TdM Haiku

[Joan Marie]

Until I have over-thought something I can't get over thinking about it.

haha! I know what you mean.

People who practice witchcraft, spell casting, will tell you that as soon as you as soon as you finish you have to put it out of your mind and let it work.

Set it and forget it!

Prayer works the same way I'm told.

Generally speaking, over-thinking is the bane of all occult practice.
I'm sure there's another joke in there.

[dodalisque]

Generally speaking, over-thinking is the bane of all occult practice.
I'm sure there's another joke in there.

There's an ee cummings aphorism: Think before you think!

That thing about projection happened all the time when I was doing readings for EE. He would make a comment about something I had said in one reading and in the next one the visual details that popped out at me prompted me to do a reading that was a virtual repetition of what he had just said. I guess I was ruminating on his words and they were the "personal preoccupation" which I projected onto the cards.

It kept happening against my will even when I was consciously aware of it. Usually being conscious of something gets in the way of doing it naturally or unconsciously but the power of projection seemed to overwhelm even my conscious awareness of what was going on. As you say, it's hilarious, but also a little spooky. You can pretty much rely on it. Monks in medieval monasteries were apparently encouraged to use the cards as a focus for meditation and I wonder if this wasn't what they were focussing on.

If what we see in the cards is such an infallible guide to what is on our minds, then the cards are a clear mirror in which we see our own features. This is not the same thing as doing a reading for ourselves, making predictions and asking questions, etc. That is the work of our conscious mind - the ego giving advice to itself. Studying our projections by noting the details our eyes are unconsciously drawn to should be where to look for the truth about ourselves. First we make a note of the story we see in the cards - our first impressions - and then figure out what aspect of our lives it must be referring to.

Since our unconscious is often aware of things we are not yet consciously aware of, it might give us insights into issues that are bubbling away under the surface. I wonder if that isn't why our experience with EE was so traumatic - we were seeing things about ourselves that we didn't like. In my case the imagery that kept coming up was prompting me to do readings about things like emptiness, sterility, fakery, and lovelessness. It's exactly the way we try to interpret the significance of a dream.

If you kept a record of the readings you did for EE it might be revealing to go back and read them again - try to match them against what was happening in your life at the time or what has happened since. I certainly made a few dramatic changes in my life after those EE readings. They were not conscious decisions on my part. They felt like compulsions driven from within, as though the decision had already been made - things I didn't force to happen but actually couldn't resist. Quitting smoking was one, and I've been a dedicated smoker for 40 years, but some other good stuff happened as well. Renunciation is always painful but it was honest, purposeful pain.

So, doing these haiku readings should probably be a 2 stage process: first do the reading and set it aside for a few days or weeks, and then re-examine it to try to identify what it might have been telling us about ourselves - maybe see if we can match it up with events in our life. Sometimes, like with "talking over their heads", the connection might be apparent almost immediately.

[Pen]

It's fascinating to follow this thread - I haven't thanked as I'm sure all the notifications would have driven you both mad. Anyway, although I haven't had any experience with EE's course, I hope you don't mind a contribution from yours truly with Madame Soleil's Dusserre Dodal.

1) Wheel of Fortune: He is determined
2) Ace of Swords: To defend his position;
3) The Sun: The usurpers quake.

[Joan Marie]

If you kept a record of the readings you did for EE it might be revealing to go back and read them again - try to match them against what was happening in your life at the time or what has happened since. I certainly made a few dramatic changes in my life after those EE readings. They were not conscious decisions on my part. They felt like compulsions driven from within, as though the decision had already been made - things I didn't force to happen but actually couldn't resist. Quitting smoking was one, and I've been a dedicated smoker for 40 years, but some other good stuff happened as well. Renunciation is always painful but it was honest, purposeful pain.

I did keep all the emails. I always meant to put them together in a document. I think I'll finally do that now. I can go back and compare them to journal entries from that time. Hopefully I was making regular entries but I'm not sure. I do know there was a lot of covid stress at the time. Everything here was closed so no shopping, no movies, no restaurants, no gatherings of any kind. I was a little stir crazy taking long pointless walks all the time. I'm sure that coloured the experience with EE.

I can admit that once I was finished with EE I was relieved to be done with what felt like a kind of tortured exercise and also felt strangely disconnected from tarot, and even from this forum. Eventually I reconnected, but there is definitely a difference. I think it was growth, a maturing of sorts. Totally unexpected that's for sure.

Speaking of projection and coming back to old readings/haikus, I often find that what I think a reading means at the time I make it and how it actually hits me later happens all the time.

I used to have a habit (that I may start again) of doing a reading every Sunday for the week ahead. a 3-card reading: 1. What is the Spirit of this week to come? 2. What is the priority for the week? 3. What do I need to be mindful of this week?

Almost invariably, when I looked back at the reading at the end of the week I saw that it played out entirely differently in light of what had actually transpired. BUT, the reading usually held up really well, it's just that it didn't apply to the things I thought it would when I did it.

It gave me great pause when I considered how I could see the message but I was projecting my own ideas of how I was imagining the week ahead and not anticipating the surprises in store. But often when unexpected things happened I would recall the reading and think, "Oh THIS is what that meant!"
The reading could still act as a guide, a really useful one, as long as I was able to adapt to actual circumstances, able to recognise the connection to the reading.

The general idea held true. It was always just the specifics that I got wrong, but that in hindsight I could clearly see. Sometimes it was pretty funny. I could see clearly how my original reading was influenced by wishful thinking and projection.

[dodalisque]

It's fascinating to follow this thread - I haven't thanked as I'm sure all the notifications would have driven you both mad. Anyway, although I haven't had any experience with EE's course, I hope you don't mind a contribution from yours truly with Madame Soleil's Dusserre Dodal.

I rather like the thanking function. The notifications don't bother me and all of them disappear as soon I check into the thread. It's reassuring sometimes to know that someone has read something I sent out into the void. But I suppose we can probably assume that the 3 of us are following all the posts. I don't mind either way. The Dusserre Dodal is a very rare deck indeed. Is the Madame Soleil edition a photographic reproduction of the original, which was itself a photographic reproduction of the original original? "The usurpers quake" is nice. They are tiny naked childlike figures groping towards each other for support; and they are on this side of the wall, which establishes them as invading usurpers; and that sun looks like the fierce face of the man holding the big sword.

[dodalisque]

TAROT DE MARSEILLE (by Mary Packard, 2015) - Madenie deck (made in Dijon in 1709)

Moon: In the dark harbour
Hanged Man: We lay floating at anchor
Temperance: Rocked by gentle waves


- this deck seems to be a redrawing of the original Madenie cards using coloured pencils. It comes in a large presentation box with a hardcover companion book that includes some historical background about the Madenie deck. The cards have been given a simulated mottled appearance. I particularly like the card-back design. For comparison, the picture above includes the corresponding cards from Yves Reynaud's first version of the Madenie. Yves' first version seems to be more or less a straight photographic reproduction, whereas his second version, which appears in the picture of the cards for the reading after this one, cleans up the images a bit to make them seem less rough and the colours brighter. For some reason I think I prefer the rougher first version. If I'm going to be using a historical deck I find the scruffiness increases the feeling of authenticity and age. But I can't resist being devil's advocate here and pointing out that EE, who prefers the modernist clarity and precision of Jean-Claude Flornoy's redrawn decks, once said in an interview that for him using a photographic reproduction of an ancient battered deck from a museum is like "touching a corpse"!

[dodalisque]

I can admit that once I was finished with EE I was relieved to be done with what felt like a kind of tortured exercise and also felt strangely disconnected from tarot, and even from this forum. Eventually I reconnected, but there is definitely a difference. I think it was growth, a maturing of sorts. Totally unexpected that's for sure.

Exactly. I wonder if the "bright light" that EE warned us about, the excess clarity that explains too much, that "flattens" objects in paintings and photographs, isn't exactly what he brings to the tarot itself. Not in his readings, which are astonishing and superbly poetic, but in his anti-occult attitude to tarot. For me, after the classes were over, this took most of the excitement and romance out of the readings I did with the RWS and modern occult decks. The TdM is more down-to-earth than the occult decks - just compare The Magician with Le Bateleur - but I have decided that I don't like being down-to-earth all the time.

I want tarot occasionally to help me to escape from my daily concerns and from the drab contents of own imagination. Sure, working with the TdM makes me feel more sensible and mature, but a steady diet of it is depressing. Perhaps if we keep working at it our own imaginations will provide us with all the romance and mystery we need. Until then I have decided to look for inspiration in both in the passionate occultism of Lon Milo Duquette and the dispassionate scientific materialism of EE. They both manage to achieve real poetry.

BTW I hope nobody reading this thinks I know what I'm talking about when it comes to discussing EE. He's a genius and all I'm doing is trying my best to figure out some of the things he was trying to convey to me.

[dodalisque]

TAROT DE MARSEILLE (by Mary Packard, 2015) - Madenie deck (made in Dijon in 1709)

Strength: The beast slips its leash
Sun: Leaps the children's playground fence
Death: And rips them to shreds.

- Definite Edward Gorey influence here: The Gashleycrumb Tinies? I think I need to rethink this one.

Hey, JM, we were talking about projection. I just realised that I recently re-read a favourite novel of mine by Elizabeth Taylor named "A View of the Harbour", and (worse) I just finished writing the above email responding to yours about becoming more mature, i.e. ripping the child in us to shreds?

[dodalisque]

Almost invariably, when I looked back at the reading at the end of the week I saw that it played out entirely differently in light of what had actually transpired. BUT, the reading usually held up really well, it's just that it didn't apply to the things I thought it would when I did it.

This happens when we do readings for others as well. I like to talk to clients about readings afterwards to see how close I got, and when they give me the actual factual situation from their life that the reading touched on I am often astonished at what a cartoon simplification I was carrying in my head while I interpreted the cards, imagining all the time that I was receiving a clear vision of the truth. Visions are pretty misty and vague most of the time but they can still carry the poetic kernel of the truth.

[Pen]

Is the Madame Soleil edition a photographic reproduction of the original, which was itself a photographic reproduction of the original original? "The usurpers quake" is nice.

There's a thread about it on Aeclectic, but it doesn't mention how the images were reproduced, although as it was apparently published by Dusserre, I guess they would have had the files used for their first edition.

Quote from the thread:

Queen of Pentacle wrote: Madame Soleil whose picture and autograph are on the box, was a very weel know French voyante (psychiq) and astrologer. She had a radio show in France in the 70, which lasted for 20 years, then a TV show, in the 90, and was writing for many magazines and nwespapers

She died in 96, but here niece, Eliane is still working as an astrologer

Strangely, here name Soleil (which mean Sun) was her real family name.

[dodalisque]

I do know there was a lot of covid stress at the time. Everything here was closed so no shopping, no movies, no restaurants, no gatherings of any kind. I was a little stir crazy taking long pointless walks all the time. I'm sure that coloured the experience with EE.

That's good point. I hadn't considered that. If we were essentially staring at our own face in the mirror when we were reading for EE without a question, then maybe our readings were depressing because we were depressed. If we had been starting a hot new affair around that time or had just won the Nobel Prize for Physics or something perhaps our readings would have had more pizzazz. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can use that excuse for myself. I was doing the EE classes just when covid was new and exciting. The place where I worked had been forced to close when business slowed and I lost my job, but to be honest I was kind of pleased to have extra free time and had a million plans for self-improvement. Didn't happen, of course. A pretty universal experience, I'm sure. But during the classes I was thrilled to be communicating with one of my great heroes.

No, EE said that the purpose of the whole process was to develop a flexible imagination, and that is one quality I famously DO NOT possess. Once I find something that works I'm willing to keep repeating it forever. (Addictive personality trait?) If I come up with a good idea about the Strength card, say, I fall in love with it and can't get it out of my head the next time I see that card. That for me is what broke me during the lessons. I ran though all 22 cards in various combinations and used up my set of pet ideas pretty quickly. It got to the point where I would internally scream whenever the Star card came up again. I just couldn't think of anything new to say about it, regardless of what cards were next to it. A flexible imagination would be able to combine various elements of the 3 cards in virtually infinite combinations but I was stuck in my own claustrophobic little world. In fact my list of ideas about the visual components of a particular card is probably much shorter than the (despised) list of (mechanical) RWS card meanings I carry around in my head!

Also the way EE's method works is to use the cards to suggest analogies to other experiences: 'This here on the cards reminds me of that thing out there in the bigger world'. But first you have to have a lot of things that you know about in that bigger world. If you have lived most of your life as an incurious lazy dolt then you are not going to see many things that the cards are analogous to! I guess I was constantly staring down at the emptiness in my own brain, and a steady diet of that would get on anyone's nerves. However, let's not get too fatalistic about this. It's a work-in-progress and I think looking at the cards might help me to develop a more flexible imagination and unearth my own personal hoard of analogies if I keep working at it. Looking the the TdM in this way is a kind of Imagination Gymnasium. Mind you, I've never much enjoyed working out with weights. Writing tarot haiku is perhaps the equivalent of taking Zumba classes instead.

Perhaps if we allowed ourselves to write tarot haiku on topics of our own choosing we might make more interesting discoveries. We would still be seeing projections but, rather than being about our current opinion of ourselves or a recent event in our lives, they would be projections of our knowledge of a particular topic - which is often much larger than we suspect. Composing a tarot haiku on a pre-chosen topic would be the same as answering a client's specific question as opposed to trying to do an open general reading, which never works. The reader gets swamped by TOO MANY possibilities. We know that experience - the question provides a context that limits the potential number of analogies possible. That limitation is what makes the cards come to life and allows us to come up with unusual connections between the card images and the question asked. Or would choosing a topic for the haiku make a difficult exercise even more difficult? Next time I'll experiment maybe. But are haiku themselves - Basho, Issa, etc, haiku - about particular topics? I don't think they are, really. The fact that they take you to a place where there is no real paraphrasable content- a zen moment - is probably why we value them. I don't know. My mantra.

I feel we are getting somewhere in understanding this whole thing but unfortunately my readings seem to be getting worse. At some point I might need to take a break and let my unconscious mull over the matter. I find I have a lot of the necessary enthusiasm if I do about one haiku a week. Any more than that and I start to get flashbacks to tarot boot camp!

[dodalisque]

There's a thread about it on Aeclectic, but it doesn't mention how the images were reproduced, although as it was apparently published by Dusserre, I guess they would have had the files used for their first edition.

Thank you so much for this link. It actually records a historical moment about another subject, where Yves Reynaud mentions in passing that he is close to releasing the first of his series of decks! I find it amusing that the Madame Soleil reproduction of the Dusserre deck is actually more rare and more attractive than the Dusserre Dodal itself, which is itself probably the most sought after commercially made deck in the world.

When I was seriously collecting decks a few years ago I was able to obtain an actual Dusserre Dodal - which is a little disappointing IMHO - not great printing or cardstock. Yves Reynaud's decks are all much nicer. And in any case I prefer to use the Flornoy or Robledo decks for readings rather than photographic reproductions of the original battered cards, however exciting it is to see those surviving cards - touching history. At the time I guess it was the first commercially available photographic reproduction of an old deck, and then Dusserre went out of business, meaning that very few copies were available. I got my copy for $30 and I'm so ashamed of myself that I don't look at it very often. I had put an ad on Aeclectic in Decks Wanted looking for a copy, but knowing that it was the longest of long shots, and then promptly forgot about it. About 3 years later I got an email out of the blue from someone who had found a copy in a Japanese corner store in Quebec City and would send it to me for $30 plus postage. She had bought it on a whim for about $20 and didn't like it. A better person would have let her know what she was selling but I didn't and I'll just have to take the karma rap. The 2 presentation cards are missing and the box is in poor shape but the cards are perfect and the deck is complete. I could probably sell it for about $500 but I don't think I ever will. And now that Yves' decks are readily available and, thanks to Enrique Enriquez and Jodorowsky, the TdM is more popular and decks are more easily available in English-speaking countries, I expect the collectible value of the deck has probably fallen.

As you probably know, there are just two survivng copies of the original 1701 Dodal in existence, one in a museum in Paris and one in the British Museum. The Dusserre is a copy of the one in Paris. I came across someone on Aeclectic who had somehow made a deck out of photographs of the British copy and was selling them in an edition of 50 decks. I bought No.38 for about $50. It was sold by someone who called themselves something like "Karen's Retro Repros" but there is no indication of a printer or publisher on the box. Probably illegal - more bad karma. The French and British copies look quite different - what's left of the colours that is - though Flornoy determined that the two decks were printed from the same blocks. The Robledo version of the Dodal seems to reproduce the colours and actual stains from the British copy of the original deck, but don't quote me on that. I'm not an expert or any kind of tarot scholar and generally get by on general impressions and guesswork. How did you find your Madame Soleil? I know you make your own lovely decks but do you have a large collection of decks made by other people? I love them. You can buy a little portable art gallery for a small price and enjoy the intellectual achievement of each deck creator as well, comparing personal interpretations of the various cards. It's a fascinating subject that seems to branch out into philosophy, art, mysticism, everything. But I'm preaching to the converted. I have recently winnowed my collection down to about 10 decks, the ones I particularly admire or like to read with. I'm ill and didn't want my daughters to be left with the job of getting rid of them.

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote: How did you find your Madame Soleil? I know you make your own lovely decks but do you have a large collection of decks made by other people? I love them. You can buy a little portable art gallery for a small price and enjoy the intellectual achievement of each deck creator as well, comparing personal interpretations of the various cards. It's a fascinating subject that seems to branch out into philosophy, art, mysticism, everything. But I'm preaching to the converted. I have recently winnowed my collection down to about 10 decks, the ones I particularly admire or like to read with. I'm ill and didn't want my daughters to be left with the job of getting rid of them.

I saw it on ebay, years ago. I think the seller was in Italy, but I could be wrong about that. Looking in my tarot purchase notebook now, I see it cost me 82 Euros. I have about 100 decks, and have stopped buying (however tempted I might be) - and yes - your 'little portable art gallery' feelings echo my own exactly, having never collected simply for the sake of having one of each and every deck. I think that would be just about impossible these days anyway.

I'm sorry you're ill. Good health becomes so much more precious as we get older, and the cards are best left un-consulted on certain matters. I'm currently trying to 'winnow down' too - but 'stuff' rather than books and tarots. We have so much of it that it seems like an impossible task. I sometimes say - only half-jokingly - that when we're gone the children will just hire a few extra large skips and dump the lot.

[Pen]

Dodal TdM

1) The Lovers: Danger's in the air -
2) The Fool: Danger follows everywhere.
3) The King of Batons: Watch, wait, be ready...

[Joan Marie]

I will try to post the pic later


Wheel of Fortune / Death / The Sun

I never noticed before that the wheel of fortune seems to be on water. Not only is it turning but it isn't stable.
The twins under the sun are on stable ground. They are connected, touching. Unlike the two heads at the bottom of the death card.
A clearing has taken place.
The skeleton in the death card seems to be looking upward, toward the Sun. Worried.
In the 3 cards we have water, earth and sun. The components of life, of growth.
The twins stand before a garden wall. Looking satisfied.

What I am doing here is finding the visual connections, the analogies, between the cards, as I see them today, right now.


Water, soil, and light
Act as a magic potion
Give us all we need.

[dodalisque]

Wheel of Fortune / Death / The Sun

I never noticed before that the wheel of fortune seems to be on water. Not only is it turning but it isn't stable.

Water, soil, and light
Act as a magic potion
Give us all we need.

If the projection theory is operational here, it sounds like you're having a good day. Nature in all its glory, magic, sufficiency. The Wheel does indeed look very rickety. Along with the water it's floating on I'm sure it's meant to convey how uncertain our fate is. Even the artwork for this card on most of the earlier decks like the Dodal, I think, is deliberately incompetent to reinforce that impression. The wheel becomes an impossible image that does not even hold together as a believable representation of an object. The way the Tower is drawn as a two dimensional rectangle is also probably telling us something about the flatness of the ego. Apparent artistic clumsiness in the TdM often seems to be used to disguise a subtle idea. The writing on the book on the Papesse's lap looks like water too - like the water in the harbour on the Moon card maybe. There must be dozens of examples.

[dodalisque]

1) The Lovers: Danger's in the air -
2) The Fool: Danger follows everywhere.
3) The King of Batons: Watch, wait, be ready...

Great stuff. I've often thought of using a 42 card deck for readings: 22 Majors + 16 Courts + 4 Aces. The trouble is that larger readings tend to look like the platform at Euston Station. 42 is a very significant number in numerology. Is that what you are doing or are you drawing from the 78 card deck? How about:

Lovers: The arrow is fired,
Fool: Travels through the air, and finds
King of Batons: His Achilles heel

or,

Lovers: My tale is about
Fool: Dick Whittington and his cat,
King of Batons: Lord Mayor of London

[dodalisque]

Wheel of Fortune / Death / The Sun

The twins under the sun ...are connected, touching. Unlike the two heads at the bottom of the death card.
In the 3 cards we have water, earth and sun. The components of life, of growth.
The twins stand before a garden wall. Looking satisfied.
...magic potion

Wheel: When we stir a soup
Death: Chopped up raw ingredients
Sun: Mingle over heat

- Hey, JM, the really silly thing is that I missed breakfast this morning and when I first read your haiku I was feeling hungry, like the starving skeleton I suppose, and was thinking about making lunch! When I got stuck during the classes I remember EE suggested that I should stop thinking of the figures on the cards as people with emotions but sometimes consider each card as the expression of a process. But this is the first time I really understood what he meant. The Wheel of Fortune isn't symbolic, it isn't even a wheel or have creatures on it - it's just the motion of stirring. Once that idea got into my head the rest of it wrote itself. "Stirring" gave me a subject - cooking - that narrowed down the significance of the rest of the elements in the cards. All of a sudden writing the poem became like answering a specific question from a client. I could limit my search for analogies. I think once you see one good idea - the "loose brick in the wall" thing - you can build everything else you see on that. That must be the trick. Maybe the word "magic" in your haiku also contributed to this breakthrough realisation for me.

But, wait a second. Did the "magic potion" line in your poem come from that stirring circular motion of the wheel? If so it was so subtle that I didn't make the conscious connection until now. I guess I'm just spelling out what was already implicit in what you wrote. Duh, I'm slow. But I do think part of the fun of this exercise is appreciating how the poet is connecting word to image. I used to get into this discussion with chiscotheque all the time. I always wanted everything to be as plain as a pikestaff so that it was instantly obvious to everyone - my unfortunate "lecturer" function - but I can appreciate that that is not how creative people think. When I was doing readings - having an audience - I guess my main priority was being intelligible rather than making something enigmatic and beautiful. That might explain the astounding flatness of my finished product

[Joan Marie]

But, wait a second. Did the "magic potion" line in your poem come from that stirring circular motion of the wheel? If so it was so subtle that I didn't make the conscious connection until now.

This is so interesting. No, the idea of "stirring" never occurred to me, at least not consciously.

I think the "loose brick" was when I noticed the wheel of fortune is on water. I really can't believe I never noticed that before (at least that I recall) because it seems to be a really important element of that image.

I think I now really (finally) understand what you mean by "loose brick" because once I saw the water the whole thing opened up for me. What's been on my mind, as we are having some lovely mild weather here, is gardening. The skeleton looked like a gardener to me (albeit a bit gruesome) working away at the earth.

Combined with the sun, I saw the 3 components of garden life, water, earth and Sun. That was, to me, the "potion" the ingredients for life. I ignored the turning motion of the wheel, which is of course connected to the idea of potion by mimicking a stirring motion, but it fits perfectly.

BTW- I am attempting, though I don't know how successfully, to NOT make each line of the Haiku correspond to each card specifically, but rather to get an overall picture or vibe or whatever you want to call it based on the connections between the cards, the analogy that the combination puts forth. The whole idea of garden came from all 3 together. That's literal (water, earth, sun) but could also be seen figuratively as the ingredients for anything all being present. A reading (as opposed to a Haiku) could be saying something like, "You have everything you need to do what you want to do." or something like that. That's also fits the idea of "potion."

I do love the idea that the wheel is stirring it.

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote: 42 is a very significant number in numerology. Is that what you are doing or are you drawing from the 78 card deck?

It's the Answer to the Ultimate Question of the Mystery of Life, the Universe and Everything...

I do draw from the 78 card deck, discard the pips if they come up but keep the aces. I'm probably too attached to reading one card at a time and using the first idea that occurs rather than looking at and reading the three cards as a whole. I think I've carried this method over from the original haiku thread.

[dodalisque]

I think I now really (finally) understand what you mean by "loose brick"

BTW- I am attempting, though I don't know how successfully, to NOT make each line of the Haiku correspond to each card specifically, but rather to get an overall picture or vibe or whatever you want to call it based on the connections between the cards, the analogy that the combination puts forth.

Yeah, I think you are trying to do the impossible. In 17 syllables you are trying to write a beautiful poem while also leading the reader through a series of complex metaphorical connections between word and image. If the readers can't instantly see exactly how your mind is working and what you are basing your poem on then the cards themselves seem irrelevant to them and they get confused. If a real poem crops up then it's a bonus, but for me it's enough with this exercise to draw attention to one or two simple elements in the cards and pick out a simple story. Doing it one card at a time moving left to right is a useful trick for keeping things as simple as possible. Simple for the audience but not for us. It forces us to be concrete and literal. It's really an exercise in looking for "eye rhymes". You are trying to do something infinitely more complex. But, Christ, the tarot haiku I have managed so far are hardly glowing examples. ("Do what I say, not what I do.")

"loose brick" is just EE's metaphorical way of saying that you only need to find one surprising visual coincidence on which to hang the whole reading. The simpler the coincidence the better - as EE says, "In order to read with the TdM you need to be dumb." Once it is pointed out, the client cannot NOT see it. It instantly puts you and the client on the same wavelength. Once you have established that common ground you can extend the metaphor and make more elaborate and perhaps dubious connections between the cards. Inwardly the client should immediately be thinking to themselves, "Jeez, of course, it was staring me in the face the whole time. Why didn't I see it?" Suddenly your audience is in the palm of your hand, you have won their trust. After that you can take all sorts of liberties with the images. Your connection is rooted in the shared truth of that one undeniable visual fact.

I think it's also taking advantage of the sense of confirmation that always attends a coincidence. All tarot readings depend on that. "Good grief," you think, "the Chariot card showed up next to the Death card and my car broke down this morning." It's a coincidence but it feels as though the cards and the details of your life are magically synchronised. In a way they are since the cards can be interpreted in many many different ways and one of those ways will have something in common with your own life. You might not have thought about your car at all if you hadn't seen the cards. You unconscious makes the connection, or the reader's unconscious is attuned to your consciousness and makes the connection...but I'm drifting off onto another subject.

An example would be in the cards that Pen last drew (Lovers / Fool / King of Batons). At first you look at the three cards and it's a brick wall, a dense agglomeration of possibilities. You could combine the different emotional and visual elements in the cards in a billion different ways. Then you notice that the arrow in cupid's bow is perfectly parallel with the massive pointed staff that the King is holding. They are laying at the same angle. Suddenly the staff looks like a massive version of the arrow - they even both have points on the end - they must be the same object. But noticing they are parallel is the "loose brick". Pen looked at the cards and noticed someone in the first card was about to be shot with an arrow, so the word "danger" became her "loose brick". The rest followed from that. There are so few motifs on TdM cards that they constantly echo one another. We've talked about this lots of times. It's what makes the TdM unique among tarot decks. It allows the cards to communicate with one another.

So "eye rhymes" are how EE refers to these visual echoes shared by two or more cards. The first part of his classes is spent getting us used to looking for those eye rhymes. But, heck, it isn't easy. There's a knack to it, and sometimes I despair that I'll ever get the knack in a million years. I'm just not a very visual person and live in a dream world of inattention and distraction most of the time. Noticing things is not my forte. Of course lots of experience looking at the cards allows you to build up a repertoire of things to look for.

Probably I'm just trying too hard. Remember that in France the tarot is known as "le jeu de tarot" - the game of tarot. Approaching it like a fun game played by family and friends around a dinner table is the feeling that seems to work best for me. Imagining sitting around with people eating nachos and drinking beer while someone leans over your shoulder and says "Notice no-one is wearing a hat" or stuff as simple as that. But it doesn't even always have to be an "eye rhyme". A simple idea like the stirring pot of the Wheel is enough to loosen the first brick. That thought probably wouldn't even pop into your head unless you had unconsciously registered a bunch of other stuff, but we have no control over that. It's just a matter of waiting for something to grab your attention. Waiting is hard and trying to consciously force it, like I do, is what prevents it from happening. It's the same with golf: the more important the shot the more your conscious mind wants to elbow its way in and say, "I better take control here. You don't want to mess up." but the muscle control necessary to hit a good shot is so refined that only instinct can manage it. The best players have to train themselves how to not care at the very moment that $10 million is riding on the necessity of them sinking a 3 foot putt. It's a spiritual discipline.

[dodalisque]

TAROT DE MARSEILLE - MILLENIUM EDITION ( by Wilfried Houdouin, 2017)

Magician: I used to look back
Devil: But when I faced the present
Fool: I could move forward

Sheesh, I said in my last post that EE recommended we needed to be dumb to read with the TdM. You don't get much dumber than this. I guess you should be careful what you wish for. I kinda like it though. I sweated over these cards for a whole day, juggling all sorts of arcane solutions, and then woke up with this silly thing in my head. I was shocked when I counted the syllables and found it worked out.

Incidentally, I notice the imps on the Devil card have an eye on one knee. I have seen eyes on both knees before but not this. The male and female have one eye each, so maybe when they combine they complete the set, in a parody of the idea of spiritual union. Does anyone have any ideas about eyes on knees? I've been asking on forums for years and no-one has come up with anything convincing. I know there are supposed to be important chakras in the knees, beyond the usual big 7. There are chakras (acupuncture points - energy centres) all over the body). Is it something to do with kneeling to pray? If we knelt to pray, the eyes on the knees would close presumably. Are the open eyes something to do with refusing to pray? Do open eyes on knees therefore signify the sin of pride? (I'm probably thinking of this because I'm quite proud of this haiku.) The eyes on the belly must be about greed, I suppose. The nipples are eyes staring back at us, catching us looking.

[dodalisque]

Wheel of Fortune / Death / The Sun

What I am doing here is finding the visual connections, the analogies, between the cards, as I see them today, right now.

Continuing to theorise, it strikes me that the idea of "first thought, best thought", which we have been elevating in our discussions to the status of divine revelation might actually be what is getting in our way. The way you brainstormed for ideas for your last reading made me realise that often our first thought when we look at the cards is our most common-place thought. To find something fresh and interesting we need to kind of burrow away until we get past that initial knee-jerk response to the cards. Our unconscious does have an instant story that it sees but it can take a while to get past the dross to arrive at it. It's like Rodin chipping away at a block of stone until he discovers the shape implicit but hidden within it. Our conscious mind jumps in so quickly with a common-place or pet idea that the liveliness that marks the presence of the unconscious is obscured.

Even though I know next to nothing about western philosophy it reminds me of something I heard about the Phenomenlogy of Edmund Husserl. His student Hegel (I think) said that he studied with Husserl for a long time before he realised that the philosophy was actually a "way of seeing". To arrive at the truth of an inquiry Husserl recommends something he called epoché - which is usually translated as as something like "postponement". We don't jump to a conclusion, we gather all the available facts and evidence and at a certain point the unconscious makes a leap of understanding. You keep postponing your decision until it is made for you. All of a sudden there is an "Aha" moment. I first came across the idea of Phenomenology when I was studying hostory. It's a fact-gathering approach that deliberately avoids making generalisations and judgements. Surely that is what you were doing when you started putting down ideas about the cards, and what EE had us doing in the first few exercises. It kind of shakes loose original ideas coming from the unconscious, which are otherwise trapped in the net of old received ideas held by the conscious mind.

Our veneration of the principle of "first thought best thought" might explain why I tend to get fixated on an idea and then get more and more tightly enmeshed in it the more I keep trying to make it work. "Flexibility of the imagination" comes when we learn how to jettison that first thought, and maybe the next few common-place thoughts as well, and not become attached to them too much. Continuing to gather data, to give our unconscious something to chew on, something to stimulate fresh connections in our brain, is how we surprise something new. I dunno. What do you think? At the moment it makes perfect sense to me but tomorrow I might not be so sure.

[Joan Marie]

It's a fact-gathering approach that deliberately avoids making generalisations and judgements. Surely that is what you were doing when you started putting down ideas about the cards, and what EE had us doing in the first few exercises. It kind of shakes loose original ideas coming from the unconscious, which are otherwise trapped in the net of old received ideas held by the conscious mind.

I was just trying to tease out anything I could from these cards staring back at me. I wasn't really looking for a "first thought" as much as I was looking for any thought at all.

I think that with practice, with persistence, and with patience and a bit of kindness to one's self, the whole process becomes more creative, by which I mean less coloured by the mundane crap in one's head. It's about elevating the mind, becoming more poetic in one's perceptions so that maybe that "first thought" really is a good one.

That the thoughts/haikus are influenced by surroundings or what is on your mind is unavoidable and why would we want to avoid that anyway? Where it gets interesting is in what kind of insight we can bring to it all. Through words.

For instance, it was super windy here all evening and night and I when I woke up it was still blowing like crazy outside. Wind affects me, it makes me tired and if I am out in it I am unable to concentrate on anything.

I then drew these 3 cards:

and then wrote this Haiku:

The same air that lifts
Also causes confusion
Balance is hard won


The air lifts the winged angel who blows a horn down to the supplicants (all, the angel and supplicants are "lifted") then the wind blows from the upper right of the Tower creating chaos, while Justice seated, weighted down holding sword and scales, keeps her balance.

I am giving up beating myself up for not being as brilliant with this exercise as I'd like. it can be hard to put one's self out there, show one's work so to speak, and betray to everyone the simplistic workings of one's mind, but this is how we improve.
Think of all the great things that never happened because of self-doubt and self-deprecation of honest efforts.

[dodalisque]

It's about elevating the mind, becoming more poetic in one's perceptions so that maybe that "first thought" really is a good one.

The same air that lifts
Also causes confusion
Balance is hard won


I am giving up beating myself up for not being as brilliant with this exercise as I'd like. It can be hard to put one's self out there, show one's work so to speak, and betray to everyone the simplistic workings of one's mind, but this is how we improve.
Think of all the great things that never happened because of self-doubt and self-deprecation of honest efforts.

Score! You don't even need to explain yourself and "show your workings" with this haiku. That's exactly what makes it good.

The "first thought" probably is the "best thought" but finding it amongst the din of other thoughts takes a lot of practise. I think that thing about "becoming more poetic" is probably what horrified me so much about the classes. It became immediately apparent, especially after comparing my efforts to EE's effortless brilliance, how far I am from being poetic. I started by thinking that EE would show me a method I could learn that would immediately transport me to superstardom, but I'd neglected to factor in the necessity of working at it. You and I are both kinda smart and used to being top of the class but being a poet is not the same thing as being smart. Perhaps EE's objection to reading with modern decks using learned meanings from the Golden Dawn system is that it is a "system". You can learn it and apply it almost mechanically, though some are more creative with it than others obviously. But reading with the TdM you're operating without a net. But, yes, not beating ourselves up about it is definitely a sign of progress.