Tarot the Old Way
“Welcome dearie! Cross my palm with silver and I’ll read your fortune!”
“In order to be able to read the cards, you need to learn all of the symbols, correspondences and attributes for each card.”
“The Tarot? That’s the devil’s cards!”
These and similar comments have put many people off from studying the Tarot and using the cards. And that’s why this site exists, to discuss the issues surrounding the Tarot in the 21st century!
Streetwise Tarot.
Streetwise Tarot is different; it’s Tarot for the 21st Century, free from the constraints of “tradition”. That’s not to say that you don’t have to do any work, far from it! But it’s a different kind of work. You need to find a deck whose imagery tells you a story. Then, in answer to whatever question is posed, you read directly from the cards. If you are reading for someone else, you can also engage them in the process by listening to what the imagery of the cards evokes in them. There’s a book that contains lots of exercises to enable you to develop your style, click here for more information. Before doing any of this, however, you need to answer a simple question:
What is the Tarot?
The Tarot is a deck of 78 cards. In most people’s minds they are associated with fortune-telling and/or Jane Seymour and James Bond. While they can be used for divination, this is a small part of what they are capable of.
Tarot’s symbolism and imagery provides the skilled user with an excellent tool for examining the most basic and important spiritual, psychological and philosophical questions of existence such as “Who am I” and “Why am I Here?”. As such, it offers us a vehicle for self-knowledge, as well as for helping others.
The image on this page is The Fool card from my favourite deck, The Alchemical Renewed by Robert Place.
