Respond to this thread before Sept. 8th in order to take part in September's Tarot de Marseille reading circle. Readings will be due by Sept. 22 and feedback must be returned before the end of the month.
- Since we haven't had our circles in a while, I thought we'd start in with good old-fashioned cartomantic lines, preferably of the more lengthy variety.
- More experienced TdM readers should aim for a 5, 7, or even 9 card line, based on how you perceive the question. If you are newer to TdM, then the 3-card line is probably recommended.
- In addition to the main line, readers can feel free to add whatever sorts of regarding draws (is that the right term?) that they normally use. For example, when appropriate, I will often draw a card to put under Le Bateleur's table to indicate what he's trying to hide. I think that Marigold likes to see who is spinning the Wheel of Fortune.
- This month may be done full deck or majors-only. My personal preferences are these: 3 cards = majors only, more than 5 cards = full deck, 5 cards can go either way or even majors plus Aces or majors plus Aces and signifiers if the question is right.
- Newer TdM readers, please take note. In the past, there's sometimes been a little confusion about "cartomantic" lines in TdM vs the kind of no-spread readings you find on facebook or your favorite basic three-card spread. Here's a good explanation from @BreathingSince72:
This month I thought we could continue our experiment of reading in a cartomantic line, using visual clues like line-of-sight and the stories the images tell. I feel like I need to define with greater precision what it is to read a line in the cartomantic style. And I am going to start by stating what it is not. Reading in a line is not your standard three card spread. This form of reading will not have the customary “body, mind, spirit’ or “past, present, future” sort of position assignment. Instead, the goal is to read the cards all together. In doing so, we hope to discover a clear, unified message.
The message of the cartomantic line can be a sentence, a story, or even just a single word. Or, it might be something else entirely. Sometimes it will come from the tarot's optical language and sometime's it might come the tarot's numerical and symbolic structure. Sometimes we read from the center outward. Sometimes we read from the outer cards to the central cards. When reading five card lines, we may use the first three cards as how the situation developed, the last three as an indicator of where the situation is going and draw an additional card as guidance. If there are characters in the cards, we might look at what they are doing with their hands, the directions they are looking and what they tell us within the context of the question.
