Cult of Tarot Forum

I'm poised. What is your question for the tarot?

I initially misread "poised" as "pissed," and I'm like "I know everyone wants to be paired up with good old Charlie Brown, but I'm sure Merrick will be doing a fine job."

Charlie Brown wrote: ↑12 Jun 2020, 05:16 I initially misread "poised" as "pissed," and I'm like "I know everyone wants to be paired up with good old Charlie Brown, but I'm sure Merrick will be doing a fine job."

You must be psychic. I'm so drunk right now I wrote "poised" by mistake instead of "pissed". I started drinking as soon as I found out I wasn't paired with good ol' CB.

According to Rachelcat, drinking is my super power.

How do I focus less on myself so I can better help others?

Merrick wrote: ↑12 Jun 2020, 14:04 How do I focus less on myself so I can better help others?

The deck I am using is the Isis TdM (2010) designed by Tadahiro Onuma, a professor of Quantum Physics at Tokyo University.


Enso means "circle" in Japanese, and wheels turn, so the first message I get from these cards is that you should turn your face away (Le Bateleur) from suffering (Le Pendu), and turn your back (Le Mat) on the world (Le Monde). That is, just report what you see in the cards without consciously analysing the client's problem or paying much mind to what society regards as wise advice. I should probably end the reading there but I'll spin things out for a bit.

If you care too much about the client's problems, you will tend to impose an interpretation onto the images that you believe is what she needs to hear. By concentrating more on the cards than on the client you will get your own personality out of the way. "You" are not your unconscious. Your unconscious is a far more perceptive and trustworthy guide.

Too much regard for the accepted opinion of the world at large about what is right and proper might also inhibit the free flow of information between the cards and your unconscious. When you put on your fortune-teller's hat you should give yourself permission to say outrageous or even forbidden things. What you do not let yourself say during the reading is almost invariably the very thing you should be saying.

The clothes Le Bateleur is wearing are not what he would put on at home. He's in his performer's uniform. To keep yourself - your preoccupations and prejudices - out of your readings, maybe it would be helpful to adopt a slightly different persona. Elton John was a different person from Reg Dwight. The client comes to you because she wants to believe in magic.

As the Enso wheel turns during each reading, the skilled performer, Le Bateleur, becomes transformed into Le Pendu, a helpless recipient of messages from subterranean levels of consciousness. His hands are behind his back to demonstrate that the cards themselves are speaking without any conscious manipulation by the reader. If you, Merrick, give advice to someone, they might doubt or contest it, but a client cannot argue with the images on randomly chosen cards. Images are irrefutable.

The bottom half of Le Pendu's tunic would flop down if it wasn't for all those buttons pulling the fabric tight. This heightens the feeling of constriction in the image as the reader and the client tighten the focus of their concentration on the images on the cards. The frame made by the gallows is even the same rectangular shape as a card.

As the Enso wheel continues to turn, this act of concentration quiets the mind and, as in meditation, grants a sense of imaginative freedom. The constriction felt on Le Pendu turns into the expansive freedom of Le Mat, wandering where he will through the countryside, or through the details on the cards.

Wherever the reading wanders, the light-blue wreath on Le Monde, the final card of the Majors, is simply the completed circle of the reading. How fitting that its circle should mark the end of this circular Enso spread. Each reading should be complete in itself and unique.

Each completed reading leads on to the next, when you don once more your fortune-teller's garb, ready to repeat the experience afresh with each new client.

I did a numeric reduction to generate a fifth card to sum up the entire process:
1+12+0+21 = 34 = 3+4 = 7 = Le Chariot


The client must be the prince in the chariot. The reading itself is the wheels of the chariot. You must be the two horses, your conscious and unconscious working in unison. I notice one is winking at the other, but I can't tell which is which.

I should also say that I found this little spread quite a challenge. Fun but very different. I am so used to seeing the cards in a nice horizontal line, with it's suggestion of time passing as we move from left to right, that thinking of them in a circular relationship made it quite awkward to make the connections necessary to create some kind of plausible narrative. The hole at the bottom of the Hanged Man card looks like a trap door opening onto the Fool card, but I had no idea what to do with that. I'd be interested to see if you notice any links between visual motifs on the cards. I'm not sure I managed it this time. I never know what to do with those four animals in the corners of the World card.

As always I do enjoy your readings! And you have offered some truly sage advice about fortune telling and the act of fortune telling (both the doing and the performing) that I will take to heart.

However, and I don’t fault you in any way as I was quite vague with my question, I was not referring to reading cards there but rather a general question that’s been picking at me lately.

What I’m seeing in that draw is that I’m performing my role, but it’s for the benefit of others, and I’m not fully engaged in it. Doing that for too long feels like I’m trapped, tied up, suspended in free fall. I desire to turn my back on the world and head on my merry way without a care, but I can’t truly do that because the unfulfilled responsibilities I have would always nag at me like a tenacious critter. So I have to learn how to be more authentically myself within the confines of the world I live in, but with a proper sense of balance that allows me to dance freely instead of putting on a show. Only then could I give to others in a truly selfless way, because I’m no longer the distracted person I was at the beginning.

As an aside I quite like the ISIS TdM. I sadly don’t have a physical copy but I do have the Fool’s Dog phone app version and it’s quite striking. The figures in the majors in particular feel very animated and lively.

Thank you for the reading!

Merrick wrote: ↑30 Jun 2020, 05:49 However, and I don’t fault you in any way as I was quite vague with my question, I was not referring to reading cards there but rather a general question that’s been picking at me lately.

As an aside I quite like the ISIS TdM. I sadly don’t have a physical copy but I do have the Fool’s Dog phone app version and it’s quite striking. The figures in the majors in particular feel very animated and lively.

That's elegant the way you turn the cards into an answer for a broader question. One thing I don't like about the Isis deck is the same gripe I have with the Jodorowsky deck, which is the copyright stamp on every card. It seems such an intrusion somehow. But apart from that I like both decks a lot.

There are some unique poetic touches in the Isis. The colours are my favorite for any deck, and the shading gives a subtle, almost 3D effect. The facial expressions are beautifully understated.The similarity between Le Bateleur and the Valet de Deniers is highlighted by having both make a tiny coin appear or disappear in one hand. I like, but don't understand, the bees that make their way onto the Fool and Strength cards, and the tiny balloons or colored bubbles that appear here and there. Certainly not as distracting as the Jodorowsky eggs.

But if you look closely at the Chariot card, the horse on the right is bigger and more powerful than the one on the left. That lively winking horse is the most active force on the card, compared to the dozy prince and the horse on the left that looks like a bland automaton. The head of the winking horse is turning around and his hair is disarranged by the motion.

I take this winking horse to represent your unconscious, cheekily dragging the chariot to the right, towards the future. He is the force that is going to win this tug-of-war. One hoof is already moving outside the frame of the card. The initials V.T on the shield at the front of the chariot are possibly meant to stand for U.T - a substitution we see on a number of the card titles like Rove de Fortune (X) - since the letter V is easier to engrave that a U - and might conceivably stand for University of Tokyo, where the deck's creator works as a professor. Just a wild guess. Or Onuma Tadahiro? The two wheels are quite different too, just one with red spokes.

Oh, I just checked a couple of other Conver-based decks and see the VT initials there too, so scrap my theory. What do those V.T initials stand for on the Conver chariot. Any ideas?