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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Tarot and Oracle Cards

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  #1  
Old 26-12-2020, 09:53 PM
Starman Starman is offline
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The Qabbalistic Tarot

I thought I’d share some of what I learned from studying the Qabbalistic Method of Tarot. The Qabbalistic method is about using, mainly the Major Arcana, for consciousness development. Offering this information here would be of benefit to me as well, because when you teach, you also learn, or revive in you the subject you are teaching.

I will present this information in the form of a course on each of the 22-Major Tarot Cards, and offer a small quiz at the end of each course. You may use any deck that you prefer, but I will mostly be referring to the Rider-Wait deck, which is the most popular tarot deck. As earlier said, I will offer a short quiz on each of the 22-cards, at the end of my posting about that card. I will also offer some exercises that you may do with each of the 22-cards, that are designed to help in developing better use of the features related to your own human consciousness.

I hope there is some continuing interest in this type of approach to the Tarot Major Arcana. Please accept my apology, as my eyesight is failing, and I post here on this forum with impaired eyesight. Regardless, this is something that I want to do, and I am telling you about my eyes in case my spell check or grammar is faulty. The good side of having poor eyesight is that I must pay extra attention to details.
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Old 26-12-2020, 09:56 PM
Starman Starman is offline
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CLASS#1:

This is practical instruction, and some may call it practical occultism. It is not mere theory or opinion. Therefore some background is in order. You can use the Major Arcana of Tarot to achieve happiness, health, and security. This is not speculation.

The first step is very simple, yet important, It might be helpful to take notes and save them, as I will be offering a lot of information. The first thing a person must do is be very specific about what they want. It might be good to write that down. What you write should give expression to a single purpose.

If what you want is long range with a lot of intermediate stages, focus on the logical first step. Do not tell everyone, or even me, what you want. Talking about what you want takes energy away from it. Those who excessively talk usually do not do. You should only discuss it with people who are relevant to your goal.

Your subconscious will manifest your goals, with the help of Tarot. Tarot will give suggestions to your subconscious, and subconscious is deductive. It extrapolates from your suggestions. It extrapolates from the way you think, speak, and act, and manifests situations for you accordingly. Clear mental images give clear suggestions, Tarot offers clear mental images.

This whole process operates on intention and attention. We are all co creators, and there is no way that we can not create. We are creating every time we empress a thought, or say something, or act. Expressions puts things in motion. What in eastern philosophy is called “karma.” We change our world by changing our mental patterns. Even in times of a pandemic which has put a lot of people out of work, etc.

Have patience, there are 22-Cards yet to be discussed, and each of them hold a particular exercise related to what I am saying here. Yes, I know, people like immediate results, they are suffering, but what I intend to offer here has helped me for the past 4-decades, in good times and bad. Understand, that which comes to you quickly may leave quickly, but that which you nurture and build, has a foundation, and may better endure.

Something in us below the surface makes connections for us with whatever we need, or want to be, do what we want to do, or have what we want to have. This something can be consciously put into operation by anyone who applies the necessary techniques. But you have to express confidence in the power of your own subconscious. It is functioning in your life right now. You do not have to coerce subconscious. But it is helpful to gently intimate what you want done.

Subconscious is controlled by how you think, speak, and act. Subconscious is controlled from the level of self-conscious awareness. Most people have habitual ways of thinking, speaking, and acting, patterns of behavior that manifest things in their life, often unwanted things. Tarot can help you develop mental patterns for success.

My next post, CLASS#2, will be on Tarot Key Zero, The Fool, with a quiz on that key at the end of that post. Please feel free to comment, ask question, etc. I only ask that you be polite and respectful of different points of view, as I intend to be. I will be talking about how to influence your own consciousness, using the Tarot Major Arcana, throughout this thread. In might be a good way to enter the new year.

Peace and Good Journey
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  #3  
Old 27-12-2020, 06:49 AM
Starman Starman is offline
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Well, no comments or other feedback thus far……. Maybe this is a test in patience for me, especially since we are in the holiday season. But if there is no interest I probably will not continue to develop this thread. After all, I am in recovery mode. Still, I thought this might be something to share. I have decided not to include quizzes at the end of each post. This is more of a sharing and not really a class.

What I am posting here comes from a 13-year program I was in, from about 1978 to 1991, on the Qabbalah. This program was before personal computers and the internet. I attended it one day a week for 13-years, and still have the mountain of pages and other material I acquired from it. I am only going to summarize here the coursework that was given to me, because I took 16-courses and each course took many months to complete, with and exam at the end of each course.

What I am sharing here is a distilled version of what I learned about the 22-Major Arcana Cards, but it I will not include the Tree of Life, Magic Squares, Cube of Space, or Gematria, and how the Major Arcana works with those paradigms. Even though that was included in the program I went through. This is basically a sharing on the 22-Major Tarot cards and nothing more. And I will attempt to keep it simple. I ask your forgiveness, as a former college professor I tend to lecture.

Tarot Key Zero (0), The Fool.

“I am the beginning of all beginnings, checked by neither time nor space, held by no bond of name or form. Present everywhere, centering the full exhaustless power in you. I am with thee always, and I never sleep.” This is from The Book of Tokens, and expresses the essence of Key-0, The Fool.

Numbers represent truths imminent in all things and manifest in all phenomena. The zero is similar to and egg shape, the beginning of manifestation yet to come. Zero means no thing, or as we say nothing. But there is really no such thing as “nothing.” But zero is also freedom from limitation, for if you have something all you have is that something, but if you have nothing, you have the potential to receive everything. The Fool represents the un-manifested life power about to step into creation, or become manifested. The journey of discovery.

It is called “The Fool” because the ways of God is often foolish to men. The main feature of The Fool is breath, or life breath. My teachers used to tell me to consciously take four deep breaths before thinking, speaking, or acting, and to repeat those four conscious breaths throughout your day. It will not only give you pause, but can also help you appreciate breathing. It might be helpful to listen to your breathing.

The Fool is actually a depiction of cosmic consciousness. The word “spirit” means “Life Breath,” or more succinctly just “breath.“ It derives from the Latin “Spiritus,” The Greek word for pneuma, translated into the English word “spirit,” it is the same word used in Sanskrit called “prana, or in Hebrew called ”ruach.” Tarot Key-0, The Fool, is all about the journey of the spirit, or the life breath. In essence spirit is pure consciousness.

Spiritual unfoldment releases latent potencies of our life breath, that may be currently bound up or involved in the limitations of name and form. Thus it is about unfolding and not attaining, because we already have it. Life limitless flows through us, the power that guides all things is within us. Superficially, The Fool is a picture of a heedless, sky gazing man, about to step-off and fall from a great height into a deep abyss. But even the superficial interpretation has valuable lessons. Don’t project yourself so far into the future that you do not know where you are.

Key-0 depicts the most perfect and complete aspect of yourself. It is the part of you that is above and beyond your external personality, above and beyond your thinking conscious mind. This is a depiction of the absolutely free and perfect being, which is the animating principle and core of our outer being, personality, etc. In esoteric circles the symbol zero stands for absolute unity.

Over a three day period look at Tarot Card Key-0, The Fool. Make no conscious effort to interpret the symbols. But if ideas come to you make a note of them. The main practical use of Key-0 is to put you in touch with your inner source of power. After you have focused on Key-0 for three consecutive days you may find glimpses of summonsing that force. Of course, many of you may already be able to achieve this without Tarot, but for those who have trouble, concentrating on Key zero can help.

Peace and Good Journey
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  #4  
Old 27-12-2020, 07:12 PM
55Degrees
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I'm here Starman. I don't tend to log in often anymore, but I'm really interested in learning more about Tarot and Qabbala so please keep posting.
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  #5  
Old 27-12-2020, 11:57 PM
Starman Starman is offline
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55Degrees, thank you for sharing your interest. Qabbalah goes deeper into Tarot more than any other system. Qabbalah is the mystical interpretation of the Torah, which Jews see as The Law. The exoteric, or outer discourse on this law can be found in the first 5-books of the Old Testament of the Bible.

So there is the outer interpretation, The Torah, the intellectual interpretation, the Talmud, and the mystical, or inner, interpretation, the Qabbalah. Traditionally, Jews said people should not study the Qabbalah until their 40th birthday; for the sake of maturity. But I started studying it, with supervision from Rabbis in Los Angeles, at the age of thirty. I am not a Jew, and do not follow any particular religion, but I do take from most of the prominent religions. Qabbalah means “a body of work.“ or knowledge, and the Hebrew Qabbalah has mountains of practical information.

Kabbalah, with a “K” is the original Hebrew spelling, Qabbalah, with a “Q” is how esoteric practitioners spell it, and Cabala, with a “C” is the spelling mostly used by Christian Gnostics.

The Magician, Key-1:

The Magician is a picture of “ATTENTION,” which I put in capitals to get your attention. Key-1 can be used to develop your own concentration. All 22-Major Arcana Keys are different pictures of the same being, or different aspects of the one being. So the Fool is the Magician, etc., displaying a different aspect. Although every key in sequential order is the opposite of, and complements, the key that precedes it.

Thus a magician, or wise man, is in contrast to a fool. The number one (1) is the number of beginning, but zero (0) is the symbol for absolute unity, which is before all beginnings. Comparison of the two pictures shows lots of other contrasts. The magician is a symbol of what psychology calls “self-conscious awareness,” or objective mind. This is the ordinary waking consciousness of human beings. The mind that comes to grips with our daily issues, and its basic function is attention.

Alert watchfulness is the key idea of this picture. To your inner consciousness this key says “be alert.” We direct power with our attention, and amplify that power when we concentrate. Nothing can withstand the force of one who has mastered the art of concentration. I have and entire course on concentration, which I may later share in another thread. With concentration you can see through and into the things which constitute your environment, instead of merely looking at them. Key-1, The Magician, is a tool that can be use to develop concentration. Although there are lots of ways to develop concentration. Some people say they can not concentrate, but most people are very concentrated when they are angry or furious. They zero in on what they think got them angry, and often can not let go of it.

Key-0 can put you in touch with the limitless source, Key-1 calls into action the ability whereby you may apply that power to changing the conditions of your life. All of the 22-Majot Arcana Keys build on each other, and I will point out how when discussing each of the 22-Keys. This is the same way human consciousness works, each feature builds on the other features. Understand, you are always telling your own sub-conscious what to do by how you think, speak, and act. No one ever becomes a magician, a wielder of nature’s subtle forces, who permits themselves to be preoccupied with personal, subjective reactions to events. The first requisite is a sharp, clear awareness.

Like and arrow head which has no energy of its own. The force whereby it cleaves the mark is a derived force. An arrow-head is and instrument which transforms propulsion into penetration. It turns bow force into arrow force. Concentration works on attention in the same way. First we observe what is going on, then we use inductive reasoning, faulty or otherwise, to try and discover what is behind the veil of appearances. This leads to the discovery of experience. You do not have to acquire any new powers, you just change things by applying powers that you already have, and you learn to use those forces in different ways.

Everything that surrounds us is a manifestation of subconscious forces. The next key, Key-2, The High Priestess, is all about sub-consciousness. In summary, the esoteric meaning of Key-1, The Magician, is that our waking self-consciousness is the primary expression of the life power. It constitutes our awareness, which with most is filtered through mental impressions.

Just looking at these major tarot keys regularly, or concentrating on them, can help you in develop the esoteric qualities of that particular key. Qabbalist do not use Tarot cards for fortune telling. They read the cards for themselves, and rarely for others. To a Qabbalist the Tarot is a tool for spiritual development, and reading the cards is a prayer and a meditating. Please feel free to comment, etc.

Peace and Good Journey
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Old 28-12-2020, 10:04 AM
Starman Starman is offline
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Qabbalah is western mysticism, and western mysticism is mostly about alchemy, or taking something undesirable and changing it into something desirable. Yoga is the alchemy of the east, and alchemy is the yoga of the west. I will be talking some about the alchemy of consciousness, and the components in our physical body that we may use to transform things in our lives. We have many, many tools, available to us.

The most acceptable records say that Qabbalah was developed in the twelfth century, in France. But some will say it goes back further than that. It is the mystical interpretation of the first 5-books of the Old Testament, which goes back before Jesus Christ. Some of the origins of Kabbalah date back to the Egyptians. Regardless, Kabbalah did have a hand in developing the Tarot. The 22-letters of the Hebrew alphabet are associated with the 22-Tarot Major Arcana Cards.

The four suits of the Minor Arcana reflect the Tetragrammaton, or the four letter name of God, as viewed by the Jewish religion. The Jews and the Hindus have one of the oldest religions still active and flourishing here on Earth today. I am really only posting a summary here, but if you want me to expand on something I said, ask.

Key-2, The High Priestess:

The number two implies duplication, whereas number one is singular. This is the contrast, but as I said, it also complements the card that came before it. The High Priestess is a depiction of our sub-conscious mind. It is a receptive feminine feature that we all possess. The Empress, Key-3, which is the next card I will cover, is a pregnant High Priestess. The High Priestess is receptive to suggestions from our waking self-consciousness. In other words, self-consciousness influences and makes sub-consciousness pregnant with its suggestions, and they are given birth by way of the Empress.

Gender is on every level of existence, even in our consciousness. But gender means much more than sex. All of the planes of existence correspond to the other planes of existence. The Kybalion, a book on Hermetic philosophy, says “Gender is in everything, everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender manifests on all planes.” We have the principles of gender in our own consciousness.

The High Priestess is a mysterious female, whose concern are the records of the past. What we call “memory.” Memory is the basic power of sub-conscious, and the High Priestess. Educating yourself involves attention, Key-1, and memory, Key-2, working together. Much of faulty memory usually comes from a lack of attention. It is helpful to give our sub-conscious clear images. Sub-consciousness has and automatic filing system, unlike self-consciousness, which is manual as we operate the function of our attention. Subconscious is automatic, meaning it is impulsive. No I am not saying females are impulsive, although the feminine principle has been blamed as being overly emotional. More to the point, the laws of recall work automatically; we make them useless by inattention. Tarot Card Key-2 symbolizes all the laws of recall in its picture. Sub-consciousness keeps a perfect record of all our experiences.

The cosmic law of association is that of compare and contrast, sub-consciousness automatically groups together images that are the same. You smell apple pie and it reminds you of your grandmothers apple pie; this is conscious association at work from the sub-conscious level. But we often can easier recall recent events than we can those in a distant past. The High Priestess does not have to turn her scroll to reveal what she has just recorded. Repetition is another part of the law of recall, and that is symbolized in Key-2. The number two is about duplication. See a person day after day and you will recognize them from a distance. Repetition is also part of learning, and can improve memory. Intensity is another attribute associated with memory. We usually remember our first experience of something, because it is new, grabbed our attention, and have little to associate it with. Intensity also means how impact and experience imprinted on us.

There are lots of memory techniques, and consistently concentrating on Key-2 can help to improve your memory. You can learn the Tarot and engrain it in your memory, or you can just concentrate on the cards and the pictures speak a language that is understood by our sub-consciousness. It is a universal language of pictorial symbolism, which is what images are. Mathematics are a universal language and so are pictures or images. The longer you look at and image the more you incorporate that image into your being. It is similar to a mantra or and affirmation. The Magician, Key-1, and The High Priestess, Key-2, are involved in and intimate relationship. Put another way, our waking self-conscious is intimately involved with our own sub-conscious. Everything is relating to everything else.

The High Priestess literally means “the chief female elder,” it applies to Hecate and other moon goddesses of the ancients, including the Egyptian Isis and the Hindu Maya or Prakriti. Under the figures of these goddesses the priesthood of old times concealed their knowledge of the power of subconscious. Sub-conscious powers are universal and they are also personal. What appears to us as wood or stone, as various sorts of minerals, as bodies of plants and animals, as the matter entering into forms around us, according to kabbalah, is held to be actually the subconscious level of manifestation coming into being. Sub-consciousness operates the automatic systems in our physical body. The actual substance of the physical plane, on which we live, from which all forms perceptible are built, is energy working at the sub-conscious level. Consciousness goes through changes in form that appear as physical objects.

Peace and Good Journey
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Old 28-12-2020, 03:09 PM
Love~is~All Love~is~All is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Starman
The High Priestess literally means “the chief female elder,” it applies to Hecate and other moon goddesses of the ancients, including the Egyptian Isis and the Hindu Maya or Prakriti. Under the figures of these goddesses the priesthood of old times concealed their knowledge of the power of subconscious. Sub-conscious powers are universal and they are also personal. What appears to us as wood or stone, as various sorts of minerals, as bodies of plants and animals, as the matter entering into forms around us, according to kabbalah, is held to be actually the subconscious level of manifestation coming into being. Sub-consciousness operates the automatic systems in our physical body. The actual substance of the physical plane, on which we live, from which all forms perceptible are built, is energy working at the sub-conscious level. Consciousness goes through changes in form that appear as physical objects.
Ooohhh... SO good. Wow. Wee. Thank you for the Revelation.

Love!
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Old 28-12-2020, 03:13 PM
Love~is~All Love~is~All is offline
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Good grief, just read that a second time. Holy Gosh O Mighty. This is so beyond ordinary words of wisdom. It is IT.
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Old 28-12-2020, 06:32 PM
Starman Starman is offline
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Love is All, and I agree. Thank you for such exuberant feedback. It motivates me to continue posting.

In my spiritual practice I have combined the mysticism of the east with the mysticism of the west, using both alchemy and yoga. Tarot practice and quiet yogic type meditation. Beyond what I am sharing here, is a thread on the Tree of Life, and its thirty-two paths, which correspond with the 22-Major Arcana. There is a lot more to this then just throwing out the cards and reading them. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, which is about how we refine ourselves, with great ingenuity, to be able to feel and experience that pure spiritual presence, is another aspect of this.

I am deliberately not including stuff, like the Hebrew alphabet or Gematria, because they may confuse most readers here, and I want to keep this sharing simple. The thing is you learn all of this stuff just to let go of it. Like satisfying your mind, and then sit in silence with no chatter or images in your mind. I find having some background on stuff helps me to approach it, even though that which is being shared is beyond words and concepts. The subject of our study is ourselves. I was reading and article titled, “How to understand the universe when you are stuck in it.”

I will tell you that I verbally speak to my own sub-conscious, and it responds to me, not in words but intuitively and in actions. Begin with simple things, like say to your deeper consciousness, when you are out and about and you see something, say remind me of this when I get home. You have to have faith that will happen, and for me, every time I say that, as soon as I get home the reminder pops in my head. I do not call my deeper being by any name, I think it just knows when I am talking to it. You can build a conscious relationship with your own sub-conscious. Just keep it simple.


Key-3, The Empress:

The Empress is at the self-conscious level of activity. In contrast to the High Priestess. The Empress is the door of creation. Key-3, The Empress is all about imagination, some say creative imagination. Basically, it is about creativity, which involves thought forms and images. The Empress is a seated female like the High Priestess, they both have exalted ruler type positions. But there are also lots of contrasts. The Empress is a pregnant mother, the High Priestess is not. The number three is the combination of one and two, what the Magician and High Priestess does determines the births bough forth by the Empress. The Empress is where the virginity of the High Priestess is transformed into the rich fertility of Venus. I am not going into astrology here, although astrology, numerology, and other occult and esoteric practices are woven into each Tarot Card.

Imagination is the mind’s power to make new, and different, combinations from the store of our remembered experiences. Everything in creation is and image. As earlier said, images or pictures, constitute a universal language. All forms are images, including our own human body. Creative imagination is the door to new life and new worlds. All of our conscious abilities are specializations of the One Life Force. What forms they assume are the ones that we give our attention to. Consistently fix your attention on images of poverty, misery, and weakness, and their actual physical embodiment will become part of your surroundings.

If your personal Magician works destructive transformations resulting from fear and doubt, your house of life will be built in strict agreement with those ill-drawn plans. Change the pattern by attending to their opposites, and presenting creative imagination, symbolized by The Empress, will begin to build you a new life. This is an attested fact by the accumulated experience of ages. This process is almost automatic, all it requires is your attention. Your memory record, as you continue to focus on The Empress, will bring forth new ideas that will enrich your realizations on how to proceed. Your mind will be as fertile as The Empress’s garden.

A quick recap: the presence of consciousness un-manifested, Key-0, Attention and self-consciousness, Key-1, Sub-consciousness and memory, Key-2, and now Imagination and creativity, Key-3. And how they all interact, and also how their symbolic Tarot Cards interact.

Imagination is where forms are delineated and preserved; we behold the reflections of an invisible world in our imagination. Actually, in reality there is no invisible world, there is merely degrees of appearances. Imagination is a mirror of visions and the apparatus of magical life. This faculty can exalt the will of a person and give them power over a universal agent. According to Kabbalah, imagination, by a pregnant women, can help to form a child in their mother’s womb. Let your contemplation of this key begin for you the processes of renewal. Like this happy radiant woman, who we call The Empress, your inner life right now strives to form the image of a new you. This it does without our involvement, it is us that often gum up the process.

The potent forces of the universe work best without friction. If the machinery of our mind is faulty, it requires tremendous energy, more than it would if running smoothly. To bring about chemical transformations and transmutations, which even the weeds do without much struggle, requires open-ness. The human body is far greater on the scale of evolution than plants. Creative imagination is the way the principle of multiplication manifests for us. The High Priestess was about duplication, while The Empress is about multiplying. It represents the door to creation, and that door has always been the feminine symbol representing giving birth. Similar on planes above the physical, are the same principle, represented by the same symbol.

Sub-consciousness receives the seed impulses of observations made during periods of concentrated attention. Then follows a cycle of development of those impulses within the field of Sub-consciousness. When this cycle is completed, a new idea, invention, or some new plan comes forth through the door of sub-consciousness into the field of self-conscious awareness. The form of this completed result of creative imagination may be altogether different from the form taken by the original seed thought, but the essence of that result will be in line with it.

Radiation of solar energy, being the basis of all vegetable and animal life, is what brings out the gradual unfoldment of consciousness. This radiant energy is also the force which allows us to have creative imagination. Put a person in a room with no sunlight for days and it will effect them mentally. According to Ageless Wisdom, all forms of manifestation are expressions of a single energy which has continuity, and is unbroken in the coming and going of life forms. Mental images are patterns of matrices for physical conditions. Mental images, on their plane, have just as definite a reality as physical objects in human reality. Under ordinary conditions, mental images gradually precipitated into physical expression through a series of subtle transformations so slight that they can not be traced.

This is the secret of instantaneous healing, or changing water into wine, etc. It is important to understand that our mental images are a manifestation of real power that may manifest in our physical lives. Chaotic conditions are the direct result of chaotic, disorderly images held in the minds of millions. What we see in this world is a reflection of what is going on inside of people. The Empress is the symbolic statement of the harmonious and constructive direction of mental imagery.

Peace and Good Journey
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  #10  
Old 28-12-2020, 07:46 PM
Lorelyen
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This is very good and informative. I've refrained from comment as I use the Major Arcana for pathworking and learned the basic symbolism from Paul Foster Case who, IIRC, described the Tarot as a book of wisdom disguised as a deck of cards; and Gray's The Ladder of Lights.
It's a lot of study and contemplation. The correspondences with the cards too can be so helpful in one's work, as you point out, perhaps confusing and an overload to someone approaching for the first time.

Most revealing.

Your interpretation of I the Magician was interesting. Dead on, but I learned the symbolism as on the Rider Waite as the Magician focusing the force down from the cosmos through a what-looks-like a scroll in his? right hand to the table on which the traditional elements are outlaid and it's up to him? to organise those elements in the right balance to achieve the creative aim. On the Thoth card for the Magus, there's an ape like thing to the bottom right to remind us that Mercury is a trickster and warns against getting caught by the fallibility of words. (I put the query mark against his? as in some reckonings he's hermaphrodite.)
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