The Cosmic Tarot Read online

  Sit in a comfortable, quiet place. Pick up the Cosmic Tarot deck and scan the images one by one. Look at each card for a few seconds; resist pausing over any one in particular. As you glance at the cards, try to be aware of your emotional reactions, of your flying thoughts, of associations. Perhaps a face recalls someone you know—a friend or an enemy. Perhaps one card is sinister, another sunny and pleasant.

  This exercise in image-ination can be almost psychedelic, as the rapid succession of images gives rise to a dazzling variety of thoughts and emotions.

  Now put the deck down and examine your mind. Don't measure or judge your impressions in terms of good or bad, psychic or mundane. Merely try to recall the general flow of your thoughts and feelings as you scanned the deck.

  You probably found that you couldn't help but stop on certain cards. Perhaps an image was beautiful; perhaps an image was revolting or frightening; perhaps an image puzzled or intrigued you. The attractive cards as well as the repulsive cards can reveal aspects of your psyche. Over time, your feelings toward certain cards will go through surprising changes.

  Each tarot card, Major or Minor Arcana, represents a facet of life. We may identify with certain cards—for example, young-at-heart people or people just meeting the tarot tend to identify with 0 The Fool. We may match people we know with certain cards. Remember, however, that each card is only a piece of the picture, part of the story.

  As you look through the Cosmic Tarot deck again and again, contemplating one card at length, passing over those that are unpleasant or of little interest, try always to be aware of your flying thoughts. These are the inspirations that will, as you study the tarot, be captured and given form by reason. This created/creative form is the treasure that the tarot has to offer.

  - The Major Arcana -

  the major arcana of the tarot symbolize, as the name implies, the "big picture." They can be seen in numerical order as a journey through life: from 0 The Fool, the blissfully ignorant embryonic child, to XXI The World, the liberated and liberating integrated person, portrayed as a mature woman joyous in the midst of life. They can be read as a picture book of metaphysics: from 0 The Fool, uncreated potential, to XXI The World, full manifestation.

  The Cosmic Tarot book interprets each Major Arcana card first with a brief description of the image on the card. Visual study of the card will yield the discovery of details that contribute to one's own relationship with it.

  Following the description is a section called "The Cosmos," a macrocosmic outlook on the card. Next, "The Human Community" views the card as a facet of human society and civilization. "The Individual" brings the card down to personal terms, showing life situations and types of people.

  The sections are not meant to imply that metaphysics, society, and personal life are divided and shut-off from each other. The aspects of life blend with and influence each other.

  The delineations of "The Cosmos," "The Human Community," and "The Individual" can help us to see the wondrously various ways in which the energy denoted by each card touches our lives. What connects with our spirits can benefit our bodies, our spiritual well-being is woven into our society, and so on.

  Finally, simple meanings are given for each card. The meanings are often contradictory; what works well in one situation, for one person, can work badly in another situation, for another person.

  Reversed meanings (for when the cards fall upside down in a spread) are not given. Each card is interpreted according to its image and context. If one feels that the positive (or negative) value of the card is stymied, compromised, or blocked by surrounding cards or by the subject of the reading, an unfavorable (or favorable) interpretation might be indicated.

  Finally, in reading the interpretations and descriptions of the cards, it is essential to understand that the pronouns "he" and "she" are used in reference to the gender of the figure on the card. The actual qualities of the cards are not gender-bound, except for a few cases noted in the text. For example, though the Magician is called "he," the type described can be a man or a woman; however, the Magician refers sometimes specifically to a brother, a male friend, or an ordained man.

  0 The Fool

  A jester in motley dances at the edge of a cliff. A dog, symbol of fidelity, leaps beside him, perhaps warning him of the dangers of the deep. The sun inspires the Fool with spheres of light. Crystals grow from the ground.

  The Cosmos - The number 0 is the mathematical point of neutrality between positive numbers and negative numbers. In metaphorical terms, the Fool is the point of balance between destruction and creation. S/He signifies the held breath of the cosmic force: the exhalation is creation; the inhalation is annihilation.

  The Fool is spirit on the edge of manifestation; the formless who precedes or succeeds the dualism of heaven and earth; "ground zero," the center of destruction. An absolute neuter, neither male nor female, neither active nor passive, the Fool embodies in its circular digit all possibilities.

  The Human Community - The Fool, or court jester, is wise in folly, witty in madness. Alone in the court, he candidly exposes the king's foolishness, with the king's consent and even encouragement.

  We have in ourselves the capacity to satirize our own foolishness, to laugh at ourselves and to laugh at the folly of our leaders—even as they, like the Fool, bring us dancing to the edge of a precipice. A humorless life would be unbearable, and our professional jesters—cartoonists, comedians, clowns, and essayists—keep our leaders from taking themselves too seriously, and keep us from taking our leaders too seriously.

  However, pretending that life is nothing but a joke, refusing to confront responsibility for ourselves and our actions, eventually leads to destruction and chaos. Complacent cynicism makes fools of us. Closed eyes bring us over the precipice, led by the fantasies of those who would dominate us.

  The Fool is the short-term solution, the easy way out: public vaccinations and education on disease control vetoed; shoddy safety standards to favor low production costs; exploitative labor practices to compete with other economies; using human rights as a public relations facade in swapping political favors. Sooner or later, the precipice—pollution, epidemics, revolution, civil suits by injured workers or consumers—will gape open.

  Conversely, the Fool is the activist, the dissenter, the one who forces us to face social problems even if solving them seems impractical politically and economically. He may be a "Chicken Little," or he may be a prophet.

  The Individual - Imagination is a sister of ecstasy, and ecstasy is a razor's edge between sanity and insanity. The most heartbreaking delusions and the most exquisite beauty spring from imagination.

  The Fool embodies the imagination, with all its glamor and all its danger. His head reaches toward the sun and the stars; his feet caper on the very lip of a crystal-studded alpine cliff. He is the romantic artist who creates universally loved masterpieces; he is the madman who makes no sense to anyone but himself.

  It is appropriate that the Fool is the 0, the naught, for the imagination by itself signifies nothing. Only when given form does the imagination make an impact. However unstable an "artistic type" may be, creation will always include a fair measure of solid, calculating reason. The faithful dog dances along, but keeps the Fool from losing awareness of the surroundings.

  The imaginary excursions that lead to creation can be spontaneous, even "foolish." The nineteenth-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz was dozing on an omnibus one day when he "saw" atoms twirling about in a dance. The end of a chain of atoms joined itself to the head of the chain and made a whirling ring. The playful vision immortalized Kekulé von Stradonitz, as it was a breakthrough realization in modeling the structure of benzene and led to models of other cyclic chemicals.

  A person who is too much in love with reason and purposefulness, one who is incapable of wasting time, will never know the joy of creation. Fascist or totalitarian societies require that artists fill the "needs of the people," which usually means findin
g the lowest common emotional and political denominator—nothing risky, nothing experimental or offensive. These societies label as "decadent" the artist who creates for the joy of it, for "art's sake." The wish to conform to what society dictates as sensible and productive (and lucrative) is a more effective censor than any government bureau.

  The Fool is a youth, male or female, or a youthful spirit. He or she may be thoughtless, even callous, but always brings that welcome breath of fresh air.

  All creative endeavors, especially those that make us laugh, are in the domain of the Fool, as are mimes and clowns of all kinds, from class clowns to professional buffoons to the benevolent Shriners. The Fool is possibly a bumbler, the person who always commits the faux pas, the one who "spills the beans."

  Meanings - Wisdom of innocence. Originality. Annulment of reason. Frivolity. Lack of discipline. Ecstasy. Delirium. Satire. Cartoons. Clowns. Mime. Madness. Imagination. Youthfulness. Comedy. Fun. Lack of social grace. Thoughtlessness. Folly. Extravagance. Immaturity. Irrationality. Frenzy. Enthusiasm. Naiveté.

  I The Magician

  The Magician's face has both masculine and feminine features: mustache and goatee, delicate eyebrows and mouth. S/He wears a fillet decorated with the lemniscate, used in mathematics to signify infinity. Through mental powers, s/he rules the four elements—the four suit signs of the tarot. The roses of passion and the lilies of purity are near the table.

  The Cosmos - The Roman numeral I is identical to the Roman letter I, which signifies the self-aware ego in English. "I" is oneness, and also "only-ness." The lonely One craves a reflection, which will be identical and yet opposite; the potential of 0 The Fool coalesces into a creative force: God/Goddess, Life, Breath, Love, Inspiration, Mind, the Great One.

  The presence of the four suit signs indicates that from formlessness have come the elements of form. The Magician is Form, then, and his sister the High Priestess (Major Arcana II) is Time.

  The sword, wand, cup, and pentacle symbolize the four elements of life as understood by the human mind: respectively, air/mental, fire/spiritual, water/emotional, and earth/physical.

  The Human Community - The Magician manipulates the elements to invent, to create, to cast a spell, and so he rules innovation and pioneering work: research and development, experimental or avant garde art, and radical sociology.

  His work has the potential to fulfill the needs of humans, though he is neutral as to the moral implications of its uses. Thus, dynamite can be used to excavate building sites or it can be used in bombs.

  The roses denote passionate dedication; the lilies represent pure, single-minded devotion.

  The Magician manipulates people as well as the elements. Charismatic, attractive, and persuasive, he knows how to play all the chords, charming us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. The Magician is the priest and the leader—and the charlatan, the pretender. The audience that forgets the illusory quality of the show is duped. The priest or preacher who claims for himself the qualities of the spirit he worships is a charlatan. The vote-buying promises of politicians are the magic tricks that veil the real difficulties involved in governing.

  The Magician can reflect the tendency of groups to get caught up in the power, charisma, or promises of an individual. Such situations have led to the founding of great religions such as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity, and have also led to brainwashing cults and the most savage tyrannies, such as those under Adolph Hitler and Idi Amin.

  The Individual - The Magician is the ideal person to raise funds for a cause, to convert or persuade a difficult audience, to solve a complex problem through sheer ingenuity. Once the trick is done, however, his interest wanes. Someone else will have to follow through. He is interested in seeing how his work is applied, but most likely needs a business partner, unless he himself has the means of production. Potential investors may be alienated by the fact that he doesn't always play by the rules.

  Though not necessarily immoral, the Magician is not scrupulous. He will not agonize over the consequences his work may have. His means support the end; the process, not the goal, is all.

  One result of his detachment is the ability to dedicate himself to a task that may have no material reward or status. The other side of scholarly detachment is science gone amok: cruelty to animals, the invention of devastating weapons.

  The Magician can be a heartless playboy or playgirl, making a science of seduction and abandoning his or her subject when the experiment has yielded results; or the Magician's objectivity can allow him to love unpossessively a free-spirited person.

  The Magician can be a brother, a friend of long-standing, or an ordained man. He can be tremendously supportive or maddeningly competitive. If the Magician is in the form of a woman, she will gravitate to traditionally male jobs and roles.

  The Magician rules crackpots whose great ideas never make it off the drawing board, inventors, con artists, sleight-of-hand artists, "Mr. or Ms. Fix-its," master artisans, and artists who concentrate more on style and form than on content and meaning.

  Meanings - Brother or friend. Elementary knowledge. A free spirit. Determination. Skill. Juggling. Initiative. Agitation. Disgrace. Self-reliance. Intelligence. Inventiveness. Self-confidence. Resourcefulness. Deception. Sleight of hand. Clumsiness. Egoism.

  II The High Priestess

  The High Priestess is marked with oceanic tides; the starry cosmos mingles with her hair. The blue tint of her hair and skin denotes restfulness and depth. On her forehead is a yin-yang symbol: union and dualism. A book imprinted with the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet is before her. The crescent moon, which governs the tides, shows the High Priestess to be in harmony with the ebb and flow of life and death.

  The Cosmos - The High Priestess, in anticipation of the matronly Empress, is often called virginal. Her womb has the potential to nourish a living being, but if conception is denied, menstruation brings the demise of the unfertilized ovum. The life force comes in its time to each being and withdraws in its time, just as ocean tides come and go, just as the moon waxes and wanes.

  The yin-yang denotes the fundamental truth of nature as perceived by humans: that all energy is generated by the interplay of opposites, the alternation of negative and positive, light and dark, dry and wet, hot and cold, day and night.

  The letters alpha and omega, inscribed in the book, are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. As her brother the Magician coagulates the elements to make creation possible, the Priestess takes from eternity time: beginning and end.

  The Human Community - The Magician represents the application of knowledge; the High Priestess represents knowledge itself. She is the ivory tower. Theories on the origin of the cosmos, the most hair-splitting semantic argument, Mandelbrot sets, are all of interest to the High Priestess. Some of the data she turns up will eventually be used by the Magician; for example, the Mandelbrot sets can help pinpoint chaotic elements in models of shoreline erosion. Meanwhile, the Priestess will always have a fascinated, if elite, audience.

  The High Priestess also represents the unofficial side of world religions (compare with V The Hierophant). Established churches have always been uneasy with their saints, visionaries, and reformers, but the community of any religion becomes a mere reflection of the worldly status quo without creative, and sometimes obsessed, individuals.

  Saint Francis of Assisi, Thomas à Kempis, and Tibet's Milarepa, and especially women such as the bodhisattva Tara, Joan of Arc, and Hildegard of Bingen reflect the kind of energy symbolized by the High Priestess. They did not start religions. They used existing institutions to realize unique visions.

  The High Priestess is the abbess or leader of obscure religious communes or orders that have only tenuous connections with established churches.

  The Individual - The High Priestess attracts men and women, though she tends to be reserved and unassuming, even cold. She may be a bookworm. One could say of her, "still waters run deep." The High Priestess can
indicate a feeling of certainty, even if various aspects of a situation are yet hidden.

  The High Priestess is the older or younger sister: an intimate relationship bound by taboos. She may be a beloved female friend or an ordained woman. If the High Priestess takes the guise of a man, he will be somewhat effeminate and very understanding of women.

  The High Priestess can represent a young, virginal woman, or a woman who has control of her sexuality in terms of activity and fertility. In this respect, she can denote successful birth control.

  Meanings - Mystery. Hidden knowledge. Wisdom. Sound judgment. Common sense. Serenity. Penetration. Foresight. Intuition. Initiation. Mental power. Silence. Perception. Self-reliance. Sister. Impassiveness. Quiet assertiveness. Platonic relationships. Love of books. Shallowness. Obsessiveness. Passive–aggressive type.

  III The Empress

  A mature woman crowned with stars, rich with jewels, rules a fertile land. Around her neck is a pendant on which is a five-pointed star. The pentagram is a symbol of the five senses as well as of wealth and the earth; it appears in the suit of pentacles of the Minor Arcana.

  The Cosmos - The Empress is the Great Mother, the physical form of creation, what we perceive with our senses as the cosmos. She gives from her own body as a mother gives milk to her infant. We dwell on her body; we draw our food from her body. We admire her beauty when we look up at a starry sky. Wind, clouds, rain, sunshine are from her. We dance and love on her body—we also defile her body.

  While the Mother seems endlessly nurturing, endlessly forgiving, there is a point at which her resources give out: for examples, the Dust Bowl of the United States, a semi-arid region formed in the 1930s by over-cultivation of the land; the extinction or endangerment of countless species of plants and animals; the decimation of rain forests. From time to time, too, she devours her own: volcanoes, earthquakes, the devastating 1986 natural eruption of lethal vapor from Cameroon's Lake Nyos, cancer from too much exposure to sunlight.