Along the Tarot Path

I was glancing through a book today that purported to provide a pragmatic way to discover meaning in any individual life, to awaken energy and provide new directions. Maybe it does that. The picture that springs to mind is of a person in a lifeboat adrift on an endless sea, conjuring chores to attend to and directions to set.

In the face of an endless mystery, meaning is a coin with no value. It may exist, but it buys nothing.

Meaning is an issue in the midst of the busyness of an anthill. An ant may well search for meaning in the midst of a drudgery that seems pointless.

But for any consciousness that faces existence by itself, there are no words for what it witnesses. And without words, there is no meaning. Meaning is nothing but a word in search of itself.

So what task shall I set myself? And for what reason? Buddha set himself the task of finding the root of suffering and a way to overcome it. And then, when he had done this successfully, he set himself the task of teaching his method to the world. His reason was compassion. That’s a good reason. And it was a good task.

But suffering has not been overcome. Nothing much has changed. Had he done and said nothing, you’d scarcely notice any difference. What could I do or say or think or feel that would do better than that? Certainly, the world would not benefit or change in the slightest. However the mystery of things came to be, it will not be in any way affected by me, or anyone else.

I can surely affect myself. I choose how I wish to live. I can set my craft to sail in any direction I choose on the endless sea. Such choices have no meaning. They don’t affect the sea, and I will one day sink beneath its waves without a trace.

But already I have achieved something. This situation no longer upsets me. The situation will not be affected by anything I do or anything that happens to me or anything I have or don’t have. I am free to turn inward if I choose and ignore or become the sea.

I have heard it said that the root cause of suffering is ignorance. And what is the root cause of ignorance? I would say that it is limit. And the root of limit is the separation of consciousness into the bits and pieces of individual awareness.

And that’s the nature of mystery — the individual awareness adrift on the endless sea of consciousness. That’s how it’s set up. That’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s an unsolvable, unresolvable mystery by its nature.

The funny thing is, it’s no problem if you don’t have an obsession with solving puzzles.

— Wald

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on August 31st, 2007 | No Comments »

I saw something this morning. I saw an answer, a good answer, to the question “What is evil?”

Whatever impedes the flow of emergence as it emerges, and whatever impedes the flow of return as it returns, will be perceived as evil.

The impedance would have to be more apparent than real, and the evil would have to be in the eye of the beholder. The beholder of evil could be the doer or anyone else. All that is necessary for evil to occur is for someone to observe it.

In the eyes of a predominantly emergent person (if there is or could be such a thing), any act of return could be viewed with either reverence or aversion.

To a predominantly returning person, emergence in various forms could be viewed with anything from joy to revulsion.

The relationship between pure emergence and pure return would probably be the predictable relationship of reverence to joy. Insofar as neither emergence nor return is ever pure, or at least rarely so, each is contaminated by a limited impulse and a limited vision.

A predilection for either direction that is simultaneously strong and limited probably is responsible for the perception of evil. The degree of evil perceived would then be a direct function of intensity and limit. The greater the intensity and the limitation, the greater the evil perceived. As either intensity or limitation diminished, the perceived evil would decrease.

— Wald Amberstone

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on August 10th, 2007 | No Comments »

Tonight I would normally be teaching a teleclass. Because of a sore throat, I’m not. Instead, I’ll be adding some insights to a class I would have given that will either deepen or confuse it, or both.

The class is on the symbolism of The Blindfold. I’ve already written the notes for class, but the extra week my illness has given me before presenting it has lead to a deepened understanding.

A blindfold can produce either an inner light or an inner darkness in addition to an obvious external darkness. A blindfold can be more subtle than a cloth tied physically over the eyes. It can be a word or an idea, a feeling or a predilection, a deed or a memory, a talent or a samskara.

In the case of a non-physical blindfold, its effect is to focus or filter; to redirect immediate contact with the world as it is happening through a pre-existent perspective; to darken or lighten reality; to add qualities to it or remove qualities from it; to transform it; to give meaning to plain facts; in short, to make reality into a symbol.

This transformation can be experienced as taking place inwardly or externally; it can be felt as positive or negative. It can be a transformation to be sought after or undone.

The blindfold in the 2 of Swords is the first kind. In the 8 of Swords, it is the second kind.

– Wald Amberstone

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on July 21st, 2007 | 5 Comments »

Kashmir Shaivism speaks about the experience of the Truth as unmesha, a flashing forth. In a split second you perceive it. Within a moment, you realize it.

Let the Truth flash forth and then hold on to it and contemplate it. In this way, instead of living your mental projection, you will learn to live in the experiences of the Truth, the Truth that is unmesha, that flashes forth here and there: in the laughter of a child, in the noise of a machine, in the sound of footsteps, or as you watch a bird flying through the sky. It doesn’t matter where or when unmesha happens; the Truth, the light of the Self, will shine forth.

Hold on to it. In it, great strength exists. In it, wonderful understanding exists. Learn to hold on to the flashes of the Truth, the light of the Self.

As you begin to experience the Truth in every grain of food, as you begin to experience it in every word, in every action, slowly but surely, you become more and more established in this experience.

— Swami Chidvilasananda

I study tarot for the flashing forth of the Truth — in an image, a number, a word, or an idea.

— Wald Amberstone

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on July 5th, 2007 | 4 Comments »

We’ll be presenting a brand new class on Tarot and Color at the Wisconsin Area Tri-State Tarot Symposium which is happening the weekend of July 13-15 — just a couple of weeks away!

This is shaping up to be a fantastic gathering and we’d love to see you there. You can get all the details at http://www.wisconsintarot.com

The conference is being co-hosted by Julie Cuccia-Watts and Corrine Kenner. Julie is the creator of the Maat Tarot and used one of its cards to illustrate this stunning poster!

Filed under: Events on June 28th, 2007 | 3 Comments »

It is possible for anyone, no matter the level of spiritual development, to harmonize the four elements and thus establish a “covenant of peace” between body and soul.
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The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the awareness of duality. To eat of this fruit is to descend into the illusion of separate existence, of polarities and opposites, of birth and death.

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Between two thoughts, there is said to be a gap, a gap which is very subtle, a space which can be seen, felt, sensed, as stability and silence. It is in the space between arising and subsiding, between in-breath and out-breath, that the Self, Consciousness, can be experienced.

Around every card and between any two cards in tarot there is such a space. When a spread is laid out, cards are joined across these spaces by a web of continuity. This continuity is the sense of an individual life; the web of connections between changeless moments, the joining of the eternal “now” of separate cards, is a “story,” a drama. This ever-changing drama of separate existences obscures the changeless moment from which every drama arises.

It can be said that the root energy of creation, from which all form, substance and activity is derived, is Time which manifests as Change. All that arises, arises in Time. And all that arises in Time subsides in Time.

Time is the root of every story, of all its characters, objects, places and actions, and of its plot as well. The movements of Time as change are revealed as the story itself.

In tarot, what changes is a spread, a web of connected cards that reveals a bit of the story of a life. What does not change is each individual card, each one a changeless moment containing the entire message of that moment for whoever pauses to hear it.

The power of the message contained in any moment is greater than the significance of any bit of the continuous web of drama.

The power of the message contained in every moment, in every card, is that it connects the one who hears it to timeless consciousness. The power of the message in any spread, in any bit of the continuous drama, is that it perpetuates the drama.

One level of teaching about tarot concerns itself with reading the drama. On another level the emphasis is on reading the changeless moment from which each such drama arises. Finally, tarot teaches us to join the eternal moment with a steady flow of time in a single understanding and experience.

In the same way that a drop of water contains all the essential properties of the ocean, each tarot card contains the essence of the whole deck. There is no real difference between the deck and each of its cards.

The apparent difference lies in the mind’s attachment to drama. If the mind did not have this attachment, the drama would not exist. There would be no need for spreads and readings; the web of connections would evaporate and each card would stand alone as the complete message. In the same way, each moment of every life stands alone and contains the message that it is the purpose of each life to hear.

An aspect of the magick of tarot is to allow time to stop so that we can examine a single moment, in the form of a single card, in its fullness. Ironically, this process takes patience, care and time.

– Wald Amberstone

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot on June 26th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Wald and I like to take walks after midnight when the weather is nice.Yesterday I finally bought a digital camera and decided to take it along in case I spotted a picture worth taking. The Universe obliged by presenting three face-down playing cards in the middle of the street!

This is the one I turned over.

Anyone care to offer an interpretation of this message from the Universe?

If you know how to read standard playing cards, you can read it as is. If not, I would translate the Jack of Diamonds to the Knight of Pentacles in tarot.

- Ruth Ann

Filed under: Adventures on June 21st, 2007 | 4 Comments »