Tarot Card Combinations Research

[Guest]

12 hours ago, zedekiel said:

Hi KevinM! I just wanted to tell you that after looking at this thread, seeing your comment, checking out your site, and seeing some of the other comments youve posted around here on readings, the way I view card combinations has improved dramatically! I don't use the sequential method but the way you talk about the cards and their combinations has been incredibly beneficial to my learning, even through the standard reading format that I do. I get so much more information from the cards than I did before so I wanted to thank you since I was lucky enough to come across this thread and all the resources people provided and your work!

Thank you thank you thank you 

Hello @zedekiel

 

I sincerily appreciate your kind words and I am extremely happy to learn that my work has helped you to enhance your readings.

 

You are very welcome and I wish you many happy hours of reading : )

 

Thank you.

 

 

Regards

KevinM

Edited September 28, 2019 by Guest

[Igraine]

On 9/23/2019 at 2:00 PM, katrinka said:

Hi, and welcome. 🙂

When you say "Tarot combinations", people tend to think of that as "reading the cards like Lenormand", but it's actually the way that the Tarot was always read (and is still read in some parts of the world.)  Lenormand, Sibilla, Kippers, etc. just didn't catch on in the Anglo world until fairly recently, so they survived without getting "Waite-ified", (or whatever you want to call it.) By that I mean you don't read the cards as little islands unto themselves, in combination with the positional themes but not the nearby cards. Rather, the cards are usually (but not always) laid in lines, boxes, or tableaus and read in combination with neighboring cards.

With the TdM, the transition to combinations is easy, since it's essentially a deck of playing cards. These blogs are the place to go:  Kapherus/Cardseer's https://artofcartomancy.blogspot.com

and Andy Boroveshengra's https://abfortuneteller.home.blog/2019/08/12/a-brief-typography-on-reading-pip-cards/

Andy reads French, so he's well versed in the writings of Silvestre, Sédillot, Unger, and others that we've been deprived of. If you can read French, you've got a huge advantage and I may well be asking you what to do at some point! (Here in the US, the bulk of our Tarot books are the "how to read Tarot without studying" variety. 😩) There's a lot of German books I'd love to be able to read, as well.

 

This book is the best I've found on the subject https://smile.amazon.com/Untold-Tarot-Reading-Ancient-Tarots/dp/0764355619

I want to mention here that combination lists are good as suggestions, but are not really meant to be memorized. Andy has stated that cards are read like a sentence, so you can think of a pair of cards as "noun-adjective" or "noun-verb" if you're stuck. (Just remember that's a practice technique and not a hard and fast rule.)

When you get into Golden Dawn decks like the Thoth and the RWS, you can use these same techniques. The trick is to strip the cards down to their essences. Most available Tarot writings tend to be verbose - you can't build combinations from walls-o-text rhapsodizing on details. I've found this site to be valuable. I've referred to it for both RWS and Thoth, since Crowley and Waite were using the same method but Waite purposely hid some things: https://www.corax.com/tarot/cards/index.html

 

 

 

Hi Katrinka, I was finally able to check out your links.  Good stuff, thank you!  The book looks very good.  I think that's what I'm looking for.  The blogs are fascinating as well and will provide a lot of insight I'm sure.  Thank you very much!

[Andylost1]

On 9/24/2019 at 7:00 AM, katrinka said:

Hi, and welcome. 🙂

When you say "Tarot combinations", people tend to think of that as "reading the cards like Lenormand", but it's actually the way that the Tarot was always read (and is still read in some parts of the world.)  Lenormand, Sibilla, Kippers, etc. just didn't catch on in the Anglo world until fairly recently, so they survived without getting "Waite-ified", (or whatever you want to call it.) By that I mean you don't read the cards as little islands unto themselves, in combination with the positional themes but not the nearby cards. Rather, the cards are usually (but not always) laid in lines, boxes, or tableaus and read in combination with neighboring cards.

With the TdM, the transition to combinations is easy, since it's essentially a deck of playing cards. These blogs are the place to go:  Kapherus/Cardseer's https://artofcartomancy.blogspot.com

and Andy Boroveshengra's https://abfortuneteller.home.blog/2019/08/12/a-brief-typography-on-reading-pip-cards/

Andy reads French, so he's well versed in the writings of Silvestre, Sédillot, Unger, and others that we've been deprived of. If you can read French, you've got a huge advantage and I may well be asking you what to do at some point! (Here in the US, the bulk of our Tarot books are the "how to read Tarot without studying" variety. 😩) There's a lot of German books I'd love to be able to read, as well.

 

This book is the best I've found on the subject https://smile.amazon.com/Untold-Tarot-Reading-Ancient-Tarots/dp/0764355619

I want to mention here that combination lists are good as suggestions, but are not really meant to be memorized. Andy has stated that cards are read like a sentence, so you can think of a pair of cards as "noun-adjective" or "noun-verb" if you're stuck. (Just remember that's a practice technique and not a hard and fast rule.)

When you get into Golden Dawn decks like the Thoth and the RWS, you can use these same techniques. The trick is to strip the cards down to their essences. Most available Tarot writings tend to be verbose - you can't build combinations from walls-o-text rhapsodizing on details. I've found this site to be valuable. I've referred to it for both RWS and Thoth, since Crowley and Waite were using the same method but Waite purposely hid some things: https://www.corax.com/tarot/cards/index.html

 

 

 

Thank you Katrinka, i know this is an old post on an old thread from last year (im new here and ive gone deep in lol) But so well said, i always look at the spread and cards as a story and let the pictures talk to me. I do understand why when studying tarot and we get stuck and pulling a more obvious combination out is easier (worse pulling the clarification cards out times 10 haha ) 

Often its the tricky dudes that trip as up mine was the magician for years..... he really annoyed me. I am going to try find Andys book 

Bless 🙂