, but every now and then they jump in my face and want attention. Then I am glad I know about them.

[Aeon418]

12 hours ago, Misterei said:

LOL I know just enough kabbalah to actually understand how a kabbalist will see everything / most things in Tarot as kabbalistic.

 

That's exactly how it should be! 😄 Throughout Hermetic Qabalah runs the hermetic maxim - "as above, so below." Or the microcosm reflects the macrocosm and vice versa. The universe itself, through its harmonies and correspondences, presents a balanced picture of wholeness upon which we can base our own efforts at balancing and unifying ourselves. When applied to Tarot it provides a kind of objective measure and outline template of what balanced wholeness looks like. While this may, at least initially, seem forced, contrived, and artificial, it does provide the reader with a sort of guideline through a reading that has the potential to alert the perceptive reader to areas of imbalance and disunity in themselves. No one is self-aware enough to catch all of their biases, prejudices, and blind spots. These imbalances can slip through unnoticed during the purely intuitive reading process and unwittingly influence the reading itself. So while the "correspondences" may appear like an artificial contrivance that gets in the way of the directness of a purely intuitive approach, they do serve a useful function.   

[Tanga]

On 7/21/2023 at 2:53 PM, Serpentwand said:

This morning I was looking at The Empress in the Tabula Mundi Tarot app then my wife decided to visit a park we’d never been to before…

 

This is a beautiful synchronicity - and what a lovely Bee - where is that???

Must dig the Tabula Mundi out...

 

 

2 hours ago, Aeon418 said:

 

That's exactly how it should be! 😄 Throughout Hermetic Qabalah runs the hermetic maxim - "as above, so below." Or the microcosm reflects the macrocosm and vice versa. The universe itself, through its harmonies and correspondences, presents a balanced picture of wholeness upon which we can base our own efforts at balancing and unifying ourselves. When applied to Tarot it provides a kind of objective measure and outline template of what balanced wholeness looks like. While this may, at least initially, seem forced, contrived, and artificial, it does provide the reader with a sort of guideline through a reading that has the potential to alert the perceptive reader to areas of imbalance and disunity in themselves. No one is self-aware enough to catch all of their biases, prejudices, and blind spots. These imbalances can slip through unnoticed during the purely intuitive reading process and unwittingly influence the reading itself. So while the "correspondences" may appear like an artificial contrivance that gets in the way of the directness of a purely intuitive approach, they do serve a useful function.   

Thank you for this!  My brain is too dumb to use Qabalah - but my smidgin of Jewish DNA means that for mysterious reasons I feel at home with the idea.

[Laurelverse]

I've studied Jewish Kabbalah (which frowns upon making the kind of images that tarot depends on and involves a lot of meditational practices), and both Christian Cabala (the early stuff that comes straight out of the Renaissance) and Hermetic Qabalah (which starts with people like Wirth, Papus, Eliphas Levi and the Golden Dawn in mid to late 1800s) off and on for about 32 years.  I intentionally use the K-C-Q attribution to keep it all straight in my own head!  LOL.   There's no official or right/wrong way to do it.  

I've studied a lot of archetypal psychology too.   There's some overlap because crowns, swords, cups, lions, eagles, sunrises, yin/yang dichotomies and all such images that tarot cards are full of symbolize a lot of the same things regardless of what culture or historical period is under discussion.   Coming up with any tarot deck that didn't draw on symbols and archetypes of some kind would be really hard. 

However, I think there's a lot of modern tarot decks that demonstrate you can diverge completely from what the magicians who created esoteric tarot tradition came up in their various decks and still do really awesome readings.   That's one of the things I most love about cartomancy and the 1000s of  tarot, Lenormand and oracle decks that are on the market.  I don't find all of them (or even half of them) to my particular tastes in aesthetics but I'm very sure all of them work for divination just fine. 
 

[2dogs]

8 hours ago, Tanga said:

This is a beautiful synchronicity - and what a lovely Bee - where is that???

It’s in Longford Park Manchester . The worker bee is the symbol of the city which pioneered mass production.

[Barleywine]

I wouldn't say "because of" but rather "in concert with." I apply them judiciously as needed for interpretation, but I seldom mention them to my clients, instead using metaphors and analogies to euphemize them.

[Barleywine]

On 10/13/2023 at 12:22 AM, Aeon418 said:

 

I came to Tarot through Hermetic Qabalah. Because of this approach it seems very natural to me to view Tarot as a pictorial extension and expression of the Hermetic Tree of Life. But after working with people coming from the opposite direction, Tarot to Hermetic Qabalah, it seems that they have to work harder to integrate, what appears to them, two seemingly separate systems. 

 

Going from Qabalah to Tarot it feels as if the correspondences inform the very nature of the imagery of the Tarot. But going from Tarot to Qabalah I can imagine the Tarot must feel like a complete and isolated system in its own right, with Qabalistic correspondences looking like an optional add on.  

I took the same path, having read a number of Hermetic texts (Fortune, Gray, Bardon, Regardie, Achad, etc) before I encountered the tarot. The first place I found Hermeticism and tarot  connected was in the two parts of Gareth Knight's Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, then in Crowley's and Paul Foster Case's work and my involvement with the BOTA correspondence courses. It's kind of like a current that carries me but I don't always dip into it in practical reading situations. I suppose it can feel like fighting one's way upstream for those not familiar with it in advance.

[Guest]

The number of efficient/accurate readers who read intuitively sorta belies this. But personally for me, I find that working with an established esoteric system makes my readings deeper and more coherent. 

[Raggydoll]

On 10/13/2023 at 6:22 AM, Aeon418 said:

But going from Tarot to Qabalah I can imagine the Tarot must feel like a complete and isolated system in its own right, with Qabalistic correspondences looking like an optional add on.  

Well, it’s not so much a ‘feeling’, but rather a historical fact. 

[alethian]

I would say that Tarot works because of the correspondence.  But if one is familiar and knowledgeable with the correspondence of Cabala, Astrology and Tarot, they would work together for the reader to come to deeper, richer and more accurate readings.

[Deian]

Quote

I've been reading/watching info about magickal correspondences, and how Kabbalah is kind of obsessed with them, as well as Agrippa etc.  I was wondering if tarot "works" b/c of these correspondences being a fundamental feature of reality, or is it more that something is talking through the deck to you?

Well, other way of looking at that can be Images. Stuff resonate with each other. We press a key on the piano and in all octaves the string of that note will resonate a little, because they are similar.
So similar stuff shows up. Can see it as a domain, a domain of the question and a domain of the situation. They resonate with each other, so cards will show you same structure and relation. How much info we can get is up to the system we use and how good we are with it. There are systems people can get a lot of details with. But principle seems to be the same. It answers because its similar.

That being said in places(Tibetan Buddhism for example, but many others) its also viewed that these domains are awake and aware as well, also can be connected to and worked together with. So its not mechanical, or to be more correct, being mechanical it also has awareness as that is just how it is.

 

[gregory]

On 1/16/2024 at 1:10 AM, Akhilleus said:

The number of efficient/accurate readers who read intuitively sorta belies this.

 

As one of those - I appreciate that. MY view is - it simply works if you let it, but NOT if you get overly analytical. Over-thinking is a killer.