Backwards Tarot Prompts

[Rose Lalonde]

Inspired by this post on Llewellyn's blog by Susan Chang, here's a quick exercise where the situation comes first, and then we choose a card to represent it.

For the prompt, you can use the one the person before you used or add your own, whichever you prefer. One option is to use a prompt generator like this one.

Then choose the card that best represents that prompt in whatever tarot deck you're considering. You can explain why you chose that card, or you can just quickly tell us the card and deck.

(It's not about picking a "correct" card. Decks vary, and as the post linked above says, one person might choose The Chariot (their car) for "running errands" while another might choose the Knight of Wands (on a mission))

[Rose Lalonde]

Prompt: Taking a bath

[Rose Lalonde]

Taking a bath

4 of Cups - Tabula Mundi

Lots of water. Luxury. Sign of Cancer at home. Evening moon. (And that feeling I get when the water starts to get cold and I'm pruney reminds me of the 4s in general, when they start to get stagnant before the 5s shake things up.)
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[MaggieMae]

Knowledge opens doors

[Rose Lalonde]

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prompt: Late to work

[Nemia]

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Silhouettes Tarot, Eight of Pentacles


Prompt: Comfort a child.

[Joan Marie]

Wise Fool Tarot / Strength


Prompt: Plant a seed

[Rose Lalonde]

Late to work

7 of Disks - Thoth

Taurus + Saturn, so slooow. (But ready to work once arriving)

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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt: getting a haircut

[Rose Lalonde]

haircut

Tabula Mundi 4 of Swords

Swords caught up in threads from the Fortune card (Jupiter) remind me of hair, plus the expansive Jupiter cut off and evened up for Libra.
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt: birthday

The Fool ~ Tabula Mundi

(my decan is 6S, but this card always comes to mind for birthdays)
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt: from a Random First Line Generator...

"There was a strange wailing sound coming from the next room"

3 of Swords - Thoth
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "He wanted her job and it would be easy enough to..."

RWS 7 of Swords! But not so much in the Thoth or Tabula Mundi, and I've got the latter in hand, so The Devil.
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "With her tattered dress and worn shoes, she knew she couldn't go..."

RWS 5 Pents
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "He was stunned - the stranger in front of him looked exactly like the girl he'd been dreaming about."

The Moon - Tabula Mundi Tarot
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "He wanted to tell him how much he loved him but..."

8C Thoth
"perhaps he lost heart at the last moment." ~ Book of Thoth, 8C
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "Under normal circumstances he would speak his mind, but, with a gun against his head..."

5W - Thoth
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "They had been together for thirty-five years"

10C - Golden Dawn Temple Tarot
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[Ciderwell]

prompt from the Introduction of The Interpretation of Dreams -

Because Freud works backwards from manifest dream to latent
content and then retraces his steps, inserting a casual arrow that
points from latent content to manifest dream, his logic is open to
question.

Thelema Tarot

[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "They'd only been apart for a week, and already he had a new lover hanging off his arm"

Prince of Wands - Asherah Tarot
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[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "It was the trip of a lifetime, yet"

The Fool - Mamanmiyuki TdM
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[Ciderwell]

Extract from, The Interpretation of Dreams - Chapter One:

Aristotle was acquainted with some of the characteristics of
the dream-life; for example, he knew that a dream converts the
slight sensations perceived in sleep into intense sensations ('one
imagines that one is walking through fire, and feels hot, if this or
that part of the body becomes only quite slightly warm') ...

The Devil - Ghost tarot

[Rose Lalonde]

prompt from generator: "Someone must have seen him, because the police were at his door"

Justice - Spirit Keeper's
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[Ciderwell]

prompt from The Interpretation of Dreams - Chapter Two:

Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo *

Thelema Tarot

* "If I cannot deflect the will of superior powers,
then I shall move the River Acheron".

Freud's use of the translation misses the context within which the quote was said. It’s said by an enraged goddess Juno, defending her right to do whatever she wants and love humanity in her way, whether or not the other gods approve. She said this in a moment of rebellion. She won’t sit by and do nothing, but although she also knows she can’t win, she will try anyway.

[Ciderwell]

Prompt from, The Interpretation of Dreams.
Chapter two ends with Freud's important discovery:

When the work of interpretation has been completed
the dream can be recognized as a wish-fulfilment.

The wish-fulfilment tarot card is usually the 9 of Cups - for
the sake of continuity I like the 3 of Wands from the Thelema tarot.
Both the 2 and 3 of wands use the same colour pallet and
brushstrokes to give their meaning a richer spellbound quality!