A very odd thing happened to me as I was completing another blog entry earlier. I suddenly realized that when I read the cards, not only do I respond to the imagery and the symbolism present in each one, but that I also hear sounds. I’m not talking metaphorically, here; I can actually hear the many sounds coming out of the images.
For some reason, I was never fully conscious of this fact until the moment I caught myself writing that the Death card is silent and the Tower is noisy. And now, I can’t turn it off!
It was amazing to me to suddenly be able to focus on the many different sounds that fill my mind when I look at each card. I was so excited, I went to look at all my decks and was even more amazed to find that they all have different sounds. No two Towers sound exactly the same; no two Deaths are silent in the exact same way, as even silence seems to have a sound.
It’s the oddest thing that I had never noticed this before. I started wondering if all Tarot readers also experience this, or at least those who, like me, rely heavily on instinct when reading the cards.
Major Arcana and Ace cards seem to be generally louder than most Minors. Court cards actually have different voices. Some decks are shrill and some are soothing.
Another surprise came when my favorite deck in the whole world, Crowley’s Thoth, the one that never fails me, the only one I ever use to read for myself, turned out to be the quietest of them all. Only a handful of cards in this deck have sounds. The Tower being the loudest by far, all other cards are either completely silent or have very faint, sometimes almost indistinguishable sounds. The suit of Cups was the noisiest; I kept hearing all manner of watery sounds, from a crystalline fountain song to a muddy sloshing sound, to the gentle lapping of waves on a beach. The Five of Cups, however, remained deathly silent in this deck, in complete contrast with the Five of Coins where I kept hearing menacing thunder in the background.
Here is a sample of the noisiest Major Arcana cards in the majority of my decks:
The Fool – birds singing
The Hierophant – solemn Church sounds, monks singing
The Chariot – the sound of a carriage’s wheels on cobbled stones
Justice – odd metallic clanging sounds, almost like a jail gate closing in the distance
Strength – a low growling from the lion, a hushing sound from the woman
Death – heavy silence cut by random sounds from a haunting wind blowing
The Devil – chains, sarcastic laughter, persistent humming sound in the background that seems to rise out of the Earth
The Tower – this one is always the loudest, deafening thunder, lightning striking the ground, buildings crashing, a roaring blaze
The Moon – dogs howling
Judgement – trumpets and horns
Now that I’m completely aware of the various sounds coming out of the cards, I wonder how it’s going to affect the way I read them? Especially since I’ve just realized that some of them also have smells.
The Tarot will always be a never ending source of amazement to me.
All images from the Gilded Tarot by Ciro Marchetti
