Tarotist or Kabbalist?

September 25th, 2009 . Posted in Tarot Philosophy | No Comments »

I was asked a week and a half ago if I am a kabbalist who is interested in tarot, or a tarotist who uses kabbalah to open new perspectives on the tarot.

I had to think about that one. I converse fluently in the symbols of both tarot and kabbalah. But what I actually am is a Ceremonial Magician. You could have guessed a long time ago. What young child revels in intoning long prayers in dead languages, insists that religious services be spoken in archaic dialects, and scoffs when a choirgirl passes out from the smog of incense? Only a Ceremonial Magician in training.

One of the primary goals of the Ceremonial Magician is to gain the knowledge and conversation of her Holy Guardian Angel, or HGA as we say familiarly. The HGA is a fancy way of referring to your “higher self” or the part of you that most fully and truthfully expresses your purpose in this world. In order to connect with the HGA, tools such as kabbalah, tarot, astrology, alchemy, and so on are studied and applied.

If I had to provide a gloss for these tools, I would say that kabbalah teaches you to understand the Divine, astrology teaches you to understand yourself, alchemy teaches you to transform one into the other, and tarot is the language that we use to communicate these conscious intentions to our subconscious.

To me, kabbalah and tarot, alchemy and astrology, Reiki, writing, sewing, twisting wire, all are implements to, perhaps awkwardly, chisel away at ourselves, trying to find and release that eternal perfection, knowing that “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends/Rough-hew them how we will.”

Kabbalah is a symbolic system that describes the process of manifestation. The other tools in our toolbox: tarot, astrology, alchemy, tend to be used primarily in the realm of the mind or of the emotions. How many times have we laid out a tarot spread and without translating it into words at all, just experienced it—gut punch or caress—as an emotional affect? Some people think they’ve reached the pinnacle of reading when it becomes that easy for them. But what happens when we end our process there is we leave it all in Yesod, the astral level—we quit the yacht race as Dion Fortune would say—and we don’t use the tarot to actually make a change in ourselves. “I use the tarot to gain insight” almost all of us say. I’m challenging people to use the tarot to make real life changes in themselves, which takes it to a whole new level. How can you manifest your next reading? What can you do to take that insight or that emotion and give it shape and form in the real world?

By bringing our tarot practice into the material world, we are setting up a current, a channel for the Divine energy to find its way into our work. The channel we set today with simple acts of manifestation in the material world is like digging a canal that later will accept the flow from the Divine source into the storage reservoirs of our tarot work and our personal and spiritual growth. Once the canal has been dug, the water will flow of its own accord—but we need to take the initial step of breaking ground and setting the course.

Backwards and Forwards

September 13th, 2009 . Posted in Tarot Techniques | No Comments »

I was having lunch today with a good friend, and, as usual, after we were done she pulled out a couple decks. I suggested we swap readings, which we did. I had hardly gotten through two of the cards in the spread I was reading for her, though, before she stopped me and asked me to repeat something–I had mentioned a technique she had never heard of and she wanted more info. I explained and then proceeded with her reading, but she was already pulling out another deck and sorting the cards to work with this new technique! It seems like that’s what happens when I read for other readers–they usually get much more excited by the techniques they observe in my reading style than the substance of the reading itself!

The technique I used in her reading is something I call “Backwards and Forwards.” I observed that the Wands and Swords suits move backwards through the  numbers–the 10 is the beginning of the suit and the suit process ends at 1. The Cups and Pentacles suits move forwards, starting with 1 and moving towards 10.  I discovered this through a combination of my meditative work with the cards, and specifically through my ongoing work with the kabbalistic Tetragrammaton and the permutation of the Divine Name, as well as through practical experience.

I noticed that when we get the 10 of Wands or 10 of Swords in a reading, often one of the most positive things we say is that the cycle is over, and that’s something to be thankful for. But something about that never quite felt right–the 10 of Wands does not seem to lead to the Ace of Cups, as it would if the cycle were over and the next cycle beginning, based on placing the pips in numerical and suit order (Ace through 10; Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles). But it does make sense for the 10 of Wands to lead to the 9: the sticks carried in the oppressive burden of the 10 can be used to create the protective wall of the 9, the strong boundaries of which guide the swift flying 8 to come to rest so that the valor of the 7 can be realized, and so on, using the traditional RWS imagery.

Using this technique, the good news in a reading when the 10 of Wands or 10 of Swords comes up is not so much that the querent is at the end of a cycle, but that although the querent may be in an uncomfortable place, we have a set of instructions for how to start from this place and take realistic, practical steps towards the ultimate goal of the suit. As we work down through the Wands, finding the stability of the four, stepping through what I consider to be the open door of the three, finding the sovereignty of  the two, and coming to rest at the generative spark of the Ace, we can now naturally find a receptive container for that spark in the Ace of Cups, and having learned dominion of ourselves, can begin working successfully in collaboration with another, and so on through the emotional and relationship-oriented suit of Cups.

The suits of Wands and Swords, both active, masculine suits, have a sense of movement to them. The 10 of Cups and 10 of Pentacles, the receptive, feminine suits, are comfortable places to rest; they do not call us to take action the way the Wands and Swords do. However, if one were to stay too long in the success of the 10 of Cups; if perhaps it were reversed and one started feeling indulgent with it, then certainly it’s possible that the depression of the 10 of Swords would result, moving us into our next suit, which we would then work through in reverse order.

The Ace of Swords and Ace of Pentacles match nicely too, whether you view them as sword and shield, or if you see in that pairing the flaming sword that turns before the gate to the Garden of Eden shown in the Ace of Pentacles. In many ways, it makes a great deal of story-telling sense to count down the suits of Wands, up the suit of Cups, down the suit of Swords, then up the suit of Pentacles, moving backwards and forwards through the pips.

Six of Cups

August 25th, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Two different questions.  Two different decks. Two single card draws. Six of Cups both times.

My first memory of the Six of Cups is from my Barbara Walker deck–first deck I ever got, back in 1991. That card, Childhood, showed an imposing and ominous nun dominating a group of small children. Powerful card. Not personally how I see it though. But I like the reminiscence of the title Childhood. The traditional composition shows a gentle innocence. The friendship of this card is distinguished from the more romantic Two of Cups, the more lighthearted and playful Three of Cups. There is a deep, memory-full offering of self in the image Pamela Colman Smith drew.

The esoteric title of the card is Pleasure and its astrological attribution is Sun in Scorpio. Odd that earlier today I randomly drew an online card, receiving the Three of Wands–my birthcard, Sun in Aries. A story develops. Two characters. A simple sharing.

I have four friends with Sun in Scorpio.  One of whom I’m quite close to. Two of whom support me passionately and with an embarrassing generosity of praise. Three of whom I feel an electric connection to. All of whom I want to get to know better.

Two children on a balcony. One leans over the edge, peering down to the city street below. One looks up wondrously and tugs the jacket of her friend. Each has a story to share.