Preparing for my first trip to Greece next month, I thought it’d be pretty easy to pick up a phrase book, learn the alphabet, and I’d at the very least be able to get a taxi, order a coffee, and find the bathroom. As it turns out, learning a little Greek is no walk in the park. The phrase in this post’s title comes from Julius Caesar, spoken by Casco, one of the dudes who planned Caesar’s assassination, in reference to Cicero’s oration in Greek. Casco, not knowing Greek, found it unintelligible. One thing leads to another, as it always does, and though I began wondering about how I’m going to master the Greek alphabet, my thoughts turned to the unintelligible. The letters I recognize I sense what they are. They feel familiar. Alpha and Beta of course. Iota and Omicron (unfortunately). But Upsilon and Xi, they feel new, symbols I do not yet recognize. Unintelligible. In Middle English the word meant something which cannot be understood with the intellect but only with the senses. Unintelligible. Back to sigils. Back to tarot.
The Sigil As An Unintelligible Act
My very rudimentary understanding of how sigils are commonly used is to manifest or summon a wish or desire. Sigils are used as a creative and spiritual tool and the process involves making an image which is unintelligible yet understood, sensed, and felt, in a non-intellectual way.
Here comes the tarot.
As much as I adore a deep intellectual dive into the cards, it seems to me that the magic in tarot reading, whether looking at cards oneself, or giving or receiving a reading from someone else, is the way in which the cards serve as a conduit between people, the way they provide energy to talk about and try to understand in possibly an unintelligible way what is happening in our lives. This is where I must be careful because the words escape me, as they should, yet here I am writing the words. I know it’s a bit slippery. How do we write about that which can’t really be written?
The Messy Middle
Considering how much has been written about tarot, there is no way to map out all the possible adjacencies, connections, relationships between the cards in a spread. Nor should we want to. I bring this up because though we as readers, in fact the whole idea of READING the cards implies making them intelligible, there must always remain an aspect of the unintelligible in the cards. The spaces between the cards, the ideas that pop up seemingly from nowhere, our picking up of symbols which connect between the cards, the cards as sigils. I’ll be thinking a lot more about this topic as I move through the rest of the week. Perhaos you will as well and would like to comment?
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I am going to start using the Abstract Futures cards in my readings. Of course I can always use Rider Waite Smith or The Wild Unknown decks, but I’m ready to start taking a journey with those who want to join me.
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xo Hanna