Osho Zen Tarot Card Book

by Alyce Howell

  The little kid in this card is standing on a side of a gateway, seeing through it. He is so tiny, and so influenced that he can’t get through gate that he can’t see the chain on the gate is unlocked; he just needs to open it.

  Every time we feel left-out, or omitted, it makes us feel very small, abandoned child. It is not shocking, as the sentiment is intensely rooted in our initial childhood experiences. The difficulty is that, because it is so intensely rooted, it shows over and over again, like a recorded tape, in our lives.

  You have a chance now to halt this tape, to quit upsetting yourself with thoughts that you are somewhat you don’t deserve to be accepted and involved. Identify the roots of this emotional state in the past, and let it go. It will bring you the precision to look how you can wide open the gateway and move into which you most longed for.

  6 of Rainbows: Compromise

  In the court of law of primeval Japan, the male helpers were usually designated from the ranks of trivial criminals who were gelded. Because of their close familiarity with the actions of the court, they were normally at the middle of the political and public machinations and exercised a big deal of authority behind the acts.

  The two characters on this card remind us of the corrupt and conspiratorial circumstances we can face when we compromise our own reality. It is one point to meet other halfway, to comprehend something unlike from our own and work for the concord of the opposing powers. It is pretty another to cave-in and deceive our own truth. If we gaze sincerely into it, we often discover that we are attempting to achieve something—whether it is command or the support of others. If you are lured, be careful: the results of such sort of compromise always leave an unpleasant flavor in the mouth.

  7 of Rainbows: Patience

  There are moments when the only you can do is to patient. The seed has been sowed, the baby is developing in the womb, the oyster is covering the granule of sand and turning it into a precious pearl.

  This card gives an indication that now is a moment when all that is needed is to be just attentive, easy-going, waiting. The female pictured here is sitting with such an outlook. Satisfied, without any trace of worry, she is only waiting. Through all the stages of the moon moving overhead she stays patient, tuned with the beats of the moon that she has virtually turn one with it. She is aware that it is a moment to be reflexive, letting environment take its progression. But she is nor asleep neither unresponsive; she knows it is moment to be prepared for something significant. It is a moment filled with enigmatic, like the moment before the sun rise. It is a moment when the only she can do is to be patient.

  8 of Rainbows: Ordinariness

  This character walking in landscape demonstrates us that beauty can be observed in the simple, regular stuffs of life. We so simply take this lovely world we reside in for granted. Dusting the house, nurturing the garden, making a meal—the most ordinary things take on a blessed quality when they are done with your whole contribution, with affection, and just for the sake of doing, without expecting any credit or reward.

  You are in a phase now when this comfortable, normal and absolutely ordinary attitude to the circumstances you face will bring much improved outcomes than any effort on your part to be vivid, ingenious, or otherwise exceptional. Don’t think of making headlines by discovering the modern widget, or astounding your friends and family with your exceptional star quality. The extraordinary gift you can give now by only taking things effortlessly and modestly, one footstep at a time.

  9 of Rainbows: Ripeness

  When the fruit ripens, it fells from the tree. One instant it swings by a strand from the twigs of the tree, filled with juices. The next instant it falls—not due to forced fall, or it made any attempt to jump, but because the bush has realized its readiness and just let it go.

  This card indicates that you are prepared to share your internal treasures, your 'nectar'. All you have to do is ease right now where you are, and let it happen. This giving out of yourself, this illustration of your ingenuity, can come in numerous ways—in your job, your relations, your routine life involvements. No specific planning or exertion on your part is needed. It is just the right moment.

  Page of Rainbows: Adventure

  When we are truthfully in an essence of adventure, we walk just like this kid. Filled with trust, out of the gloom of the forest into the spectral of the light, we move step by step, illustrated by our feeling of wonder into the mysterious. Adventure doesn’t have anything to do with preparation and plans and agendas and organization.

  This card indicates a quality that can come to us anytime—at home or in the workplace, in the wilds or in the city, in an innovative project or in our dealings with others. Whenever we travel into the new and unfamiliar with the naive spirit of a kid, pure and open and susceptible, even the tiniest things of life can turn into biggest adventures.

  Knight of Rainbows: Slowing Down

  The cards indicates that just like a tortoise, we take our home with us everywhere we go. There is no hurry, don’t have to look for shelter somewhere. Even as we go into the deepness of the emotional seawaters, we can stay self-contained and away from affections. It is a moment when you are prepared to let go of all hopes you have had regarding yourself or others, and to take charge for any misconceptions you may have been clutching. There is no necessity to do something but relax in the richness of who you have presently.

  If longings and expectations and dreams are vanishing away, then it’s much better. Their fading is creating place for a fresh quality of silence and reception of what is, and you are receptive to welcome this change in a pathway you were not able to before. Relish this excellence of slowing down, of coming to relaxation and realizing that you are now home.

  Queen of Rainbows: Flowering

  In this card there is a beautiful plant which has extended to the peak of its blossoming and its colors. She is very sensual, very lively, and filled with opportunities. She is snapping her fingers to the love music, and her zodiac necklet is positioned in a way that Venus sits over her heart. The sleeves of her dress comprises of abundant seeds, and as the wind flows the seeds are scattering to take root where they can. She is not worried whether they fall on the mud or on the rocks—she is simply dispersing them all over in pure festivity of life and love. Flower are falling over her, in accord with her own blossoming, and the seawaters of emotion twirl bouncily under the flower on which she rests.

  You may feel like a lawn of flowers presently, rained with blessings from all over. Greet the bees, call the birds to have your syrup. Share your joy with all.

  King of Rainbows: Abundance

  This character in this card is the portrait of a complete man, who drinks wine, dances on the seashore and sings in the rain, and at the same moment adore the deepness of thoughts and knowledge that belong to the wise. In one of the hand he grips a lotus, proving that he admires and encloses within himself the elegance of the femininity. His bare chest (a receptive heart) and calm belly demonstrates that he is at his home with his manliness as well, utterly contented.

  The four main elements - earth, water, fire and sky all around Rainbow King who is seated at the top of the book of knowledge of life. If you are a female, the Rainbow King conveys the support of your own masculine vitalities into your life, a unification with the soulmate eternally. For a male, this card signifies a moment to break through the conservative manly stereotypes and letting the ampleness of the complete human being to sheen forth.

  Osho Zen Tarot

  Minor Arcana: Suit of Water

  Ace of Water: Going With the Flow

  The person in this card is totally relaxed and at comfort in the water, permitting it take him where it can. He has learned the art of becoming reflexive and open without being gloomy or tired. He is just open to the streams of life, without any thoughts of saying "I dislike that," or "I wish to go another pathway."

  Every instant in life we have an option whether to go into life's water and sail, or to attempt to s
wim up-stream. This card that you are capable of floating now, believing that life will back you up in your easing and take you precisely where it desires you to go. Let this feeling of faith and ease to develop more and more; all is happening precisely as it should be.

  2 of Water: Friendliness

  The twigs of these two blossoming trees are tangled, and their dropped petals merge together on the soil in their lovely colors. It is as if paradise and earth are joined by love. But they are standing individually, both rooted in the ground in their own bond with the earth. In this manner they signify the core of true friendship grown-up, relaxed with each other, ordinary. There is no insistence about their linking, no requirement and no wish to modify the other into something different.

  This card point towards the willingness to move in the eminence of friendliness. In the way, you might observe that you are no more interested in any sort of drama and passions that others are involved in. It is not a shortfall. It is the foundation of a greater, more adoring quality born of the ampleness of experience. It is the beginning of a love which is actually unconditional, with no expectations or burdens.

  3 of Water: Celebration

  These three females dancing in the rain and the storm reminds us that celebration doesn’t depend on external conditions. We don’t have to wait for a special outing or a formal event, nor an unclouded and sunny day. Real celebration comes from a happiness which is initially experienced internally, and falls into an overspill of song and dance and enjoyment, and surely, even teardrops of gratefulness.

  This card directs that you are turning more and more open and open to the various prospects which can be celebrated in life, and can be shared with others. Forget about planning a party. Just relax, take off your shoes off and start jumping in the ponds right now. The celebration is right now everywhere, every instant!

  4 of Water: Turning In

  The lady in this card has a faded smile on her lips. In fact she is only observing the tricks of the mind—not arbitrating, not attempting to stop them, not recognized, just observing as if they are like traffic on the street, or ripples of a pond. And the tricks of the brain are somewhat amusing, as it bounces up and down and rotates this way and the other, attempting to divert your attention and lure you into the game.

  To build up the ability of creating a distance from the brain is one of the biggest boons. This is what meditating is all about—not reciting a mantras, or resaying an affirmation, but only observing, as if the brain belongs to someone else. You are prepared to detach now, and to see the show without getting trapped in the play. Pamper yourself in the simple liberty of Turning In any time you can, and the ability of meditation will develop and expand inside you.

  5 of Water: Clinging to the Past

  The character in this card is so engrossed with grasping her box of memories that she has turned her back and can’t see the sparkly champagne goblet of blessings. Her longings from the past has blocked her head and made her a beggar, as it appears from her patch up and shabby clothes. She doesn’t have to be a beggar but she is not willing to try the leisure that propose themselves right now.

  It's the moment to face the reality that past is a history, and any attempt to repeat it is a certain means to stay trapped in old plans that you might have already expanded if you had not been so occupied hanging to what you have previously been through. Just relax and get your head out of the box and tie it up with a beautiful paper if you can, and say goodbye. Life is short, and you are on a risk of turning into ashes before your time!

  6 of Water: The Dream

  One day you will meet your soulmate, the perfectionist who will meet all your requirements and fulfill all your desires. Correct? Incorrect! This fiction that authors and poets write about has its origins in reminiscences of the womb, where we felt so safe and one with our mommies; it's no surprise we have longed to go back to that place all our lives. But, to put it rather heartlessly, it is a silly dream. And it's wonderful we hold on to it so obstinately in the face of truth.

  No one, whether it's your existing partner or a partner from dreams in the future, has any compulsion to bring happiness in your life—nor can they even if they wish to. True love comes not from attempting to fulfill our requirements by depending on someone, but by growing our own internal abundance and maturity. Then we have ample of love to shower which will certainly draw our soulmates towards us.

  7 of Water: Projections

  The male and female in this card are fronting each other, but they are unable to look at each other clearly. Both are projecting a picture they have created in their minds, hiding the actual face of the each other they are looking at.

  Most of us get trapped in projecting pictures of our own creation onto the circumstances and persons surrounding us. It occurs when we are not entirely aware of our own outlooks, needs and opinions; instead of taking charge for them and maintaining them, we try to compare them with others. A projection can be evil or godly, upsetting or calming, but it is a projection—a mist which prevents us from viewing truth as it is. The way out is to identify the game. When you realize that you are judging someone, turn it other way: Does what you observe in others truly belong to you? Is your sight clear, or shadowed by what you wish to see?

  8 of Water: Letting Go

  In this card leaves of lotus with the morning dew, we can notice in the ripples in the water which was caused by just fallen drop. It is a priceless moment, and one which is filled with poignancy. Surrendering itself to gravity and sliding off the lotus leaf, the dewdrop loses its earlier identity and blend with the immensity of the water beneath. We can picture that it should have shivered before it dropped, right on the verge of the known and the mysterious.

  This card is a gratitude that something is over, something is ending. Whatsoever it is—a job, a relation, a house you have treasured, something that would have helped you to describe who you are—it is moment to let go of it, permitting any sorrow but not struggling to hold on. Something better is waiting for you, fresh dimensions are there to be open. You have cross a point of no restoration and gravity is doing its job. Go with the flow—it signifies liberation.

  9 of Water: Laziness

  This wealthy man thinks he made it big. He rests on his giant over-puffed chair, sporting his shades and pink slippers, and holding his drink in hand. He has no energy to get-up and do something because he feels he has already done it. He is unaware that the glasses around is cracking, a definite sign that the place he feels he has at last reached to is about to destroy in front of his very eyes.

  This card indicates that a poolside resort is not your ultimate destination. The voyage doesn’t end here, as that white birdie soar into the limitlessness of the skies is trying to indicate. Your satisfaction would have risen from an actual sense of accomplishment, but now it is the phase to move on. It doesn’t matter how comfortable the slippers are, how refreshing the drink is, there is skies over skies still awaiting to be discovered.

  10 of Water: Harmony

  The feeling of relaxing in the heart during meditation is not something that can be seized or voluntary. It comes by itself, as we mature more and more in tune with the beats of our own innermost silences. The character on this card replicates the harmony and gracefulness of this feeling. The dolphins which arise from the heart and create an arch in the direction of the third eye imitate the playfulness and intellect that comes when we are capable of connecting with the heart and travel into the world from there.

  Be easygoing and more open now, because an indescribable pleasure is waiting for you around the corner. No one else can point it out for you, and when you discover it you will not be able to express it in words to other people. But it is there, hidden in your heart, prepared and ready to be revealed.

  Page of Water: Understanding

  The bird is watching out from what looks like a cage. There is no door and the railings are fading. The railings were a deception, and this little bird is being bade by the beauty and lib
erty and inspiration of the others. It is stretching its wings, all set to fly in the sky for the very first time.

  The beginning of a fresh understanding—that the cage had no door, and the skies has been there for us to explore always – which can make us feel a slightly unsteady at first. It is okay, and natural to be unsteady, but don't let it outshine the prospect to experience the cheerfulness and escapade on offer, just there together with the unsteadiness. Go with the pleasantness and calmness of this moment. Experience the waving within. Open your wings and set yourself free.

  Knight of Water: Trust

  Now is the time to jump without a rope! And it is this excellence of absolute faith, without hesitations or secret security nets which the Water Knight needs from us. There is a wonderful sense of excitement if we can jump and travel into the mysterious, even if the idea frights us to death. And when we take faith to the height of the significant leap, we don't create any detailed plans or arrangements. We don't think that, "Ok, I believe that I know what to do next, and I'll resolve my stuffs and pack my baggage and take it along." No, we simply jump, with barely any thoughts for what will happen next.