Post 1 - Getting Started
Tarot originated as a set of cards used for gameplay in a similar way to the English patterned, French-suited, standard 52-card pack that you probably think of when I say “a deck of cards”. Tarot was mostly used for ‘trick taking’ games such as tarocchini, tarot and Königrufen. They’re still mostly in use for this purpose throughout much of Europe with little to no connotations. Ironically, the occult associations are mostly limited to english speaking countries. According to Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, the connection between tarot and the occult appeared sometime within the 18th century, although an exact date is obviously hard to land on. There are claims that Tarot was used for divination purposes in older civilisations like India, Ancient China, and Ancient Egypt. There’s no record of tarot being used for divination at all before the 18th century, and certainly no academically approved evidence of it existing outside of Europe before the 15th century (although early recordings of playing cards did come from Mamluk Egypt, what’s recognized as ‘tarot’ specifically was localized to Europe).
Tarot evolved from an older variant of playing cards that emerged from Mamluk Egypt and appeared as early as the 12th century, spreading rapidly across Europe as means of entertainment. Not much is known about the packs of this time but Johannes von Rheinfelden or ‘Brother John’, a frier that lived sometime circa 1340 (no connection to the Brother John who was supposed to ring the bells in the 16th century children's rhyme “Frère Blaise” although I did take a look), wrote the earliest description of these cards in a European context. Most of them had four suits, numbered cards, and a ‘court’ for each, although the courts did not have the ‘jack’, ‘queen’, ‘king’ layout a modern player might recognise.
What they did have was suits based around the imagery of (among other things) clubs, cups, coins, and swords. Which is very relevant to the topic we’re actually supposed to be talking about. With that acknowledged, I need to move on. This isn’t a blog on the history of playing cards, and I need to condense to stay under the wordcap, so we need to fast-forward a bit to 15th century Italy.
Sometime in the 1440s, in cities like Florence, Ferrara, and Bologna, trionfi, ‘triumph’ or ‘trump’ cards, started appearing in the standard four suit decks. These cards had elaborate illustrations on them and differentiated themselves from the rest of the deck, presumably because they had special importance from a gameplay perspective. This is, fun fact, where the term ‘trump card’ comes from, and is theorized to be the first iteration of the ‘Major Arcana’. The first known instance of one of these ‘upgraded’ decks belonged to Italian nobleman, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, someone who had a “-love for Trionfi. [...] It was already known that, a dozen years after the gift received by Giusto Giusti, he wrote letters to Milan and Cremona asking for Trionfi packs.” (Pratesi, 2012). From there, presumably the idea picked up popularity because in the following years Trionfi packs started turning up all over Italy, and in later decades, all of Europe. They were hand painted in those days, so they were rare and expensive, but there are a few surviving decks. The Visconti-Sforza decks are 15, famously incomplete decks now owned by various museums around the world. They are thought to be the oldest surviving tarot decks.
The deck that I chose to use for this journey was the Rider-Waite Deck, one of the most common decks for modern usage. Illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith and cultivated by A. E. Waite, a mystic and academic who released what would become the most common practicing deck in 1909. The deck, like many of its predecessors, uses a combination of symbolism, preconceived notions, and a background story that the cards follow in order to guide its reader. A particular emphasis is placed on symbolism, “The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.” (Waite, 1911), so I will be ensuring that I pay close attention to both the contextual and visual symbolisms in my readings.
With this truly out of control prologue out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the experience.
The Three Fates Reading:
To both put my skills into practice and to prepare for the weeks ahead, I planned on doing two readings this week, a three fates and a four elements, and actually did perform both. But due to time constraints and word limits, I’m only analyzing one. Funnily enough, I think the cards may have even seen this coming.
A Three Fates reading is a simple but powerful reading, and one of the better known ones, in which the reader or client draws three cards, each representative of the past, present, and future respectively. I asked the cards how to approach this 6 week journey and drew the following cards:
(Note: The fact that some cards are upside down have significance. Inverted cards often mean the opposite of their general meaning, and that the lesson of the previous card in the deck should be observed in order to overcome the challenges this will represent.)
The Cards - A Breif Reader's Guide
The World
The final card of the Major Arcana. Represents cycles, completions, endings and beginnings. In the story of the Major Arcana, ‘the fool’, now old and wise, has balanced the four elements within him and achieved balance and success. His journey is over. The ‘next card’ in the arcana is once again The Fool, as the story begins anew. “Waite describes this card as: Assured success, voyage, route, emigration. flight, change of place.” (N/b, 2019). The World depicts a new universe, after the rapture. “It represents also the perfection and end of the cosmos, the secret which is within it, the rapture of the universe when it understands itself in God. It is further the state of the soul in the consciousness of Divine Vision reflected from the self knowing spirit." (Wiate, 1911)
The Queen of Swords (Inverted):
The queen of swords is usually about thinking about feelings. Clearing your thoughts by applying both mindfulness and emotion to your actions. A card of reflection and adapting approaches to steer clear of old patterns. However, inverted, “-can be a pessimist, a perfectionist, and cold hearted.” and “her own painful experiences have damaged her so severely that she beacons to life with an open hand, but cuts them with her sword when it draws near.” (Fenton-Smith, 2008). It is a card of being damaged and that damage affects action and performance. “Another meaning for this card reversed is the tendency to be very hard on yourself when you make a small mistake.” (Fenton-Smith, 2008).
The Queen of Cups (Inverted):
The Queen of cards is usually a card for listening to experience and applying the imagination in unique ways to produce results. Maturity and intuition with a focus on results. However inverted it “-describes a severing of the connection between the water and the earth, with two possible outcomes. First, she can sink into depression, losing all creative spontaneity [...] Alternatively, she can become cold and ruthless, masking her pain with anger” (Fenton-Smith, 2008). This card can represent failure through lacking creative discipline and acting out in anger, as well as withdrawing and avoidance.
Learning to Read
When approaching reading an individual card was, in itself, something that took some working out. I was advised to begin by simply examining the images of the cards. Taking in the things depicted and trying to draw my own meaning from them. What is the card depicting? Where is the landscape, and what is in it? What time of day is it. How many figures are in the picture? How are they positioned? In this reading, for example, I noted the abundance of water in the Queen of Cups and the wreath in The World. Both relevant to the meanings of the cards, the Queen of Cups being a card aligned with the creative water element, and the wreath representing the cycle.
From there, examining the card’s place in the story of their suit is sometimes, but not always relevant. In this case, the Queen of Cups and the Queen of Swords have both experienced severe pain in their pasts, which influences their readings both inverted and upright. Similarly, emotional hurts affected me greatly the week of the reading and led to impacted performance.
Finally, the cards themselves have connotations that only really come with rote learning, and learning from others is the only real way to get familiar with those. These are the explanations and quotes I am pulling from books and websites to make true sense of the card’s presences
Reflections
Before we begin, I will briefly touch on what I gathered from the reading:
The World in first position indicated that I had success in my past, and I was starting something new. Considering I was asking about how to approach the second part of this assignment after doing so well in the first, that was an easy parallel to draw. The Queen of Swords inverted in second position meant that I was struggling in the present with past pains, falling into old habits like perfectionism and lashing out due to external stressors. I wish I had made this connection a bit quicker. The Queen of Cups inverted in third position refers to the future and as such is a cautionary tale. There is a risk of failure through not curbing my creativity to the practical, as well as disconnecting or lashing out. I must be careful not to do this in order to achieve success.
Technical
These are more about the cards themselves, the meanings that they have, and my skill in memorizing and associating them.
As this was my first week and I’m still very unfamiliar with the cards, I was not immediately aware of the meanings of the cards that I specifically drew. I suspect my lack of familiarity may have actually helped my pictorial reading, because it gave me time to examine the physical card before addressing sources for meanings. “When you are trying to learn about a card, you should do so without judgement. It should be an exercise in seeing and describing [...] if possible, separate from its explanation.” (Burger, Fiebig, 1995). So I took a look at the cards that I had drew and examined their pictures for meanings, trying to devoid them from ‘explanations’ for the time being. I would say that my upfront reading was my strongest skill this week, as expected as it involves analysis rather than recall, which I haven’t had the chance to develop yet.
I knew that each suit generally has different connotations. Swords are to do with will, strength, and aversery. Wands creativity and ambition. Pentacles wealth and possession. Cups spirituality and emotion. (All of these are very loose generalizations and don’t always apply.) I recognized The World as being the last card in the Major Arcana (and the deck) and thus assumed it was a powerful card, but I didn’t know much beyond that, and I recognized both the queens as court cards. The court cards come at the end of the suit’s ‘narratives’ so they’re usually quite powerful cards, but both of mine came out inverted, which doesn’t bode well as inverted cards mean the opposite of what they usually mean. I recognized the wreath in the background of The World to refer to cycles; beginnings coming from endings. I was also able to discern from the design of the queen of swords (sitting in a stable position on the ground with a weapon in hand) that the card may have something to do with self empowerment when not inverted, but the card being upside down debased her. Similarly with the Queen of Cups, upside down cups aren’t able to hold anything, and in being upside down the connection between the water she sits at and the earth she sits on is lost.
I can see how these cards form a narrative together. I do not think the presence of one affected how I would read any of the others, although I suspect that the inverted Queen of cups is warning not to continue the bad habits that the Queen of Swords represents.
Reflection through Reading
This is more about my performance, and how I interpreted the cards and linked them to my personal circumstances to find meaning and advice for self-reflection
In my opinion, the presence of The World in the past position was fairly easy to read. My proposal was met with enthusiasm and praise. A resounding success to end the first pert of the assignment and breaching into the second portion. The World represents the coming of a beginning, as much as it represents an end. “It’s important to think of [the Major Arcana] as a circle or spiral.” (Burger, Fiebig, 1995). The presence of the next beginning following the end is an important detail in the Major Arcana, and I felt that the card heralded the coming of the next challenge as well as acknowledging my success in the last part. I did not make the connection between my stressors, avoidance issues, and the presence of the Queen of Swords until later. Had I taken more time to reflect on the cards earlier in the week and considered what they might have been trying to tell me about my current state of mind, I may not have struggled as much. I will bear the Queen of Cups in mind going forwards. I feel this was both a reminder that I did well in the past, but my attitude in the present and future can and will affect my chances of success, no matter how well I started off.
The reading did not feel helpful at the time, but in hindsight the cards had a point and if I had kept it in mind, I may not have struggled as much as I did. I did legitimately find the reading rather humbling, in hindsight. With the lesson this week and this lesson taught me, I am going to go into this week with a resolve to focus more on completion than perfection, and try not to become overwhelmed with stress of both outside and internal influences to my studies.
References:
Pratesi, F. Studies on Giusto Giusti at trionfi.com. Retrieved 25 April, 2021 from: http://trionfi.com/giusto-giusti
Decker, R., Thierry Depaulis, & Dummett, M. (2002). A wicked pack of cards : the origins of the occult tarot. Duckworth.
Semetsky, I (2011). Re-Symbolization of the Self: Human Development and Tarot Hermeneutic. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers
Laycock, D. C., & Canberra Skeptics. (1989). Skeptical, a handbook on pseudoscience and the paranormal. Canberra Skeptics.
Waite, E, A. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. England: William Rider & Son
(N/b) (2019). The World. Rider Waite Smith. Retrieved 26 April, 2021 from: https://www.riderwaitesmith.com/the-world/
Bürger E., Fiebig, J. (1995). Complete book of tarot spreads : includes 122 layouts. Sterling Ethos.
Fenton-Smith, P. (2008). Tarot revealed. General Books.