Studying the Tarot: The Drawing Approach

Because Keywords are lame!!

Have you read a book on Tarot? And has the book suggested that you sit down and jot down the keywords that come to mind? The answer is probably yes and yes. It was like that for me. As a novice to Tarot, I sat down, I read a gazillion books, only one of which was ever useful, and never wrote a single keyword down at all. I got where all those authors are coming from, but writing down keywords and really getting the meaning of a card really seemed far removed to me. So I skipped that part.

But you have to ingest the card meanings somehow

The trouble is, once you've gone around and studied the cards, and feel like you've understood them, you finally come back full circle to keywords. Nowadays, when my friends ask me what certain cards mean, I just list my internal list of keywords.

Different approaches

You can of course list keywords. You can upgrade those lists all the time. That's fine. I would have done that, too, if I weren't so terribly lazy. But I am. Listing stuff is tedious work and I hate that. So I don't do it.
Instead, I draw the cards. I take one card, and I sit down, and I just copy everything. Every single detail. This is tedious work too, but I can simultaneouly improve my art and style and see all the tiny details of the card that I missed before.

Key II: The High Priestess from Lo Scarabeo's Romantic Tarot and my rendition

When you describe a card, you can be as detailled or as non-chalant as you like. If you list keywords, you can just overlook the stuff you don't understand. But if you copy a card, you have to really look hard at what you're doing, because otherwise it will look nothing like the card.

Twin Peaks Tarot: 3 of Pentacles

Even if you're not really gifted at drawing or painting, recreating the cards isn't about pretty or ugly. It's about a deep meditation of the cards and their meanings. It is a way of connecting to the cards in a personal manner. For instance, I decided to rename the High Priestess in this deck "The Reader".
But that's a personal choice. The bottom line is, drawing or tracing a Tarot card (you could get the RWS cards online in black and white and just trace them and color them) will make you see everything, while keywords reduce the card to very little.

Romantic Tarot Key 0: The Fool

 

Think about it. Maybe drawing a card or two will help you get a better understanding of the cards you failed to connect with until now.

Blessings and balance ~

Peachess