The mysteries of tarot

By Roz Brown

        My older brother from Iowa has visited me three times since I moved to Boulder 27 years ago. The most recent visit, at 72 hours, was by far the longest-the other two were less than 24 hours each. He owns a farm-related business there and says he doesn't like to be away too long. The truth is, Boulder is just too far-out for my brother. More than once he has asked me, with a look of bewilderment, "Why do you live here?"

       Imagine my surprise, then, during the "long" visit in May, when he walked up to the tarot reader's table on the Pearl Street Mall, plunked down $20 and asked her for any insights she could pass along. This was definitely a first.

       Despite the popularity of tarot, nobody really knows when, where, how or why the deck of cards took on its mystical associations. We do know that card games entered Europe from the Arabic East around the 13th century, and the earliest extant examples of tarot decks are of Italian origin dating from the early Renaissance period. During the 1700s in France, when there was a fascination with all things Egyptian, many tried to trace the roots of tarot to Egypt, but that's unlikely. What is known is that tarot has been associated with nearly all of Europe's spiritual or magical traditions including cabala, gnosticism, rosicrucianism, astrology and Celtic shamanism, to name a few.    

      The tarot deck can be used for card games, but is better known for its use as a divination method, technically called cartomancy but better known as fortune-telling. Divided into two parts, each deck has 22 major and 56 minor arcana cards. In the minor aracana, that means there are four suits of 14 cards, thus the similarity to ordinary playing cards that have 13 cards in four suits. The four tarot suits each represent a specific meaning: Swords, wands, cups and pentacles, much like spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds.

       Similarities might be said to end there, however, as most modern tarot readers use only the 22 major arcana or trumps for divining the future. The word arcana is from the Latin, arcanum, meaning "to shut away," and is usually used to refer to occult mysteries. The fact that there are 22 trumps has preserved that mystery, for in cabalistic numerology 22 is the number of "all things," or God.

       For divination purposes, the tarot pack is typically consulted as a means of resolving a question. Let's say you have a question about your current job or relationship, or even something about your past. You keep that question in the front of your mind while you shuffle and cut the deck of cards several times. The reader lays out the 22 cards in sequence or in one of many formal patterns, the most popular of these known as the Celtic cross.

      Once the reader or diviner lays out the cards in a pattern, called the spread, they can be analyzed. This includes position in the spread, relationship to other cards and whether certain cards are upside-down. Inverted cards can change a meaning to its opposite, diminished or altered in some way. Depending on the card, it can alter the reading dramatically.

       For example, in the simplest terms, if the six of wands appears in an upright position, it might foretell of triumph, victory, gain, good news and advancement. If reversed, fear of an enemy, apprehension, delay, treachery. If the card featuring the hanged man appears upright, its suggests life is suspended, apathy, passivity, a respite between significant events. If reversed, an unwillingness to sacrifice, wasted effort, arrogance. The card displaying the fool upright indicates a choice needs to be made, one of vital importance. If reversed, that choice is not being taken seriously-the gravity of the situation is not understood.

       Not all tarot readers, however, consult the cards in a traditional manner. One local reader says although she studied tarot, and uses the cards when it seems appropriate, she relies more on her own intuitive powers to "read" a person and offer advice. In her experience, most people who consult readers want day-to-day advice on four topics: love life, money, career and health. She typically uses the cards as a tool and relies more on her intuitive powers than the tarot cards to answers those types of questions.

      In the past 40 years, more than 200 different tarot decks have been published. Nonetheless, the most popular deck is probably the Rider deck, with images painted by artist Pamela Colman Smith. There are also decks with fairies and gnomes, cats and witches-but nearly all have a rich symbolism, suggesting archetypal worlds. In fact, the man who introduced the term "archetypes" to a broad audience, Carl Jung, was the first psychologist to attach importance to the tarot. He believed formal patterns and the symbolism of tarot represented archetypes embedded in the subconscious of humanity. In that vein an archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way-such as the shadow archetype-projecting onto others the dark parts of ourselves we can't admit to.

       "I don't know why tarot works, it just does," said one local psychic. "I believe it taps into the subconscious like many other divinatory arts. Often the cards won't answer the question you've asked, but will instead provide an answer for what you need to know-perhaps what you should have asked. If it didn't work, it wouldn't still be so popular."

       My brother didn't elaborate on why he suddenly needed the services of a tarot reader, but I think I know. Married 30 years, he and his wife recently called it quits. It seems that when change is overwhelming, even a skeptical, Mid-western agrarian believes an ancient divination technique shouldn't be overlooked when it comes to what the future might hold.

 

Resources

. www.ata-tarot.com

. www.tarot.com/tarot/index.php

. www.tarothermit.com

. Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley (Weiser Books, 1981)

. Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners, by Joan Bunning (Motilal Banarsidass, 2002)

. Mythic Tarot, by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene (Fireside Books, 2001)

. Rider Waite Tarot, by Art hur Edward Waite (Us Games Systems Inc., 1989)

. Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot, by Rachel Pollack (Thorsons Publishers, 1998)

      The following are advertisers in Nexus who use the tarot in their practice. Turn to the page listed after their name to read their ad and learn more about what they offer:

. Judy Lekic, 303-635-2243

  See also the Nexus Calendar and Classifieds.