Dumb Question: do Different Decks Elicit Different Interpretations?

[Grandma]

Grandma goes waaay off topic to protect Raggydoll:

2 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

(See, now even I got crazy off topic too. I bet @Saturn Celeste will stop by and spank me ☺️)

[Raggydoll]

24 minutes ago, Grandma said:

Grandma goes waaay off topic to protect Raggydoll:

😂😂😂😂😘❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Saturn Celeste]

2 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

(See, now even I got crazy off topic too. I bet @Saturn Celeste will stop by and spank me ☺️)

[Marigold]

What if the title of the thread was changed to "off-topic thread which seems to elicit a lot of different interpretations of the subject."

 

Just kidding. No, I'm really not trying to annoy the moderators here. I promise ! Cross my heart.  I just find this thread delightful and passionate and funny and interesting.

[Raggydoll]

1 minute ago, Saturn Celeste said:

😘❤️❤️ (And now you will have to discipline me again. Please? 😁)

[Saturn Celeste]

5 minutes ago, Marigold said:

Just kidding. No, I'm really not trying to annoy the moderators here. I promise ! Cross my heart.  I just find this thread delightful and passionate and funny and interesting.

It's ok Marigold.  This is the type of thread that can get back on track very easily.  When a thread goes off topic,  we deal with each derailment on an individual basis.  I enjoy a healthy sharing of minds such as we had here.  And this isn't the first time a thread has derailed and it won't be the last.  What is most important to me, as an administrator, is that everyone is having fun.  So, we have fun, then get back on topic. 😉  Enjoy each other!  We are a very special community of like minds. ❤️

[katrinka]

8 hours ago, leroidetrèfle said:

Absolutely. Cartomancy is the practice of semiotics; we’re reading the images. If the image is different then so is the interpretation.  

 

For me, image also trumps symbol - so I focus on the entire image, seeing the symbols as akin to letters that build a whole statement (think Icon). But the whole is the focus. So it’s important to really study the images and why, at least for me, I have a “primary” deck (Noblet for Tarot). 

LOL, when I read this earlier, it reminded me of you. I should have looked more closely at the cats!

Barley, I can see where RWS would be preferable if you use use facing directions. Is that what you meant by "situational awareness and developmental insight"?

[Barleywine]

30 minutes ago, katrinka said:

Barley, I can see where RWS would be preferable if you use use facing directions. Is that what you meant by "situational awareness and developmental insight"?

No, I just meant that I'm looking for practical angles instead of more "squishy" psychological or spiritual ones, much the same way I read Lenormand. As long as it's not read too literally, RWS can give you a leg up on more action-and-event oriented perspectives.

[katrinka]

6 minutes ago, Barleywine said:

No, I just meant that I'm looking for practical angles instead of more "squishy" psychological or spiritual ones, much the same way I read Lenormand. As long as it's not read too literally, RWS can give you a leg up on more action-and-event oriented perspectives.

Completion, Science, Gain, Futility, Abundance...I don't see things like this as psychological, unless you're asking about someone's state of mind.
You could correlate a lot of the cards to Lenormand. (I'm not saying to go running off and making a blog post along those lines, lest people use it as an excuse to do faux-Qabalistic Lenormand and cite you as the source, lol)

But what I'm saying is that I think the fault lies moreso in modern methods than the Thoth itself. We've been subjected to a decades-long trend of psychological Tarot writings.. It's only fairly recently that cartomantic-style reading has started to make a comeback.

Here's an old AT post that illustrates the Tree of Life with the act of making a sandwich. It's all context. http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=4312387&postcount=17

[Barleywine]

15 minutes ago, katrinka said:

Completion, Science, Gain, Futility, Abundance...I don't see things like this as psychological, unless you're asking about someone's state of mind.
You could correlate a lot of the cards to Lenormand. (I'm not saying to go running off and making a blog post along those lines, lest people use it as an excuse to do faux-Qabalistic Lenormand and cite you as the source, lol)

But what I'm saying is that I think the fault lies moreso in modern methods than the Thoth itself. We've been subjected to a decades-long trend of psychological Tarot writings.. It's only fairly recently that cartomantic-style reading has started to make a comeback.

Here's an old AT post that illustrates the Tree of Life with the act of making a sandwich. It's all context. http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=4312387&postcount=17

Heaven forbid I should contaminate my Lenormand reading with anything remotely resembling tarot! I even wrote a fairly bristling rant about it a while ago, before I became kinder and gentler. It was the advent of the New Age and its fascination with Jung that screwed traditional thinking, and the tarot was pressed into service in that cause the same way astrology was. Uh oh, going OT again . . .

Edited June 29, 2019 by Barleywine

[Saturn Celeste]

Quote

"I'll build you a bridge for this much money."

~*~ Zephyros

What an interesting post!

 

39 minutes ago, Barleywine said:

No, I just meant that I'm looking for practical angles

Do you have the Science tarot?  Or Bright Idea?  I think they are practical decks and remove 'spiritual' as a theme.

[Barleywine]

8 minutes ago, Saturn Celeste said:

Do you have the Science tarot?  Or Bright Idea?  I think they are practical decks and remove 'spiritual' as a theme.

Are they RWS or Thoth-based, or more oracle-like? Oracle decks can get away with anything. The Voyager Tarot is on the extreme outer fringe of what can work from a practical perspective while being almost entirely inscrutable without the hefty guide-book.

 

By the way, it should be obvious that I cherish the Thoth, I just don't foist it on clients unless they ask for it, since I can't always help them with it without some major heavy lifting. RWS is more anecdotal by far, despite its numerous weaknesses.

Edited June 29, 2019 by Barleywine

[katrinka]

11 minutes ago, Barleywine said:

Heaven forbid I should contaminate my Lenormand reading with anything remotely resembling tarot! I even wrote a fairly bristling rant about it a while ago, before I became kinder and gentler. It was the advent of the New Age and its fascination with Jung that screwed traditional thinking, and the tarot was pressed into service in that cause the same way astrology was. Uh oh, going OT again . . .

Heaven forbid that I should contaminate my Tarot reading with anything remotely resembling squishy Tarot. LOL!
We all wrote that rant. Some of us wrote it many, many times. And I think it actually did some good.

Saturn Celeste - IKR? I keep it bookmarked!

 

[Saturn Celeste]

5 minutes ago, Barleywine said:

Are they RWS or Thoth-based, or more oracle-like?

They are tarot decks.  Click on the links and go to the AT library to view those decks. 

3 minutes ago, katrinka said:

Saturn Celeste - IKR? I keep it bookmarked!

We have an AT project here to save some important threads.  If you know of any that you would like to preserve, post them in that section.  We just save the OP as a quote and make sure the name of the user and link to the page is included.  We're lucky to still have it to reference!

[katrinka]

Oooh, will do! I have several saved.

[Barleywine]

28 minutes ago, Saturn Celeste said:

They are tarot decks.  Click on the links and go to the AT library to view those decks.

I remember Mark McElroy's deck; I believe he envisioned it as a "business" deck. The Science deck, although it has conventional notation, seems a bit oracular to me in its images and titles. Neither one really excites me.

[Halcyon]

6 hours ago, FLizarraga said:

Halcyon, you should know by now that your question was anything but dumb... 😎

a!!  I am LOVING this whole conversation so much.  It made me realize that I pick decks based on the person.  If I don't know the person,  I choose the universal RWS. 

 

spin-off question: most of my reading have to do not with practical matters but with more spiritual questions.  Or maybe those are just the questions I tend to pose as I am using the tarot now for self-discovery.  I always fall back on my rws.  That may be because I'm a newbie,  and I am learning. I also really really love the Luna Sol deck. 

 

What deck would you say lends itself well to primarily spiritual and energetic readings?  

[Barleywine]

39 minutes ago, Halcyon said:

What deck would you say lends itself well to primarily spiritual and energetic readings?  

I'm not sure how spiritual it is, but this one certainly is "mystical" while being a reliable RWS clone done in a medieval fantasy style. But it seems to me you might want to go more abstract than representational if you're after something truly exalted. I find such decks rather sterile and cold, however.

 

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/mystic-dreamer/

 

You can look at a bunch of full-deck scans here, but it's far from up-to-date at this point:

 

http://www.albideuter.de/

Edited June 29, 2019 by Barleywine

[Halcyon]

32 minutes ago, Barleywine said:

I'm not sure how spiritual it is, but this one certainly is "mystical" while being a reliable RWS clone done in a medieval fantasy style. But it seems to me you might want to go more abstract than representational if you're after something truly exalted. I find such decks rather sterile and cold, however.

 

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/mystic-dreamer/

 

You can look at a bunch of full-deck scans here, but it's far from up-to-date at this point:

 

http://www.albideuter.de/

Mystic dreamer is pretty.  Some part of me is also drawn to linestrider.

[katrinka]

14 hours ago, Halcyon said:

I always fall back on my rws.  That may be because I'm a newbie,  and I am learning.

No,  it's a great beginner deck, but a lot of us still use it after literally decades. I've branched out to other Tarots and other systems, but I keep a RWS handy - I pulled three cards just yesterday. There is a prominent reader I know of who started in the 1960's(!) who prefers RWS above all the others. So you don't have to think of it as the Dick and Jane of Tarot. It arguably has some issues, but so does a comfortable old pair of shoes. There is a time for a nice pair of heels, a time for boots, and a time for a good old beat-up pair of Birks.

[Raggydoll]

11 minutes ago, katrinka said:

No,  it's a great beginner deck, but a lot of us still use it after literally decades. I've branched out to other Tarots and other systems, but I keep a RWS handy - I pulled three cards just yesterday. There is a prominent reader I know of who started in the 1960's(!) who prefers RWS above all the others. So you don't have to think of it as the Dick and Jane of Tarot. It arguably has some issues, but so does a comfortable old pair of shoes. There is a time for a nice pair of heels, a time for boots, and a time for a good old beat-up pair of Birks.

[Halcyon]

46 minutes ago, katrinka said:

No,  it's a great beginner deck, but a lot of us still use it after literally decades. I've branched out to other Tarots and other systems, but I keep a RWS handy - I pulled three cards just yesterday. There is a prominent reader I know of who started in the 1960's(!) who prefers RWS above all the others. So you don't have to think of it as the Dick and Jane of Tarot. It arguably has some issues, but so does a comfortable old pair of shoes. There is a time for a nice pair of heels, a time for boots, and a time for a good old beat-up pair of Birks.

I always feel like my RWS gives me he most accurate and understandable readings.  And yes,  a comfy pair of shoes is exactly it!!

[FLizarraga]

I learned Tarot using Rachel Pollack's and Eden Gray's books, plus Waite's Pictorial Guide, so what I was learning was basically pure Waite school, but I only used the RWS deck for study purposes, as I didn't like Pixie's art AT ALL. The deck I used for reading at the time was Kat Black's Golden Tarot (still one of my favorites, and probably the dearest one to my heart).

 

(Curiously enough, in the very beginning of my Tarot studies the Thoth Tarot was like an open book to me. My ignorant, inexpert eyes looked at the images and the titles, and things just clicked. That stopped cold after I tried to get into Crowley's writings, and later Milo Duquette's, but that's a whole 'nother conversation.)

 

In time, I grew to appreciate Pixie's rather uninspired, but serviceable workmanship. Nowadays, the RWS is the deck I go when I want clarity and simple, unambiguous answers.

 

 

[Eric13]

The interesting thing with the emotions this deck obviously influences, is the ranges of emotions and influence upon readings this deck influences. The RWS decks. 

[FLizarraga]

 

Sorry, I know I'm OOP, but I couldn't resist...