Tag: Marseille

Lessons In Tarot – Choosing Your First Tarot Deck

Choosing Your First Tarot Deck

Here are some points to consider if you are choosing your first deck:

  1. Choose a deck that makes you feel comfortable and secure, but also inspired. Since you will be spending a lot of time with your cards, you don’t want to pick a deck that strikes you as odd, unpleasant or boring. Later, you may seek out unusual decks for the challenges and insights they offer, but it’s better to start with one that attracts you. If a certain deck calls out to you, go with that one! 
  2. There is no official tarot deck. Decks come in many different forms, but the “standard” deck has 78 cards with 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana cards divided into 4 suits. Most decks are built on this model. You should probably stick with a standard deck to start so that you are familiar with the most common format. 
  3. Many decks are oriented around a theme. This is especially true of modern decks. Typically, the images, the names of the suits and the court card figures reflect this theme. If you choose a deck with a theme, be sure it is one that suits you and that has lasting appeal. 
  4. The Rider-Waite is probably the most common deck in the United States, and many tarot decks are based on it as well. Cards in these decks often have the same subject matter as the Rider-Waite, but are drawn with a different style and artwork. The Universal Waite is essentially a copy of the Rider-Waite, but with softer colors and less contrast. The Albano-Waite has bright, unusual coloration. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of some cards from the two decks. 
  5. In some tarot decks, the pip cards, or numbered suit cards, all have unique picture scenes. In other decks, these cards simply show the suit symbol repeated the appropriate number of times (similar to regular playing cards). Some people like these symbolic decks, but for learning and memorization, it is often easier to have the pictures. 
  6. Some newer tarot decks have been created in the spirit of light-hearted fun. Two examples are the Halloween Tarot and the Silicon Valley Tarot. These decks are amusing, but not the best choices for deeper, more thoughtful tarot work.

 Rider-Waite Tarot Deck

The Rider-Waite Tarot deck is probably the most popular tarot deck in use today in the United States. It was first published in 1910 by Rider & Company, a London publisher. Arthur Edward Waite designed the deck in collaboration with Pamela Colman Smith, an American artist. Waite was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult society of the time. Waite considered symbolism of prime importance, so the cards of the Rider-Waite deck were created to communicate esoteric principles through symbols. Waite describes his interpretations in his book The Key to the Tarot, sometimes published with pictures as The Pictorial Key to the Tarot.

Waite made several changes from the tarot deck traditions of the time when he designed his deck. He switched the Strength and Justice cards so that Strength became card 8 and Justice card 11. He and Smith also created full pictorial scenes for the minor arcana numbered suit cards. Before this time, these cards usually showed only the suit symbols as in the Tarot of Marseilles.

The Rider-Waite tarot deck is the model for many modern tarot decks and also has several variants. It is available in 4 sizes (miniature, pocket, regular and giant) and four language styles (spanish, french, german, and five-language). The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck will be the one used in these lessons.

Travel with Daydreams

Travel with Daydreams
Adapted from The World Dream Book
by Sarvananda Bluestone
Inner Traditions, 2002

While most of us cultivated the fine art of daydreaming as an escape
from boredom in school (a practice which serves some of us well at work,
too!), daydreams can be used to bring us to new places, teach us more
about ourselves, and enrich our lives.
Your daydreams are magical passports. Here’s how you can travel with
them:

1.) Find a place and time where and when you can do nothing. This kind
of daydreaming requires your full attention, so find a place and time in
which you have no responsibilities. Unlike ordinary daydreaming, this is
not about escaping from something. It is about going to something.

2.) Close your eyes. If you have your own way to relax, feel free to
employ it, but definitely close your eyes. Our eyesight can be a
distraction, and we don’t want to be distracted from our daydreaming.
You might want to take a few deep breaths, inhaling slowly through the
nose and exhaling slowly through the mouth.

3.) Think of something you have wanted to do and have not yet done.
Don’t just think about it–actively imagine what you want. The more
specific the images, the better.

4.) Do what you have wanted to do. Here’s the key. In a dream we can do
anything, we can be anywhere. We can travel through time and space. We
are not bound by logic or practicality. We can visit the dead, speak to
the unborn. There are no limits here other than those that you impose
upon yourself.
Again, be as concrete as you can be. If, for example, you’ve wanted to
visit France, be specific. France is a large place, but the waterfront,
at, say, Marseilles is more specific. I’ve never been there, but I can
conjure up a breeze from the sea and the smell of fish. Which leads
to…

5.) Pay attention to all of your senses. The problem with visualization
alone is that it focuses on one of the five senses–the sense of sight.
We do more than see when we dream. We feel, and sometimes we smell and
touch. Surely in our dreams our sense of sight is foremost–that’s how
we’ve been trained. But in a daydream we can use all our senses.
In my Marseilles daydream, I’d allow myself to imagine not only the
sight of the harbor but also the smell of the fish, the feeling of the
sea breeze on my skin, and the sound of the seagulls. The more senses,
the merrier the daydream.

6.) Let yourself explore. Now that you’ve reached the place where you’ve
wanted to go–explore. Walk, fly, swim if you want to.

7.) Do this more than once. Daydreaming takes practice. The more we do
it, the better we get at it. Once again, more of what we call
daydreaming is about getting away from a particular situation. In
imaginative daydreaming we create something to go toward. It takes
practice. The sky’s the limit!

The World Dream Book
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819022/caremailgreeting

Copyright © 2002 by Sarvananda Bluestone Reprinted by permission of Inner Traditions.

 

Submitted by Akasha