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Thursday, June 28, 2018

The Trick to Reading Etteilla tarot

I am sure I have written here before about the Etteilla tarot decks and the difficulty which the tarot community have in Reading them. This difficulty is rather ironic because these tarots represent much more what fortune telling was like with tarot cards before the golden dawn got hold of it.
Personally I love these decks and own the last deck produced of this type, which is marketed under the title of the Book of Thoth. Of course we must remember that the fallacy that tarot cards were invented by Egyptians was brand new at this time and allow a certain poetic licence in these cards production! I love this deck also I must confess that for most of its time with me sat in my wardrobe because I have unfortunately bought into the popular idea that this deck is difficult to read. And indeed it is, if you are only used to tarot decks of other traditions and don't the little trick I am going to reveal here. That's right, yet another huge chocolate secret blown open to the public on this blog!
It's taken me forever to find out the secret. What I had already noticed of course was that you cannot simply read these cards the way you would any other tarot deck. I personally have to read them differently anyway because reversals are built into the system with this deck. It is a pitch deck and so you cannot just look at the pictures and define that way the way you often cam nowadays. The deck does have key words on each card. I know that some people think that these are unhelpful, and frankly these people will be gratified rather difficult nature of the keywords on the cards. If you are not able to understand French you're starting on the wrong foot anyway! If nothing else this deck is definitely one which requires work to understand, like all good magical and divinatory Systems.
So anyway we come to the secret, and I'm afraid I can't tell you where I got it from, as usual I read it on the internet and only realised it's truth afterwards when I had clicked away from the site.
The secret to raising this deck is this: Layout a good number of cards, say 5 by 3, and then read them in the wrong direction. No seriously. If you try to read the layouts from left to right you will just get gobbledygook, if you read it from right to left then what the cards have to say suddenly becomes stunningly clear. That cunning old Fox, designing a tarot deck which has to be read the wrong way round!
Another trick is to read the cards in threes, and this seems to be quite a common method of understanding this deck. Personally I'm finding I only do that when it feels right. Otherwise I'm a treat the layout as moving from the past to the Future, or whatever feels right at the time. Hey I'm a witch, you can't expect me to stick to rules to rigidly!

2 comments:

  1. This will almost certainly expose my Tarot ignorance, but if one lays the cards back to front, can they then be read left to right? (I might do this to be awkward - what did you say about being a witch and rules?)

    [off topic: sorry] I've just watched Gardeners World and a lovely looking community garden in Birmingham was featured. Martineau Gardens in Edgbaston. You'd hate it. I couldn't see any concrete and it was full of plants and moths!

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    1. Not off topic at all, since you've set me wondering who Martineau was, as several bits of the city centre have had that name. But of course I haven't been to his garden.
      Actually it's a very good point because I neglected to say that I've found they can be laid out either way and still read best from right to left. Etteilla was obviously even more contrary than us.

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