Reading the Tarot is about giving answers, isn’t it? People come with questions, spoken or unsaid, and once the tarot cards are shuffled, cut and spread, all the answers come tumbling out.
Who am I supposed to be? Making choices
So many of my clients these days come to me when they are lost – they no longer know they are, what they should be doing, where they should live, who they should live with… the list goes on and on. These are all intelligent, articulate, successful people in their own right, so where does this existential crisis come from? Lack of choice.
Hawking in Heaven?
Oh dear, Stephen Hawking does not believe in heaven – it is relegated to a fairy story. Does it bother me? No. Is he right? Yes, but not for the reasons he gives. His view that we are simply fluctuations of the quantum field is gloriously materialistic – for the quantum field is simply a manifestation of something that no physics experiment could ever prove.
Tarot, Gall’s Law and extreme programming
Tarot readers love complexity; tarot is a rich medium full of imagery, arcane concepts, mysticism, magic and philosophies in a smorgasbord of chicken soup. Is there any problem with that? You bet. We have lost the wood for the trees. In my view tarot needs to be deconstructed to its simplest forms, to rediscover a purity of order and structure that is mathematically based. If we do not, we cannot find new insights and uses for this already brilliant and powerful system.
New theory of tarot
To develop a new theory of tarot, we have to strip out all the non-essentials to have a blank canvas. How far can we go with this, and how far are you ready to go? Tarot has a lot of baggage that has to be jettisoned before we can take Tarot to its fundamentals and really get started. One definition of those fundamentals would be Pure Consciousness and Maya. I will show you how to find Pure Consciousness and Maya in the Tarot.
To do this we have some clearing to do. For a start all the divinatory meanings can go. Then we dump all descriptions and images. We can do the same thing with the titles. This seems extremely drastic but in truth a lot remains.
Tarot has accumulated attributions from many other systems to varying degrees of success. You might think they aid the reader in interpretation, but adding complexity to an already complex system is madness. The most obvious systems to go in the trash can are astrology and the kabbalistic tree of life, and kabbalism in general. While we are about it all the attributions in Liber 777 can be unceremoniously dumped. That still leaves us with beliefs and isms such as paganism, magic, spiritualism and all the others, so they have to go too.
Tarot and strategy
Games that use chance to determine the next move nevertheless require strategy to win. Remember playing Ludo as a child? Depending on the roll of a dice, which counter you move is critical to winning or losing. Monopoly is another classic example. I found that the orange set of streets with houses and hotels was always a good idea and not owning the expensive Mayfair and Park Lane. Military gaming also requires several dice to decide the nature of the move. Simple tarot spreads such as the Celtic Cross eliminate that uncertainty.
Tarot Strategy and OOTK spread
Strategy is something that is long ignored by Tarot Readers, and I think it is time to explore this very important concept. To start with, I had better offer a few definitions of strategy:
- A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.
- The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle
Wikipedia
Merriam Webster gives a fuller definition:
Exploring the Thoth Tarot
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Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth is poorly understood, so this blog sets out to explore and illuminate aspects of this fascinating book.