Tarot again...
-
Excuse me, but how should one shuffle the deck? When I found out the cards had different meanings if they fell face down or up I started to first shuffle them in my hands and extended that to also rotating them in a mess on the floor before me before I picked them up. Is that sufficient? I'm asking mostly because I don't want to ruin my wonderful Thoth deck.
-
@Malaclypse said
"Excuse me, but how should one shuffle the deck?"
This actually brings up an interesting point about divination: How random should it really be?
If you're of the opinion that the main point of divination is to develop our powers of interpretation (conscious and subconscious), then the "result" should be truly random and taken out of the hands of the diviner as much as possible. (Maybe an automatic card shuffler - as long as it doesn't damage the cards!)
But there's also the idea that divination is a pathway to allow some aspect of the subconscious to "communicate" directly (albeit in symbols) to the conscious mind. If that's the case, then wouldn't one want to allow the subconscious to have some "real" leeway in choosing the result? The following "shuffling / card-choice" procedure suggests itself:
Lay out the cards in a grid, face-up. Then, one by one, turn them face down. Try to concentrate the conscious mind on the question(s) at hand and not on the positions of the cards. Then do some slow and gentle movements of the face-down cards, maybe just swirling around two at a time (one under each hand). The point is to allow the subconscious to keep "knowing" where all the cards are, but making sure the conscious mind isn't keeping track. Then, once you've thought enough about the question(s), pick up however many cards you need for the divination, from whereever feels right.
In other words, leave open the possibility of "cheating" for the subconscious, but don't actually cheat consciously!
Does this make any sense? I'm of course lumping the whole "subconscious" into one thing, thus neglecting more than 100 years worth of Hermetic Qabalah on the parts of the soul, etc... Maybe this has been tried and tossed out because it emphasizes the wrong parts of the subconscious...
Steve
-
93,
IMO, any gentle shuffling will do, followed by a mindful cut. Some traditions prescribe a specific method of cutting. Also, keep in mind that Crowley and others generally did readings with all the cards upright--no upside down cards in the layout--determining "malignant" effects of the cards purely by their being "ill-dignified" (placed near cards with energies not harmonious with their own, etc.)
93 93/93
David
@Malaclypse said
"Excuse me, but how should one shuffle the deck? When I found out the cards had different meanings if they fell face down or up I started to first shuffle them in my hands and extended that to also rotating them in a mess on the floor before me before I picked them up. Is that sufficient? I'm asking mostly because I don't want to ruin my wonderful Thoth deck."
-
@Malaclypse said
"Excuse me, but how should one shuffle the deck? When I found out the cards had different meanings if they fell face down or up I started to first shuffle them in my hands and extended that to also rotating them in a mess on the floor before me before I picked them up. Is that sufficient? I'm asking mostly because I don't want to ruin my wonderful Thoth deck."
I never put any meaning on reversed cards, and go out of the way to keep them all right-side up except when I'm using the full G.D. method - in that case, the impact of reversed cards is that face cards face a different direction, causing you to "count around the circle" in a different direction.
One approach to ensuring that a few cards are reversed would be to take a percentage of the deck off the bottom - less than half, perhaps no more than a fourth - and simply rotate that part 180° before one part of the shuffle.
-
@Steven Cranmer said
"In other words, leave open the possibility of "cheating" for the subconscious, but don't actually cheat consciously!
"This is excellent. This man understands!
-
Thanks a million for your answers! And yes, I agree with Jim, Steven! Superliduper!
Now I have another question, or perhaps set of questions. I just finished reading DuQuette's "Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot", but was hoping for a better explanation of specifically the divination methods, but I still don't fully get it.
First, just to be absolutely sure, in the first method, "count the cards from him (the significator), in the direction in which he faces." From it, as in upwards when facing up, or downwards? I know, I'm stupid, but... ah... yeah, I'm stupid. Okay, next question:
Counting the cards. Okay, but to what end? Should I look up the meaning of the sum in Liber 777? And the sum should be decimated to a one digit number, right?
"Shuffle, etc., as before." I take it this includes parting the entire deck into four stacks of 19-20 cards each? Then it says, because I take it the stack with the significator is then chosen, "let the thirty-six cards following him form a ring around him." So either the shuffling etc. as before is misinterpreted or I should take cards from the stack either left or right of the one he is in, right?
Just checking to be sure: the entire deck is used in all the methods described in the book, right?
I believe that was all for the moment.A last question: any good place online where I can find further divination methods?
-
Thanks! Just a couple of probably off-topic responses...
@Malaclypse said
"And the sum should be decimated to a one digit number, right?"
I've never heard the word "decimated" used in this numerological context! I think its other meanings are appropriate regarding the loss of information when you go from, say, 300 to 3! (Come on, Shin isn't Gimel!)"A last question: any good place online where I can find further divination methods?"
While I'm sure that Googling the phrase "Tarot Spreads" will yield thousands of hits, you might want to try repeating that search using "Google groups" (i.e., the ancient Usenet news groups) for dates between about 1990 and 1995 and the specific groups "alt.magick" and "alt.pagan" There was a wealth of information posted back then in plain ASCII...
("Ben" ain't the only near-centenarian here...)
Steve
-
Yes, I googled up exactly that right after I wrote that.
But, really, the questions. This is just too high a level for me to grasp with my present knowledge. Any further help is really appreciated.