The Gods and Goddesses are all aspects of the Divine *rant*

[CuAnnan]

I was taking part in a thread on tarot and Gods and which God(ess) should be used to represent the tarot (Linkie).

For those of you too lazy/not interested enough/who have just come to see me rant:

I was arguing that the moods/themes/ideas held within the Tarot as a unit are too broad to be contained within a single God.

There was bad argument going on left right and centre but this, this takes the biscuit:

Someone actually used the argument "But consider this: the gods and goddesses are all aspects of the Divine (male/female - sun/moon - god/goddess) - the divine energy of life and death, of love and loss."

I don't generally use the title "Hard core polythiest" because it's not 100% accurate, it comes damn close, though. I seriously resent being told to consider a world view I don't agree with.  

[Padmasana]

What Deities do you think fulfill the role of representing Tarot the best?  

[StrawberryGumiho]

Ohhhhh.... stressed
Your much nicer about this topic than I am...
But then I am 100% hard polytheist... So maybe to some I'm "intolerant" on the topic. stare  

[CuAnnan]

Padmasana

What Deities do you think fulfill the role of representing Tarot the best?

I don't think it can, or for that matter should, be done.
The Tarot are not an oracular. They are a divination tool.
While they can be used oracularly, the vivid symbology inherent in each card makes it difficult to use them as such. Hence using Ogham, in my case, or Runes, in Deo's, or Yarrow or Coins or whatever it is you use.  

[Pelta]

Tarot as a tool could fall under the dominion of a deity of divination. But that's extremely vague and probably as far as you could go with the idea. To say that it falls under the dominion of any specific deity is somewhat... disrespectful.

And I like the way she stated her panthiest view as fact and told you to "consider" it, then later mentioned that anything in the thread is just opinion. What's the point in argueing then? And why on earth do you keep posting on those forums if you complain about it so much? pirate  

[TatteredAngel]

Agreed, it's kind of a jerkwad move to say loftily that something is one way, then go on about opinions. Reading the thread, I have to say that the tone taken in the other person's posts is rather grating to me, but that aside, it's still not nice to do that.  

[saint dreya]

TatteredAngel

Agreed, it's kind of a jerkwad move to say loftily that something is one way, then go on about opinions. Reading the thread, I have to say that the tone taken in the other person's posts is rather grating to me, but that aside, it's still not nice to do that.

she sounds a bit too much condescending for my view, at least that's what i interpretted to be grating me up.

i partially understand the pantheistic view, as i used to hold it, but i don't think i would have ever said 'any god you pick could embody the latent symbology in the tarot because they (gods) are all aspects of the divine'. for one, while in the pantheistic view each god/dess is a 'facet' of the 'diamond' of a super deity, each 'facet' is unique as well as merely a part of the whole. to say that a part = the whole would very much be inconsistent and misleading.  

[Gideon Starorzewski]

You can certainly apply Tarot to any pantheon or system of belief you want because the cards are certainly receptive to it, but it's when people start attributing a single system of belief or origin to it that there's a problem. I was just watching one of the Disinfo documentaries on all the Da Vinci Code hooh hah, and one of the manditory fluffy types was going on about how the Tarot was obviously created with the intention of hiding the story of the Magdalene and the grail. rolleyes  

[xxantuxx]

I see them all as the same... I mean before I found wicca and still, I consider all those who have some sort of worship worship the same, just call it a diffrent name... I mean when I pray or do rituals I use the names from every religion I can think of that are appropriate, and I know I'm praying to the divine, the goddess, and the Horned One... Not really each and every god I name, but instead what they stand for.  

[maenad nuri]

xxantuxx

I see them all as the same... I mean before I found wicca and still, I consider all those who have some sort of worship worship the same, just call it a diffrent name... I mean when I pray or do rituals I use the names from every religion I can think of that are appropriate, and I know I'm praying to the divine, the goddess, and the Horned One... Not really each and every god I name, but instead what they stand for.

All the same? Worship the same?
Que?

Can you expand on this?  

[Triste-chan]

The thing that tends to piss me off about these people isn't so much that they believe that Gods are just flat facets on a big gemstone rather than individuals just like people as it is that when they state their beliefs, they almost always say it as if it's a fact that cannot be disputed.

Like, of course all deities are one big deity, because that way we're all one big happy family! ******** diversity, we're all exactly the same! biggrin Join us, reagun. evil  

[LadyEladrin]

Triste-chan

The thing that tends to piss me off about these people isn't so much that they believe that Gods are just flat facets on a big gemstone rather than individuals just like people as it is that when they state their beliefs, they almost always say it as if it's a fact that cannot be disputed.

Whereas that's the exact thing I do believe, I wouldnt' say it's the only way to look at Deity and the Divine. To each his own. *shrug*  

[CuAnnan]

EladrinStarmist

Whereas that's the exact thing I do believe, I wouldnt' say it's the only way to look at Deity and the Divine. To each his own. *shrug*

Neither Triste (the hard core athiest who's big enough to admit to being freaked by tarot wink ) nor I (the hard core polythiest who's big enough to admit to being a jackass) shun the facet view. I can't know that it's right or wrong.

What we're shunning is the "This is the only Truth and if we're going to talk, you have to accept that" attitude the person took.  

[ProfessorZed]

reagun ban

What we're shunning is the "This is the only Truth and if we're going to talk, you have to accept that" attitude the person took.

That would be pretty infuriating. I guess every tradition has its zealots, and they never seem to realize that it's no better when they engage in asshattery than when anyone else does.

Death to all zealots! *broad wink*  

[Crysiana]

This is where being a hard polytheistic monist is fun. If difficult to say aloud. (Which is to say, everything that exists is ultimately one, which doesn't actually stop discrete entities from existing.) But on the other hand, I wouldn't tell someone else that they're absolutely wrong, and definitely not with the tone the girl took in the thread.