About Your Private Meanings Outside of Tarot Verbatim
It’s kind of like the distinction of whether you are ‘Observant’ or ‘Orthodox’ in your religion:
You have your own version of some of the Tarot cards. Yeah, you emerged from a distinct background that the rest of us did not arise from. Your taste buds differ from mine too.
Here’s the reality of your adoption of Tarot Verbatim. ANY Tarot system must express anything that is, was, will be, could be, could be imagined, does or does not exist … and more. It doesn’t matter which card, or set of cards, express any of that. What matters is your ability to draw, and then to read, what your Tarot is saying to you.
This is why, every once in a while, I say ‘That doesn’t happen in my system; it may in yours.’
What does that picture say to you … mean to you?
How sensible are you? How experienced are you? How rigid or fluid are you? Your limitations are your Tarot’s limitations. And always remember that ANY Tarot system works, any Tarot system impresses its user … even if it is a feeble system compared to some others.
Tarot Verbatim represents forty years of research, research about collecting all kinds of meanings that a given card expressed in god-knows-how-many spreads. So it is very likely to work, and I have demonstrated that it DOES work for all sorts of people who adopt it and report their experience. The cards Tarot Verbatim differs from most other systems on, readers report, work better for them than the standard interpretations … which suggests there ARE intrinsic meanings for some of these cards. Confessions from readers validate this concept.
So there are distinctions, there are individual slants and individual definitions, there are distinctions, there are individual views of the scenes on the cards, but your system must be wise enough to describe your answer clearly enough for you to relate to it well enough to spit it out.
If you eliminate an orthodox Tarot Verbatim definition, there must be another way to express that in your Tarot dictionary, your private data bank.
How a Subject Determines a Tarot Card’s Meaning
Being Aware Early On In Your Tarot Journey Of How One Subject Calls For A Different Set Of Meanings Than Another Subject Does
Suggestion: Especially if you are a beginner, ask questions about as many things as you can think of, and ask questions you know the answers to.
The purpose of this is to get your meanings for various subjects into your personal Tarot system early on. Asking a question you know the answer to defines the meaning of the cards. “I know what this is saying, so I guess Five of Wands can be a fight.”
If you haven’t inquired, at the beginning while your personal Tarot system is jelling, about, say, lost objects, how to do something, a malfunctioning vehicle or appliance, business deals (say, real estate), health, job interviews … then when you do inquire about those things, you are at a loss because ‘I don’t have a card for that’ or ‘What does Seven of Cups mean about a business meeting?’
So there’s this stage as we begin Tarot when we are picking meanings for 78 cards. We are picking them as we ask questions of Tarot and draw conclusions as to ‘what that card means.’ If the questions we ask are mostly about one thing or two … love and money … we are filling up all 78 cards with meanings about those things, right? Most of us start Tarot because we want to know about our love life, and we may be obsessive at that point. So we have a pile of interpretations for love life.
Be ready for the bottleneck that happens when you branch out — especially when you start answering other people’s questions. You have to now find new meanings for cards that you feel are ‘already filled up.’ They aren’t!
At some point we are new to the idea that it’s not just ‘the cards’ meanings,’ it’s that each subject is going to have its own list of meanings. If the question is love, Lovers means a love relationship or love partners. But if the question is about your job, Lovers is going to apply to a contact, partnership or partners, the ‘higher ups,’ connecting with another person, or even standing side by side.
Being aware early on in your Tarot journey of how a subject calls for a different set of meanings than another subject does makes achieving Tarot expertise a lot easier.