Note: This is my first blog post in working through the book “Tarot for Yourself” by the amazing Mary K Greer. Each Week I’ll work through each chapter, providing my exercise results, thoughts, and quotes from the text. I’d love to have anyone join me in the comments section if you want to read along.

—–

When I first started learning tarot, one of the things that appealed to me most was the idea of using it for personal readings and self-reflections. I’m a writer, so I’ve always been a storyteller, and the great strength of Tarot, in my opinion, is the way that you can used the cards, in the context of a spread or alone, to find a story or narrative from which to glean important clues and find symbols that connect to your life. I was surprised to learn later that readers are often told not to read for themselves. I understand the basic idea behind this recommendation (that we will see what we want to see–or what we think we already know–in the cards), but I’ve always found that the cards really make me work to understand problems in a new and different way.

Those recommendations about not reading for yourself also come from a divination perspective. Although Greer is certainly interested in tarot as divination in Tarot for Yourself, my favorite aspect of the book is its focus on tarot as a tool for understanding myself and my place in the world. In the introduction, Greer says that the book is “a tool for achieving self-knowledge” as well as a way to apply tarot to real-life situations: to really live tarot, not just memorize meanings and symbols.

Greer says that tarot should be considered “not just a means of divination, but as a potentially dynamic tool for personal growth”. This view of tarot endows these 78 cards with a potential significance that your average non-reader might not understand: tarot isn’t just a way to see into the future, but it’s a way to help you understand your present more deeply.

Greer also emphasizes that this book is focused on helping to build intuition through exercises. The exercises are primarily writing ones, but Greer says that visual or auditory responses (such as drawing or reading aloud into a tape recorder) are also a good option. Since I’m a writer, I’ll be writing out all of mine & sharing them with you, though I might indulge in an audio post or two at some point.

The first exercise, just a taste of what’s to come, asks the reader to write every thought, association, and idea around the word “rose”. The emphasis here is on spontaneity and intutive thought–so if you are following along, try not to cross out anything or revise as you write!

Here’s my exercise of associations for “Rose”:

Rose. Red, velvet petals, though they’re sold in the grocery stores in a single unit, wrapped in crackling plastic. On Valentines Day, people give them to each other in heavy bunches, held in vases on workdesks and living room tables.  Roses are tightly bound in their buds, petals overlapping, until they open and display the softer inner petals. They have thorns, I’m sure, but I can never remember being cut by one.
So there it is! No great writing here, but I’m interested in how I really focused on the positive side of roses, sexuality and roses, as well as the commercial–the plastic-wrapped roses in the grocery store and the focus on petals. I must admit I didn’t have many ideas about roses before I wrote this up: I’ve never been much of a rose girl. But the exercise makes me want to go and look up all of the possible symbolic uses of roses beyond the obvious association with Valentines Day here in the US.

Ok, up next week, I’ll be delving into Chapter One, Getting Acquainted With the Cards.

Tags: mary k greer, tarot, tarot for yourself, tarot studies

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.