PRAYING WITH THE TAROT–CAITLIN MATTHEWS AND THE SHINING TRIBE

I’m taking the unusual step here of using this space to link directly to another blog, that of Caitlin Matthews, author, scholar, and spiritual teacher.

http://caitlin-matthews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/praying-with-tarot.html

Together with her husband John, Caitlin has produced a truly astonishing body of work, both in its scope and the very high level of art and commitment to spiritual tradition. This past December John decided to give Caitlin a copy of my limited “Art Deck” edition of the Shining Tribe Tarot. This set consists of individually made archival prints of the original artwork, plus five extra cards. The run is limited to 78 copies (the number of cards in the traditional Tarot), and when we began it I honestly thought we’d sell a handful of copies. We’ve so far sold 54 (Caitlin’s was 52, which of course is the number of cards in a regular deck).

What I love about Caitlin’s article is that it exemplifies what I consider the best use of the Tarot. Not to predict the future, or even to provide psychological insights–valuable as both these qualities are–but as a genuine spiritual guide, even a partner as we move through difficult times. Once, during one of my own hard times, I took up the deck and said to it “Take me home.” The three cards I turned up did just that, lifting me out of my despond into a wider awareness of myself and the situation.

What I also love about what Caitlin did is that it doesn’t work from a pre-determined spread. Instead, there is a back and forth dialogue between her and the cards, allowing not just “prayer” as she calls it, but a real conversation.

http://caitlin-matthews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/praying-with-tarot.html

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A CONTRACT WITH THE TAROT

(On Dec. 8, 2012, a small group, 12, met to try a kind of experiment. We would make a personal contract with the Tarot, letting the Tarot offer benefits but also what it expected from us, accepting or rejecting different parts, and offering our own terms as well. The results were very exciting. Below, slightly edited, is the description I wrote up ahead of time.)

What if we could make an actual contract with the Tarot, laying out what we expect from it? We might include spiritual guidance,, or clarity, or the ability to let us help people, or maybe make a living as a professional card reader. At the same time we also would have to include what we will commit to from our side. This might be daily readings for a period of time, or promising never to use the cards for manipulation. How would we create such a contract?

The idea to do this comes from a story a friend told me of a medium she knew. As I recall the story, when the woman’s medium powers began to emerge she found it exciting but also frightening. She knew the stories of mediums whose lives became overwhelmed and she didn’t want that to happen. So she offered a contract with her guides. She would be fully available to them at specified times, as long as they backed off otherwise. And it worked, my friend said. The woman’s mediumship was doing really well, and so was her life.

So I thought, what if we could do something similar with the cards? The idea may seem strange but in fact it invokes an old magical tradition. In the West, such ideas are usually demonized, and so we get the many stories of deals with the Devil signed in blood.

But maybe such stories are meant to scare people from an underlying truth. We can make a contract, not with some evil being, but with spiritual energy, including the life-giving power in the cards. In some African traditions priests and priestesses make specific commitments with their ancestral spirits. Shamans form partnerships with their guides and powers.

“Magic always has a price,” people say. Maybe we can make a contract instead of just blindly paying whatever price is demanded of us!

(Following are the instructions given to the class)

HOW TO MAKE A CONTRACT WITH THE TAROT

Choose a card to represent the Tarot in the contract “discussion.” You can do this by consciously choosing a card. (The Devil? Justice? King of Swords?) or shuffling and picking three cards at random, then seeing which is best.

Shuffle. Choose three cards to represent what the Tarot is offering you. Discuss with group. Make notes of your impressions, then discuss further. Select between one and three for what you will be willing to accept of what the Tarot is offering. Since you are negotiating a contract you are not required to blindly accept whatever the Tarot is offering you.

If you reject all three, take two more, then choose one or both (you don’t get to go back to the first three but now have to work with the two on offer, just as in any contract negotiation). If you reject both of those, take one more for Tarot’s final offer (again, the two are now off the table).

After you have chosen, set aside whatever cards or cards you decide you would like from what the Tarot is offering you. Return the other cards to the deck.

Shuffle. Choose three cards for what the Tarot is asking of you. Follow same process as above, including discussion and taking notes to develop your ideas. Again, you can reject the first group of three, and ask for two more, then one more. Once again, set aside the cards you chose.

You now have the Tarot’s position—what it’s offering, and what it’s asking of you.

Now you need to develop your own position.

Look through the deck face up and choose one to three cards to represent what you would like to get from this contract. The High Priestess might say you want the Tarot to give you wisdom and insight, the Hermit that you want to hold out a light of guidance to others. On the other hand, the 10 of Pentacles, or the World, might say you hope to make money and become a famous Tarot reader. Take notes and set aside as before.

Look through the deck again and choose one to three cards to represent what you are offering the Tarot. For instance, Justice might say you will promise to be honest and fair in your readings, or the Queen of Cups might say you will be compassionate and dedicated, the 8 of Pentacles in the Rider deck that you will be hard-working and dedicated.

Add, if you wish, a card or cards that might represent limitations. For example, the 10 of Cups in the Rider (a happy family celebrating the rainbow) might say you don’t want the cards to interfere with your family life. The 4 of Swords might say “I don’t want to be woken up by dreams of Tarot or people wanting emergency readings.”

Now you should have a group of cards representing what the Tarot is offering you and what it is asking of you, and another group representing what you are offering the Tarot and hope to get from it. Based on these cards and your understanding of them, write up your contract.

You don’t have to include everything the cards are asking of you, or everything you would like to get. Try to make it a contract that the card you chose at the beginning to represent the deck—Justice, or the Devil, or the King of Swords—would be willing to sign, as well as something meaningful to you.

(Those were the instructions. I then gave them elegant parchment-like paper to write their contracts, had them sign and date it, with the person they’d worked with signing as a witness, then they each gave the contract to me for me to sign as the teacher and include a stamp that showed a house with mysterious writing filling the structure. Thus the contract was official.)

An interview and a review on my birthday

Just in time for my birthday (August 17–reading to come, and an exciting announcement!) I received the links for a special interview concerning my story “Jack Shade In The Forest Of Souls” in the current issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Here is the link, followed by the text:

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/2012/08/16/interview-rachel-pollack-on-jack-shade-in-the-forest-of-souls/

– Tell us a little about “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls.”

I would refer to this story as shamanic noir. Jack is a present day private eye occultist shaman, who deals with the supernatural, and travels to other dimensions for people who hire him. Jack is tough, smart, sophisticated, but as in the classic noir stories, is likely to be scammed by his clients who have their own agendas. Again, as with the noir tradition, Jack has a tortured past, a terrible secret which gets revealed, but not resolved, at the end of the story. I envision “Forest of Souls” as the first of a series featuring Jack, and his attempts to undo the disastrous mistake he made early in his career.

– What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?

This has been one of the fun aspects of this story. It was inspired by two very different works, and merging them together was part of what drove the writing. Some months back I was on a road trip and brought along an audio of Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece Pale Fire. The book takes the form of a long poem, the “Pale Fire” of the title, followed by an extensive commentary supposedly written by a lunatic professor who believes the poem is secretly about him. I’d read it years ago but now as I listened to the poem itself I was struck by its beauty and poignancy. The fictional poet writes about his lifelong fascination with death and the afterlife, now made urgent by the suicide of his daughter. He also tells how his daughter was fascinated by the occult and tried to organize a ghost hunt. The name of the poet is John Shade, and as I listened I began to play with the name, Jack Shade, and how it sounded both tough and occult. Suddenly I thought of the old TV show, Have Gun, Will Travel, a noir Western with Richard Boone as a decadent poker player in San Francisco who secretly makes his money as a hired gunslinger. Bringing these together was a real delight. The title, by the way, is a kind of shout-out to the readers of my books on tarot, one of which is called The Forest of Souls. The title of that book is metaphoric; in the short story the Forest of Souls is an actual place.

– What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?

Well, aside from my half century or so of reading works on occultism, magic, shamanism, Kabbalah, and mythology–not much. Seriously, while there are some actual references to the occult–notably “The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Sage”–most of the magic in the story is invented. My goal (as in other of my works) was to create contemporary versions of traditional shamanic practices. Thus, the entrance to the Forest of Souls is a door marked “Employees Only,” in a garage on 57th St. in Manhattan.

– What might you want a reader to take away from “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls”?

Excitement at a good story and a likable character, fascination with Jack’s “tradition,” and hopefully a desire to read further adventures.

– Some authors say their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, then in what way is this story personal?

It brings together some of my favorite things–urban fantasy grounded in both occultism and shamanic practice, private eye stories, and, incidentally, my love of poker. In the old “Have Gun, Will Travel” series Paladin would often be playing poker in his elegant hotel, only to be interrupted by his servant bringing the famous business card on a silver tray. I borrowed this for my opening, updating the poker game to Texas Hold ‘Em.

– What are you working on now?

I’m finishing a novel, The Child Eater, and then I look forward to writing the next Jack Shade story, “The Queen of Eyes.”

– Anything else you’d like to add?

Just that I hope Nabokov would have been entertained by my unusual tribute.

And further–I also received a great review of my book Tarot Wisdom.

http://www.thenewageblog.com/book-review-rachel-pollacks-tarot-wisdom/

And as I said above, I’ll be posting a special birthday reading in the next few days, along with an exciting announcement.

THE LISBON WORKSHOP

Last week I was in Lisbon for the International Tarot Month. What a wonderful event, with speakers from Portugal but also Brazil, and along with my own participation for the U.S., Lisa de St. Croix. Even as I was teaching I was learning, and now that I’m back I wanted to bring some of the exciting ideas to my Tarot on The Hudson Class. And even though most of you reading this cannot attend, I thought the ideas might be interesting.

This is actually a big travel year for me. In July I go to Brazil for a week of Tarot with Arto Tudjarian, Mary Greer, Marcus Katz, and Tali Goodwin. Then, much closer to home (six miles from my house!), there’s the Omega Institute, again with Mary Greer, plus this year, Caitlin Matthews, Robert Place, and Joanna Powell-Colbert (www.eomega.org). Then in October it’s off to London, Amsterdam, and several appearances in Germany!

THE LISBON WORKSHOP

For this gathering we will be looking at some ideas about Tarot inspired by my trip to Lisbon, and how to apply them in our readings. Here are some possibilities. We probably won’t do them all, but that just means it gives us something to look forward to for next time.

1. What is the real relationship between the higher and lower numbers of the Major Arcana? From numerology, or the concept of personal life cards we know that, for example, 18, the Moon, “reduces” to 9, the Hermit (1+8=9). But how do we work with this dynamic in readings, or in considering our life or year cards? If we get the Moon in a reading does it automatically invoke the Hermit? Is it different if they both appear? Does the Hermit call forth the Moon in the same way the Moon evokes the Hermit? Or is there a subtle difference?

2. Readings are usually individual, for one person, at a particular moment. But is it possible there is always a larger context, belonging to the times we all live in? I’ve been thinking how the last century, 1900 to 1999, was the century of the Sun, card 19. On the one hand, science made great advances, and on a simple level electric light brought the sun to the night. But it also was the century of nuclear fire, the energy which actually powers the sun. Now we are in the century of 20__, the century of Judgement. What will this be like? How might it lurk behind all our readings, whether card 20 shows up or not? Let’s bring Judgement cards from different decks (it’s called Awakening in the Shining Tribe deck) and we’ll look at them together to see if we come up with some sense of this card’s messages for the century—and the readings we do.

3. Here is a very interesting idea I encountered from a Portuguese astrologer: the three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, all represent large archetypal energies, based partly on their positions, but also on the mythological associations of the names they were given. And yet, she told us, these energies, which she emphasized are not physical, could not actually manifest in our psychic world until the physical planets were discovered by astronomers. If I understood her, it was not just that people were not aware of these energies in their lives, the energies actually were not active. So what does this tell us about the power of Tarot images, and how they work in our lives?

4. Here is a grouping I call the Three Sisters: Destiny Divination Desire. What is the actual function of divination in this group? Does divination simply report destiny, or does it in some way allow desire to transform destined events (or maybe just give us a fighting chance)?

5. Some may remember the biographies we did of the Magician and High Priestess (remember how the Magician was a carnival huckster until he met a woman lion tamer?). In Lisbon I decided to look at the life of the Empress.

a. What is her empire? 3 of Cups
b. How did she come to rule it? 9 of Wands
c. What is her relationship to the Emperor? Queen of Wands
d. What will she do to protect it? 9 of Cups

So how does this strike you? What do you think of her life secrets? If time permits, we will lay this out and discuss it (and I will see how it compares to what the Lisbon folks came up with).

READING FOR THE DAY FROM THE SEE OF LOGOS

Some time ago, I created a 32 card oracle deck, called The See Of Logos. Unlike most oracle decks, such as Lenormand, which contain simple pictures that you can interpret as you will, The See takes the daring step of actually telling you what will happen.

32 exact prophecies! In fact, the title page of the (unpublished) deck reads “Guaranteed 100% Accuracy!” Can’t get better than that, can you?

So, for today, Saturday, April 7, which happens to be Easter Sunday Eve, and also the first day of Passover, I pulled a card at random. Here is what it said:

You will break every commandment in the Torah but one. God will smile at you and tell you, “It’s okay. You got the right one.”

See? 100% accuracy.

A LONG AGO DREAM

A LONG AGO DREAM

The story below comes out of my thoughts about Teiresias and Oedipus from working on Tyrant Oidipous, my and Davd Vine’s translation of Sophocles’s ancient play, usually called Oedipus Rex. for more on this, see the play’s site, www.TyrantOidipous.com. Teiresia also is on my mind because it’s April, the month of T. S. Eliot’s great epic, The Wasteland. Eliot described Teiresias as the poem’s “secret hero.” This is interesting, because the poem is based on the Grail myth, and the Tarot, not the Ancient Greek stories. Teiresias is the secret hero of Tyrant Oidipous as well.

And now, the dream, and the story behind it.

Three times in my life I have traveled to Greece. The second time, in 1990, I visited temples, Cretan ruins, caves, and other sacred sites, in particular Delphi and Eleusis, to understand and experience them for my book The Body of the Goddess.

A few years ago I led a group of people on a return to some of these same places in a sacred journey to celebrate the Mysteries. Here, too, Delphi was central. We performed a ritual there that I called The Opening To Apollo (described below) that continues to resonate in my life in powerful ways—including Tyrant Oidipous, in which Apollo never appears, but looms behind every moment.

In contrast to the two later journeys, my first trip to Greece, in 1975, was primarily to visit two friends who’d bought a yacht to sail and live in as their home. My partner and I were living in Amsterdam at the time, where we’d met the boat women, so we took a “Magic Bus” (hippie express) to Athens and then a ferry to Samos, where the boat was docked.

It was a strange journey. The tyranny of the “Colonels” (military junta) had collapsed just months before. Though people rejoiced at the return of democracy, fear and sorrow still hung in the air. At one point our ferry boat stopped briefly at a small island, and Edith and I remarked to a Greek man we’d met on board that it looked very pleasant. No, he told us, his body suddenly stiff and white. It was a place of terror. The Colonels had built a concentration camp there to hold dissidents, those they did not simply kill. We were all glad when the boat set sail again.

Though I’d always loved mythology I did not do any special reading or research before the journey. I did not even know that Samos had been the home of the mathematician, mystic, musician, and philosopher Pythagoras, whose vision of numbers as the basis of existence partly underlay the Tarot deck that Edith and I carried with us wherever we traveled. I did, however, bring along one work of ancient Greek literature—David Grene’s translation of the Oidipous Tyrannos.

Our friends’ boat was beautiful, all polished brass and mahogany. But they were having engine problems and couldn’t launch it, a problem compounded by the lack of cooperation from the people in the small town where the boat was moored. They might have assumed prejudice, either against two women or two foreigners, except for a Greek businessman who’d told them how the town’s one garage had completely destroyed his boat’s battery. So my friends worked on the boat, and I gave what little help I could, and we ate in the taverna and drank retsina. And I read Grene’s Oedipus the King.

One night I dreamed a strange dream. I dream literally every time I fall asleep, and forget most of them, for if I kept a dream journal I would have little time for anything else. This one I have always remembered, almost as clear now as when I dreamt it, thirty-seven years ago.

It began with a situation similar to the current reality, that is, a group of people on a boat seeking assistance from an uncooperative town. The group was larger, with an official captain, and none of the real life people, just a kind of anonymous cast of actors in the story.

In the dream there was a strange house on the edge of town, that people believed housed an oracle. Our group decided that we might gain favor if we pretended to believe in this local superstition. So, a bit giddy, we all traveled to the mystery house.

It was built on a steep hillside, so that you entered at the top, descended several levels, and emerged at the bottom of the hill. The stairs were narrow, so that we had to walk down in single file. I was next to last, just before the captain, whom I remember as a bearded middle-aged man with a blue captain’s hat, and maybe a naval jacket.

As the stairs went down and down the hallway became narrower, darker, the walls and steps now stone, the passage smoky. Ahead of me my friends whispered and giggled, but I was happy when I saw the end approach. Everyone before me had emerged, and I could see the open doorway, with bright sunshine outside, though the light did not penetrate into the passageway.

I was just about to step out, into the sun, when suddenly, behind me, a girl in a long elaborate dress, her body young but her face creased and ancient, stepped out of the darkness, as if she’d been waiting in a room I couldn’t see. She walked up to the captain, right behind me, and screamed “Oedipus! There is a curse upon your house!”

And then I was outside, stunned, unable to speak, while all my friends seemed to be at a party, drinking wine from elegant glasses in the bright sunshine as they joked about what fools the silly townspeople were to believe that stuffy old house contained something magical.

I woke up gasping for breath.

Recently I have been re-reading Peter Lamborn Wilson’s wonderful book Shower of Stars: Dream And Book, about people who are initiated in dreams, either by a master whom they cannot visit in person, or by a spirit. It strikes me now that the girl in my dream was Teiresias (or Teiresia, her female form), and she was not a symbol, or a character in a story, but the seer herself, a genuine visitation. It was not long after this that I began to teach the tarot, something I had never planned to do.

MY FIRST POLITICAL BLOG–SANDRA FLUKE AND THE DOUBLE STANDARD

It’s always been in my mind that this blog should not be restricted to tarot or writing. I know that blogs are often a particular profile but there is also the idea of it being someone’s interests and experiences. But still–I’ve tended to steer away from politics, just because, well, it’s politics. The one time I posted a comment on Facebook I had to deal with someone ranting at me, and then angrily withdrawing because I asked him to stop.

So why now? Well, it’s because I’ve been thinking about the uproar around Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke, and even more, the absurd attempts to claim that Bill Maher did the same thing by saying something nasty about Sarah Palin. And then a New York Times columnist, Stanley Fish, who apparently is a philosopher, did a column about double standards. In it he said,

“Some left-wing commentators have argued that there is a principled way of slamming Limbaugh while letting the other two off the hook, because he went after a private citizen while they were defaming public figures. Won’t wash.”

This dismissal–from someone making a pretense of reasoned argument– annoyed me so much that I wrote a comment for the Times. And since I had already written it, I decided to share it here (mainly, I suppose, because no one will ever read it on the Times site! There were already over 200 comments posted).

Here is what I wrote (slightly longer than the Times comment, which had to be edited to fit a length restriction):

You comment that the distinction between slamming a public figure and a private citizen “won’t wash.” Sorry, that’s not an argument, it’s a proclamation.

There are two points here. One is that Laura Ingraham and Sarah Palin, etc. are people who make their living by being in the public eye, by being larger than life. Like politicians, they need to be ready to take nasty comments as part of the job. Rush Limbaugh may believe that taking his sponsors away is going too far, but he’s not likely to object to people calling him a foul-mouthed bigot, because he knows that just means he’s doing his job. He expects, even hopes for, such reactions. Sandra Fluke, by contrast, is a private citizen who dared to stick her head up and make a statement to Congress (or at least the group in Congress who were willing to allow her to testify). Private citizens should not be treated to such abuse just because they enter the public sphere. There should indeed be a double standard between people who live their lives and make outsize salaries in the public eye, and private citizens who simply wish to be heard.

The second point is perhaps more salient. When Ed Shultz called Ms. Ingraham a slut he was using the term metaphorically, for her willingness to say whatever Roger Ailes might want her to. Nobody thought that he was describing her sexual practices, or the frequency of her partners. But that is exactly what Mr. Limbaugh was doing to Ms. Fluke, at great length (over several days, apparently), and with relish. When he used the terms “slut,” and “prostitute,” he did so literally. That is, he was describing her actual sex life and personal conduct. As such, it was a direct attack on her person, not simply an over the top metaphor.

It is only the media’s obsession with false “fairness,” and the attempts to find equivalency every time a right-winger goes too far, that would lead anyone to muddy the difference between the comments of Mr. Limbaugh and those of Bill Maher and Ed Shultz.

TAROT THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR

This past Saturday we held our winter workshop here in Rhinebeck. Since the day was Lincoln’s birthday I decided to make the theme one of emancipation. First off, we looked at the birth date cards for both Lincoln and Charles Darwin, who were born on exactly the same day, February 2, 1809.

2
12
1809
______
1823=14=5
So both men were Temperance/Hierophant. We might say that both needed to be steady and temperate to mix different elements together and emerge as great teachers.

We then looked at the idea that the Devil, card 15, can represent enslavement, and the World, 21, true liberation, so that these final cards show us a process of emancipation. Writing this now, I realize that since Temperance is 14, and thus precedes the Devil, we can say that Lincoln needed the Temperance qualities to take on his great task.

We then went on to a spread I created for anyone who feels “enslaved” in some way in life to bring about her or his own emancipation. Here it is:

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION READING

1. What enslaves me?
2. What is the history?
3. What are the direct effects?
4. What are the side effects?
5. What are the blocks to freedom?
6. What struggle is required?
7. What sacrifices might be required?
8. What is my strength?
9. What must I proclaim?
10. What will result?

I welcome any who wish to try this for themselves.
Please note: like any other blog entry, this material, including the spread, is copyrighted (anyone’s blog is automatically copyright in the writer’s name as soon as it is published). Permission is granted to use it in classes, or re-post it–but only if copyright is acknowledged (as, “This spread is copyright Rachel Pollack, 2012). Thank you for your cooperation.

February 2nd LETTER TO JAMES JOYCE ON HIS 13OTH BIRTHDAY

Today is February 2, a significant day for me. Not only do several good friends celebrate their birthdays this day, but it is the birthday of James Joyce, one of my literary heroes (in retrospect, it might not have been the best choice to have Joyce as my model for the first few issues I wrote of the comic book Doom Patrol).

Every year on this day–which is also Brigid’s Day, the goddess/saint of poetry, prophecy, and the eternal fire– I read out loud passages from Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s mighty dream book, whose first sentence (beginning “river run, past Eve and Adam’s”) is in fact the ending of a sentence that begins as the book’s final words (“A way a last a lone a loved a long the”).

Last year Fern Mercier and Lyn Olds in New Zealand invited a group of tarot people to write letters to people from earlier times, with tarot as a theme. These were then published as a special exhibit in the Southern Symposium Tarot Conference. The exhibit was then shown in France and Italy, and will be displayed next year in Toronto and London.

Some wrote to A. E. Waite, some to famous magicians, but I immediately thought of a letter to Mr. Joyce (as he was known in the Paris literary world). Below is the text of the letter, reproduced with the kind permission of the conference organizers, and not to be copied or reproduced in any form. I hope very much that people will respect that.

river run, past Eve and Adam’s

Dear Mr. Joyce,

Recently the world celebrated your 129th birthday, also called Imbolc, Candlemas, and St. Brigid’s Day. Those ancient celebrations reveal your true nature, that thousands of years before your physical form people began to sense that this cross-quarter day would be the time of reading lines of poetry and prophecy.

As I always do on your birthday I read from Finnegans Wake, the book of all things. And then I wondered how the other book of all things, the tarot, appears in the Wake. There was no question that it would be there. Everything is, especially prophecy and soothsaying.

And will again, if so be sooth by his elders to his youngers shall be said.

What tarot readers can understand from this vital line is how to understand predictions. They are not detached statements that have nothing to do with the events they describe. Nor do they actually cause events…Instead, they allow events to happen, events that need to happen but cannot until the prophecy is made.

So then where is the tarot itself in the Wake? I consulted the modern blind seer, Google, and found that in the book there is a fortune-telling reading with playing cards. In the middle of cards like the King of Hearts and the Ace of Clubs there appears the Wheel of Fortune: the card of eternal recurrence, of Finnegan rising and falling, of the Woman, the River, who falls as rain from the sky, flows among us as the River, then returns to the sea.

Then the seer brought me to a man who revealed/reminded me that your own self is in the book. Shem the Penman, your stand-in, bears the name of Shem, son of Noah, the primordial sailor and the inventor of alchemy, magic, and divination.

Two oracles, the book and the tarot. I asked the cards, the Celtic Wisdom Tarot, what I should ask you.

Card 1 was card 1, The Decider, also called The Magician. How did you make your choices? How did the song, “Finnegan’s Wake” lead you to the great giant’s awakening?

Card 2 was card 2, the Renewer, the High Priestess. This is the card of the feminine, the mother/daughter/river/wife. Does the river carry prophecies only to have them dissolve into the sea?

Card 3 was card 12—1 plus 2 producing 3—the Dedicator, the Hanged Man, which shows a blindfolded initiate. With your thick glasses and your eye-patched eye, this is you, isn’t it? The initiated blind seer—Odin, Teiresias, hanging on the World Tree.

A way a last a lone a loved a long the

TAROT THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR

TOTH–Tarot On The Hudson, my occasional class here in Rhinebeck, will be meeting on Feb. 12. The date, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln (not to mention Charles Darwin on exactly the same day), inspired some thoughts on Tarot and Emancipation.

I know that most people reading this live too far to come for an afternoon, but I thought people might enjoy seeing the description.

February 12 is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Lincoln was our 16th president, and of course card 16 is the Tower, the image of destruction but also liberation. Lincoln led the country through a true Tower time, and so we might look at readings for when things are blowing up around people, either in their personal lives, or in the greater world.

We also think of Lincoln as The Great Emancipator, who liberated the slaves in his Emancipation Proclamation. Many people turn to the Tarot when they feel trapped, enslaved, stuck in a bad situation. We often see the Devil as the image of such slavery, and it is interesting that the Devil, card 15, precedes the Tower. Might card 17, the Star, be an image of emancipation? Maybe the entire line, from 15 to 21, shows us the path, and process, of liberation. (Something else to think about—Charles Darwin was born on the same exact day as Lincoln.)

In terms of readings, how can we use the cards to help liberate/emancipate ourselves or others from disastrous or painful situations? What kind of spreads can we develop for emancipation? What do we do with the images and ideas and information that come up in the cards?

Hopefully no one will be facing any situation right now where they feel enslaved, but try to think of some time in your past, or in the life of people you know, where such a reading/method could be valuable.

And how might the cards have helped Abraham Lincoln if he’d been able to consult a good Tarot reader? Just as Tarot author James Rickleff used to do readings for characters in fairy tales and fiction, so we will do a reading for Honest Abe (with some lucky person getting to act out the part of the Tower president).

PLUS—Our usual round robin of questions, deck sharing, experiences and issues from the world of Tarot. Please think of what you’d like to ask, share, exhibit.

And a BONUS—Many of you will remember our readings to discover the secret histories of the people in the cards. In the past we looked at how the Magician became a powerful magus, and what are the High Priestess’s secret teachings. Now it’s the Empress’s turn. We’ll look at her early days, her marriage to the Emperor, what it’s like to rule an empire.