by Paul Greer
Benebell Wen, Holistic Tarot: An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2015), pp. 4-5, 15.
Thomas Saunders, The Authentic Tarot: Discovering Your Inner Self (London: Watkins Publishing, 2007), p. xxv.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Freedom Wherever We Go: A Buddhist Monastic Code for the Twenty-First Century (California: Parallax Press, 2004), p. 58.
See for example Arthur Rosengarten, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Minnesota: Paragon House, 2000).
This reflects what Mary Greer describes as the Magical style of Tarot practice. This involves focusing upon the highest potential suggested in any given card, and employing techniques to begin change towards those potentials. The cards themselves function primarily as meditational aids in the process, and provide the means of a “breakthrough” towards realizing a “desired possibility.” See Mary K. Greer, Tarot Mirrors: Reflections of Personal Meaning (California: Newcastle Publishing, 1988), p. 38.
Rosengarten, op. cit., p. 65.
C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol.9i: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), para. 89.
Joseph Campbell and Richard Roberts, Tarot Revelations, third edition (San Anselmo, CA: Vernal Equinox Press, 1987/1979), p. 43.
C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 10: Civilization in Transition, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), para. 431.
ibid., para. 512.
C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962/1933), p. 235.
C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 5: Symbols of Transformation, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), para. 336.
Anthony Storr, Jung (London: Fontana Press, 1986/1973), p. 89.
This of course is not to suggest that there are no other ways to read a Tarot card. Many practitioners adopt “psychic,” “intuitive,” “gestalt” and other approaches to the cards, relying upon personal insights and feelings over Jungian interpretations.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, commemorative edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004/1949), p. 28.
ibid., p. 32.
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology (Middlesex: Penguin, 1985/1962), pp. 253ff.
Joseph Goldstein, “The Example of the Buddha,” accessed October 23 2016, http://tricycle.org/magazine/the-example-of-the-buddha/.
Eden Gray, A Complete Guide to the Tarot (New York: Bantam, 1972/1970), p. 228.
Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom – A book of Tarot (London: Element, 1997/ 1980), pp. 22-3.
F. Max Muller, trans., Max Fausboll, trans., Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 10: The Dhammapada and Sutta Nipata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), accessed October 21 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1014.htm.
Dzogchen Ponlop, Rebel Buddha: A Guide to a Revolution of Mind (Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, 2010), p. 39.
Adrian Chan-Wyles, “Carl Jung and Buddhism,” accessed October 22 2016, https://thesanghakommune.org/2013/04 /18/carl-jung-buddhism/. For a more negative appraisal of the Jung-Buddhism relationship, relating specifically to a perceived Jungian misappropriation of Buddhist doctrines and concepts, see Donald S. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999/1998).
Rosengarten, op. cit., p. 160.
Joan Bunning, Learning the Tarot (San Francisco: Weiser Books, 1998), p. 10.
The Fool (0)
Campbell and Roberts, Tarot Revelations, p. 68.
See for example Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 27, and Amber Jayanti, Living the Tarot (Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 1993), p. 21.
Place, Mandala of Cards, p. 135.
Lama Thubten Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra: A Vision of Totality (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1989/1987), p. 116.
Gene Reeves, trans., The Lotus Sutra (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008), p. 296.
Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs, p. 100.
Yeshe, op. cit., pp. 15-6.
Gene Reeves, The Stories of the Lotus Sutra (Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications, 2010), p. 207.
Pollack, op. cit., p. 26.
Deepak Chopra, Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment, (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 27.
Muller, The Dhammapada, accessed October 18 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1007.htm
J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, second edition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971/1962), p. 112.
Mary K. Greer, 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (Minnesota: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2014/2006), p. 1.
Thick Nhat Hahn, Melvin McLeod, ed. The Pocket Thich Nhat Hahn (Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2012), p. 94.
Richard Gardner, The Tarot Speaks (London: Tandem, 1974/1971), p. 136. For the most part, Gardner’s work comes across as the genuine article, lunging violently in stream-of-consciousness style between the millennial, the incomprehensible, and the deeply libidinous. Yet hidden within the clutter are a number of gems of penetrating insight, some of which will be revealed as our inquiry progresses.
Shen Hui, Sermon on Sudden Awakening, in E. A. Burtt, ed. The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (New York: Mentor, 1982/1955), pp. 234-5.
Huang-Po’s Sermon from “Treatise on the Essentials of the Transmission of Mind” in Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, trans., Manual of Zen Buddhism (1934), accessed October 18 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mzb/mzb04.htm.
Marcus Katz & Tali Goodwin, Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot (Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2015), p. 118.
See Gene Reeves’ commentary on this parable, The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p. 108.
The Way of The World:
From The Magician to The Chariot
Introduction
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, pp. 22, 43.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, New Woman/New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), p. 204.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), p. 22.
Beth, “Fool’s Journey: What Makes a ‘Feminist’ Tarot?” accessed October 18 2016, http://www.autostraddle.com/fools-journey-what-makes-a-feminist-tarot-350230/.
The Magician (1)
From the Jataka Introduction in Henry Clarke Warren, trans., Buddhism in Translations (New York: Atheneum, 1987/1896), p. 5.
ibid., p. 15.
From the Majjhima Nikaya, quoted in Mircea Eliade, “Time and Eternity in Indian Thought,” in Ralph Manheim, trans., Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 173-200 (p. 188).
For more on the links between the lokapalas and the four elements see Benjamin Preciado-Solis, The Krsna Cycle in the Puranas: Themes and Motifs in a Heroic Saga (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984), pp. 63-4; see also the correspondence table in “Shitenno = Four Heavenly Kings,” accessed October 24 2016, www.onmarkproductions.com.
From a Chinese translation of the Mahapadana Sutta, discussed in Miriam Levering, “The Precocious Child in Chinese Buddhism” in Vanessa Sasson, ed., Little Buddhas: Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Text and Traditions (Oxford: Oxford Press, 2012), pp. 124-56 ( p. 133).
Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra, p. 140.
From the Samyutta Nikaya, discussed in Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, revised edition (London: Gordon Fraser, 1985/1959), p. 25. Before we accuse the Buddha of being a mere materialist here, we must remember that Buddhism denies the absolute nature of any khandha. Ultimately all things – including form – neither exist nor do not exist; this is the teaching of the middle path.
Muller, The Dhammapada, accessed October 24 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1003.htm.
The High Priestess (2)
I have utilized Rosengarten’s notion of the “Spectrum of Possibility” when approaching a number of the cards. This is the view that interpretations should take account of both the wide range of meanings that can be associated with the cards, including their oppositional qualities. I feel that this idea is of particular relevance to a Buddhist point of view, given that Buddhism is not only concerned with enlightenment, but also the processes which prevent us from attaining it. For Buddhists, the wisdom of Nirvana cannot be separated from ignorance of Samsara. See Rosengarten, Tarot and Psychology, p. 129.
Quoted in Martin McNamara, Targum and Testament Revisited: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible, second edition (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), pp. 148-9.
From The First Revelation of James in Marvin Meyer, ed., The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: the International Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 324-30 (p. 328).
From the Jataka Introduction in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 49.
Asvaghosa, E. B. Cowell, trans., Buddhacarita: Acts of the Buddha (USA: Createspace, 2015), 1: 54.
Warren, op. cit., p. 50.
Asvaghosa, op. cit., 1: 74, 77.
Alexander Berzin, “The 32 Major Marks of a Buddha's Physical Body,” accessed November 15 2016, http://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies/lam-rim/refuge/the-32-major-marks-of-a-buddha-s-physical-body.
From Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacaryavatara, in L. D. Barnett, The Path of Light (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1909), accessed October 24 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tpol/tpol11.htm.
Ayya Khema, Being Nobody Going Nowhere: Meditations on the Buddhist Path (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1987), p. 70.
See Buddhini, “Thich Nhat Hanh: Nirvana as the Cessation of Wrong Views, Wrong Perceptions and Suffering,” accessed October 24 2016, http://spiritualnotreligious.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/.
Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, p. 49.
Khema, op. cit., p. 22.
Quoted in Tom Lowenstein, The Vision of the Buddha (London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 1996), p. 65.
Edward Conze, trans., Buddhist Wisdom: The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra (New York: Vintage Books, 2001/1958), p. 97.
From the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, in E. B. Cowell, F. Max Muller and J. Takakusu, trans., Buddhist Mahayana Texts: Sacred Books of the East, Vol 49 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), accessed October 24 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe49/sbe4929.htm.
Conze, Buddhist Wisdom, p. 21.
Quoted in Daisaku Ikeda, Unlocking the Mysteries of Birth and Death … and Everything In Between (Santa Monica: Middleway Press, 2003), p. 123.
From Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacaryavatara, in L. D. Barnett, op. cit.
The Empress (3)
Sallie Nichols, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey (San Francisco: Weiser Books, 1984/1980), p. 103.
See Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, second edition, (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan Press, 1988/1957).
Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 45.
Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex & Politics, second edition (London: Unwin, 1990/1982), p. 10.
Hajo Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero (Maine: Samuel Weiser, 2000), p. 42.
Campbell, The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology, pp. 62, 17.
Simone de Beauvoir, H. M. Parshley, trans., The Second Sex (London: Picador, 1988/1949), esp. pp. 160, 108.
Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, second edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963/1958), pp. 110, 147.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Motherearth and the Megamachine: A Theology of Liberation in a Feminine, Somatic and Ecological Perspective” in Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 43-52 (p. 47).
For popular feminist readings of matrifocal culture, see Marija Gimbutus, “Women and Culture in Goddess-Oriented Old Europe” in Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Women’s Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 22-31; and Riane Eisler, “The Gaia Tradition and the Partnership Future: An Ecofeminist Manifesto” in Irene Diamond and Gloria Orenstein, eds., Reweaving the World: the Emergence of Ecofeminism (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1990), pp. 23-34. For feminist views on a matrifocal /patriarchal transition, see Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, 20th Anniversary Edition (San Francisco: Harper, 1999/1979); and Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, second edition, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper, 1991/1987). For critiques of this hypothesis, relating especially to the issue of historical veracity, see especially Mary Jo Weaver, “Who is the Goddess and Where Does She Get Us?” in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Spring 1989, 5:1, pp. 49-64. However, despite such criticisms, many feminists point out that the matrifocal hypothesis would in no way be compromised if there were definite proof that few matriarchies ever existed. Weaver is right when she argues that the hypothesis functions primarily as “utopian poetics” – a creative and imaginative reconstruction of the past that generates motivation for change and transformation in the present.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 1: 17, 20.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 46.
Asvaghosa, op. cit., 1: 25.
From The Diamond-Cutter Sutra, in Cowell et al., SBE: Buddhist Mahayana Texts, accessed October 24 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe49/sbe4929.htm.
See R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985/1962), p. 76.
Recounted in Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 106.
Lambert Schmithausen, “The Early Buddhist Tradition and Ecological Ethics” in Richard K. Payne, ed., How Much is Enough? Buddhism, Consumerism and the Human Environment (MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010), pp. 171-222 (p 197).
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p. 51. For a more recent example see John Halstead’s 2012 article “Why I Don’t Dig the Buddha” at www.patheos.com.
Robert A. F. Thurman, “Nagarjuna’s Guidelines” in Fred Eppsteiner, ed., The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism, second edition (California: Parallax Press, 1988/1985), pp. 120-44 (p. 127).
Ken Wilbur, Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution (Boston: Shambhala, 1986/1981), esp. pp. 7, 111, 133, 146, 147, 260.
See John Myrdhin Reynolds, “Kurrukulla: The Dakini of Magic and Enchantments,” accessed November 1 2016, http://vajranatha.com/teaching/Kurukulla.htmwww.vajranattha.com.
Thubten Chodron, How to Free Your Mind: The Practice of Tara the Liberator (Boston: Snow Lion, 2005), pp. 78, 142.
The Emperor (4)
Nichols, Jung and Tarot, p. 106.
See C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol.9i: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), para. 178.
Ecofeminism is so-called because it holds there are conceptual links between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature, and that the liberation of one is bound up with the liberation of the other. For Ecofeminists, patriarchy is understood primarily in terms of a “conceptual framework” - a particular way of organizing our experience of the world that has been linked with male oppression, but does not necessarily indicate how all men think, nor exclude the possibility that some women may be as equally “patriarchal” in their views. For Ecofeminists, the patriarchal mindset is one characterized by value-hierarchical dualisms - the splitting-up of reality into a series of binary opposites, in which one side is perceived as being of more value and worth than the other, providing a rationale for its domination. Moreover, through the process of cultural reinforcement, each side is also linked with a particular gender and a cluster of qualities, values and characteristics. Thus “masculine” becomes attached to men, reason, rationality, action, light, and spirit; and “feminine” to women, emotion, the irrational, passivity, darkne
ss, matter, and by extension, nature. See Karen J. Warren, “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections” in Environmental Ethics, Spring 1987, Vol. 9, pp. 3-20.
Jung, CW9i, para. 178; and C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol.5: Symbols of Transformation, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), para. 540.
William Blake, The Book of Urizen, accessed November 13 2016, http://www.public-domain-poetry.com/william-blake/book-of-urizen-excerpts-9209.
For Ecofeminists, the male self of patriarchal culture is the “seperative self.” This is a falsely-constructed model of the self as a constant and abiding entity that intentionally and hygienically severs itself from its surroundings. It is also one half of a dyad; the other being the “soluble self” or the model of selfhood proffered to women. This is a self that is no-self, consisting of pure sentiment and relationality. As a functioning pair, the male embodies self without connection, and the female, its opposite. See Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), esp. pp. 205, 7, 206.
Edward C. Whitmont, Return of the Goddess (London: Arkana, 1987/1983) pp. 80, 144.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 53.
ibid.
Campbell, Masks of God: Oriental Mythology, p. 254.
Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 1: 10.
ibid., 1:13.
From the Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta in Trevor Ling, ed., The Buddha’s Philosophy of Man (London: Everyman, 1993/1981), pp. 112-25 (pp. 115, 119).
Norm Phelps, The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (New York: Lantern Books, 2007), p. 22.
Annie Kelly, “Gross National Happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world” in The Guardian, accessed November 1 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/01/bhutan-wealth-happiness-counts.
