13/02/25
hey, long time no see. i've been keeping tarot things to the forum and most personal things in the journal. some tidbits here and there on mastodon, but mostly i just forget to post everywhere... but i think i'm drawn to here again for now.
back in january i've dusted off my ritual tarot study journal. it's going slowly, but i fill in one or two prompts for each card whenever i use it for a reading. i'm really curious to see each entry finished, to see what it will all add up to.
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i've been playing around with a new "signature spread". shorter than the 7 card monstrosity linked on the main website. it started out as a version of a french cross, but i find i prefer reading it in line, doing the extra operations on it - pairing, reading the triads. the positions are:
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got my first deck of the year - the claude burdel 1751 from yves renaud. surprised myself, because i was only actively considering the goddess of love tarot recently. but maybe it was just time, i've had my eye on it for years and years.
i am very impressed with the quality of the cards, both the images and the physical object itself, very satisfying to handle. i've been continuing the jean-michel david book. or rather, i restarted it, following along with (most) of the exercises with the burdel. it's slow going but i expect it will get a bit more enjoyable once i catch up to my previous spot in the book and start learning things again!
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also - dug out the old haindl tarot. technically it's my partner's but they're hardly using any of their decks and gave their blessing for me to try it out, again... it's been a long time since i played around with it, but i've always been drawn to the art style and colors. in that decade i've worked more with pip decks and developed my own numerological system i'm comfortable with, and i'm finding i'm much more capable with the haindl now.
there are only two trip ups. firstly the court cards. i'm reading through the accompanying books and while i love pollack's originality and breadth of knowledge, i've always struggled with her writing style. mostly i'm just trying to get a rough background on some of the figures to see what haindl intended with the courts, because some of it is quite opposite to how i understand them (like the queen of swords - nut - preferring mystery to knowing).
secondly - the titles. they definitely do not align with how i read. i know it's a perfectly fine thoth-y system, but it's my least favorite. i do have a trimmed thoth i enjoy using - without the titles. and i have seen a very beautiful version of a trimmed haindl. i am tempted, but obviously i wouldn't experiment on this copy. but am i tempted enough to buy another tarot deck D: probably not. for now i'll try to just ignore the bottom text.
