Member Articles

Fool

In the beginning, with raw potential the Tarot student/initiate enters the Tarot world like the Fool; naïve about the abyss s/he is about to fall into; positive and open-minded, optimistic, reckless with inspired energy, and fertile with professional readership potential.

They anticipate that this journey will be fun! Get a deck and a book, maybe take a course or two, learn the meanings of the cards, and how to place them and we're off to readership.

"The Fool's journey takes him to all the realms—for he is never fixed in one place—so you, like the Fool, are free now to explore these places: the land of dreams and imagination and the land of the dark unconscious. Unlike the Fool, however try to hold on to what you find and bring it back with you to enrich your life." (Genetti)

I've taught the Tarot predominantly at evening college continuing education, and community centres – most people take the course because they've had a Tarot reading and know they possess psychic ability. They gravitate to the cards because they believe they'll be good at it – what can be complicated about a deck of cards?

Associating cards with play interestingly is often the Initiate's first reaction - there is the ancient kinship of games and divination systems – Nigel Pennick's, Games of the Gods: The Origin of Board Games in Magic and Divination – he shows that many games including chess, snakes and ladders, and mah-jongg have their roots in divination techniques

In the initiate's mind this association suggests that learning the Tarot will be easy, just learn the rules of the game and onto readership - but as anyone knows who has learned to play games – learning to play the game and mastering the game, is marked by hours and hours of practice!