The First Operation in Tarot is a transformative process that sets the stage for a successful reading, leading to deeper understanding and insight. This is the first step to an extensive divination method called the “Opening of the Key”, associated with the Golden Dawn approach. The technique is found in Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen and is adapted by Paul Foster Case.
The First Operation involves selecting a Signifier card, shuffle the deck with the Signifier card, and cut the cards into piles corresponding to YHVH. Each Tarot reader has their unique way of approaching the cards and delivering a reading, and there is no right or wrong way to pull cards. The Opening of the Key is a five-operation inter-disciplinary divinatory procedure rooted in the adept traditions of the Hermetic Order of the Hermetic Order.
For the first operation, the deck is divided into four piles representing the four elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. The situation of the Querent at the time when they consult you is represented by the top half of the pack being in front of you. Paul Foster Case of the BOTA group, an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, gave his take on the First Operation in his book Oracle of the Tarot.
In summary, the First Operation in Tarot is a powerful and transformative process that sets the stage for a successful reading, leading to deeper understanding and insight. It is a technique found in Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen and adapted by Paul Foster Case.
📹 The First Operation – Tarot Technique (Paul Foster Case)
Found in Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen – The First Operation is a technique by Paul Foster Case. I find this techinique to be …
What is the first card in Tarot reading?
The Fool is the first card of the tarot, representing fire, water, earth, and air sign energy. Major Arcana cards can also be seen with each zodiac sign. Readers may assign different signs to each Major Arcana card, but these discoveries are the most accurate in professional readings. Aries is the Emperor and Fool, Taurus is the Hierophant and Empress, Gemini is the Lovers and High Priestess, Cancer is Temperance, Leo is Strength, Virgo is the Hermit, Libra is Justice, Scorpio is Death, Sagittarius is Judgment, Capricorn is The Devil, Aquarius is The Star, and Pisces is The Moon.
What are the order of the tarot cards?
Tarot cards are ancient Chinese divination tools used for predicting the future. The major arcana, consisting of 22 cards, represents various forces, characters, virtues, and vices. The cards are numbered I through XXI, with the fool being unnumbered. The major arcana includes jugglers, papesses, empresses, emperors, popes, lovers, chariots, justice, hermits, wheel of fortune, strength, death, temperance, devil, lightning-struck towers, stars, moons, suns, last judgments, worlds, and the fool.
The minor arcana consists of 56 cards divided into four suits of 14 cards each. Each suit has 4 court cards and 10 numbered cards. The value progression in each suit is ace to 10, then jack, knight, queen, and king.
The adaptation of tarots to occult and fortune-telling purposes first occurred in France around 1780. Each tarot card is ascribed a meaning, with the major arcana referring to spiritual matters and trends in the questioner’s life. In the minor arcana, wands deal with business matters and career ambitions, cups with love, swords with conflict, and coins with money and material comfort. The meaning of any card is modified based on its position in the spread and the meaning of adjacent cards.
How do you start off with tarot?
Those new to the practice may find benefit in the use of spreads or specific reading methods, such as the one-card spread, which involves the pulling of a single card at a time. This approach is less intimidating than a comprehensive spread and facilitates a more nuanced comprehension of the cards.
What is the first suit in tarot?
The sequence of elements in the Tree of Life, which includes Wands (Fire), Cups (Water), Swords (Air), and Pentacles (Earth), is also the sequence of the four suits in a Tarot deck. Kabbala is a key system in understanding the Tarot system, providing a basic framework for the Tarot system. Kabbala helps explain why certain aspects of the Tarot Cards are the way they are, such as the sequence of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. This system is a major formative key in the Tarot study, providing a foundation for understanding the Tarot system and providing answers to questions about the Tarot cards’ nature.
What are the 4 suits in Tarot cards?
Cartomantic Tarot cards, derived from Latin-suited packs, typically have a Minor Arcana of 56 cards, with 14 cards in each suit: Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. The four court cards are page, knight, queen, and king. Some variations have princess and prince cards, while others have damsel and mounted lady cards. The historical Tarot of Marseilles contains 56 cards, while later packs based on French suits have only three court cards per suit. The Minor Arcana is believed to represent mundane life features, while the court cards may represent people one meets. Each suit has distinctive characteristics and connotations.
What is the tarot card for starting over?
The Fool card represents a spark of a new beginning, filled with wonder, anticipation, and excitement. Gemini, this week, should go their own way and not be influenced by others’ opinions. Cancer, the Emperor, reminds them to be the ruler of their reality. They should stand their ground, set boundaries, and protect their goals. Leo, the Fool card, emphasizes the importance of strength, which comes from a place of love, forgiveness, and acceptance.
Leo should rely on their strength to navigate the week ahead, finding it in their center, wisdom from experience, heart, love, and moral compass. By doing so, they can navigate the week ahead with confidence and positivity.
What is the 1 in Tarot card?
The Magician, also known as The Magus or The Juggler, is the first trump or Major Arcana card in traditional tarot decks, used for game playing and divination. In the occult context, the trump cards are recontextualized as the Major Arcana and given complex esoteric meaning. In this context, the Magician is interpreted as the first numbered and second total card of the Major Arcana, succeeding the Fool. In French, Le Bateleur, also known as “the mountebank” or “sleight of hand artist”, is a practitioner of stage magic.
In Italian tradition, he is called Il Bagatto or Il Bagatello. The Mantegna Tarocchi image of the Magician is labeled Artixano, the Artisan, and is the second lowest in the series. 18th-century woodcuts of the Magician reflect earlier iconic representations and can be compared to free artistic renditions in 15th-century hand-painted tarots.
What suit comes first?
Suit ranking in poker involves assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. The most common conventions are the English alphabetical order, with clubs followed by diamonds, hearts, and spades. High card by suit and low card by suit refer to assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. Most poker games do not rank suits, but small issues can be resolved by dealing one card to each player.
If two players draw cards of the same rank, an arbitrary hierarchy of suits can be used to break ties. The order of suit rank differs by location, with the most commonly used ranking in the United States being different from the one in Italy. High card by suit is used to break ties between poker hands as a regional variance.
How to start tarot reading?
Howe recommends two basic spreads for beginners: a three-card pull and the Celtic Cross. The former involves drawing three cards from the deck to represent the past, present, and future, while the Celtic Cross is a classic starting point with 10 cards each. However, there is no “right” spread; it’s more about the connections between the cards, as the cards around a certain card influence the meaning.
Dyan suggests focusing on the quality of each message instead of the quantity of cards pulled, as the connections between cards are influenced by each other and sometimes amplified by each other. The Celtic Cross spread is a classic starting point, but there is no one “right” spread.
How to organize tarot cards in order?
To break in a new Tarot deck, remove and unwrap the cards from their box, select a tarot bag for storage, and study the Little White Book. Study the Major Arcana first, then deal with the Minor Arcana, which represents major turning points in life and day-to-day issues. When shuffling a deck, follow the order of Major Arcana, from 0 Fool to 21 World, then ordered by Suit, Ace through 10, and court cards.
When shuffling a new deck, shuffle well and use various methods, such as fanning the cards facedown on a large table, shaking your hands back and forth, or playing “78 Card Pick-Up”. Gather up the messy pile and shuffle regularly, asking the deck what you can expect from working with it. Pull one card and see what it has to say to you on a personal level through its imagery. Consult the LWB if the card’s message is unclear.
Continue working with the new deck daily for at least a month to get to know it and how it works for you. Take notes and see how your interpretation of the card matches up with what you see and experience in the world that day. Continue working with the deck daily before attempting to read for others.
What is the No 1 Tarot card?
The Magician, also known as The Magus or The Juggler, is the first trump or Major Arcana card in traditional tarot decks, used for game playing and divination. In the occult context, the trump cards are recontextualized as the Major Arcana and given complex esoteric meaning. In this context, the Magician is interpreted as the first numbered and second total card of the Major Arcana, succeeding the Fool. In French, Le Bateleur, also known as “the mountebank” or “sleight of hand artist”, is a practitioner of stage magic.
In Italian tradition, he is called Il Bagatto or Il Bagatello. The Mantegna Tarocchi image of the Magician is labeled Artixano, the Artisan, and is the second lowest in the series. 18th-century woodcuts of the Magician reflect earlier iconic representations and can be compared to free artistic renditions in 15th-century hand-painted tarots.
📹 Learning the Opening of the Key | Tarot Summer School | 01 Introduction
(Full course description and more info on the Tarot Summer School landing page.) This excerpt from the full OOTK course is …
Thank you, Angelo! And you explain the technique really well. I do want to make clear that Case’s method is the first part that you talked about, everything up to locating the significator in the pile and noting the significance of that appearance, but the part where I read the card in front of and behind the significator (I call it signifier, but same diff.) is my own approach that I’ve added upon Case’s original methodology. Great article!
Just subscribed and this is the first article I’ve viewed. You make this easy to understand. I began using this spread a couple of years ago after buying and seeing it in Holistic Tarot and I use it a lot. In my limited experience, people will say “just tell me something about me” and as you said, this works very well in that type of situation. Something that I’ve developed on my own is to leave the pile where the signifier is found in its exact vertical arrangement and read at minimum the five cards that precede the signifier and the five cards that follow the signifier. The cards that come before the signifier show me the events leading up to the issue at hand and the cards that come after the signifier show me those events that may be coming in the future regarding the issue. It seems to work very well for me and I feel confident about what I see. If the signifier is the first card in the pile, I take that to mean the issue has just manifested and there is no additional information that precedes the event. Should it be the last card, I read the preceding cards to see if the issue may be coming to a resolution. Just ordered Tarot: Unlocking the Arcana, and I plan to come here often. Thank you.
Another great article Angelo. I’m definitely interested in Benebell’s monstrous book. It’ll make a great addition to my amazon order when I get the new Tarot Mucha deck by Lo Scarabeo :D. Though I just want to point out that Case’s method is a very watered down version of Alister Crowley’s 1st operation (of 5) of the opening of the key spread; which can be found in his Book of Thoth book. Many people today use it as a general spread. But originally it was used for specific questions, so you can do that as well.
I was experimenting with using the first operation with some friends after dinner and found that it was quite accurate but I took first to cards ahead and last 2 cards behind and found that it was scary accurate and did better then the traditional Celtic spread.. if you were to give the book a star system of you should have this in your library what number 1-10
Great article, thank you! I must ask though, where in the book is the part about reading the cards behind and in front of the signifier? I can only find the chapter on the first operation where Wen talks about finding the signifier in a certain pile and thus knowing if the question has to deal with either piles theme, but nothing about the other cards. Would be interesting to see how she explains how to read the other cards also. 🙂
Angelo you should really make a article explaining to people that the tarot cards are like the Ouija It can be like portal to demons so you should tell people to protect themselves. It uses your energy to get you the results you want that’s why sometimes if you use it too much like for “practice” you start to feel kind of ill or weak. Just putting it out there i didn’t know about this and i started doing it a lot to practice day and night and i started to feel really bad like a very bad sensation on my chest in between the nipples area so i went to speak to a brujo(witch) and he told me about the tarot cards and how they work. Soon he is going to be teaching me how to raise my positive energy and he is going to show me how to read cards but they are different they are mexican cards they aren’t like tarot i guess you can say they are a little safer. I just wanted to put this on here since i’m a big fan so you can tell your audience before they get into the tarot scene. Thank you and God Bless :).
I love “Holistic Tarot.” I’ve been studying it on and off for 3 years, and have finally made it to the Advanced Study Guide. I feel like the deck I enjoy using is the “Tarot of Vampyres” by Ian Daniels. I used that deck alongside your Shadow Work course, and absolutely enjoyed the experience (even though writing about my past pains was pretty difficult for me). I’m here to learn about the Opening of the Key from “Holistic Tarot.” 🙂
Love you articles! Just bought your books! Am enrolling in your course today! Thanks for all the hard work and killer info presented! I can help you with your article production questions & your editing questions as well! Ask away! It is a token of my appreciation for you & your terrific & refreshing outlook on the tarot! Just PM me and i’ll be happy to help you with anything, no strings! xoxo N
IAO, pronounced EE AH OH. Is based on the formula of INRI, the abbreviation of the inscription over the cross of Jesus which mystics a very long time ago analysed by translating INRI into Hebrew letters; this gives Yod Nun Resh Yod. Yod is associated with Virgo, Nun with Scorpio, Resh with the Sun. Virgo is Isis, Scorpio is Apophis-Typhon, the Sun is Osiris. Isis Apophis Osiris= IAO. It is the formula of the dying and reborn God. IAO is also a Gnosic deity . HRU is pronounced HERU, Crowley identified him with Horus, but his ultimate origin is in the system of Dee and Kelly as you said.
😍Try your other camera and we always use lights with camera action. One scene of the bust and other hands put both scenes in the digital edit boxes and the rest is up to the editor…. Went to class and got a A so it is not that hard I have been hit in the head and played football (!concussions)💿🦇💿🎶🎙🎧