Articles

In my Tarot classes I always recommend that students buy Joanna Watters’ fabulous book entitled ‘Tarot for Today’. Joanna runs amazing Tarot courses in Greece on the island of Lefkas. Check out her website at www.joannawatters.co.uk

Below you will find an article written by Joanna:

Approaching the Tarot and the Nature of Symbolism

Joanna Watters

Author of Tarot for Today

www.joannawatters.co.uk

Divination v Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is derived from the French for “clear” and “sight” but it has come to mean more than keen sightedness. If we say someone is clairvoyant we mean that they are psychic, which in turn generally means that this person has some kind of natural second sight. They have not necessarily developed their psychic skills in any conscious way. They simply see, hear or know things without being told or without being asked. This is the realm of unbidden information or omens.

Divination is derived from the Latin divinare which means to foretell or predict. The modern day definition is “the foretelling of future events or discovery of what is hidden or obscure by supernatural or magical means.”[1] (my italics) The essential difference, then, is that divination is an act of consultation, through the means of the Tarot cards, the horoscope etc. This is the realm of bidden information or omens.

Knowing how to interpret a Tarot spread or a horoscope is not the result of psychic abilities but the result of learning, the acquisition of certain skills. Some of these skills are down to pure knowledge, such as learning the traditional meaning of the cards or the characteristics of a sign or planet, while others are down to your intuitive and creative talents, learning how to think symbolically and how to interpret a symbol within a specific context. As with any other craft the degree of success depends initially on the amount of time and effort invested, and then on subsequent experience.

Creative Learning

Compiling lists of keywords or possible meanings is tempting and this approach can certainly play a useful role in the early stages. However, making notes can only take us so far, it can quickly become heavy going and somewhat flat. It also confronts us with the problem inherent in any attempt to assign predetermined meanings. Cf dreams - why don’t dream interpretation books work?

Dreams - manifest meaning v latent meaning

Remember the dream analogy and start by looking for the manifest content, the themes of the card, and trust that the latent content will emerge once a card appears within the context of a reading.

Astrology - universal meaning v particular meaning

Many students tend to give up when they come up against the difficulty of interpreting spreads, that is, the many different combinations of cards. The same stumbling block exists in astrology. Learning the mechanics of chart calculation and grasping the basic meaning of the signs, planets, houses and aspects is relatively easy, but interpretation of each individual horoscope is another matter as every chart is unique.

Every Tarot spread is also unique. This is easily illustrated by the fact that, if you take just the Celtic Cross, the traditional ten card layout, a statistician will tell you that, working with seventy-eight cards, you are up against

1,258,315,963,905 possible spreads

Putting it another way, you are more likely to win the lottery - a one in 14 million chance - than you are of getting the same spread twice!

So, we cannot possibly learn every combination in advance. Not only is this beside the point, it is the point. Even if we could memorise thousands of combinations that wouldn’t mean that we would become expert Tarot readers. On the contrary, we would simply have fallen into the eternal trap of amassing information with no meaning. Any Tarot spread does not really mean anything at all until they are addressed along with the querent, the person seeking the consultation. In other words, every reading needs a context, and that context is the uniqueness of the life, the question, the situation, the relationship, and so on, of the querent.

Symbolism - an infinity of meanings v anything goes!

The more we try to make any card mean one thing, the more we try to box and categorise symbolism, the more it refuses to play - it becomes flat, lifeless and mute. We have to come to grips with the paradox of learning keywords and then forgetting them, or at least not allowing ourselves to be constrained by them. In the name of accurate interpretation we must always remind ourselves that presuppositions tend to cloud rather than clarify and if we cling to keywords we can all too easily end up in some kind of symbolic straightjacket. So where does this leave us?

We can never lose sight of the fact that symbolism is essentially fluid, lively, dynamic but our most important frame of reference is the bigger picture which acts as a faithful guide. In other words, none of the cards will ever mean just one thing, but they will always speak of matters relating to their own dominion. So we can learn manifest meanings whilst remaining open minded to the infinite possibilities of the latent/particular meanings.

For example, the four suits of the Minor Arcana each represent particular aspects and facets of personalities or situations. The Cups, for instance, speak of love, relationships and our emotional lives and each of the cards in this suit has its own story to tell, such as the Two for togetherness and union, the Three for celebration, the Four for despondency and so on. These surface meanings provide a framework for a reading, but it is only when the reading is underway and a card is seen in context that the finer details will emerge.

The same applies to the Major Arcana cards. Let’s take the notorious Death card as a working example. The Death card speaks of endings or loss and the consequent need for change and adjustment, often in a way that is painful or extremely challenging.

In a reading for a woman in her mid forties the Death card came up as the center card of the Celtic Cross. The center card can be read as “the heart of the matter”, the card that speaks of where we are right now. Before I could say a word she put her finger on the card and said, “That’s how I feel. Dead.” The ensuing tale was one of depression, guilt, isolation and just plain boredom. Trapped in her own private hell she could see no way out. There were, in fact, several ways out but she was only just beginning to recognize this. The Death card was incredibly powerful for her as the card spoke to her in a way that moved her, making her see that she was too young to “die” or to offer up her own life as a sacrifice to others.

For another woman asking about the future of a relationship the Death card showed as the outcome. This did not mean that he or she would die but that the relationship would. She admitted that it was already dying on its feet and that, in her heart of hearts, she knew that it had been a mistake from the beginning. He was another wrong choice in a series of doomed love affairs and the Death card reinforced the message that she needed to stop and look at why she was attracting “dead end” relationships.

From these examples we can see how the Death card fulfills its symbolic role even though the stories are totally different. It is also important to note how the card “spoke” to each person in a way that was powerful and pertinent to them, and this “symbolic attitude” is crucial to the effectiveness of any reading.

As you study the 78 cards bear in mind that traditional keywords are but surface meanings. Keep your learning creative, write down any ideas of your own for possible meanings of the cards, and keep notes of examples of particular meanings for any of the cards as they arise in your own readings. In this way the cards will become increasingly familiar to you and finding their contextual meanings in individual readings will become increasingly easier.