Reading Tips: Eye Rhyme Method

Enrique Enriquez's Method of Reading:

1. Why the Marseille Tarot? The Marseille Tarot, the tarot of the image-makers, carries the power of the cathedrals to move the human psyche, and therefore, its’ language carries the power to re-build each one of us as a sacred space.

2. Look at three cards, four maximum. This is the poem.

3. Why do I call any sequence of cards a ‘poem’? Because like a written poem, the tarot speaks the language of shape. We need to let ourselves be taken into the poem’s shape by observing its accent and rhythm.

4. The first thing the cards – each and every sequence of cards - has to tell us is that the riddle we solve on the table gives us the ability to solve one riddle in our lives. “Similia similibus curentur”. An act of magic.

5. If the character in a card is looking outside of the spread, I place a new card in front of him/her to know what she/he is looking at and to close the spread.). More cards than that and I start feeling confused. I don't work with spreads because, as I pointed out before, there is no intrinsic meaning in each specific card, nor in its position.

6. First we look for a general rhythm: raising, falling, constant. Then we look for rhymes.

7. What are Eye Rhymes? Eye rhymes originate in poetry. The notion that two words with a similar sound can be exchanged to create a play of words. This is the idea of two words sharing a similar shape that can be used interchangeably for amusement or communicative purposes, and led me to think that if the tarot's shape isn't auditive but visual many images have a similar "sound" that can be appreciated at plain sight. They are rhymes for the eye. I saw this represented for the first time in Temperance and Le Bateleur, in the form their posture, arms, heads, hats, etc, they rhyme!

8. The only thing relevant in a single card is what rhymes with other cards. Rhymes define the active attributes of each card in a given sequence. We ignore the passive attributes.

9. We don't know what a single card means, nor do we need to worry about that. (Later) we will talk about my suspicion of what does each card elicits, but that will always be a provisional idea, useless in the context of a reading.

10. I would go so far as to say that each tarot card is an image looking to be turned into a metaphor when the viewer, based on his or her own experience, finds a referent for it. The image in the card isn’t a metaphor, but it wants to be a metaphor. Since the referent always changes, meaning will always be transitory.

11. We can only understand a card by contrasting it with the other cards in a sequence.

12. Trumps, pips and court cards are all part of a whole. Trumps and court cards aren't more 'valuable' than pips, but they may provide focus to our narrative since they depict human characters.

13. The cards of a sequence don't depict separate events. We read the whole sequence as one single sentence/idea. As a sequence/story line we understand the cards going from past-left to future-right, but it is all part of one single motion.

14. As a consequence of the previous points, we don't base our first glance on the card's attributes, suits, or numerological values of the pips.

15. The purpose of looking at the cards in this way is to get visions. We see things that weren't there before. Revelations. Looking at the tarot in this way is about taking a detour to find a straight answer.

16. There is a verse from medieval times, attributed to Nicholas de Lyra, which accounts for the four levels in which a text could be interpreted. "Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia" this is: "The letter teaches the actions, the allegory teaches what you believe, the moral teaches you how you act, and the anagogy teaches where you are going."

17. We need to be familiar with the principle of analogy. The tarot is an analogical machine. Any card, or any sequence of cards, can be linked to our personal experience by analogy. The important thing here is for us to have a frame of reference. In this case, we had all these feelings we experienced before actually looking at the card. In some cases, our frame of reference will be a question. In some others, our frame of reference will be our mind state. Our client also brings her mind state to the table, and her mind will draw analogies between whatever we say, or whatever she looks in the cards, and her mind state. A non-theoretical approach to the cards will always produce analogical meaning.

18. Our frame of reference is what tells us what to look for. It also asks for each reader to take responsibility for her/his own metaphors.

19. Every time we look at the cards we are (attempting) to recognize our question or concern in the images we have in front of us.

20. A person could be crystallizing, therefore needing to become more organic. A person could be expanding, therefore needing to contract. A person could be cold, therefore needing to warm up, a person could be in total order, therefore needing to break onto chaos, etc.

21. How do we know whether a person is contracting, expanding, etc? That is what the pips are telling us.

22. When we look at the pips we can always notice if the sequence goes from ORDER to CHAOS, from DETERMINED to UNDETERMINED, from ORGANIC to CRYSTALLINE, from WARM to COLD, or from EXPANSION to CONTRACTION.

23. On broader terms Wands and Swords contract -in that they evolve by generating a solid shape in the middle of the card.

24. Cups and Coins expand -in that they spread across the card’s surface.

25. Even so, we can see that Swords are expanding if we compare them with Wands, and we can also see that Coins have a particular point of view that makes them expand over a horizontal plane, while Cups ‘pile up’ or expand on a vertical plane. All these are indications of movement, and such movement will give us, by analogy, an insight into the process a person is experiencing.

26. Shape becomes meaning and rhythm becomes message.