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Hyper-Tarot

00:54 / 22.12.04

So, I got this idea that I wanted to play with, and I wanted to see if there was anyone else who wanted to give it a go so we could compare results.

We've been through various mappings to the major arcana of the tarot. Instead, I would like to see what happens if one invents a personal deck out of tarot cards, other divinatory symbols, and personal magick models. For example, one might grab chunks of the Thoth deck, a couple of cards from the Rider-Waite deck, the 3 of clubs, a card with Fehu printed on it, a poem, and an entity of one's own creation written up as though it were a Magic (the game) card. If you have 5 High Priestesses in your deck, this is not necessarily to be frowned on. The hope is that by taking everything you have in your magickal pot and treating it as just another card to pull (even if it's to the point that you've got to do your readings with a dealer's shoe), you'll be more likely to keep all your various perspectives bubbling to the forefront of your mind semi-regularly, and less likely to calcify.

The immediate problem with this idea that comes to mind is that you may lack the balance that your basic tarot deck comes with, in the same way that if you take the smorgasbord approach to religion, you might take the fun and easy parts while forgetting that obstacles are important. But then again, I'm inclined to risk blowing up the laboratory and divining theories from the ashes.

Anyway, it's currently a half-baked idea—anyone for putting some walnuts in?

01:14 / 22.12.04

I do not know, mixing decks of different concepts of tarots sounds... ilogical. And the tarot has a very logical inner sense.
Heck, alternatives are interesting, though...
For a time I could not use Tarot, it didn't speak to me... but I could use the Tarokka... a false tarot included with some older editions of the Ravenloft RPG, man, it worked incredibly well, both in and outside the game. But I never managed to have one of my own. The symbols were different, but the tarokka was well balanced.
Years latter, a Crowley tarot fell into my hands... and my world was never the same.
By the way, i've read that some thought about using the tarot inversely... that is, placing the cards in an specific order to shape things to come. Has anyone done it?

01:17 / 22.12.04

Hm. Three years ago I would've jumped all over this. But I've ripped through and tossed around and drawn connections for so long that my understanding of the Tarot is concrete. I don't have a "magickal pot" from which to pull, superimpose, or any variation thereof. I have a really clear view of the whole picture as it relates to the little fractal between my ears. I'd have to lobotomize myself or purposefully go back to who i used to be: angry and obsessed with my own suffered fools. Worth a go though, for a game's sake, sure

I was thinking also: Tarot is a way to divine extrospection through introspection. What would be the point of hyper-Tarot? Don't say the same, because the system, as it stands, is SOLID. To say it isn't because it-just-don't-relate-to-you, is grounds for the Cultural Appropriation Thread. What's our new spin or direction?

Now, I'm ready to play! Those are my conditions... What are your conditions?

02:41 / 22.12.04

Perhaps you should consider making your own Tarot. New majors, new suits, new court. The whole shebang. You could map everything you are and everything you strive for onto a deck that would be unique to your practice.

ciarconn - i've read that some thought about using the tarot inversely... that is, placing the cards in an specific order to shape things to come. Has anyone done it?

That sounds intriguing. I mean, I've used single cards as focuses for meditations attempting to invoke the qualities of the card. What you mention is really just a logical extension. Hmm. I might have to try that. I have used the opposite interpretation of the card in the future position as a guide to changing/avoiding that future.

Thems is my nuts. (So they're slightly misshapen...so what?)

03:29 / 22.12.04

I've used single cards as focuses for meditations attempting to invoke the qualities of the card.

I've done this but with quite a few cards. I haven't laid them out in the order that I wanted things to happen but I've used a good few of them in short meditations and in ritual.

Here's something I did back in March :

Cast an astral circle using Circle conjuring spell in the names of Dagda and Morrigu, then Creator Deity spell.

Placed tarot cards in the circle like this :

East : K & Q (King and Queen) Fire (as Wands) +9*

South : K & Q Earth (as Pentacles)

West : K & Q Water (as Cups)

North : K & Q Air (as Swords)

*+9 : I placed 9 cards here :

The Emperor & The Empress
The Magician and The High Priestess
The Sun & The Moon
+
The Lovers - at one side
Temperance - at the other
Balance - If I remember correctly, this card was the closest to me in the center.

Not exactly inverse Tarot, (although I do remember placing the Balance card closest because that's what I felt I needed the most at the time) but I wanted all of these qualities to manifest because I was in a pretty bad spot back then.

I think I need another Tarot set though, (I'm using the Universal Waite deck at the moment) maybe a Crowley one or a Celtic one.

21:38 / 22.12.04

spread the cards. read the spread, and meditate...go out drinking... come home, meditate again...nothing has changed...

consider if you *really* want to change something about the energy-that-spells-[insert your name] at a given time. ya sure. fine.

get hollow. change the map. connect map & territory (via mantra/war cry). consecrate. earth. done.

good night.

XXII:X:II = XXX

05:51 / 24.12.04

I had a couple ideas about this, working with archetypes more immediately accessible to modern people that have positive and negative aspects (ie, politician, journalist, vagabond, etc.; suits like gun, money, information, et al), but I'd want to come up with a whole map, system, whatever to plug them into, or else there's no point. It needn't be the same number of cards, suits, roles as the classic Tarot, but they ought to interrelate according to some sort of internal logic.

/+,

07:31 / 24.12.04

I'm against internal logic right now. I'm looking at it as more of a collage than a correspondence system, because I have a tendency to try to develop a fully generalized system, which is impossible. I want to stop trying to nail down everything; my floors are getting ruined. This might be a personal difficulty which I incorrectly assumed to be more widespread, however.

12:48 / 24.12.04

I got the Celtic deck, and even though the major arcana are good and I love the look of them, I'm not sure about the rest. They are more pattern-like than the Waite deck, with none of them having pictures of men/women/gods/goddesses/other beings on them. The first thought I had on the bus was to replace the majors from the Waite deck with the Celtic ones, and use Waite minor/Celtic major arcana. This is probably inspired from this thread, but because I place so much importance on having beings my cards that I can connect with, I have the feeling that I could have done this anyway.

I for one, say go for it. (and thanks if you have been the one to inspire me to mix my own in the end.) I mean whatever's significant for you should be the best thing. With myself now I'm loving the idea of one day having a good few decks to mix up and use. (and I better be able to draw a few of my own soon because I really need to try that too.) I can't see it doing anything but adding life and vibrancy to the divination process if this is actually what you need to try out. Maybe it will work, maybe not, but it's worth a try.

I'm gonna guess that you know how Grant did it, and it worked for him, maybe you need to do the same type of thing for it to connect.

17:43 / 24.12.04

Okay, so I'm bored right now and spending Xmas doing self-reflective lobotomy. I think the most helpful way for me to approach this project is to use it from a "designers' perspective". I could play with the cards, and they'd help with developing either content or context or even aesthetic choices.

So far I've got six suits: Line, Shape, Space, Hue, Value, & Texture

And I'm tying to come up with Major Arcana as social principles like:
Speed, Space(diferent as concept than as element), Sameness, Transformation, Truth, and Hybrid.

Add to that a second tier consisting of art school semester priniples like:
Perception, Message, Identity, Audience, System, and Chance

Now I'm thinking of adding "archetypical voices" to the mix, like:
The Comedian, The Elitist, The Cool Hunter, The Scientist, and The State

Am I on the right track here? I see all these things and I'd love to draw some connections too, but I think I'm strict collaging here.

19:17 / 25.12.04

Digging it, Chad, especially the archetypal voices.

I realized last night that part of what I'm after is something like the Oblique Strategies cards:

'The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of "Evening Star" and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno's "Before and After Science" and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind.'

19:19 / 28.12.04

I am a professional Tarot reader and I have to say that a personal version of the Tarot is like a personal version of the Bible. You can make one up, but is it as valid as the original? Not likely. Revisionism has it's limits, and to revise the Tarot you need a pedigree like Waite.
Your perception of the Tarot may not be accurate, and to then revise it is a bold move to say the least. Respect the originators of the system, eh.

18:44 / 30.12.04

Hmmm, I must respectfully disagree. I've worked with decks so radically different from the origional tarot as to be almost a different system of thinking. I've found that they all have their uses, and the deck that I use most heavily,(for initiatory experiences), is actually the most different in terms of structure. When you look at it, everything that we have as humans is built upon what came before it. We take things and essentially re-arrange, adding part of our "selves" to it. It's no different with any practice, including magick and divination. I do agree with you though, that someone needs to have practical experience in order to do this, i.e., familiarity with the origional system, through practice. Still, if we refused to modify anything in deference to it's creator, would we have anything new? I suppose that when you look at it, there really isn't anything TRULY new under the sun, but there is a necessity to have systems that work to fulfill the needs of a given time. That requires change.

Unconditional Love

07:29 / 31.12.04

everything is new with every blinking of the eye
memory creates the delusion of the past
history isnt my story,
remember to forget.