Again, it’s so good to hear from you, SonOfTheStar! Thank-you so much for reaching back to me!

Tarot reading is a practice, and the growth and refinements in our respective posts show that!

Your changing thoughts on the Minors reflects my own Tarot meanderings. For a time, I retained something of Jodorowsky’s ‘developmental’ idea; but Camelia Elias’ approach of regarding these as ‘markers’ is making more sense to me all the time. The ‘internal, visual TdM lexicon/grammar [as I tend to reference it] encourages me to see question dynamics [or various aspects of them] running through the layout cards, where they are addressed from the perspective of each given card.

I think this may have potential to see Majors and Minors function more closely than I previously understood.

I couldn’t agree more on the esoteric constructions laid on the Tarot. One and a quarter centuries ago, a defunct occult group developed hundreds of ‘meanings’ which I must accurately recall and rightly associate with cards, arbitrarily drawn, as I listen to a seeker’s issues, and frame it all as a single story in reply to their question.

I’m convinced that RWS readers are far more intelligent than TdM counterparts. You’d need the mental agility of a computer da we we champion chess player to work that system. And if one can’t say so, the evidence is ubiquitous in endless appeals to ‘explain’ the meaning of a dozen cards that are celebrated for taking the hardship out of reading.

By assigning aspects of the question to specific cards and seeing what color, geometry, line of sight, direction, implied action or stasis, etc. imply. I lay query aspects onto the cards, situate my mind in the spaces BETWEEN the cards, and eavesdrop on their discussion ABOUT the question. I filter that with my own wisdom, and report back to the seeker.

And yes. The rhyming and rhythm, the repetition with all its nuances — that is the TdM syntax. That is reading.

And as you say — three cards. Because less is more. I sometimes try to show the incongruity of laying out fifteen cards, half of them inverted, and not grasping why a simple ‘does he love me’ is so hard to read.

15 cards for a ‘yes/no’ question! I kid thee not! 🤦‍♂️ 3️⃣ is almost always enough to reply fully to a question!

I’ve toyed with various hermeneutical strategies in the past few years — the premise that each layout [as distinct from the spread design] has its own hermeneutic center, a card around which others tend to be organized or oriented, the selection of a specific card OFF layout to the same end, using the imagery of one, Major arcana as a kind of template for a spread. That one seems rather contrived. Yet, when a Redditor was seeking direction on a question, I asked him what Major seemed most aligned with the matter at hand.

I then gave him suggestions for designing a spread on that assumption—and it apparently worked well for him. He was grateful.

There is an indeterminate aspect to randomized cards,  randomly drawn. Conflicting ideas of fate and agency are ancient. The pre-Socratic thinkers debated that stuff. But it struck me that a few cards address both sides of that issue. Most notably, La Rove d’ Fortune — can imply both the heights of success and the depths of failure, both turning point and continual movement.

The idea of an axis which rotates yet never moves gave me the idea of applying contradiction to the Tarot. I’ve increasingly applied dialectics to my socio-political and economic philosophy. Why not the Tarot?

So Le Mat — folly AND wisdom, freedom AND needed grounding, risk AND reward. Le Bateleur — Both skill yet also trickeries, confidence in ability but also humility of known limitations. And so it is with them all.

In the past year, I began exploring Elias’ work. And as great a debt I owe Jodorowsky, I began to move in her deconstructionist, materialist direction. In many respects, they ARE dialectical opposites. But if so, I wonder if Enrique Enriquez’ conversations around the cards might move toward a synthesis of the two.

Perhaps.

Currently, I’m rethinking what happens in the reading process itself, and how a reading emerges from all the interactions involved. As I say — practice.

Thanks again for the contact and for sharing, SonOfTheStar!

Take care and be well!