by Marcus Katz
In our educational system, we are taught from the outside in, and the modes of learning are constrained within propositional knowledge and logico-deductive reasoning. We rarely learn how to be creative, intuitive, nor the nature of belief, our place in the world, and the nature of awareness and our relationship to the Universe.
To find an authentic teacher requires that they be experienced in the journey. A wonderful demonstration of this journey and the role of the teacher (and the outcome) is to be found in the film, The Silent Flute (1978, also known as the Circle of Iron). This was co-written by martial artist Bruce Lee, drawing on Taoism, Zen and the teachings of Krishnamurti.
Our resistance to a teacher is profound, for we are taught a lack of trust in our own early educational experience. The gifted C.S. Nott, a student of G.I. Gurdjieff, whilst talking about how Gurdjieff’s teachings would often provoke friction, also writes:
In my childhood, and indeed later on in life, all sorts of persons, from my parents to my superior officers in the army, were constantly telling me what to think, feel and do. Outwardly I accepted their views, inwardly I doubted them: I doubted whether they were speaking from inner conviction due to direct experience. Now I had met a man who, I was convinced, was speaking from his own experience when he pointed out my faults and weaknesses. By his own efforts he had overcome these things, and he fully understood my needs. The older pupils also, when they answered my questions about the system, spoke only from their own direct experience.
C. S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff, p. 55
There is also a noticeable and recognized infantilism arising through the phenomena of social networks. Whilst certainly not decrying their usefulness in mass-connecting human communication, there are dangers inherent in the rapid rise of technology. In 2009, Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, made several stark warnings about social networking, suggesting that their overuse might lead to:
short attention spans
sensationalism
inability to empathise
a shaky sense of identity
She also pointed out that they are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance, which might eventually produce adults with a marked inability to judge consequences of their actions and interact in real-time. We certainly hope this will prove not to be the case. It is also to be hoped that we continually learn and teach Tarot in a progressive and considered environment, particularly in a decade which has allowed any teaching to be carried out on a world-wide scale.
The Light House of Tarot
"It will rain," he remembered his father saying. "You won’t be able to go to the Lighthouse."
The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now—
James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it?
No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too. It was sometimes hardly to be seen across the bay. In the evening one looked up and saw the eye opening and shutting and the light seemed to reach them in that airy sunny garden where they sat.
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Wolf, p. 152
In Tarot, every symbol is multivalent, that is to say, it can have a limitless range of meaning. A Sword can be the clarity of decision in one card and the pain of loss in another – in fact, on the same card, the same sword can be “letting go of the past” in one reading, and “making a single decision for your future” in another, dependent on its location. It is also affected by the context of the cards and multivalent symbols about it in a spread.
This is how Tarot works - as a simultaneous matrix reflecting consciousness – and Crowley himself said that the grasp of multivalency was the mark of the Adept. This is also why there can be no “one meaning” of any symbol or card.
When we talk about Tarot then, we are aware that we are only ever talking about one viewpoint, one lens, one here and now. The Tarot is a transient, developing artifact of our relationship with the universe and ourselves – as such, it is timeless and paradoxical. We offer here only one perspective, one beacon illuminating what it will, rather than any absolute house of light.
What is Tarot Really For?
Given the preceding notes that Tarot is whatever you make it, and in that freedom, we offer our own vision: Tarot is a mechanism of our relationship to the divine universe. Whether it is a reading for “When will Dwayne come back to me?” or the most mystical meditation on the correspondences of The Aeon card, these are both in essence, enquiries.
And the Universe is fundamentally an Act of Enquiry.
Tarot is a means of spiritual enquiry into ourselves, the Universe, and the relationship between these apparently separate elements. This is a spiritual journey. In making this enquiry through our Tarot readings and study, we test the Universe – and ourselves – increasingly exhausting (and making obsolete) – all that is not deeply true. Again, this is a spiritual journey.
One of my early teachers (writes Marcus) wondered why the first time someone performed a Tarot reading that worked, it didn’t stop their world dead and send them on a journey to try and figure out how the universe worked to allow such a “non-apparent acausal” act to arise. There would be no need to do a Tarot reading ever again, he suggested, it would have accomplished its teaching.
As we progress, our internal sense of the Universe and our place in it, becomes increasingly more comprehensive, consistent and congruent. Tarot teaches us and we become expanded, connected and authentic. In that sense, we can be considered approaching values attributed to spirituality.
If Tarot is a language, then we must now take what we have learnt in that language to the country in which that language arose – it is only there so that we can communicate what we experience in that land, the inner landscape of our relationship with the universe itself.
The Return of the Oracles
Are you an Oracle or a Seer? Whilst there are many grades on the scale, in Ancient Oracular systems, the nature of an Oracle and a Seer were seen as polar ends of that scale. The Oracle, a word which comes from the Latin, ‘Orare’, to speak (L.) gave what the Greeks called khrēsmoi, oracular utterances. These were divinely inspired.
An Oracle was thus seen as a vessel through which a Divinity Speaks prophecy. This is also called inspiration. In Hinduism, it is the same as Akashwani , “a voice from the sky”.
A Seer or Mantis, on the other hand, is trained and educated to use tools such as entrails or runes to offer auguries and does not need to be part of a “family” or “tradition” in order to carry out their work. Whilst we are no longer in ancient Greece, it is an interesting distinction in experience, as we each move between these two poles.
Sometimes a reading may be “by the book” and sometimes it may be utterly and completely divinely inspired – and sometimes, often, it may partake of the entire spectrum. The important thing is that we accept all approaches, they both have worthy forbears.
The Oracle Born in Blood
In Tarosophy, we concluded with a provocative challenge, a call back to the return of Tarot within the oracular tradition. We wrote:
You speak with honey on your lips from the Book of Clouds, echoing the voice of fire from the living darkness, or you do not. There is no such thing as a half-way oracle.
In much the same way that the gristle and sinew of meat-preparation has been hidden behind the consumer-friendly packaging of a supermarket freezer section, so has the Tarot – and its near relatives, runic and stellar – been sanitized and slowly dismembered from its oracular roots.
As a system, it is indeed merely a few hundred years old, yet as an outlook, a perspective on the world; it belo
ngs to a venerable wisdom tradition which was born in ancient blood. Amongst the earliest oracles were the Haruspices, who determined augers from the entrails and liver of sacrificed animals.
Illus. The Liver of Piacenza, 2nd-3rd century B.C.
The liver in particular was favored, for it is the largest gland available and rich with blood. It was seen at times as the centre of the passions, sometimes more so than the heart. The Roman poet Horace (65 BC – 8 BC) wrote “my liver fills with bile difficult to repress”.
The giant Titysos, slain by Artemis and Apollo, had two vultures tear at his liver whilst he lay chained in Hades, and of course Prometheus, whose name may well mean “forethinker”, was also consigned to a similar fate.
That the liver is remarkably able to self-heal has been arguably suggested was known to the ancient Greeks, whose words for liver and “mend” are very similar. So by reading the liver the seer is looking into the very physical world, the hidden inner world, the purely biological world.
It is from this root stock that the cardboard (paper, tree) of a Tarot deck, or even its plastic format (originally egg, blood, horn or rubber tree proteins), derives. We are a lot less messy; however we are still reading and interpreting the physical world in our hands.
That the light of Tarot can penetrate the whole body is of import to the very “feeling” of a Tarot reading. We readers know what it is like to have the hairs on our neck stand up during a reading, or other bodily responses to the oracular experience. We also know to recognize the flush response in a querent as the reading gains depth and penetrate to the very heart of the matter. A reading can be a visceral event, cutting to the quick or stopping breath, laying subtlety as a whisper or cleaning the edge of a wound.
As it is written, “the human spirit is the lamp of the Lord, searching every innermost part” (Prov 20:27).
The Wounded Healer
Tarot is a sum of many parts, in as much as Tarot can mean many special different things to so many people - there are many paths to walk in a vast world of beautiful choice.
There are many reasons that a person comes to know Tarot. It will help to differentiate between some of these choices. Some may have more professional considerations or more spiritual considerations - or both! It can be subjective and personal, it may be more mundane. There is the ‘Tarot Reader’ and the ‘Reader of Tarot’ or it may be the difference between ‘Seer’ ‘and ‘oracle’. There is the hybrid Tarot reader and reader of Tarot combined. However, one’s approach to Tarot is as multivalent as the Tarot cards themselves.
There is a natural order/chaos at play, like attracts like and that is how it has always been and always will. This is something to be celebrated - ‘vive le difference’. If we were not, we would not be in the midst of the Tarot world. I, Tali, would not be writing this, if it was not the case. You may wonder how I see myself with regard to Tarot. What is my story? I naturally lean toward the intuitive side of Tarot, the occult; my intuitive side is the part that after a few diversions drew me to Tarot. A childhood spent of damping down my psychic nature as to appear ‘regular’ to fit in with the status quo eventually wore thin. I failed miserably of course; it is not something one can hide! Sensing too much can be a painful path to tread, and a lonely one. Your teenage peers are seeing boyfriends/girlfriends and you are seeing entities from beyond.
But you carry on and you work hard to be accepted and try to avoid revealing your difference. However, there is no way of avoiding where you are supposed to be, and where you are supposed to go. There is something called “answering the call”, and this is related to the process of initiation and the ‘Wounded healer’.
A large number of Tarot readers may have come to Tarot while they are, or have been in the past, seriously ill. The illness may have been one that triggered what is called a “spiritual emergency” or it could be that the experience of ill health has triggered a longing for a meaning which transcends an earthly one. Through the archetypal images of the Tarot we remember that what we once were, and that what we will be again. Is this what it is about illness that opens us up to the energies of the wounded healer in Tarot?
Perhaps it goes even deeper and we must take care of how we bring those wounds to our service as a reader. Guggenbuhl and Craig, a Swiss and an American, took Jung’s references to the Myth of Asclepius, the wounded healer, and made a link to the complexities and possible complications that arise from counter-transference, the reaction that a Therapist can experience in response to their patients issues.
Metaphorically, this is the hot potato that may be passed back and forth between client/therapist, and if the “hot potato” is passed on to the therapist who has a psychological/emotional hang-up which has not been identified through analysis there could be a bit of an ouch moment, to say the least.
This is why Jung recognized the importance of analysts undergoing therapy themselves, and that the speed of the patients healing process is relative to the therapists own state. This was also described as “the therapist being just as responsible for the cleanliness of his hands as a surgeon would be before an operation” thereby avoiding cross-contamination.
Some people may be accused of taking Tarot too seriously; others may be accused of being too flippant. For example, some pole dance for a living and some pole dance for fun, some do it in public, some people have a pole at home and would never dream of doing it in public. Even in these whirly circles it creates a bit of friction between the different poles, how society views pole dancing, preconceived ideas of what it sometimes is and what it sometimes is not, but in the risk of mangling metaphors and being cliché, ‘different courses for different horses’.
It all is as ever, as it is supposed to be. We can only ever be what we are, and not how others perceive us to be. Especially if you take into account that perception is so subjective and open to change at the drop of the hat.
It is all about us allowing that what is on the inside to be on the outside, and not give a flying fig! We are all on the path we should be on, just at times they inextricably meet and merge and then part again. We are alchemy at work, a spiritual work in progress.
Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.
Italo Calvino
We take our wounds, and we weave words from them. This is, in part, the power of Tarot – it allows us to expose our vulnerabilities, to heal in that process, and to re-connect our life-story in a way of ancient words.
The Way of Ancient Words
In our Tarot Hekademia 2-year Tarot course, one of the most popular modules deals with the oracular tradition. Whilst covering the basics of rune-craft, I-Ching and other divinatory systems, the most popular aspect of this module is that it covers oracular language. In this present kickstart book we would like to provide one such example for you to explore, based on Old English poetry.
It is provided as a different way of exploring journaling and “little white book” creation for your own Tarot, other than our Haiku methods given in other works. It is very powerful to explore a new Tarot deck as it requires good observation of the literal components and design elements on your cards, and then takes them into unexpected dimensions of oracular utterance.
The language structure we present here was common to poetry of Old English, Germanic, Norse & Anglo-Saxon languages. It is generally two half-lines verses (Distich) with a pause in the middle (Caesura). We won’t concern ourselves with the two “stressed syllables” (Lifts) but just the alliteration which makes these poems so vibrant and forceful.
Alliteration is simply the use of the same sound/letter for two or more connected words, which gives them added emphasis:
See suddenly how swiftly she sighs.
Take time to travel without tension.
In this form of oracul
ar poetry, we create our own Edda (like Beowulf and other classic old English texts) in what was called a Hrynhenda. We also take on this form by using only 8 syllables in each of the two lines of each verse. Those readers who have utilized our Tarot Haiku exercises will be delighted at the extra syllables!
Notice also how the verses are split in the middle. We do not generate a rambling flow of linked metaphors and poetic delights in this structure, nor the precise elegance of a Haiku. We rather take on a Klingon accent and guttural emphasis, and make pounding powerful poems of profound passion.
To create a Tarot Hrynhenda, and inspire your oracular insight, simply take one object that you can see on a card, and think of what it brings to mind – whilst sticking to the same letter of the object. Then choose something else, and do the same thing, whilst keeping the whole line of those two parts to 8 syllables.
Here we take the enigmatic 6 of Cups and see the flowers first, and the word that comes to mind, also beginning with “F” is “fall”. Our eye then casts itself to the archway and the apex, so as those words both begin with the same letter, we write them down. This makes our first line of the verse, with a pause between. We put in the “and” to make sense of the line and reaching 8 syllables.
Flowers Fall | Archway and Apex
We then look again at the most obvious thing on the card, which is the children. Whilst we think about that, we also see something else that begins with “C”, the cross. Whilst we do not have to have the second word actually something on the card, this works so we use it. All of a sudden, thinking about the falling flowers, the cross, the children, the man walking away, what arises is that this card is one of widowhood. The mother has died. We then see in the card that the “young girl” is actually a “woman”, and the “big boy” is perhaps also a “man”. Perhaps this indicates that the girl now has to take on the mother’s role – we think this as we look at her “mittens”, and as we do so, “Mother’s mantle” comes to mind, making the last part of the second line and completing the verse.