(Spoiler) Thanks, Bekah! Welcome, Peter 186. 1-19

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Peter Petto:
          Jumping the gun is just great. I'd love to
          hear more about Tarot, although I have 
          to say it's a very mooshy (term of art) subject.

Think of Tarot cards as a poker deck with an additional face card and 22 jokers.
Instead of 52 +1 cards----1 through 10 and three face cards---Jack, Queen, King, 
in four suits: hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs and an additional card---the 
Joker---that corresponds to the Fool in the modern tarot deck, there are 
56 + 22 cards: 1-10 in four suits; cups, swords, pentacles, wands, plus face 
cards of Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings. The twenty-two "Trumps" or Major 
Arcana have specific, non-mooshy meanings---a new age reading might make 
lemonade out of a Tower card, but an"unveiled" reading usually is gonna tell ya 
that the shit's about to hit the fan, one way or t'other. C/Q/Kabbalists 
describe the deck and the Trumps in particular as routes of connection to higher 
powers, elemental aspects of being and consciousness that connect us with our 
Angel, our true, higher and more powerful self. Your gypsy reader, natural born 
Qabalists if they're any good at it, look at the positioning of the Trumps 
within a reading as most predictive for the oracular outcome among the 78 cards. 
the weight of the Trumps within a reading is usually the determining element, 
though an Ace of Cups is a glorious thing, very much like Grace, and you don't 
want to mess with a nine of swords, that's major league bad news, you don't want 
that one anywhere near your reading.

          Peter :
          When new age pals have held forth on this 
          subject, I often sit there thinking that just 
          about any card could be interpreted in just 
          about any way. But that's not to say it's 
          nonsense.

There's a georgeous, rather recent and oh-so self-consciouslly new-age tarot 
deck---the Voyager deck---consisting of some quite artful photo collages:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/voyager/

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/books/voyager-tarot-book/

I've found the Voyager deck as useless as any other New Age pablum, 
here's a little clue:

          In his preface, James Wanless sees oracles as a way to 
          understand ourselves, to find our own truth and to realize 
          the richness of the universe (and our place in it). He has 
          purposefully chosen to use the Voyager Tarot oracle 
          because of its wealth of symbols. In my humble opinion - it works!

          In Chapter One, Dr. Wanless gives us the 
          "Four Golden Truths":

          1. We want it all. 
          2. We have it all. 
          3. We must seek it all.
          4. There is a way to get it all. 

. . . .which sounds like classic "The Secret" new-age twaddle to me. Always 
found the Voyager deck useless as an oracle. The fifth "Golden Truth", as 
we all know is "whoever has all the gold, defines all the 'truths'", allocation 
of resources plays into the "Great Game" and "tanstaafl" always applies: 
somebody, somewhere is gonna have to pay. It's interesting to note how 
noted diabolical figure Nicholas Noo. . . . excuse me, Alistair Crowley was 
always oraculizing about the "New Aeon", Crowley's more, shall we say 
triangulated notion of a "New Age", (I'll get to him later no way around that 
sucker, folks,  just run for cover if ya know what's good for you kiddies, 
weird uncle Al is coming to town and he's coming to stay) which ain't 
exactly happened just yet but right now (in what hopefully turns out to be 
a side show carney's classic act of misdirection) I'd like to point our lovely 
guests in the general direction of the "Crowley Deck":

http://www.aeclectic.net/thoth/

Its innovations are most likely the outcome of its designer's yoni worship. In a 
nutshell, the deck's innovations, very useful innovations, are to feminize the 
deck, to make the gender balance in the deck more representative of reality, 
thus making for clearer maps of the future. The Page is substituted by the 
Princess. "Strength" becomes "Lust" (with a clit right there where you can 
tickle it, if ya was wondering what he meant, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say 
no more), thus pointing to a Female aspect that the card's designer felt was 
central to his magical practice. The usually hard to read "Temperance" card 
becomes "Art", clarifying essential aspects of an often confusing card. 
"Justice" becomes "Adjustment", pointing to karmic adjustment, a topick 
Our Beloved Author (or, if you prefer, OBA*) has brought up on a number of 
occasions. And so forth. Furthermore, the surface---as it were, fixed---
meaning of the swords, cups, wands and, discs [rather than pentagrams], 
are printed at the bottom of the card, further clarifying matters. 

Crowley's introduction is useful here:

          The Tarot is a pictoral representation of the 
          Forces of Nature as conceived by the Ancients 
          according to a conventional symbolism. At first 
          sight one would suppose this arrangement to 
          be arbitrary, but it is not. It is necessitared by 
          the structure of the universe, and in particular 
          of the Solar System, as symbolized by the 
          Holy Qabalah.

Freida Harris' 80 illustrations (there are three different designs to choose 
from for the Magician) just have more clout, more natural whammy than 
Pamela Coleman Smith's beautiful but more recondite imagery.

          Peter :
          There was a time in my life when I often 
          consulted the I Ching, and not just because 
          I'm a math-head who loves permutations. 
          I find that when I consult its precise-but-vague 
          and allusive text, what I end up seeing is not 
          it, but something that was already within me, 
          but that I hadn't already seen.

          I suspect that properly-used Tarot works 
          much the same way.

Both systems have a comparatively small, fixed set of archetypical images 
that can be arranged before the reader as a progressive narrative. If 
nothing else, they are both superb tools for exploring the subconscious 
and any potential examples of Synchronicity. Again, from GR:

          . . . .So that the right material may find its way to the right 
          dreamer, everyone, everything involved must be exactly 
          in place in the pattern. It was nice of Jung to give us the 
          idea of an ancestral pool in which everybody shares the 
          same dream material. . . .


*: http://people.uvawise.edu/roots/mike/oba/obaphotocu.jpg

http://www.randafricanart.com/Benin_Oba_commemorative_heads.html