Path: shell.portal.com!shell.portal.com!not-for-mail From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (lorax) Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.tarot,alt.divination,alt.religion.wicca,alt.pagan Subject: Re: Tarot of the Cat People Date: 4 May 1996 12:16:14 -0700 Organization: Portal Communications (shell) Lines: 84 Sender: tyagi@shell.portal.com Message-ID: <4mgadu$mrg@jobe.shell.portal.com> References: Reply-To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (lorax) NNTP-Posting-Host: jobe.shell.portal.com Xref: shell.portal.com alt.magick:72843 alt.magick.tyagi:7962 alt.tarot:6691 alt.divination:7393 alt.religion.wicca:27534 alt.pagan:157663 kaliyuga 49960504 taliesin@mail.utexas.edu (George Leake): |...what is tarot used for?... tarot is used for anything humans can imagine doing with tarot. I have played regular games with tarot, studied esoteric symbology in association with them, sought their reflection in divination, and adorned altars and composed rituals all using tarot cards or cartouche. it was not difficult and some of the decks are skewed/biased/flavored along particular thematic lines. |...you can find out your future for enough money sitting in front of a |painted, be-scarfed, and perfumed (nee "Oriental") lady 'oriental' has this meaning? within what context and time period? were the cosmetics and adornments such as these mostly unavailable to those who first used the term 'oriental' in this manner?? |[nice list omitted]...all these and more have been associated in various |ways to tarot cards. no doubt. as there becomes no One Right Way to go about magical pursuits, people will begin experimenting a bit and coming back to discussion with some experience which may serve more than a repeated parallel. |So, does the tarot have to function as some sort of symbolic system |employing magical systems and/or act as a tool for self-revelation? no, it doesn't have to. it can serve as a means by which one psychically attunes to a client, counsels hir, and helps her reflect. it might be the schtick of some confidence game whereby I convince (through sleight of hand, careful deceit and crude treachery) another of my 'powers'. it might be a bunch of pretty pictures which relate to Hermetic teachings that people sometimes like to meditate on and discuss |All evidence shows that before 1781 it was largely regarded as a card game |(a kind of ur-Contract Bridge), though it meant more for some. See my bit |on the Trionfi or the works of Michael Dummett and Gertrude Moakley on the |subject, or better yet, read the works of Petrarch and Shakespeare and |look for references to paradigms/great ideas symbolized in words such as |"Fortune". thank you for the references, kind sir. |...card games. What is its function in essence as a game--a tool for escape, |something to play with. ...Tarot of the Cat People ...designer's intention |...to project the user into an imaginary world of fantastic conception... |why not take it to its excessive extremes? I strongly suggest that one |enhance the mood when using this deck by listening to a double album by |Yes called Tales of Topographic Oceans. Turn on your lava lamp, breathe |deeply, eyes closed and light up that ginseng incense! very similar to a ritual I designed where we listed to that album and played UNO for hours without keeping score, our objectives shifting and changing, from trying to get cards to trying to get rid of cards, and the game continuing while we moved to playing other people's most favorite music (things relaxing, classical, escalatory and transcendant). |While Kuykendall has constructed a mythical world consistent with her |images (or vice versa) it is hard to see by what logic she has cooked up |the correspondences. Some don't fit the images on the cards. Again, my |opinion is she decided to mimic Waite for that so she could concentrate on |the art and inventing an alternate fantasy world milieu. While I find her |correspondences rather arbitrary, she at least was serious on matters some |undoubtedly regard as a bit silly. the Cat People cards are for those who are less analytical about their divination. Wiccans sometimes do well with CP because they find the images intriguing to their aesthetic tastes (perhaps it is something about a connection with the experiences of the painter, I have no idea) I don't get the impression that heavy qabalists or wet-behind-the-ears Thelemites are gonna go head over heals for it, tho. lorax of the evul wikkunz tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com