A.E. WAITE and symbolism.....

[cedars]

This is a topic brought forward from a different forum and would be good if it was discussed here out in the open.

Cedars said:
On one hand we are preaching that the Rider Waite is the basis for all cards and are indirectly saying if you learn the meanings of the RW cards by 'heart' then you can interpret just any card. Well, then, all we are doing is collect and hoard other decks if our sense of interpretation is being guided and based only on the RW...

We cannot standardise the other meanings which only come to light at the time of a reading, the situation, the case, the intuition.....then tarot reading becomes a mechanical process.

Payewacker said:
Hi Cedars,

I don't want us to degrade the RW. Nor any other deck. I agree, all the basic symbolism, interpritations and the likes come fro AE Waite. My consideration is to build on those interpritations, expand our knowledge and perhaps bring a different view to the way in which Tarot may be read or perceived.

Blessed be.

PS, Africa, our electricity just "vanished"!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello PW

I am in no way willing nor about to degrade Rider Waite. It is the deck I use and connect with; it is the deck with which I got into tarot and still learning about it.....

As complex as the symbolism of RW is,  I would not want to use a deck which is free of symbolism.

But I also believe that just because A. E. Waite put his own beliefs and symbolism into the cards, I do not equally believe the symbolism affects a reading greatly. Whether the High Priestess has two moons or a dozen moons, the High Priestess stands for what the High Priestess stands for..... if you get my drift.

I would like to get sometimes to the bottom of these symbolism(s), but you can only go too far without making the 'card reading' some kind of symbolism reading as opposed to guiding and empowering people in their daily life.

Did I say 'predicting'? No I didn't

[Payewacker]

Hi Cedars.

I understand exactly what you are saying.

Let us look at symbolism in the Fool.

Vestments---Mottly or actually colourfull and "gayish"?as in no care.
He has a white "shirt"
The white rose
The Sun, although it has no colour, it's white?
Snow covered mountains.
Lower Mountains.
The Cliff or "abyss"
The dog.

Connections
Clothes--2 of Cups.
Two referances to the Death card, The Rose and the Abyss, of which this has a significant connection, regarding the "Cornerstone"
Snow covered mountains to Judgement
The dog-The Moon card.
Lower Mountains-The Moon. And we see a pathway, between the two Towers, leading to the mountains. The Yods, decending from the Moon counts to 150 or 6 being - The Lovers.

Having a reading with let's say the Fool, Death and Ace of Wands, what can we derive from the blending of these three?

Blessed be

Blessed be.

[AyeCantSeeYou]

Oh my gosh! I'm trying to get the 'feel' of some of the cards in the major arcana, and now ya'll are talking about the symbols in them and how they relate to other cards. I'm gonna sit quietly and listen to all ya'll have to say on these.

[Payewacker]

Hi,

When looking at symbolism in the cards,mmm,

I have a fair knowledge on the symbolism, but are only a student.

Take up your Majors,
Pack them from 1-7 in one row, the 8-14 in a second row, then 15 to 21 in a third row. The Fool is not part of this "laying"

This might be a bit "Greek", but
1-7 is Archetypal, but included and forming the "transition", is 8,9 and Ten, to
8-14 Existential. then 13, 14, 15 is the "transition" once again to
15-21 Cosmic.

The Fool is a wild card and doesn't fit, but has an important message at times.

Look at the post I do in Tarot Topics, you will pick-up a lot of info there! And fortunately now, we have other authors starting to discuss various topics, as this one by Cedars.

Cedars, this is going to be really so much fun and satisfying, GOOD FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pirbid, Can you please also include this link in the sticky!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cedars, as this is absolutely so great, could you do the leading in this. Then have this thread as a heading, and as sub-topics, each symbol discussed.

F+++++, this I like!!!!!!!!!

Blessed be.
PS.
I got carried away a bit. But when you have your cards placed like that, the start looking fro the left top, going to the right and then from Top to bottom. Look for the same "kinda" things. Pillars etc.

O, I remembered now. THIS STRUCK ME LIKE A WET FISH. HOW COULD I MISS IT! The Empress's crown has 12 Stars, Cedars remember your reference to the Lovers card in respect of the 12 Yods to the left of the man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pirbid]

Oh my gosh! I'm trying to get the 'feel' of some of the cards in the major arcana, and now ya'll are talking about the symbols in them and how they relate to other cards. I'm gonna sit quietly and listen to all ya'll have to say on these.

Ha, no way! You are getting your hands dirty in here like all the rest of us... I'm so happy you're posting, I'm not about to let you stop now. Now, I'm the one to defend feeling the cards rather than learning their meanings, and most of my posts are in that direction. So I won't be the one to tell you to stop feeling them, will I?

Cedars began this thread precisely for the same reason (I think): he defends that, interesting as the cards' background and symbolism are, they are not everything, and not what he uses when aiding seekers. While PW, our (resident) Tarot scholar, makes the most of even these posts to bring out more symbols in each card (I can imagine Cedars' face when he read that last post  :smt003 ).

Anyway, I'm definitely including this link in the latest update of the Topics sticky. In case you wonder, and at PW's suggestion, I am also going to delete all later posts on that thread (mainly ours) and lock it, since it's purpose is served just by keeping the main list updated. Great job, Cedars. I'm glad the few of us are managing to keep this alive and well. Hopefully we'll soon have more people joining the discussions  :)

[cedars]

Okaaaaaaaay...
Let's all take a valium and calm down..... And hugs to you all......

AyeCantSeeyou... please don't be put off by our excitement here... Do take part. We don’t all know everything. We are brainstorming each other.

PW, am afraid I will take sides with Pirbid here, as I go with the 'feel' of the card rather than the symbolism. Hang on, hang on... Symbolism is BEAUTIFUL and it gives the cards their deeper meaning, BUT.......I maintain strongly, in my case at least, that by knowing all the symbolism and what they stand for......... my connection with the card(s) may have nothing to do with the symbolism.

My dear Payewacker: I am referring to the posting about the colours and the similarities in vestment and so on that you referred to in the above thread. So, what is the connection? My burning question is: how would that affect my reading?

Blessings.

[sweetsunray]

I'm gong to jump in and speak in favour of both... Actually, I think symbolism is the language of intuition and the unconscious. Pirbid will say I might be influenced by my dream translating, and I admit to it. The language of dreams is that of symbolism, archetypes, etc. Contrary to what people might think, even if many archetypal symbolism evokes similar responses and meanings for many people, it is not a dictionary language. Most often we do not even need a dream to be explained to us in the waking life to understand it unconsciously. Many of the dreams people ask help about to understand often end at a point where somehow the dreaming person did get the message and solved the issue while sleeping, even though they're befuddled the next day of what it could all have meant and to what it was related. And when I do a reading for someone, whether tarot or translation of a dream, I once again use nothing but symbolic language, anologies, word puns, etc... Because I experience the language of symbols, evne in written down explanations, as the more emotional, the more representative and more powerful tool. An image says more than 1000 words, so if you have only words, then use the words to describe images

And that is the analogy I want to make when it comes to the symbolism of the tarot... we make associations and give meanings to the cards because of the symbolic language within it, even if we do not know the exact meaning consciously (the dictinioary way).

One of the strongest aspects about symbolism is the power of association that comes through it. 3 days ago I had to follow a session with improviational theater liga regarding dealing with issues in the classroom as a teacher. The warming up were majorly association games. And once we were forced to associate for one game, it became hard, well downright impossible, to turn association off. And imo tarot is as a whole an associative reading... we associate the cards to real life situations and examples, and the cards are full with symbols that help us do that, whether we are aware of it or not. We will even make associations based on symbols on the cards that we're not even consciously seeing.

Symbolism becomes even more important when you combine several cards in a reading... Different cards need to become associated with each other, and no better way than through symbolism.

So, I agree with cedars and pirbid that tarot reading shouldn't be symbol-dictionary readings, and instead should be intuitive, associative readings... however the intuitive association language is that of symbolism.

And what Payewacker is doing imo is simply making us more aware of the more hidden symbols we've been associating on anyhow. When I read PW's posts I always get the notion a discovery was made, an awareness came of the cause of a previous unconscious association, and the wish and hope to share the AHA-moment of the discovery by pointing us to look closer at those cards as well. And when I become aware of it myself, I'm always awed at the design of the cards, just like I'm awed by my dreaming brain when I finally did translate every symbol of a dream of mine: how the brain understood everything in my sleep even if I had never translated it, because it both created as solved the message.

[cedars]

Very well put Sweetsunray and nice to hear from you again. We've been missing your inputs.

Symbolism: They are wonderful and we cannot do without them. When I connect with someone's energies clairvoyantly or psychickally (call it whichever) even before I have laid the cards, I get symbolic visions, pictures or messages which would probably make sense to the querent than anyone else. I do not ask for them; they just come through. For example, once I saw the querent in a crowded train speeding to a destination and at the end all the passengers came out and she was still on the train.... I had to give it to her the way I saw it and yet we both knew it had nothing to do about A TRAIN or a STATION..... It was all symbolic.

I will never, never discard what enlightenment is derived from symbolism, in this case the tarot cards. Payewacker's illuminations on these symbols always shed a new light on a particular card and, as you said Sweetsunray, the A-HA always springs to mind. May be this is why I cannot connect with these modern cards which are graphically beautiful but I do not find or access the symbolism in them.

Payewacker: Going back to the comparison you made in this thread of the vestment of the Fool and the Two of Cups and the rest... could you please illuminate your take on these to us a bit?

For example, the number of Yods on the Moon adding up to number Six - the Lovers.. What does that boil down to or add up to?

Aren't we all getting excited or what?

[pirbid]

Take up your Majors,
Pack them from 1-7 in one row, the 8-14 in a second row, then 15 to 21 in a third row. The Fool is not part of this "laying"

This might be a bit "Greek", but
1-7 is Archetypal, but included and forming the "transition", is 8,9 and Ten, to
8-14 Existential. then 13, 14, 15 is the "transition" once again to
15-21 Cosmic.

Blessed be.

This point PW raised is rather interesting. One of the first things you are invited to do when learning Tarot is to look at the 21+1 Major Arcana laid in three rows, as he said above. In fact, this is part of Gem's tutorial in the Tarot forum: you can look at all 3 rows in the link below:
http://mysticboard.org/vi ... hp?t=24410
She names the 3 rows as body, mind and spirit (note the difference with PW's division). The Fool would help you link between them (intuition?).

Another division I had heard of is to imagine this as your whole life:
- First 7 cards would be the first 20-25 years (depending on longevity, I guess ), with your initial potential (Magician), inner self (Priestess), parental figures (III and IV), education and society (Hyerophant), puberty and all it implies (Lovers) and beginnings of independence (Chariot).

- Second row would be from age 20-25 to age 40-50, so a maturing process. Learning self control (Strength), how to be alone in order to clear your mind (Hermit), accept change and destiny (Wheel), seek justice and truth (Justice), make sacrifices for ideals or love (Hanged Man), accepting ends and beginnings (it's common for our elders to die in this period: Death) and trying to keep balanced through it all (Temperance).

- The last row would reflect age 40-50 to 60-75 and then some... where we learn the last lessons in life, or try to, since many don't even manage to learn the first row in their whole lives (I mean our development is never linear and some lessons we must go back time and time again, a lesson Sweetsunray taught us in this thread: http://mysticboard.org/vi ... sc&start=0 ).
Those would be roughly learning to deal with addictive behavior (Devil), accepting things are not permanent (Tower), learning to take care of our global health (Star), trusting intuitive messages (Moon), see the happy side of things (Sun), learn our true mission in life (Judgment) and learning to recognize when a cycle is complete (World).

In this 'age division' I tend to see the Fool as the unborn babe. As we loose body and mind powers in our last years, we tend to go back to that stage. In fact, many elderly people who die a natural death (like one of my grannies) can be found lying in a fetal position.

Please take into account that all these divisions and meanings are but some views it is possible to take on this matter. I invite you to look at the cards in that position and see what story they tell you.

I think this might be a good subject to bring up in the Learn Tarot, so I might copy some of it there.

Sorry if I'm going slightly off topic, Cedars. Promise to come back to it!  :)

[pirbid]

Hey, Sweet! So glad to finally hear from you. I know you must be really busy in the Dream forum and others, so I understand if you have no time to give Tarot readings. But please come check on us once in a while and give us your opinions, like now. Otherwise we might feel sort of abandoned...

Big hugsss  :smt058

[Payewacker]

Hi Guys, I didn't know Gem had a tutorial on this, I researched it, when I was getting my Majors in "place".

The Moon, High Priestess and The 2 of Cups, dualities. The clothing of the man let me think of the jump into the unknown, and the mistakes which may happen. The Woman the colouring of the clothes that of the High Priestess. In the Two, we may find that the Fool has found initial stability in seeing the house in the background.

Blessed be.

[Payewacker]

Hi Guys,

What if we have a look at the Fool, and see where we may find symbolism in the Minors to him.

Blessed be.