as mentioned in a previous post, i rarely do tarot readings for myself anymore. something to do with being ok with what is/what is to come? a sort of spiritual settling? there's way less stress and worry, and even when they happen i just allow them to exist without immediately trying to solve them away. i do still handle and interact with the cards in a variety of ways, one of them being - just laying out some cards in a row, looking for patterns. sometimes this actually yields an interesting message, even if nothing is troubling me and i haven't asked a question. i find these often to be akin to what rachel pollack demonstrated in her "a walk through the forest of souls" book. readings about the nature of reality and human life in general.
it can definitely be done with any deck although i prefer either very potent decks (in which case i use fewer cards), or the more stripped-down TdM style decks (in which case i use more cards and the potency comes from my intuition). today i was playing around with one of my september decks (ahead of schedule) - lo scarabeo's "ancient italian tarot" (a soprafino) and laid out 5 cards:
magician - knight of wands - 4 of swords - popess - 3 of coins
the majors drew me straight away, a 1 and a 2 forming a binary. usually we think male-female but i'm seeing the con-man vs the true mystic. it made me think of the dead-end street and multi-billion-dollar industry of self-help, keeping you stuck in navel-gazing mode and hardly ever focusing on making you a better person. maybe less hurt, but never quite sufficient (after all you can improve - and shell out money for that improvement - endlessly!)
so i'm looking at the mystic. her lessons learned come from an inner garden of mental peace and stability (the 4 of swords on the side of the book). the results/future (where she's looking) emerge as a natural, spontaneous font of giving, creating, sharing (3s being in the domain of the empress). the inner peace and kind of empty space is what allows for the free flow of generosity, it's the natural conclusion of the lack of fear and apprehension.
the knight had been listening at the con-man's table, drinking his kool-aid (the magician offers a cup filled with red up to the mounted knight, while the knight's body is facing the magician, he's now looking towards the right, extending his club towards the 4 of swords). he thinks that he can brute-force. his way into that inner garden of peace. surely there's some trick that will allow him to attain that grace while keeping/using the fiery club of his ego? how can he be expected to drop that which he worked so hard on? Be without His Tools or even some defense? except that self-focus is exactly what prevents him from achieving the popess state. and yeah, it can be scary - the words of the mystic make no sense through an ego-filter, they do sound like something to be defended against (or attacked/ridiculed). but that's just the small-ego trying its best to defend/prolong/justify its own existence (something it's very good at, even without the added sunk-cost fallacy of years of conscious self-improvement). but we are More Than That. i think even Jung said that to truly, fully individuate you must shed the final, most elusive and persistent mask of the "self".
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