Tarot. The Open Reading - review

These are only a couple of thoughts I had about "Tarot. The Open Reading".

I liked the book very much. The author draws the reader's attention to many various ways to read what the cards want to tell us - how the figures and objects in the spread correspond to each other by gestures, glances, colours and shapes that patches of colours create. I think the author reads the pips in a less detailed way than we do when we read scenic pips like RWS. He sees them more like smaller pieces showing a bigger picture. However, he also gives in his book interpretation for every card and what's interesting - he has an interpretation for a reverse card, if the card can be reversed at all (some of the pips are so symmetrical it's hard to see whether they're straight or upright).

About the suits: Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov seems to refer to classical playing cards suits where we have black and red suits - and where black suits are believed to mean struggle and complication and red suits are about love, company and money. Thus he sees Cups and Coins as "soft suits" that show more pleasant things and Wands and Swords as "hard suits" that show us our challenges and limitations.

The book was interesting for me also because the author is a disciple of Alejandro Jodorowsky and he refers to his teachings frequently. In suits he sees correspondences to the elements, directions, parts of human body etc. and he points that we can put the suits into the order according to them. For example:

Coins=body=legs, that ground us, that give us the base. Without a body there's no emotion, no desire and no intellect.

Wands=desire=pelvis, where our sexual desires dwell.

Cups=emotion=chest, where our heart is.

Swords=intellect=head.

What I didn't like and thus skipped that chapter - detailed instructions for how you should do a reading and what to avoid (like use blue bag for your deck, but not red, better use matches to light the candle, than a lighter). I believe that to be a very personal thing and nobody should give such detailed instructions about it. I'm also not into "magical ritual" kind of thing, so these parts were not interesting for me. 

I must also say that the deck that the author has restored is great, I like it very much. I have the Jodorowsky&Camoin restored deck and I love it to bits, but maybe one day I will also buy the CBD :) What is lovely about the CBD, is that Dr. Ben-Dov altered the expressions of the figures a bit - and they don't look so stern; they mostly smile gently.

Iron Woman

I wasn't feeling very well and a blood test showed that my iron is low again. I'm planning on going to a doctor when I'm back to Switzerland, but I thought I could ask the cards what psychological factors can increase my problems with iron. For the physical part, the doctor will tell, so I laid only one card for that. 

1. What are psychological reasons for my iron problem? 5 of Cups, 6 of Swords, 4 of Cups

2. What are physical reasons for my iron problem? 7 of Cups

3. What can I do from the psychological point of view to improve my situation? 10 of Swords, Queen of Swords, 5 of Wands

You know that sometimes the cards can give an answer to a different question that was asked. I think that's the case here with the 10 of Swords. I asked about psychological point of view, but the 10 of Swords evidently wants to warn me that I should start supplementing iron! The ten swords piercing the man are the iron I need.

As for the first question: I'm clearly still not in good shape, my depression is still out there and it's eating me from the inside, weakening my body.

Question two: probably my organism has problems with assimilating iron.

Question three: I should continue working on rationalizing my worries and fears (Queen/Swords) and be more playful (5/Wands).

Reading outside the box

...meaning outside of the box of your house :)

Have you ever read cards outside, where nature is so inspiring?

I tried it today, because the weather finally stopped pretending it's still winter and showed us a more spring-like face. 

I highly recommend reading outside. The mind opens in a different way and the surroundings are very refreshing.

What will you need for that? A spread cloth, maybe some stones to keep the cards from flying away if it's a windy day (I don't recommend reading cards on a very windy day though) and maybe something to eat and drink - because why not make a small picnic once you're outside? ;D 

I must say that since I trimmed my Universal Tarot deck I like it much more and want to use it! So I took this deck with me to the woods, found a nice stump and placed a small towel on it. After the reading I lay with my eyes closed and my face to the sun, listening to the birds singing and the pines rustling... A great early afternoon!

How to improve a deck you don't exactly love

There was a moment in my life when I rediscovered tarot and it was a whole new world in which Internet was easily accessible. I discovered books about tarot and that they mostly used Rider-Waite-Smith deck that I didn't know before (I've seen Tarot de Marseille somewhere and I owned my Jasniak Tarot) - so I wanted a deck that will be like RWS, but maybe a bit prettier. For unknown reason I thought that Unversal Tarot by Lo Scarabeo will be the one. I had no experience and saw only a couple of cards in the Internet - so I bought a deck that I now find totally not fitting my taste. I have some sentiment towards this deck though, because I took it with me to the tarot course I attended - and since it's an RWS clone, it was a good choice for that purpose.

Now I store this deck at my parents' place, so I have an "easy" deck at hand when I visit them for holidays. I have so many beautiful decks now, that in comparison the Universal looks really poor. So I decided I will trim it and thus improve how it looks like. And it does look better! Well, the Page of Pentacles still looks like some kind of a savage (why??), but many, many cards are improved when stripped of the ugly, white frames with names in six languages.

Take a look yourself.

Before:

After: