by Mark Horn
As I deepened my Jewish studies and my learning in Kabbalah, I realized it was time to go back and finally begin to look at the correspondences with the tarot cards. I realized that I could use tarot cards to do the special Kabbalistic meditations practiced during the period of Counting the Omer.
I started sharing my experience of Counting the Omer online each year, on a blog I called Another Queer Jewish Buddhist. I wrote about using the cards with the Omer count as a kind of a spiritual MRI for inner exploration. Doing this revealed issues I tried to hide, even from myself, and it uncovered gifts I didn’t even know I had. Working with the cards in this way brought me to new depths of understanding in the tarot, in Judaism, and, of course, in myself. And because I shared my personal struggles in this practice publicly, many people who read my posts online felt a connection and wrote me with questions about how to use the cards in their own Omer practice. Which is, of course, what led me to write this book.
Counting the Omer using tarot and Kabbalistic meditation is a journey that you can take too, whether you’re Jewish or not. This book will serve as a guide, whether you do it during the traditional period between Passover and Pentecost or for any forty-nine-day period you choose. Because this has been part of my path, as I give examples of how to use the cards in the daily practice, I reveal many of my own struggles and triumphs. I hope this inspires you to follow suit and use this practice as an opportunity to explore deeply within. My wish is that it brings you deep peace, a heart of compassion, spiritual strength, and the blessing of experiencing the Divine light that always surrounds and supports us.
MARK HORN
NEW YORK CITY
GATESOFLIGHTTAROT.COM
Kabbalah, Tarot Cards, and Counting the Omer—What’s This All About?
THIS BOOK IS AN UNORTHODOX GUIDE through the forty-nine-day mystical practice known as Counting the Omer—an ancient Jewish ritual that is observed between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (also known as Pentecost). As practiced by Kabbalists, the ritual is designed to refine the soul in preparation for spiritual revelation. It creates a psycho-spiritual inner journey that follows the path of the ancient Israelites from the moment of their physical freedom from slavery in Egypt to the moment of their spiritual freedom when they received the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. You can take this inner journey yourself; it’s a powerful practice that can help you change your life for the better and open you to a closer relationship with the Divine.
This book will guide you along the path, drawing on teachings in the Torah, the Talmud, and other Jewish sources, including concepts and meditations from traditional Kabbalistic texts. What makes it unorthodox is that it uses correspondences between these concepts and the underlying structure of the tarot deck to deepen your experience of this mystical practice through reflection, contemplation, and specific meditations. We’ll also be making stops along the way for insights from Christianity, Buddhism, and other wisdom traditions, both Eastern and Western, to help open our minds and hearts to the wonder of all being.
While Counting the Omer is an age-old practice, it is also a living tradition. Today many Jews continue to use the period between Passover and Shavuot for study and meditation as a way of finding their spiritual center—learning to hear and align their will with Divine will. So can anyone do this? The answer is a resounding yes. As the old advertising campaign for Levy’s Rye Bread proclaimed, “You don’t have to be Jewish.” In fact, the early Christians adapted and transformed this practice to follow the arc of the spiritual journey as they experienced it from Easter to Pentecost.
Whether you identify as Jewish or Christian (or even, like me, as Jewish-Buddhist), you can indeed experience the benefits of this path. You just have to be willing to take the steps of this forty-nine-day spiritual journey. But before you start, you’ll need a map of the territory:
The origins and meaning of the original Omer practice and how it has evolved over time into a Kabbalistic meditation,
An essential explanation of the Kabbalistic concepts at the heart of the meditation,
An exploration of how those concepts correspond to the structure of the tarot deck, and
A guide on how to work with the cards and the Sephirot over the course of forty-nine days in preparation for an experience of personal revelation on the fiftieth day.
If you do the work, at the end of this period, you can experience profound changes in all your relationships, and you will find a stronger, deeper connection to the Divine in your life. After counting the forty-nine days of the Omer, you’ll know how to make every day count for the rest of your life.
THE FORTY-NINE STEPS OF SPIRITUAL REFINEMENT
How long does it take to make an important change in life? Sure, some of us are capable of overnight change, but for most of us, making a major change to the direction and compass of our lives takes time and practice. You might want to change a bad habit or build up the discipline to start a daily spiritual practice. You may want to break free of an addiction or overcome negative thinking. You might need time to consider a new direction in life or to heal from a personal tragedy. Whatever your motivation, the many wisdom traditions of humanity offer a wide range of effective practices for personal and spiritual growth. One that has resonated for me personally is the forty-nine-day period known in the Jewish tradition as Counting the Omer, culminating on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, also known as Pentecost, the fiftieth day.
Pentecost is the Greek word that Hellenized Jews used to name this period of observance because it simply means “fifty days.” If you’re Christian, you may know Pentecost as the first time the Holy Spirit descended on a group of Jesus’s disciples, including the apostles. What both traditions share is the connection between Pentecost and revelation. Whatever tradition you come from, this forty-nine-day period of reflection and meditation is a spiritual discipline that can bring great benefit.
HOW A BIBLICAL COMMANDMENT TURNED INTO A KABBALISTIC MEDITATION
Originally, this forty-nine-day period was part of the liturgical calendar of sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem three thousand years ago. In Judaism, the Counting of the Omer is one of the 613 Biblical commandments:
And you shall count from the day after the sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf offering; seven weeks shall there be complete; to the day after the seventh week shall you shall count fifty days; and you shall present a new offering of grain to YHVH.1
During this period, the ancient Israelites were commanded to bring an omer (a unit of measure approximately 3.5 liters that is sometimes translated as a “sheaf”) of the new barley harvest to the Temple every day as an offering. It was an agricultural holiday, giving thanks for the first harvest and offering a portion of it as a sacrifice in the hope that the next harvest (of wheat) would be a good one.
Today most of us aren’t growing any barley, and there hasn’t been a temple in Jerusalem since the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE. Without a temple, it’s impossible to carry out any commandments focused on temple practice. This is where the oral Torah and the Jewish mystical tradition come in. Besides the written Torah with its many commandments, there was also an oral tradition that was passed down from teacher to teacher, generation to generation. According to the Mishnah*1, this tradition of transmission began with Moses: “Moses received the Torah on Sinai, and handed it down to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly.”2
The oral tradition included accounts of mystical practices that, over time, developed into the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. Kabbalah simply means “received,” and it is used to mean the knowledge of Jewish esoteric teachings and meditation practices that were transmitted orally from teacher to student. Sometimes it also refers to knowledge that was received through direct revelation and then passed down. The earliest writing that is considered to be a Kabbalistic text is the Sefer Yetzirah; the date of its origin is disputed, but it has been narrowe
d down to somewhere between the second century BCE and the second century CE.
The Sefer Yetzirah is the first written reference to one of the essential concepts in Kabbalah: the ten Sephirot, which are central to the practice of Counting the Omer:
In two and thirty most occult and wonderful paths of wisdom
did YHVH the Lord of Hosts engrave his name. . . .
Ten . . . are the Sephiroth, and twenty-two the letters,
these are the Foundation of all things.3
When you practice Counting the Omer, you will work to draw down the Divine energies known as the Sephirot in a practice of purification and meditation designed to strengthen your spiritual container. This will gradually open any spiritual blockages so you can feel the Divine flow that is always available to us. The forty-nine steps work in a graduated order, in a kind of spiritual workout regimen, day by day. It is designed to prepare you for a more direct experience of the Divine on the fiftieth day.
The oral tradition of Judaism also teaches that it was not only Moses who received the Torah on the mountaintop. Every Israelite standing at the foot of the mountain also received their own revelation, making the event at Sinai both a uniquely individual and a communal encounter with the Divine. The oral tradition also teaches that the soul of every Jew—past and future—was also present at the foot of Mt. Sinai. And because the fiftieth day is the day the Torah was given to the people, the holiday of Shavuot is also known as the birthday of the Torah.
So for the Jewish mystics, even though there was no longer a temple where the people could offer their omer of barley in sacrifice, it was meaningful (and, as a commandment, essential) for Jews to continue Counting the Omer symbolically as a practice of spiritually reexperiencing the journey of Exodus from the first moment of freedom in Egypt to the revelation at Sinai. Today there are several books that observant Jews use to guide them through the practice.
The main part of this book is also a guide through this forty-nine-day practice, with the difference of using tarot cards to deepen your experience of the Sephirotic energies of each day and as an aid for your daily reflection and contemplation.
THE ADOPTION AND ADAPTATION OF PENTECOST BY THE EARLY CHRISTIANS
For Christians, the genesis of their observance of Pentecost finds its origin in the New Testament, Acts 2:1–6, which recounts the story of the first Pentecost prayer gathering after the Crucifixion in the same “upper room” where the Last Supper was held. It was fifty days after Passover. Present were the apostles, Mary, and Jesus’s brothers, along with several women whose names aren’t given. While the names of those women, like so many other women in the Bible, remain unknown, the message that the Holy Spirit can come to anyone regardless of gender comes through loud and clear, because the Holy Spirit descended on all of them, and everyone began speaking in a language they didn’t know.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at the sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.4
Just as Jesus had been proclaimed the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies of a messiah, the Apostle Peter proclaimed this event to be the fulfillment of the words of prophecy in Joel:
I will pour out My spirit on all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.5
The apostles and their followers were engaged in a traditional Pentecost eve prayer vigil. After all, they still identified as Jews, and their experience of personal and communal revelation was simply a renewal and reinterpretation of the Jewish tradition.
Following their experience of the descent of the Holy Spirit, Peter used Joel’s prophecy as evidence that from this point on, revelation was not only available on Shavuot, but on every day continuously. In fact, Jews believe that God is pouring forth Sephirotic energies into existence continuously, so that creation is renewed and revelation is available to us every second. By attuning yourself to this energy and strengthening your container, you can have a deeper and more direct experience of it. Peter took this further to proclaim this revelation is available to everyone, Jew and Gentile, man and woman.6 This first celebration of Pentecost after the Crucifixion, with its own distinct experience of revelation, has come to be known in some Christian traditions as the birthday of the Church, because those who began speaking “in tongues” went out to spread the Gospel on the streets of Jerusalem to Jews from other countries in their native language.
In the early Church, the period between Easter Sunday and Pentecost was known as Eastertide, and the entire fifty-day period was celebrated as a single feast. In medieval and Renaissance Italy, it was the custom to drop red rose petals from the ceiling of the church to reenact the “tongues of flame” that descended on the apostles with the Holy Spirit.*2 To this day in the Roman Catholic Church, each Sunday between Easter and Pentecost has its own title and theme connecting to the Resurrection.
In recent years, Roman Catholics have taken on the practice of the Via Lucis, the Stations of the Resurrection. This fifty-day practice of meditation and devotional prayer is based on the scripturally recorded appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection and before the Ascension through to the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The tradition of all-night prayer vigils the night before Pentecost continues to this day in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, where a liturgical book known as the Pentecostarion has been in use for centuries and continues to be the focus of communal worship during this fifty-day period.
While most modern Christians are unaware of the spiritual dimension of this fifty-day period, leaders in some Protestant denominations have been working to reinvigorate the customs of this ancient practice.7 In Western denominations such as the Anglicans and Lutherans, only the Night Prayer is recited on Pentecost eve.
THE TIKKUN PRAYER VIGIL
In Jewish communities, the ritual of a prayer vigil the night before Pentecost evolved into what is known today as a Tikkun Leil Shavuot. As it has evolved from its origins among Jewish mystics, the ritual goes from sunset throughout the night until sunrise. Today many congregations continue to observe this ritual, studying the Torah and Kabbalistic texts that celebrate Divine union: the marriage of the people of Israel to God with the Torah serving as the ketubah (wedding contract). The morning service that follows has a wedding canopy (called a chuppah) over the altar.
One example of such a vigil is the story of Rabbi Joseph Caro, one of the most respected rabbis and Kabbalists of the mid-1500s. He had invited Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz to his home for a Tikkun Leil Shavuot, and in the course of study that evening Rabbi Caro spoke in the voice of the Angel of the Mishnah.8 Clearly, speaking in tongues on this holy day was not just a Christian experience. This angel was Caro’s mentor, and Caro credited the wisdom in his writings to what he learned from it. Caro said that his most famous work, the Shulchan Aruch, a manual of observance for the Orthodox Jew that is still used today, was written while he was channeling the Angel of the Mishnah and was not really his work at all.
Today millions of believers in these two Abrahamic traditions across millennia share a faith that this forty-nine-day period is important in preparation for personal revelation and Divine connection. Jews continue to Count the Omer and celebrate a Tikkun Leil Shavuot prayer vigil of study and meditation before Pentecost services the next morning, and many Christians use devotionals for special prayers between Easter and Pentecost, with some denominations still observing the all-night prayer vigil. This shared belief creates a morphic field with a vibratory resonance that helps to unlock our in
ner pathways to the Divine. When you use this period of seven weeks plus one day following Passover or Easter for inner work, you tap into this energy.
Of course, the Jewish celebration of Counting the Omer and Shavuot do not exactly line up with the Christian celebration of the Eastertide season. Since the Jewish calendar is lunar, the dates that Passover and Shavuot are celebrated rarely align with the Christian calendar, even though Easter and Pentecost are also movable feasts. But often there is enough of an overlap to make this time in spring most auspicious to begin your practice.
That doesn’t mean you couldn’t start this practice at any time, since tradition holds that revelation is available and the Torah is given at every moment. However, I believe that if you choose to do it when so many millions of others on the planet are doing similar work in different ways, you’ll get a booster shot of spiritual energy to help you on the way.
KABBALAH, CABALA, AND QABALAH
The Kabbalah is not a book; it’s one strand of the Jewish mystical tradition that encompasses many books, the most famous of which is the Zohar (The Book of Splendor). Kabbalah also includes oral teachings that have never been written down. The word Kabbalah is best translated as “received tradition.” Kabbalistic writings and practices were secret, reserved for initiates only, and one of those practices was the esoteric meditation during the Counting of the Omer.
The reason we know about the Sephirotic “drawing-down” (meshikhah) meditations that were practiced during the forty-nineday period is because a well-known member of the circle of Spanish Kabbalists living in the thirteenth century, Rabbi Azriel of Girona, wrote about them.9 Azriel was one of the most influential Kabbalists of his day, but he was reprimanded by his own teacher, Rabbi Isaac the Blind, who sent a letter to the Kabbalists in Girona demanding that their teachings be kept secret and not written down.10 We don’t know how Azriel felt about this, but we do know he obeyed his teacher, because from that point on he stopped writing down any of these teachings.
