Tarot Clustering

I tend to approach Tarot (and other related things, like Angel Cards or Medicine Cards) similar to the way I think about dream interpretation. I don't necessarily look for it to be magical -- though "uncannily accurate" tends to happen a lot -- but it provides a very interesting way to think about things and focus the concentration. One thing I like to do is the "pathway" spread that I learned from my set of Medicine Cards, even though I currently prefer to use Tarot cards for it. I also like the idea of looking at cards' proximity to each other in a shuffled deck, which direction they're facing, etc., for additional interpretations or influences on meaning.

Anyway, based on that latter concept, I had what I thought was an interesting idea for a very large-scale, all-encompassing Tarot spread. Shuffle the deck as desired and then spread the whole thing out on the floor, with all the cards showing face up. Then group them all into clusters based on their proximity to certain predetermined, significant cards. E.g. if you're into this kind of stuff, you may have a card in mind that best represents you personally, so use that as one of them. The Lovers could represent your current romantic relationship, something like (just off the top of my head) the 10 of Cups could be family, somethings else for career, etc. Alternatively, you could choose to group cards around all the Major Arcana. Either way, the remaining cards could reveal influences on all those areas based on where they fall in which clusters. The central "point" cards wouldn't be entirely excluded from influencing others, since you could look at where they all fall in relation to each other. I think this would make for a fascinating interpretation project, though it would obviously require a good chunk of time, involving the entire deck like this.

By the way, if anyone's interested, I love the Robin Wood Tarot deck. (Thanks, Antonia!)