WALKING TAROT DECKS

ART ROSENGARTEN, PH.D.

Nothing Written In Stone

Due in part to their colorful associations with gypsies, the secrecy in which 19th century occultists enshrouded them, or perhaps their better known surviving offshoot--modern playing cards--synonymous with entertainment, gambling, and games of chance, Tarot cards are often met with controversy, misapprehension, and myth. Their random manner of selection in a session does little to add confidence in their status as a reliable therapeutic method.

Among the many misconceptions is that Tarot is synonymous with “fortune-telling,” a degraded concept by today’s hardened standards, conjuring images of gullible souls surrendering their sullied fates to the double-talking frauds of arcane knowledge. I call this degradation the “miscleofication” of Tarot, in reference to the Jamaican actress and entrepreneur of psychic hotline notoriety. Like most serious practitioners, I see such displays as crass and a disservice to the real thing.

Actually, Tarot is not so much an exercise in “fortune-telling” as a sincere experiment in “truth-seeking” or better, “self-seeking.”  The proper approach is more akin to what in Zen Buddhism is termed “beginner’s mind” wherein one is encouraged to temporarily suspend everything known about a particular focus or question. Ideally, such is done in a safe and contained healing environment so that one may open without inhibition to contemplate the full panorama of one’s personal situation as they work with the tarot images. The evocative archetypal imagery of tarot provides the lens used to enhance the search for deeper understanding. It is like taking an extended glance over a “symbolic” sunset without distraction, or perhaps sitting a long hour before an imaginary river.  Fresh, even profound, insights invariably emerge.

Still, nothing is written in stone, the experiment shows us. Patterns of insight rise up and just as naturally can fall away, yet in the extended glance one is called to catch the inner wave of change and act accordingly. For example, this point is reflected perhaps most optimistically in Trump X, The Wheel of Fortune, associated with the laws of cycles, karma, and change. Like the master athlete, comedian, or storyteller, The Wheel teaches that timing is everything. Moving forward, moving back, stopping, taking action, just so…one attunes to the inner rhythms of the river so as to grasp its natural intelligence—“that which is so of itself”-- the Taoists describe it.  And so it is when turning for advice to the card oracle itself—the Tarot—used sparingly and auspiciously, always with eyes fixed on the subtle patterns of change and possibility.

Homo Tarot Erectus

In a figurative sense, we ourselves are no other than walking tarot decks —that is, pedestrian bundles of tendencies, teachings, and challenges for personal transformation that continuously rise up and fall away on the wheel of life.  Man the Homo Tarot Erectus. Our inner anatomy is thus comprised of 78 multifaceted lessons according to the Tarot Gods, each deemed worthy of special consideration. Divination, however, takes from the totality only a slice, not unlike a routine blood test, whereby one’s current measure of health is assessed from a small sample of the serum, and if necessary, appropriate treatments may be recommended and likely courses predicted.

In those subsets of randomly “pricked” cards (typically no more than ten or eleven units), a remarkable opportunity is given to analyze and reflect upon the whole state of one’s health and condition. Why do we take this indirect route? Because much as the blood panel alerts the trained physician to the body’s internal functioning where a direct physical examination cannot, the Tarot “panel” alerts the trained metaphysician, if you will, to the mind’s internal functioning where a direct mental examination cannot. This is what is meant by truth seeking or self-seeking. The aim is to reveal a mapping of the larger person where a direct examination, either physical or mental, cannot.

Still, it must be understood that alerting the skilled interpreter to the inner workings of the mindstream is not quite identical to psychoanalysis, or other clinical approaches. In this metaphysical exam, our reference to “mind” or “mental” connotes far more than the narrow region of mental being belonging exclusively to psychological reality per se; rather, here we invoke the larger domain of Mind, that is, all non-physical reality subject to experience, inclusive of purely psychological structures, but also the philosophical, creative, soulful, and spiritual dimensions of Mind as well that are said to comprise the mindstream of consciousness.

Two Lines of Experience

Non-material reality, or Mind, as such, can be mapped on two axes of experience—a horizontal axis and a vertical axis—wherein the former extends from subject outward to the world, and the latter ascends and descends at various depths within the subject him/herself. The distinction lies at the heart of all dualities of consciousness, e.g. subject/object, mind/body, inner/outer, depth/breadth, I/Thou etc. For example, note the dual lines of reference in Trump III, The Empress, when appearing as one of the eleven “units” of a spread layout. “She” may refer horizontally to the offering of nurturance and sustenance to the issue in question, or a loving facilitator of Earthly power, and an archetypal nurse who taps nature’s intrinsic vitality and beauty so as to bring to the situation a certain organic, whole, healthy, and natural quality. This lesson, of course, can be expressed on multiple levels and contexts of outer experience and should not be taken literally.

Seen vertically however, The Empress may be pointing to the need for self-nurturance and acceptance—“physician heal thyself,” it asserts. One is encouraged to be more personally Empress-like in attitude and disposition, more willing to touch and be touched with passion and sensuality. Yet which ever chord “She” now strikes in the participating subject, no matter his gender, worldly and other-worldly range of reference, “She” will now be pondered and felt, if only momentarily, with a sense of personal significance and urgency. This itself is no small accomplishment, as helping professionals will attest.

With each card in the reading, one or the other axial possibility may generate the bigger “click” for the querent, (always the final authority in the procedure). Following the path of emotional connection---the click--- is always the most productive way to navigate past the treacherous rocks of intellectualizing and meta-babble.  Often, however, clarification arrives from neighboring cards in the spread (the so-called ‘dignities’) where a pattern woven in combination with others reveals the greater tendency. We know this “tapestry effect” playing ordinary poker when four otherwise dull and unrelated cards of one suit are suddenly “flushed” by a fifth making for a surprisingly strong hand. “Well-placed” dignities give the skilled interpreter further guideposts for the best axial route. But again, as frustrating as it may be to our modern need for “take-it-to-the-bank” certainty, I repeat the divinatory creed: Nothing Is Written In Stone. Particularly as this fluid enterprise springs essentially from Mind, not matter.

The Dynamic Present

Some reading this brief analysis may also be surprised to learn that true divination focuses less on “the future” (a mental construct existing, paradoxically, in the present alone) than on the more temporally meaningful domain of the “dynamic present”---those many bandwidths or waves of consciousness that cohabit simultaneously the present moment. These inner and outer bundles of who and what we are, both personally and collectively so, extend beyond the purely psychological realms of ego, shadow, and unconscious. Wider horizons of interpersonal, familial, social, political, environmental, and even cosmic influence exist forcefully on the horizontal axis of the dynamic present as well.

Man is a citizen of his own psyche, but also of his everyday life, the world and environment of which he is part, and beyond it all, the larger cosmos in which he is enveloped. Similarly, “higher and lower” depths of individual and collective consciousness can be traveled on the vertical axis within the subject himself, often with personal psychology giving way to transpersonal spirituality and metaphysics. One quickly realizes from the two axes that the dynamic present is an ocean of potentiality whose parameters and depths are never exhausted.

Though predicting the so-called “future” is a safe bet in the short run (and a sexy game worthy of late night infomercials on obscure cable networks), it truly is not divination’s first order of business. The main thrust of divination is to penetrate the subject’s functioning and condition in the context of now, often in relation to visible precipitating circumstances, with special regard to a small randomly-selected bundle of universal tendencies, teachings, and challenges that we call tarot cards. As a multiplex of emerging archetypal influences, we are thus empowered to walk the walk with spiritual congruence.

The Meta-Serum

As mentioned earlier, a single vial of the meta-serum will silhouette only one brightly wrapped bundle of complexity at a time, leaving innumerable others unopened and unlit. Here the mystery and magic of the procedure comes to fore. Remarkably, the bundle so selected in panoramic “glance-time” only rarely does not directly and meaningfully relate to the questioner, or his concerns.  Science is troubled by this fact as might be expected, greatly troubled.  How can prophetic art be standardized in the profession? Thus as it often does when its method is challenged, science chooses to ignore, attack, or devalue these strange workings, and with good effect, I might add, judging by the aesthetically-sparse, doctrinally-abundant healing professions of this highly horizontally-biased age. One may nevertheless attest to divination’s amazing longevity and universality throughout the history and prehistory of humankind by Tarot’s Eastern ancestor, the Chinese Book Of Changes (I Ching). For all of the I Ching’s modern resurgence, it remains a relic from pre-history, a divinatory system with over three thousand year old roots in the traditions of magic and shamanism. After all, is not a central axiom of modern science the notion that only the most fit survives?

Just as a single unit circulates throughout the entire bloodstream of the body, nourishing and interacting with all its tissues and internal organs, so too does each single tarot card circulate through the entire mindstream of the psyche, nourishing and interacting with its internal meta-structure. It is no mere accident, therefore, that a single vial from one small slice should seem so uncannily fortuitous, relevant, or “accurate.” How could it be otherwise when looking into the mirror of the Mind? The cards we choose today merely showcase a unique combination of essential and universal parts. But it’s in the timing—the here and now—that makes this enterprise compelling. Why were we given this combination---not any other combination---for the extended glance now?

The Vaguely Sensed

One final note concerning “the real thing” that the constraints of this small essay can also manage: real divination is less concerned with the much over-rated “mysterious unknown” than it is with what we may call the “vaguely sensed.” By this I mean those fuzzy, ambiguous, gnawing, twilight tickles of near insight that surround the narrow band of ordinary focal attention and are commonly called “hunches,” “intuitions,” or “felt senses.”  Sometimes they are like the nose on the face, so close, so central, so unique in form, yet so damned from direct view without a mirror. Tarot is that mirror. The implication here is that while we already exist with complete and universal self-knowledge as standing, walking, bone fide tarot decks ourselves---Homo Tarot Erectus---we nevertheless fail miserably in our ability to access (of all things) ourselves.  Clinically speaking, we suffer a moderate-to-severe “self-myopia” with significant deficits of intuition and wisdom, though the condition is so commonplace that it hardly deserves a diagnosis. Divination is the effective corrective lens, with tarot cards, in particular, serving as intuitive bridges to the bigger picture.

Alas, we must remember that as well-shuffled walking decks, we tend to over-focus on the small everyday hands we’ve been dealt in the moment, missing the inner wave of change and circumstance they are part and parcel of. Through this magically divined operation, Tarot (with a capital T), the once vaguely-sensed opportunity for meaning is now brought onto the table. We are enabled to glance upon our own noses; such as they are, plainly, reflectively, and vividly. But one need not bring a bag of buttered popcorn to this extended viewing, as the demands of self-seeking require heartier digestive tracts. Homo Erectus—know thyself!  As full tarot decks absorbed in our own divination, we may now take nourishment from more satisfying small bundles.

Dr. Art Rosengarten is a Jungian psychologist, Director of Intuition Mind Seminars, and an internationally known researcher and teacher of the Tarot.  He wrote the first accredited doctoral dissertation on the Tarot (1985) at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and is author of the much-acclaimed book, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Paragon, 2000).  Thrice a guest on Coast-To-Coast AM with George Noory, Dr. Art Rosengarten is a regular lecturer at the World Tarot Congress in Chicago, and the annual LA and Bay Area Tarot Symposiums.  His experimental pilot studies on Tarot have compared divination with dream analysis and projective storytelling, as well as explored domestic violence through the synchronistic lens of Tarot readings with perpetrators and victims.  He will be presenting two lectures at the upcoming ParaWorldExpo in Los Angeles (October, 04).

An entertaining and provocative speaker, teacher, and writer known for his unique multimedia presentations, Dr. Rosengarten teaches The Tarot Circle in Los Angeles and San Diego, and specializes in the contemporary relevance and power of Tarot divination in modern culture. He is both Diplomate of the American Psychotherapy Association and Advisory Board Member of the American Tarot Association.  Art is in private practice in North County San Diego, California, and can be reached for consultations through his website at www.ArtRosengarten.Com, or Toll-free at 877.504.0230.