Tarot Inspire Read online

  The Sun: A Separate God: Origins and Teachings of Gnosticism, Simon Petrement

  The Last Judgment: Global Brain, Howard Bloom

  The World: The Unfinished Universe, Louise B. Young

  This is of course a nascent list for your own expansion. We have tried to present here a few avenues which may soon lead you to your own highways in the spiritual world.

  Apostasis Spread

  Whilst this book provides more in the way of contemplation and inspiration of ideas related to our approach to Tarot, we here offer a practical spread for significant change-work in your life. It is based on the concept of Apostasis, which refers to the end or crisis-point of a disease, usually by an expulsion of the dis-ease.

  Here we see it in Campbell’s context of the heroic journey, an archetypal pattern that plays out in all our lives, whether it is the epic saga of Beowulf, or an issue with one’s Grendal-like boss at work. In any situation that requires a significant spiritual decision or life-style (and hence value-related) choice/impact, this spread can help give elegant and effective perspective.

  This spread is a Tarosophy Split Deck method, in which we separate out Majors, Minors and Court Cards into three piles which are then separately shuffled and laid out.

  First, shuffle the entire deck. Lay out the top card of the deck to your left, and the bottom card to your right as follows:

  These are your Birth and Rebirth cards. They indicate what is already born from you, and what is required to initiate the next birth of a new self.

  Then split out the remaining deck into three piles for the Majors, Minors and Court Cards.

  Shuffle the Majors. Lay one down, this is your Calling.

  Shuffle the Minors. Lay one down, this is the Threshold at which you stand.

  Shuffle the Court Cards. Lay one down, this is the Temptation that leads you away from crossing the threshold to answer your calling.

  Shuffle the Majors. Lay one down, this is your Return. This shows how you may make your journey beyond the rebirth. It offers advice and a form of hope for what lies for you after significant initiation.

  Shuffle the Minors. Lay one down, this is your Rescue. It indicates what will be rescued within you from this particular initiation.

  Shuffle the Court Cards. Lay one down, this is your Gift. It shows the character of your gift, which you can offer others, following this stage of your spiritual journey.

  You can also select a card from any of the three piles to indicate “How Can I unite my Upper and Lower Worlds”?

  Illus. Apostasis Spread

  Restoring a Spiritual Dignity to the Tarot

  Truth is brief, (afterward, it is all commentary)

  p. 633, Foucault’s Pendulum

  As was summarized in one of the appendices of Tarosophy, half a surveyed sample of the UK population, when asked about Tarot and other such “psychic” phenomena (including, bizarrely, Yoga and Satanism in the same list), felt that Tarot was “evil”. That is to say, it represented some way of influencing the mind beyond “general advice”. Whilst some Tarot readers may be forgiven for thinking this is their entire purpose, it is not one which is easily delivered to that half of the population.

  It appears to us, that this signifies a common lack of respect for the practice and diverse beliefs of Tarot. There is a lack of dignity accorded to this profession or the pursuit of a passion in study.

  The word dignity is an ambiguous word, in philosophical, ethical or legal terminology alike, so we will not attempt to offer more than our own usage of it. To us, it signifies a lack of respect to the individual who is practicing Tarot. We refer to the innate right of respect for one’s pursuits, pleasures, passion or profession, whether you are a Tarot reader, student, sanitation officer or nurse.

  That this dignity is not accorded to Tarot should be self-evident in most readers experience. Even at the most elegant and cultured dinner-parties, we have been subjected to “can you read these crisps if you haven’t brought your cards” type routines. However, in personal experience we have found that adopting a non-apologetic “normalized” stance is the most effective in such situations.

  And with regard to the “spiritual” dignity that the practice of Tarot and divination – a term which equates most nobly to divinization – may hold, we refer specifically to its use as a language for spiritual development. At one time, the project for Tarot was to imagine it as a grand scheme, a pictorial language, for the narrative of the soul’s ascent. It was viewed as a picture-book of enlightenment.

  That this spirituality was lost to rapid layers of magic, mysticism and enigmatic correspondence, scandal, dissension and other mundane manifestations, notably in the Golden Dawn society that introduced Tarot to those who then popularized it (Waite, Crowley, Colman-Smith, Foster-Case) is unfortunate. However, it is not irredeemable. The project of the Golden Dawn was to construct, in one of the three co-founders, William W. Westcott’s words, a “complete scheme of initiation” – a curriculum - for an awakening of the “spiritual consciousness”.

  However you see that spiritual awakening, the Tarot was seen as a language for that landscape of mystical experience. It seems that the language is often taught, without any intent to visit the place in which that language is spoken. Whether we are performing a reading for “when will Dwayne come back to me” or our own self-development, we are participating in that larger landscape.

  The Ascent Narrative illustrated as a Tarot journey

  In the Order of the Golden Dawn, the Adeptus Minor hears this in their ritual of initiation;

  This is the symbolic mountain of God in the centre of the Universe, the sacred Rosicrucian Mountain of Abiegnus. Below and around it are darkness and silence, and it is crowned with the Light ineffable. At its base is the wall of Enclosure and Secrecy, whose sole gateway, invisible to the profane, is formed of the two pillars of Hermes. The ascent of the mountain is by the spiral path of the serpent of wisdom.

  The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie, p. 242

  This “spiral path” weaves its way up the Tree of Life, to which are corresponded (on the paths) the Major Arcana, but within the Sephiroth, the Minors. These correspondences provide us a map of that ascent. However – we must remember at all times, it is only a map, and one of many.

  Aldous Huxley writes,

  Even the most ordinary experience of a thing or event in time can never be fully or adequately described in words. The experience of seeing the sky or having neuralgia is incommunicable; the best we can do is to say “blue” or “pain”, in the hope that those who hear us may have had experiences similar to our own and so be able to supply their own version of the meaning.

  To suppose that people can be saved by studying and giving assent to formulae us like supposing that one can get to Timbuctoo by poring over a map of Africa. Maps are symbols, and even the best of them are inaccurate and imperfect symbols. But to anybody who really wants to reach a destination. A map is indispensably useful in indicating the direction in which the traveler should set out and the roads that he must take.

  The Perennial Philosophy (p. 134)

  A Map of the Spiritual Mountain in the Minors

  When considering the spiritual levels of Tarot, the rich tapestry of the Majors can provide all the archetypal fabric we require to describe any profound vista of the soul. Toni Gilbert provides us a wonderful survey of the Majors for healing and spiritual growth in Messages from the Archetypes (Ashland: White Cloud Press, 2004) and briefly presents the Minor cards in two levels, an upper and a more “primitive” enactment of their archetypal energies. Madonna Compton deals only exclusively with the Majors in her Archetypes on the Tree of Life: The Tarot as Pathwork (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1991).

  So what of the Minors? What do they have to tell us about our spiritual path?

  In a hermetic perspective, when arrayed on the Tree of Life, the Minor cards correspond with the four worlds and the ten Sephiroth – four levels of ten descending (and ascending) energies. They ru
n from the Ace down to the Ten, in each number descending from the Wands, through the Cups, Swords and finally to the Pentacles. These are the four worlds of Kabbalah, whose names are given here purely for reference:

  Wands World of Atziluth Emanation

  Cups World of Briah Creation

  Swords World of Yetzirah Formation

  Pentacles World of Assiah Action

  Students of Tarosophy will recognize these four worlds as the four levels of Tarot card interpretation; literal (Assiah), symbolic (Yetzirah), extended (Briah) and secret (Atziluth).

  We can also give the names of the Sephiroth and their numbers which provide a key-phrase together with the world (suit) in which that number sits, informing the nature of the card. This was expressly utilized by the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley in their Tarot.

  10. Malkuth – Kingdom

  9. Yesod - Foundation

  8. Hod - Glory

  7. Netzach - Splendor

  6. Tiphareth - Beauty

  5. Geburah - Strength

  4. Chesed - Mercy

  3. Binah - Understanding

  2. Chockmah - Wisdom

  1. Kether - Crown

  So this allows us to see, through correspondence, that the Six of Pentacles is the “Beauty of Action” which gives a far deeper interpretation of that card in a reading. In taking these higher meanings, we can more easily apply them to even the most mundane of situations which are their lower reflection. Another example might be the 3 of Swords, which here is now the “Understanding of Formation”, showing how that card depicts the painful realization that whatever is formed, is separate.

  You can now go through the 40 Minors yourself and see how this generates meaning for the cards from these key words.

  In this schema we commence with the Ace of Wands at the very highest level of divinity, descending all the way down through forty gates to the Ten of Pentacles, the grossest matter.

  And here is the hermetic mystery enshrined more than ever – that “as above, so below”. In Kabbalah it is said that “Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether”, and in Alchemy, “the heaven is in the earth, but after an earthly manner; and that the earth is in the heaven, but after a heavenly manner” (pp. 20-1, The Kabbalah Unveiled, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, London: Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1981).

  So the Ace of Wands is the “creative beginning” of pure spirit (Mastering the Tarot, Eden Gray, New York: New American Library, 1971, p. 26) and the Ten of Wands is the card of “great financial stability” and final manifestation (p. 69). The forty gates of the Minors are arrayed between these poles.

  Out of interest, in the extremes of this arrangement, when we see the upper world of the Wands in the lowest Sephirah, the Ten, there is “Ruin of all plans and projects. Complete disruption and failure” (Gray, p. 66). The highest Ace in the lowest world, Pentacles, is better dignified, for in it we see the “lilies of spiritual thought” growing in its garden (p. 29). Some suits (Worlds) support a better dignity to different ranges of number (Energy) in the context of this mapping.

  In using this map of forty gates, we can plot a spiritual path up the flanks of Mount Carmel (see The Interior Castle or The Mansions by St. Theresa, and The Mystical Doctrine of St. John of the Cross) commencing our ascent with the Ten of Pentacles and aiming our vision on the Ace of Wands. We will first sketch out some of the significant points of this path by looking at the four Tens as our starting position, and then take a more detailed trip up the entire Tree in the highest world, the Wands. Firstly we will summarize the entire journey.

  10 of Pentacles: It ends, as it began, in a garden. In our everyday experience, we are furtherest, yet closest to the light. As it is said, “the light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not”. This card shows our sleeping state – and yet from this we can awaken, it is a full circle. The Gnostics say, “one by one, we are taken out of the world”.

  There is also a secret teaching embedded in this card as depicted by Waite and Colman-Smith. The young child looking back out at us is he who grows up to be the Fool. He clutches at the dog that will accompany him on his entire spiritual journey. It is his first (and last) attachment – faith. Whether you have faith in your family, friends, material wealth or wisdom, it is all the same in the Abyss – nothing. The child takes a white rose from this garden of matter in the 10 of Pentacles and at last gives it to heaven in the final card of the journey, the Fool.

  As Waite says in describing the Fool, this is a cyclic process; “The sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path after many days” (p. 154-5, Pictorial Key to the Tarot).

  10 of Swords: Our next step is that of realization of our intellectual attachments, and how these pin our body to the ground of matter. These too will have to be transcended in the “Great Work”. The card shows us how these inner voices fixate us and provide a mantra of attachment even in our most inner environment. There will be pain removing these inner voices, as many of them have been there for a long time.

  10 of Cups: The illusion of happiness in attachment – we see here on closer examination that it is only a stage-set, a fiction. Some day that curtain will be drawn up, and nothing will be saved. The Sufis say, “you only truly possess what you would not lose in a shipwreck”. It will take a great force of will to see through this façade.

  10 of Wands: Here we see the highest expression of energy in the lowest world. We struggle constantly in a world of duality to meet our own expectations, values and standards. We are always working towards some goal or another, blindly and valiantly. Yet this is not the answer – the 10 must become the 1, those Wands must be pulled together and bound into one true thing, held not by ourselves but by the divine.

  Here is the short-cut of initiation and mystical insight; that all that we fight is our false sense of self and all that arises from that mistake. Only we can lay our own burden down and release ourselves. As Da Free John simply says, “Avoiding relationship?”

  We will now provide key concepts for the remaining cards in the spiritual ascent journey, demonstrating how they show a progressive development of the soul. Again, we know not if this were intended, nor does it particularly matter – we read the design as it is read. Those who study the initiatory system through Kabbalah will recognize the grade system experiences in these descriptions.

  9 of Pentacles: The garden of security is now revealed; do we take off and fly or live in the uncomfortable knowledge that there is simply more than this to our lives?

  9 of Swords: The constant shocks of life cannot be blanketed forever – and even if so, they lead to our death. No matter how painful, we must face the truth of our lives.

  9 of Cups: Then we begin to see our own smugness, ego-games and in doing so, start to be removed from them – a quiet change begins in our awareness as we constantly observe our own emotional state.

  9 of Wands: We begin to realize what is valuable to us, how our wounds have made us stronger – and how the world provides these opportunities constantly. We hold fast to an uncomfortable truth.

  8 of Pentacles: The Worker is Hidden in the Workshop. We begin to conduct inner work and test our enquiries into the Universe and ourself, from a higher perspective. We may explore alternative spiritualities – the secret is to work, consistently, patiently and without pause. This is a card of service, as Jasmine Sim, a Tarot reader in Singapore says, “we continue to perfect the art and then we can share it with others”.

  8 of Swords: Until ultimately this begins to reveal what we know and what we don’t know. We begin to see that all the traps and distractions were only of our own making – we have been playing a game which has become real, because it has been going on so long.

  8 of Cups: So we walk away. Eventually we must act on our changing perspective of the world. The inner light eclipses the outer and we often find in this stage that we make major lifestyle changes, move home, career, relationships – it is always a
difficult step.

  8 of Wands: And a new energy comes, clean, fresh and rapid. A higher connection starts to move us, we feel enthusiastic about our course, borne aloft as if on the wings of angels. We may not at this stage know where we are going, but we know for sure that we are going.

  7 of Pentacles: In Netzach now, we begin to pass into a phase of contemplation. We look at Nature as an exemplar and learn through Her teaching. The spell of the sensuous calls us to unity, a slow alchemy begins to take place in this long waiting game.

  7 of Swords: Like a “thief in the night” our old ideas are becoming obsolete. Without any effort, they are taken from us, leaving only what is congruent to our own personal experience. This is the Venusian Netzach undoing of the Mercurian Hod.

  7 of Cups: There is an emotional upset at this stage for it feels like everything is possible and everything is permitted. When we are undone, what do we see – everything unraveled. However, as always, the secret is what transmutation is being wrought on our self – the only thing we cannot see. Here (in the Waite-Smith image) we become a shadow, and there is much at this time to be drawn from that shadow.

  7 of Wands: Ultimately, this stage leads to an inner resolution. A stand. A statement that cannot be argued, from within, that enough is enough. We take our place for our role in the Universe and fill out the job description. Then we wait.

  6 of Pentacles: And wait and wait. A new equilibrium takes centre stage and we begin to balance our own books – our resources, energies, we align to our highest vision. We seek only harmony, a divine balancing act, without knowing against what we are being judged nor what waits for us below or at the end of the rope.