Anybody know a real simple Tarot explanation resource? I want to get a reading for my MC and of course I know the outcome I want, but the Tarot resources I'm finding assume that A) the reader believes, and B) the reader has a really high tolerance for ambiguity (from my perspective, because it's all nonsense, but that's not what I need in my story.) What I want to avoid doing, however, is creating the "Hollywood Poker Hand". I'm sure you've seen it, the one character has three of a kind, the next has a flush, the other has four kings, and the hero has six aces or whatever. Anyway, any help in figuring out what I'd need dealt to foreshadow my story would be greatly appreciated.
The thing about tarot is that it is massively ambiguous. Authors generally agree on the broad strokes, but pick up three different accepted resources and you will get three different sets of detail, sometimes directly contradicting one another. That said, it sounds like Biddy Tarot would be good for what you need (ignore all the paid stuff and just look at the free card explations): https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/
I was hoping someone more knowledgeable than me would offer! Seriously, I can't imagine trying to create a fake reading with no prior knowledge, sounds like an exercise in head-spinny frustration to me.
It's fun playing the medium and quite easy once you learn what each card's meaning is. From there on it's all imagination, because... no one can prove you wrong when you are divinating whatsoever. Fun fact: It used to be a game. I learned about them because I love the card decks for their aesthetic value, (I also want to create one myself at some point) and I find that they're very cleverly constructed, the meanings in regards to their illustrations. Might not be a tool to tell the future, but at least they help you self reflect and realise with more clarity what's bugging you and what you truly want. Seriously.
Thanks! I'll try and PM you tomorrow, I need to distill things down so I don't flood you with excess detail.
I used to read the tarot. For the purposes of the story, I would say - make it up. There are as many ways to read the tarot as there are to make cups of coffee. A hint though, look at the classic Ryder-Waite deck's illustrations. They give you a pretty good idea what the cards mean.
I just worry that that could lead to the overly on-the-nose, face cards only kinda thing. I know The Tower and the Ten of Swords (that was my future, the first time I ever had a reading :O ), but I need to get a little deeper than that.
Tarot cards are a set of archetypal symbols, meaning they don't relate to the external, but the internal world. The external world is ruled entirely by physics—science is king there. The inner world is psychological/emotional and generated largely by the unconscious mind, producer of dreams and imagination. Physics has no bearing there. Symbolism (like dream symbolism) rules that domain. As I understand it, yes the Tarot was used for a game, but it was apparently designed originally as a set of symbols for something like early psychology. People understood the symbolic value of the images, though of course many people freely mixed it up with things like divination (predicting a person's future). Today that's mostly what it's known for, and of course we live in an age that has completely devalued the inner world of symbol and imagination, so we scoff and sneer at those things to our detriment. Artists and writers can get a lot of value out of Tarot, Alchemy, and other forms of mysticism if they would understand them in their inner (esoteric) meaning, as opposed to the strictly outer (exoteric) meaning applied to everything today. Jung explained all this, but of course our left-brained society has disowned him. I guess what I'm trying to say is, rather than wave off the inner reality as nonsense, try to understand it comes from the same place as dreams, feelings, and fantasy. They only seem like nonsense from the purely materialistic, physical science perspective. That's only half of the world we live in. As artists and writers, we need to take the inner reality seriously as well.
Modern people also misunderstand the meaning of cards like The Tower and Death. In religion, spirituality and initiation ritual, death and chaos are symbolic and must come before change can happen. You must die as who you were before you can be born in your new form, the same way the trees seem to die every winter only to bloom into new life in the spring. It just means you must undergo some voluntary (or involuntary if you resist) suffering in order to grow and transform yourself to your new form.
Someone else is doing the reading for your character? I say the cards don't really matter. It's about reading the person more than the cards, the cards just give you a jumping off place. Read through a list of cards and consider what could be a good jumping off thread for the reader to weave deeper meaning based on feedback from your character.
No, you can't say the cards don't matter. Just as an example, a king is an older man and a page is a youth. There's no way you can turn over a king and try to argue that the card in any way represents a youth. Cups, swords, pentacles, wands ... each suit relates to a specific and discrete area of life. The five of swords would never be interpreted to means the same thing as the five of pentacles. As has been commented, the Rider-Waite deck is almost certainly the most widely used Tarot deck in the world. I have a niece (by marriage) in South America, and that's what she uses. Here's a link to a basic primer on the Rider-Waite deck: https://exemplore.com/fortune-divination/Meanings-of-Tarot-Cards-Quick-Reference-to-the-Rider-Waite-Tarot Keep in mind that a proper Tarot spread involves a number of cards. Just as the Rider-Waite deck is the most commonly used deck, the full Celtic Cross spread is by far the most widely used spread. It involves ten cards, which must be turned over and read in a specific sequence. You could expend an entire chapter on it if you go through each card -- and, depending on how you write it, to arrive at a predetermined interpretation you might have to do just that. Also: https://tarotx.net/tarot-card-meanings/rider-waite/ https://www.tarot-card.net/tarotcardmeanings.htm https://rider-waite.com/
As I said, they need to find a card that's a good jumping off spot, not a random one. What i meant to imply is that they don't need the perfect card since a lot of tarot (in my experience) is interpretation.
Of course Tarot is interpretation, but for an artificially-constructed spread in a novel that's going to lead to a preconceived prediction, I respectfully submit that it would be best to stay generally within the published meanings of the various cards. Because the Rider-Waite deck is far and away the most widely used deck, that's a good one to use (whether or not it's identified in the story). And, because the Rider-Waite deck is so popular, a tremendous number of the books and web articles on Tarot interpretation are based on the Rider-Waite cards. Most readers use the Celtic Cross spread, or a variation of it. Because that begins with cards that provide insight into what has gone before, if Iain is going to use a full Celtic Cross spread he'll need to have the back story worked out well enough to select cards that will tell that back story.
Not necessarily. The writer doesn't need to give a full blow-by-blow account of the reading. He just needs to focus to the relevant parts for the purposes of the story. There's no need to list or detail every card in the reading or their positions. Remember, it's a story, not a movie. The reader only sees what the author lets them see.
You are correct. I have been doing Tarot readings for more than 30 years, so it's difficult for me to separate myself from the process. The author needs to strike a balance between being believable enough not to be rejected by readers who know something about the Tarot, while not being so detailed that readers who know nothing about the Tarot will just want to get on with the story. While it may not be necessary to list and discuss all ten cards in the spread, IMHO it IS necessary to discuss at least a few that are going to be crucial to the reading -- and that can't be done without also discussing their positions. Let's just say The Fool is going to be a significant card. It would mean something very different in the "This is behind you" position than it would in the "best outcome" position. You simply can't discuss a card and its meaning without discussing its position in the spread. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the Tarot would reject that out of hand.
Miss Wraithewaite muttered incoherently as she surveyed the cards, then lifted her wizened face and gazed at Iain across the table. "Oh, you've got a lot of trouble ahead, you've always had plenty of trouble haven't you? But then you know how to handle trouble—it's this one that concerns me." She tapped the Fool card with a gnarled old hand. "The Trickster. You want to watch out for him" Really you don't even need to go into that much detail about the spread of cards. You could pull back into pure narrative summary, but I think this scene calls for some detail. That doesn't mean it has to be the details of card placement or what each one means. She could just say "Things are going well for you, oh yes, but watch out! The Fool is crossing your path, and the Tower stands ahead casting its shadow over all your endeavors." Or you know, other stuff like that.
Hmm, let's address some details I let grow into misconceptions. My setting is modern-day L.A. Magic is real, but only a vanishingly small number of people are able to practice it. My MC can see ghosts, my tarot reader can (dimly) see past and future events that she shouldn't have knowledge of, there's a character who can do healings, another one for whom feng shui is a real practice that can yield solid, practical results, etc. There are a lot of events in the MC's life for the tarot reader to glom onto. Like, he once died (and went to Hell, but doesn't remember that bit), he can see ghosts, he knows an Angel (but doesn't know the Angel is an Angel). He's going to meet a set of twins, one of whom just so happens to have died in the womb but is hanging around... Don't want to dump too many details. But you know the question of why, when a genie is summoned and offers to grant three wishes, why does no one ask for three more (or unlimited) wishes? It's not a genie, but he'll need to trick/convince the antagonist into "asking for more wishes" to resolve the crisis at the end of the book. I want to throw the tarot reader in at the beginning as window dressing, but then have enough of her predictions (upon hindsight) come true that something cryptic she said will make him realize that he needs to play the aforementioned trick.
Interesting, the last copyright on the Rider tarot deck (in the EU) will expire at the end of this year.
So where's the unusual stuff? Tarot readings aren't usually event-specific, nor are they time-specific. The cards might indicate (as in "suggest" rather than "predict') that the questioner may soon experience the death (or loss) of someone close. If the card affected by the loss card is a king, the questioner may lose an older man. If it's a queen, the loss will be a woman. But "loss" may not mean death -- it could be a terminal parting of the ways, or it could be something as simple as one or the other person relocating and the two lives taking different directions. Time is generally basically "soon," "in a short while," or "in the distant future." The cards can't say that, "On September 17th, 2022, your cousin Fred will die of a stroke and leave you $174,268.27." Also, a typical Tarot reading is focused on ONE question. The cards answer that question. You don't get a book or even a short story with a road map of different predicted events for the next one, five, or ten years. IMHO, this is still the best single reference for tarot in general, and especially for the Rider-Waite deck: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=isbn+0-553-27752-9&ref=nb_sb_noss
@Iain Aschendale OK please let me give you my real-world insight and view to Tarot Cards or Ruin Stones. In my early teens I study this area as well as others looking for answers to all sorts of questions. It led me down all sorts of paths, but I found categorically how and when to use them successfully. I suggest buy any basic book and deck on tarot or ruins then read them. Next look at Tony Buzan’s first five books on lateral thinking. Then something like Sun Tzu ART OF WAR... Guess what it’s all the same. The thing is it’s not about fortune telling at all, that’s the side show circus rubbish. It’s about looking at a problem and exploding it to view that problem from many different angels without bias. From there the reader may find a direction which best suits to resolve that problem. Sounds like bollocks, right? Actually, it’s not, the basic draw in which cards are laid out give an overview of the question asked. The individual card placed inverted or not in a location just supplies a random talking point about the problem in that particular space and time. What I learned very quickly about Tarot is it showed me my problem or question from every conceivable angle. If I looked and answered honestly each particular area of the draw by the end, I had a much clearer understanding. It cuts away the legacy build up that led to the problem making you see things from a bias point of view. Does that make sense? Lateral Thinking does something similar and of course Sun Tzu. It’s a very personal and private journey that helps formulate the real question you want to ask. A Question like what will be the next lotto numbers is obviously not going to work. How can I get out of debt or How can I get better recognition at work can show up some truths? Your MC could have the ghosts explain life lessons via the tarot. The MC doesn’t need divine intervention to improve his life, just needs to appreciate and understand what he’s got sort of thing. With the story arc the three wishes must be a false positive. His character development needs to show by looking at something in a different way or attitude the wishes themselves become moot. The antagonist is the Devil offering something that looks out of reach for the MC’s soul in exchange... Just a thought MartinM
I can cheerfully read your fortune with Tarot, cast your horoscope the old-fashioned way, or read your palm, but I wondered for a while why you wanted to get a tarot reading for your motorcycle club.
