Tarot as a System of Metaphysical Philosophy

[Spotless]

Tarot cards can be used for so many things - the least of which is futures, but for futures they are still interesting.

Futures do exist but they are alter able and at the same time often relatively fixed.

The primary use is for assessing current trends and stuck energy - and keeping the practice focused on inner work and where work might best be focused.

 

One of the great assets the tarot can help with for a time is coming to comfort with a thousand pictures floating around in front of you all shimmering and some settling. Different decks bring a different texture to the colors and tones and light. Your whole body being is able to privately enter a mystical realm and play - hopefully it is a sort of play and not some deep foreboding crap off the deep end of delusion - simply no need to go there though many do.

 

In the play with tarot one is also confronted with -

 

The process of seeing and wanting to fall for the temptation of willing rather than just seeing.

 

Of seeing but not falling for the temptation of judging. (Most miss this - neutrality seems to be the hardest lesson to hear in all of practice - and the most valuable of all - even the word "neutrality" drives many monkey mind to near insanity instantly)

 

My primary use of the tarot deck was to see what area within my space I was working on - it could be useful in this way from almost any level I might come to it.

 

The tarot can also be very validating - you can be drawn to them and everything can be vivified sometimes with a whole cast in upper arcana.

 

As I became very proficient I used a deck of playing cards more frequently. They get to the quick of where in your space you are working and where in your space your stuck - I don't know of many who use a simple deck - the joker is not used.

In this system you do not use them for future reading or anything like that - simply help in practice and sometimes finding your ass from a hole in the ground. Most of the time I used them in my head without the actual use of the physical cards - in fact that may be the only way I used that system - I don't think I ever cast a simple deck.

 

Tarot is very useful when "looking" at someone - a person can ask for a reading and they will have their attention on the cards - not their attention in your head - so "seeing" becomes easier and the tarot act as a diversion as well as an instrument to light up in the space of the person you are looking at those things that they are most actively dealing with (or trying not to deal with). It makes the process of seeing them easier and this is good for a beginner who is practicing sight - even if it is just the notion of sight.

 

In the initial use of the cards the cards will congest ones space by lighting up a whole host of energy points (pictures) in ones space.

Working through this takes not much time but until this calms down they are a bit like over stuffing yourself on thanksgiving - you can't do much more than roll around and wait for digestion to occur.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Spotless

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Does anyone here know how to play the original game the cards were made for? I've heard its pretty good.

 

Back circa 1970 some friends and I found instructions for what claimed to be the original "Tarot" game.  Basically it was a three handed game similar to Bridge, but in which, surprise, surprise, the "trump" cards were the trump cards.  I didn't find it particularly interesting, but then card games never interested me that much.  I don't remember much more about the game,nor the source for it, it was after all a while back.

[Nungali]

 Not traditional but we had our own versions.  One can take a trick by a wordy verbiage and attempted justification of the previous cards in the trick seen as a reading and the one you played tops the others (somehow) -  the group decides whether the argument is valid and who wins the trick.

 

Its a good game for when you are flooded in for a week, the power is out and the solar is flat.   ... otherwise known as 'cabin fever'. 

Edited May 2, 2015 by Nungali