“For more than 99 percent of human history, the world was enchanted and man saw himself as an integral part of it. The complete reversal of this perception in a mere four hundred years or so has destroyed the continuity of the human experience and the integrity of the human psyche. It has very nearly wrecked the planet as well. The only hope, or so it seems to me, lies in a reenchantment of the world.” ~ Morris Berman
Most of my interest in divination — indeed, for the rest of whatever years I have left — is to explore spirituality (in the broadest sense, and one that embraces magic, mystery, wonder, and enchantment): spirit and soul in nature, cosmos, the Unseen, and myself. While seeking to understand the common events in our lives through the cards has its place, I’m more interested in understanding what the Unseen wants to express to me, either of their own perspective or how I can respond to an experience for soul growth. And I don’t mean these comments to be reductive or to isolate/separate the mundane from the spiritual or ethereal; I’ve been a holistic lifestyle and health care person since the late 1980s. However, the modern ‘machine’ is extraordinarily invasive and parasitical, so I try to stay aware of those external influences and conscious of the blessings from Divine Source, from Gaia, from the Unseen, from all aspects of spirit. In Ayurveda, I was taught that the tanmatras are essentially the pre-material forms of the five elements and this, too, influences how I experience the world.
With these things in mind, I’m currently learning as part of my spiritual divination practice to sense into the patterns within the card images. And one of the systems I’m using for that effort is the Tarot de Marseille (along with other pip decks). I find this isn’t so much ‘trying’ as ‘allowing’ for optimum results.
As I’ve found with other card systems I’ve learned, I can review quite a few teachers before I suddenly feel one resonates with me for my foundation. After all, we are all born different with varied innate prakriti (constitution and temperament) even before life experience affects our views. The book I’ve found that currently speaks most clearly to me for patterns is The Marseille Tarot Revealed by Yoav Ben-Dov, where he writes:
“Yet something in the elusive and mysterious character of the tarot may inspire us to go beyond purely psychological explanations. We can at least play with the idea that there is something more to it. Maybe there is a meaningful pattern originating in another level of reality, which the tarot cards channel and express at the human level.”
Ben-Dov also taps into my own approach to reading cards when he says that, “Just as the reading space needs to have a special quality, much like a temple or sacred space, so the time of the reading should also be clearly marked to separate it from the mundane time of ordinary reality.”
Anyone who has read some of my material on this blog will easily see that my nature is “feet on the ground with head in the clouds” (maybe why I’m so very enamored of trees). Indeed, during my deep journey a few years ago with Saint Hildegard of Bingen, I had no problem imagining myself in a previous life possibly living in a small, intimate convent (and I brought that aspect into my second novel in my Chantilly Lace trilogy).
Many modern card readers refer to shuffling as a method to make sure the cards are ‘randomized’ according to mechanical view, and they stop with that concept. I feel shuffling is far more than this; handling, shuffling, shifting through the cards is an energetic connection between me, the cards, and the Spirit infusing them for the specific reading.
I’ve also found the many ideas around framing our questions to be intriguing. Ben-Dov says: “Many tarot books attach much importance to the explicit formulation of the question, as if the cards were somehow obliged to answer the exact wording of the query. But … we should regard it only as a starting point. … we may arrive at a focused question … but we may also just describe the situation … and see where [the cards] lead us.” I don’t see myself as ‘in charge’ during a reading and that includes the question, so I really liked his comment.
And, since I’m NOT a ‘numbers’ gal, I particularly appreciate how Ben-Dov, while bringing in a bit of numerology, to me focuses more on the symbolic and visual context of how a gathering of objects in an image can express an energy or vibration that one can feel. Maybe I’m projecting my own sense onto his work, but this is simply how I perceive it. I feel like Ben-Dov’s book is helping me create my own unique foundation for reading/receiving the TdM/pip decks.
I look forward to my continued journey into divination, and wanted to also offer a moment of gratitude to two women with video channels who have inspired me to explore the TdM/pip cards: Readings by Diane and Marilyn from Tarot Clarity. Both offer wonderful insights and decades of experience, even though I’m already reading the cards in a different way than they do (as we all seem to do). More specifically, Diane introduced me to the lovely Metanoia Marseille Tarot deck, while Marilyn brought the Ancient Italian Tarot to my attention; these are proving to be a few of the good decks in this style, for me, since the bold, sharp, too-bright, red and yellow predominant colors in the CBD Tarot de Marseille is definitely not my aesthetic.
Barefoot On The Gaia Path 