By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 79 -- September 27, 2011
For an introduction to Tarotlogy, see ArkLetter 62
Summer gave way to Fall on my riverbank in the most tender and sweet of hand-offs. I was not supposed to be home to experience it, being pledged to deliver the keynote speech at the Association of Tarot Studies conference in Ste. Suzanne, France last weekend. But for reasons beyond my control, Nature and the Angels decided to leave me at home where I apparently belong. Because of that accident of fate, the presentation that was lovingly crafted for that event is soon to appear at this and other widely accessible locations. So stay tuned, dear friends, it will all have been for a good end!
We finally took delivery of our 1200 copies of Tarot of the Holy Light a few days ago, and it is a tremendous feeling for me to lay eyes on this pile of Tarot cards sitting in the middle of my living room! Michael and I have been doing low-key mumbo-jumbo over the cards ever since -- nothing fancy, just spontaneous joy and excitement spilling over them in waves from seeing our dream come true.
Readers of this site, who know how I can go on and on, might be surprised at the brevity of the LWB, both in the individual card meanings, and in the introductory matter. I too was shocked that the main message would fit down into such a small space! One would think that, after a lifetime of practicing Tarot, I'd find more to talk about upon the introduction of the deck. But that's what Tarot ArkLetters is for, a place where I can bloviate freely. People who share my long-winded temperament can come here and lose themselves in all of my winding thoughts and associations, and I do.
But I believe the Tarot of the Holy Light is strong enough visually, symbolically, psychologically and sensually to go out into the world without needing a big superstructure built around it, telling people what to think in advance of their own direct experiences. When I was first picking up Tarot decks in mid-1970, there was very sparse documentation to go with the pack in one's hand. We learned from the images, from any crumbs we could find about the symbols, and from growing our intuition when confronted with a human situation that needed decoding. Nowadays we are all so over determined, weighted down with so many different theories, styles and approaches, our bookshelves groaning with alternatives. We thought it might be refreshing for people to just experience the deck as itself in simplest terms, and save the esoterica for those who want to take that next step and buy the book.
In this little box, between the handmade LWB and the 78 cards, Michael and I have given you plenty of evocative imagery, accompanied by just enough esoterica to guide the beginner in learning both the divinatory meanings and the astrological references made by the cards. The justifications for the Trump correspondences come from Etteilla's teachings to his private students, and the Pips correspondences are literally as old as the hills, being related to the compass and the Zodiac.
This is a Continental Tarot. By that I mean that it represents the canon of esoteric values that a Renaissance magus from the time of Agrippa would attribute to the cards. This is easy enough to ascertain -- simply consulting Agrippa's Scales of the Numbers would reveal what all the pivotal numbers of the Tarot equation refer to.
The Tarot Equation, by the way, is the formula upon which Tarot is built:
- The Trumps are [(7x3) +1], referring to the alphabet of magic (also 2 octaves and the final do), alternately 22/7, which is the ancient shorthand for pi, the radius of a circle.
- The Royals are (3x4) + (1x4), in keeping with the compass rose, or the zodiac and its cardinal points.
- The Pips are {[(3x3)+1] x4}, arrayed to hold the Shem angels of the four elements and their Grand Trines. Alternately, one can envision the Pips as (10x4) with a Kabala Tree in all four directions, or a Tetractys opening out in each direction like the petals of a flower.
All of these values are attributable to the cards through the basic architecture of Tarot, before one even begins to include any "face values" such as titles, images, numbers, or symbols. Simply based on the Tarot equation, inherent correspondences shine forth from the 78-card pack's constituent categories. This same line of thinking prompts the suggestion that in a spread, the order in which the cards appear colors each card with its own numeric properties.
As I said in the Little White Book, "To get the most out of your Tarot spreads, consider transposing the same set of cards (in the same order) between several different spreads that have an equal or similar number of cards." Doing so will help you understand the qualities of the individual numbers in a way no library full of number theory can do. This will also help you to differentiate
a) The part of your interpretation that comes from the card itself (upright or reversed),
b) The part that is added from the card's order in the deal (since prior and subsequent help us locate ourselves in time and process), and
c) The part of the interpretation that comes from its particular position in a particular spread.
There's always a choice about how complex one needs to make the process. Sometimes less is more. I will often just grab a pack of cards, close my eyes and visualize some kind of geometric shape. Once that is clear then I can shuffle and throw the cards into that shape, working out the positional meanings as I go. Many of the shapes come from visionary art, the illustrations of magical treatises, or the formal diagrams of the esoteric disciplines. But sometimes the situation right in front of me unfolds just like a Dr. Seuss story: if Thing 1 and Thing 2 collide, then Thing 3 is sure to follow, and the chain of consequences will run out as far as there is energy to continue.
Smaller groups of cards are more concise when a person is busy and just needs a report on current trends, but I suggested meanings for all the numbers out to 12. Those values are based on a compilation of Pythagorean numerology, the Celtic spread, the Tetractys, the Tree of Life, the 3x3 and 3x4 grid, the Cube of Space, the Hermetic Cosmos, and the 7 Planetary Governors. Just like the Pips values, these attributions for the numbers are archetypal, known from the foundations of the western esoteric paradigm.
This pack is best learned alongside your birth chart, including present transits as well. Once one has begun to mentally tie the individual cards to their astrological values (including their season, element, mode, degrees, ruling planet, and whatever else seems relevant), then one can shift over to one's birth chart and follow up the Tarot's references to the planets, signs, and elements moving overhead and affecting your chart. The cards will tell you right where to look to see the action -- and frankly it's uncanny! Anyone can make up his or her birth chart for free over at astro.com, (the excellent site created by Liz Green, who incidentally created the Mythic Tarot). With that and an astrological datebook, you can have daily access to the very cosmos that the cards point towards, just like the professionals. I can't tell you how many unbelievable coincidences I have seen between the cards falling on my table and the action happening in my birth chart. Truly, over the years, it was because of the Tarot cards that I learned astrology, not the other way around. Don't ask me how transits moving overhead come to be reflected in the cards I have just shuffled, I just know it happens. You have to see it to believe it; really, the two are hand-in-glove in a manner that utterly defies the laws of averages
When using the cards as astrological tokens, my students and I notice that the upright cards most often point to present and near future planetary motions, while the reversed cards suggest scanning backwards in time across recently past transits for relevant aspects to your chart. This helps us to take the good/bad valence off the reversed cards, which frankly is too often overplayed. I have given reversed meanings for every card, because that is part of the Continental tradition. But I have interpreted them in the spirit of the extremes of the upright meaning (either great excess or great lack), rather than making a complete departure from it. In any way a card might appear, up down or sideways, the card remains what it is -- being at some different tilt doesn't change its essential nature, or its natural correspondences. But just like yang means "the bright side of the hill" and yin means "the dark side of the hill", there are qualitative differences between one and the other, even if they are both the same hill. The goal is not to become frozen in the presence of reversed cards, but to use them as a signal to look further into the card. Often revered cards will be the first cards I will examine for their astrological correspondence, since they present a kind of mystery that has to be unraveled before it can be fully appreciated.
This Pack takes its character from the Gnostic Sophianic Spirituality of the magical Christian Alchemists of the 16- and 1700's. Therefore the characters of the Trumps have unique extra characteristics, granted by the slant of the philosophers who formulated Illuminism, the science of Enlightenment, for western esotericism. Two very important characters in the quest for the Light are the Fool and the Priestess. These two make a set of brackets around the Magus in a very significant way.
Those who have been reading this column for years learned to use a spread called the World Server's Spread, for which the positions were the World, the Fool, and the Magus. That spread welds the traditional end-cards of the Trump sequence to the Magus (or Mountebank) in the manner of the Oroborous, the serpent with its tail in its mouth.
But for the Tarot of the Holy Light, the more relevant trinity from which to make a similar "Alpha and Omega" statement would be the Fool, the Magus and the Priestess. These three Trumps between them express the situation of the soul in a body embedded in Sophia’s creation. These three values are stated under the numbers Zero (the un-manifest), the One (the ego), and the Two (the Holy Spirit). Remembering that Pythagoras said 'One is the masculine and Two is the feminine", that allows us to read the Zero as the androgyne, the timeless and genderless angelic nature that stands behind any particular manifestation in time and space. These three Principles were often shown together in Alchemy as the Sun, Moon and (philosophical) Mercury, evoking all the archetypal symbolism of that discipline as well. When reading for myself especially, these are the first things I think of when I see these cards, although I'll also share a few other associations that I find particularly rich in this context.
The Fool is the immortal soul in the mortal body. Given Etteilla's astrological correspondence of the Fool to the Sun, this Trump represents the innate spark of Light that enlivens the lifeless mud of Nature, making it get up and walk in human form.
Standing inside the band of the Zodiac, the Fool takes a contemplative posture, refusing to let the fiery chaos of unenlightened wrath of matter (below his feet) nor the barking dog of daily concerns distract his focus on the Sun and Moon of the inner life. He is historically known as the Fool of God or Holy Fool, but he is just as easily seen as the Fool for Love, in the sense that he is naturally attracted to the Light of Nature. He is earnestly striving not to insert his will into events unfolding around him, but instead chooses to listen deeply to the inner Lights and only move when shown the path by Spirit.
Being spiritually androgynous, he does not polarize with others but instead chooses to find the "yes", the pivot-point of mutual affirmation and support. He steps out of the Nothing into the something, but with great sensitivity and reserve, providing a creative catalyst after all the pre-programmed forces have had their way and exhausted their momentum. In Boehme's understanding the Sun is the heart of the individual, and is here described as "holy, sober and resigned".
The Magus is the quicksilver-mutable, ultra-awakened body intelligence aroused by the element Air. The power of Aleph has been called chi, or Kundalini, with emphasis on the special intelligence, imagination and will power that become available when the metabolism is charged by sacred breath-work. Mytho-poetically, this is the magical awareness and aliveness that demonstrates humanity's special inheritance, marking us as "made in the image of God". This power of living awareness anchors into the body at the breastbone, wrapping around the heart and nestling between the shoulder blades. It is identified with the lungs and expresses as the voice, irrespective of what is being said or the language being spoken.
Through Aleph, the body resonates with the syntax of nature, the language of sound and the harmonic frequencies contained in the Divine Om or Holy Word. In particular, humanity's access to the three-octave scale of human hearing and vocalization is the gift of Aleph, and we see all the potentials of this correspondence exploited by the god Mercury/Hermes across multiple esoteric disciplines. Associated with the mother-letter Aleph, the Magus is specifically the consciousness awakened by and carried on the breath. Following on from that, this is the vitality of the will spurred on and fired up by the bellows of Air. Yogis, chanters, runners, dancers, wind instrument players, singers, athletes and orators must all learn to directly harness Aleph to master their art. The Renaissance magi aspired to reach this state through the pursuit of "exaltation", marshaling a combination of prayer, chant, dance, magical visualization, ceremony and talismanic magic, unleashed at specially propitious times indicated by astrology.
Modern people seek the same state through intense physical training, vegetarianism, meditation, yoga, immersion in the wilderness, and other forms of reaching for that "peak experience". This teaching about the magic of the breath is endemic to human culture as far back as we can trace it, since 'the cave of the lungs' has always been considered the abode of the ancestors. The voice thus symbolizes the speech of the ancestors, providing humanity's link to our origin and our destiny outside of time. The Kabalists say that Aleph is the point of balance between the other two Mother Letters, which are Shin (in the third eye), emitting the critical flame of divine correction "from above", and Mem (in the pelvis between the two hip bones), releasing the compassionate fount of mercy and encouragement "from below". A person who is properly inspired by Aleph is neither crushed by the weight of Shin nor weakened by the sentimentality and pathos of Mem.
The Priestess is the Holy Spirit, Paraclete, divine advocate or helper, keyed to the Moon, and symbolizing the invisible companion, comforter and guide for the Magus (ego) in this world. In the enlightened Gnosticism of these Sophianic Christians, it was understood that each incarnate soul has for its helpmeet a guardian angel, Spirit, or astral twin. Communion with this Spirit (one's own personal fragment of the Great Cosmic Goddess) grants a steady transmission of guidance, wisdom and understanding into the life of her follower, allowing for a more successful experience in this incarnation.
This is the Sophia that Solomon was lauding, "taking her as his wife" and "living with her all of his days". She is the author of the Wisdom Teachings, the sacred number-letters that communicate with the Cosmos through their frequencies and harmonics. That makes her the Mistress of the Library, Queen of Science, Astrology and Sacred Geometry, and this is why we find her most comfortable in the quiet of the cloister, the inner sanctum, and the back of the mind. In this form Sophia was carried from Old Testament times to the New Testament, as the patron saint of the scribes and translators of the Holy Book. She offered comfort in the sacred labor of transcription, assisting with the thorny task of carrying The Holy Word from one tongue to another without doing damage to the gnosis.
The culture of Courtly Love was also based on this type of mystical communion with Spirit, found everywhere in Nature and symbolized in the feminine form. In terms of the Trump sequence, this is the individual's first encounter with Sophia, who gradually reveals herself across the Trumps until we see her in her fullness as the Virgin of the World. Here at the outset, she is scaled to fit the individual's current consciousness (similar to Tinkerbelle in the story 'Peter Pan'), playing with the Light inhabiting the altar-candles and nursing the soul with creative consciousness from her breast.
Typo Alert: In the passionate drive to produce a Little White Book that is readable and easy on the eye (which was handmade here at home, while the cards were being made in China), the reversal interpretation of the Priestess went missing. It was only a few words long, but somebody will miss it, so here's the scoop: The Priestess reversed means "fear of emptiness and silence". This is the sort of discomfort we have in a big empty building full of echoes, or the creeping fear we feel when our friend who is talking and driving at the same time suddenly cuts off and the line goes dead. It's that writhing cringe we face when we wake up in the wee hours reviewing our sins, and can find no comfortable place to rest our minds. Each one of us has our own description of it, but it’s the sense being all alone and helpless without the help of our compassionate forgiving Sophia, leaving us to face our darkest hour alone. Without her advocacy, we feel as naked as Adam and Eve under the judgmental eye of Jehovah. In such moments, our awareness of personal inadequacy can be crushing.
For the sake of the NewMoon, here are the planet/sign combinations illustrated in Trumps from The Tarot of the Holy Light, for your meditations. Just let them enter into consciousness visually, without too much extraneous thought, and see if their combinations suggest anything that you might want to do different or re-arrange in order to have your private house in order.
- NewMoon in Libra with Mercury, Venus and Saturn ==> Fool/Priestess in Hanged Man with Star, Empress and Judgment.
- Mars in Leo ==> Strength in the Hermit
- Jupiter in Taurus ==> Emperor in Lovers
- Uranus (Primal Air) in Aries ==> Magus in Hierophant
- Neptune (Primal Water) in Aquarius ==> Death in Moon
- Pluto (Primal Fire) in Capricorn ==> The World in Tower of Destruction
The Tarot of the Holy Light is now available to all! You can order your deck directly from us here: http://www.tarotuniversity.com/.
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