Cult of Tarot Forum

Rose Lalonde wrote: ↑06 Feb 2020, 03:21
I'm going to give it a try. (Since I have 2 copies of the deck I read with most, I could actually even take a picture of the spread if it were a reading for someone else... Unless it came up thrice. )

Diana wrote: ↑27 Jan 2020, 21:32 There's been something that's been bugging me since the very early days of my apprenticeship in reading the tarot. It's a very long apprenticeship. Apparently no-one's ever finished - even the Hermit is still looking for some answers it is rumoured. Others say he's looking for questions. No-one knows for sure.

The thing that's bugging me is the fact that once you've drawn a card for a certain position, there's no possibility that the same card can be drawn again. Like let's say you're doing a Past/Present/Future spread. You get the Wheel of Fortune or any other card for the Past. But maybe the Wheel of Fortune should also ideally represent the Present and/or the Future. Which means that maybe we should each time be drawing just one card for the first position, Past, put it back in the pack, shuffle again and draw the card for the second position, Present. And then put it back in the pack, shuffle and draw a card a third time for the Future position.

This means of course potentially that the same card could come up twice, even three times. (It's such a pity that we don't say thrice anymore. Once, twice, thrice. That was very adequate. What on earth happened that this lovely word disappeared.)

I'm doing a reading for myself in the Readings section. My spread that I decided to do was a three card spread. a) How has this situation affected my outlook on life; b) What are, if any, the benefits, and c) What are, if any, the disadvantages.

I looked at the 3 positions. And then I looked at my cards. And I felt very strongly that I should be using all 78 cards for each question. Sort of like three separate readings. But I didn't want three readings - I wanted one cohesive one with no separation between them. I wanted to do a normal spread but each position had to have the 78 cards and their full potential. Now of course, this means that maybe the same card will come up twice in the same spread. The idea sounded appealing. I tried to argue against this idea though - quite strongly in fact, like "what if the benefits and disadvantages is the same card - that won't make sense", but then I thought immediately afterwards "well, that just means that they cancel each other out. That the situation is neutral." Then I thought, but there are other cards that could represent this neutrality just as well. But then immediately I thought "But what if the ideal card for that has already been used up for question 1". I had this sort of internal dialogue with myself. It went on for quite some time.

I also told myself that maybe I'm being a heretic and will be burned at the stake in the Tarot of Marseilles hell. But that too I had a good argument against. So I relented.

I decided to use all 78 cards for each position. But they're not three readings. When they're finished (I've still got to draw the card for position 3), this will all be put together and considered as one. With the implication that it is possible that the third card may be the same as one of the other others. So far the first two are different. It's unlikely this will happen and I'm not holding my breath. Not this time - I don't intuit that. But still, I have to consider that possibility if I'm doing a three-in-one or one-in-three reading (which is it by the way ? what's the difference between three-in-one or one-in-three ???)

I'd like to very much hear your thoughts on this. Thank you.

Nemia wrote: ↑11 Apr 2020, 10:08 It's possible to draw cards from different decks - that would prevent this problem. It might even be interesting to pick a different deck for each spread position.

And what I nearly always do for deep insight readings is permutations. I move the cards from one position to the next. I always like to use fewer cards (my ideal number is 4) and then move them around, as described here.

Joan Marie wrote: ↑13 Apr 2020, 19:45

Nemia wrote: ↑11 Apr 2020, 10:08 It's possible to draw cards from different decks - that would prevent this problem. It might even be interesting to pick a different deck for each spread position.

And what I nearly always do for deep insight readings is permutations. I move the cards from one position to the next. I always like to use fewer cards (my ideal number is 4) and then move them around, as described here.

This is really interesting. Thanks for the link Nemia. I had never heard of using permutations before.
At first I thought it sounded really, well, wrong to move the cards around like that, but as I read more I started to see what a truly interesting perspective this would give to a reading, and what a kind of magical stretch of the cards if that makes any sense to say it like that.

Anyway, I can't wait to try this. I wonder if anyone would be interested in trying it in a reading group/circle.