The Organisation and Religion to Re-unite All Religions

Introduce Yourself to the Tarot.

Author: Priestess Saffron van Helsdingen Brink

 

Author’s biography: Research and writing has always been one of Saffron’s passions.  Having studied and thoroughly enjoyed Art History, photography and illustration while studying graphic design, she spent the first few years of her professional career creatively in magazine publishing for the SA tourism market as well as health and lifestyle.  Since then she has moved over to production at a busy marketing communications firm, but is still pursuing her great love for writing and publishing.  Her interests are broad, including ancient art, mysticism and culture, the study of the Tarot, contrasting with her hobby of collecting and cultivation of rare succulent plants.  She has a knack of finding herself in some odd places, and considers the time she spent cleaning penguins during the Treasure oil-spill disaster as one of the most inspiring weeks of her life.

Take any deck of ordinary playing cards.  Have a good look at them.  You’ll find a Joker.  You’ll find kings, queens and jacks.  You’ll also find four suites consisting of diamonds, clubs, spades and hearts.  What you are holding in your hands is the simplified version of the Tarot deck that has been used for years.

Although there are claims that the cards themselves hark back from a mystical past deep in the antiquity of Egypt, India or China, the first historical evidence of the Tarot card system has been found in Europe dating back to the fifteenth century.  Some believe that the cards were developed in order to keep their unspoken religious beliefs during times of persecution.  What is certain about the cards is that they have been used for centuries as a method of divination .  A 19^th century scholar worth mentioning, who contributed greatly to our current knowledge of the cards is one Eliphas Levi.  He took the often-confusing standard Tarot as it had existed for centuries, and clarified its meanings, drawing parallels with the Tarot’s symbology and the Kabbalah.  One can also not ignore the Tarot’s benefits in its association with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late 1800’s, with input from such figures as Aleister Crowley and eventually the famous A.E. Waite.

The Tarot deck consists of 78 cards in total.  There are 22 major arcana cards that relate to the 22 paths on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and are concerned with qualities.  They are numbered accordingly and begin with The Fool (which has the value of 0, encompassing nothingness and potential) and ending with The Universe (which has the value of 21, encompassing the macrocosm). One can also mention some schools of thought that will place The Fool separately (or even between all the other cards) from the other major arcana or even after The Universe (or The World as it is sometimes known).

Before examining the rest of the cards it is important to understand how they are divided up.  The 16 court cards and the minor arcana can all be placed into four suites.  These represent the four elements: earth, air, fire and water.  Various Tarot decks will use different symbols to represent the four elements. Fire is usually represented by staves or wands, and represents the energy or the force that the reader directs in his/her life. Air can be represented by swords and relate to the reader’s intellect or methods of thinking. Water is usually represented by cups or chalices and represents the reader’s emotions and feelings.  Earth can be represented by pentacles, discs or coins and the symbols relate to the reader’s work or productivity.  Each of these suites is represented by four corresponding court cards and ten minor arcana.

The 16 court cards are symbolic of the Tetragrammaton (or the name of God: Yod – He – Vau - He), as are the four groups in the minor arcana.  For each suite there is a Knight (Yod - primal male energy, fire), Queen (He - receptive female energy, water), Prince (Vau - secondry male energy, air) and Princess (He - secondary female energy, earth).

The Knight is usually represented astride a mount of some sort and represents the element of fire.  For instance the Knight of Cups represents the fiery or active aspect of the suite that he belongs to, be it wands, cups, swords or discs.  The Queen is usually depicted enthroned and she represents the element of water or receptivity and the transmission of energy.  The Prince can be seen driving a chariot of some sort.  He represents airy aspects of whichever suite he belongs to.  Last of the court cards is the Princess.  She represents the earthy aspects of the suite she belongs to, signifying the crystallization or completion of the cycle. 

The 40 minor arcana number ten in each suite and are concerned with quantity.  They relate to the ten spheres (or Sephiroth) on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.  The Ace represents the Crown (Kether) and is that particular aspect in its purest form of spirit.  Gradually one then works down the cards to the tenth Sephiroth which is known as Malkuth, which concerns itself with the things of the flesh and this earth or matter.  Examples of how this works would be that the Ace of Cups represents the purest form of emotion or love The Ten of Discs can represent the complete satisfaction of completion, perhaps of a job, or a financial transaction.  All the numerals descend from the unity of one to the ultimate division of ten, and are all but different aspects of that same element.

The cards are in essence a pictographic key or alphabet, that when drawn in random order, can deliver a limitless range of meanings, exactly the way we manage to combine the 26 letters and 10 digits that can be used to express quality and quantity in the English language.  They work together almost like a book that you can open every day in a different place to gain a new piece of wisdom!  The same cards have different meanings, according to how they are laid out or “dignified” by the other cards around them, or depending on the type of questions that are asked during a reading.

There is an abundance of information available about Tarot cards.  A good place to start is on the Internet.  When using search engines like Google or Yahoo, one always has to practice caution with the information that is found.  Quantity is not always quality… And there is a lot of hogwash to wade through. The benefits here are that you have a wide array of sources to follow through on.  If you are interested in a particular Tarot deck, you can not only track it down within ten minutes, but you can dredge up information on its creator, when it was first published and a couple of reviews to boot.

A trip to the local general- or esoteric bookstore can overwhelm one with options.  There is a lot that has been written about the Tarot, and there are many new books on the shelves that distract the eye.  A good piece of advice for the beginner is to start at the most obvious place, which is right at the beginning, with the very first literature that was written on the subject.  Perhaps the most simple and comprehensive piece of literature available today is A.E. Waite’s “Pictorial Key to the Tarot”.  For those who wish to dig deeper, “The Book of Thoth” by Aleister Crowley is an essential key to any Tarot literature.  Both these books have a corresponding deck of cards to work with.  It is important to avoid books that try to make it too simple, as much of the real information will be lacking.

Having a mentor to teach one is also helpful.  If you are serious about learning more about the cards, take some time out and speak to some people who are experienced in using the cards.  There is no hard-and-fast rule as to what works best with the Tarot.  Everyone develops a method, or chooses a particular deck to work with, and gains a system and a familiarity with the cards that is peculiar to them. Even the experts disagree on the way it should be used and what the cards mean.

There’s an old myth that it is bad luck to purchase your own deck and that it has to be given to you as a gift.  Don’t let that stop you.  Go out and look around.  It’s best to start with a deck that is fairly basic (like the famous Rider-Waite deck) and then to move onto one that you prefer, whether for aesthetic or symbolic reasons.  Most bookshops will be able to order the cards in for you from their suppliers if they don’t already hold some in stock.  A good old-fashioned search on the Internet can’t harm either, if you have a credit card handy.

As a beginner, it’s probably better to steer away from the themed decks that are lurking around.  Learning to read Tarot cards is a lot like learning to read and write a spoken language.  It’s best to start on something plain, which will be easier to read than something decorative.  Correspondingly, decks with such alluring themes like dragons or faeries may obscure the original meaning of the card.

Once you’ve got your cards and a good guide to reading the cards, start familiarizing yourself with perhaps one or more card per day, drawn randomly.  Start visualizing how they inter-relate.  Make notes and start practicing different ways of laying out the cards. A very simple way of starting is by first meditating the question that is on your mind, shuffling the cards and then laying out three cards at random.  Start by laying out the middle card, then a card immediately to it’s left and then right.

The middle card represents the nature of the question, and the cards on either side qualify or describe the middle card.  Read up on each card thoroughly and then see how they relate to each other.  The symbols and the combination of their descriptions will work together in helping you to gather their meanings intuitively.  There are many methods of laying down the cards.  Investigate these methods and develop system that works for you.

Whether or not foretelling the future is a possibility, the cards are definitely a very valuable aid to anyone seeking a means of reflection.  They  become almost a way for our subconscious will to manifest itself, outlining current thoughts and the potential consequences of actions that can be taken (along with the reasoning behind them).  One of the other joys of being able to successfully read the Tarot, is the pleasure of helping other people who seek its advice.  Seeing faces light up when you hit upon a truth is a wonderful feeling!

A final word: There is no such thing as an evil card.  Cards’ meanings do not get subverted when they are turned around.  Every card in the Tarot deck has a positive as well as a negative outcome. It’s all in the way that the one read the cards, and as one reads the cards, through the years you’ll discover even more subtle shades of meaning that will never fail to astound you.

Permission has kindly been given by the Author for ORRAR to use this material, so please do not copy or duplicate unless you have permission from Saffron van Helsdingen Brink.

 

Sources and Credits:
Priestess Saffron van Helsdingen Brink

 

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