The Buddha in the Tarot

by Paul Greer

  From the Mahaparinibbana Suttanta in T. W. Rhys Davies, trans., Buddhist Suttas: The Sacred Books of the East: Vol. XI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), accessed November 27 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe11/sbe1103.htm.

  From the Kaccayanagotta Sutta, in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 166.

  Sylvain Chamberlain-Nyudo, Nichiren Gosho – Book One (Lulu Press, 2016), p. 9.

  The Devil (15)

  Waite, The Pictorial Key, p. 128.

  Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 113.

  Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, pp. 107-8.

  Pollack, op. cit., p. 112.

  Gardner, op. cit., p. 107.

  See Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (London: John Knox Press, 1966), esp. pp. 46-50.

  Asvaghosa, op. cit., 13: 1, 5.

  ibid., 13: 9, 16, 16-7, 55, 36, 58, 61.

  Warren, Buddhism in Translations, pp. 80-1.

  ibid., p. 81.

  Fausboll, The Sutta Nipata, pp. 330, 331, 330.

  Implied in Asvoghosa, Buddhacarita, 13:5.

  From the Padhana Sutta in Fausboll, op. cit., 120-1.

  Shaila Catherine, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm and Clarity, ReadHowYouWant edition (MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010/2008), p. 135.

  Stephen Bachelor, Living with the Devil: A Buddhist Meditation on Good and Evil (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), p. 28.

  The Tower (16)

  Bill Butler, Dictionary of the Tarot (New York: Schocken Books, 1978/1975), p. 170.

  Papus, A. P. Morton, trans., The Tarot of the Bohemians (London: Senate, 1994/1896), p. 169.

  See illustration in Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of Tarot Volume 1, p. 51.

  Katz and Goodwin, Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot, p. 180.

  Waite, The Pictorial Key, pp. 135, 132.

  Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 119; Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, p. 174.

  From the Bhayabherava Sutta in Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi trans., Teachings of the Buddha: the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (MA: Wisdom Publications, 2015/1995), p. 105.

  Mark Knickelbine, “The First Watch of the Night,” accessed November 18 2016, http://secularbuddhism.org/2012/03/07/the-first-watch-of-the-night/.

  From the Bhayabherava Sutta, op. cit., p. 106.

  Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 83.

  Damien Keown and Charles S. Prebish, eds., Encyclodepia of Buddhism (London: Routledge, 2010/2007), p. 144.

  Fausboll, The Sutta Nipata , p. 332, 335.

  From the Dhammapada in Wagiswara and Saunders, The Buddha's Way of Virtue, accessed November 18 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/wov/wov15.htm.

  From the Samyutta Nikaya in Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, p. 365.

  See Robert Beer, The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols (Chicago: Serindia publications, 2003), p. 86.

  The Return:

  From The Star to The World

  Introduction

  Maurice Friedman, “Aiming at the Self: The Paradox of Encounter and the Human Potential Movement” in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Spring 1976, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 5-34 (p. 9).

  Nichols, Jung and Tarot, p. 357.

  See Carl A. Raschke, The Interruption of Eternity: Modern Gnosticism and the Origins of the New Religious Consciousness (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1980).

  Muller, The Dhammapada, accessed November 13 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1003.htm.

  From a BBC broadcast talk given by Jung in 1946, quoted in Petteri Pietikainen, Alchemists of Human Nature: Psychological Utopianism in Gross, Jung, Reich and Fromm, (London: Routledge 2016/2007), p. 106.

  C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), para. 275.

  Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp. 179.

  The Star (17)

  Papus, Tarot of the Bohemians, p. 172.

  Jayanti, Living the Tarot, p. 259.

  Waite, The Pictorial Key, p. 26.

  See for example the still highly-relevant Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (London: Paladin, 1989/1980); or Ralph Metzner, “Age of Ecology” in Resurgence, November/December 1991, pp. 4-7.

  Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 124.

  Waite, op. cit., p. 176.

  Pollack, op. cit., p. 123.

  Papus, op. cit., p. 171.

  Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 15: 11-2, 52.

  Campbell, Oriental Mythology, p. 276n.

  From the Ariyapariyesana Sutta in Nanamoli Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications, 2015/1995), p. 260.

  ibid., pp. 261-3.

  Jack Kornfield, The Path of Compassion: Spiritual Practice and Social Action” in Eppsteiner, The Path of Compassion, pp. 24-30, (p. 25).

  Gary Snyder, “Buddhism and the Possibilities of a Planetary Culture” in Eppsteiner, op. cit., pp. 82-5 (pp. 82-3).

  Michael Welton, “Can Buddhism Save the World?” accessed November 19 2016, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/15/can-buddhism-save-the-world/.

  See for example Kali Holloway, “Mindfulness: Capitalism’s New Favorite Tool for Maintaining the Status Quo,” accessed October 21 2016, http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/mindfulness-capitalisms-new-favorite-tool-maintaining-status-quo.

  Sulak Sivaraksa, “Buddhism in a World of Change: Politics Must Be Related to Religion” in Eppsteiner, op. cit, pp. 9-18 (p. 13).

  Michel Clasquin-Johnson, “Why are there so many Western Converts to Buddhism,” accessed November 19 2016, https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-many-Western-converts-to-Buddhism.

  Welton, ibid.

  Synder, op. cit., p. 83.

  See Dominique Side, Buddhism, esp. Chapter 21: Buddhism in Western Society (pp. 223-35).

  Sivaraksa, op. cit., p. 16.

  Tenzin Gyatso, “Hope for the Future” in Eppsteiner, op. cit., pp. 3-8 (p. 8).

  Wagiswara and Saunders, The Buddha's Way of Virtue, accessed November 19 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/wov/wov05.htm.

  The Moon (18)

  Waite, The Pictorial Key, p. 140, 143.

  Papus, Tarot of the Bohemians, p. 175.

  Nichols, Jung and Tarot, p. 314.

  A. E. Thierens, General Book of the Tarot (Philadelphia: D. McKay Co., 1930), p. 76.

  Gail Fairfield, Choice Centered Tarot (California: Newcastle Publishing Co., 1985/1984), p. 99.

  Rachel Pollack, The New Tarot Handbook: Master the Meanings of the Cards (Minnesota: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2012), p. 87.

  Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, p. 123.

  See illustration in Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of Tarot Volume 1, p. 40.

  ibid., p. 54.

  Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p. 109.

  Charles G. Leland, Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches (California: Ancient Wisdom Publications, n.d./1899), pp. 17-8, 18.

  ibid., pp. 19, 20.

  Eliezer Segal, “The Ten Sefirot: Shekhinah, Malkhut,” accessed November 20 2016, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Shekhinah.html.

  See C. G, Jung, Collected Works, Vo 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry Into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposite in Alchemy, second edition, Herbert Read and Michael Fordham and Gerald Adler, eds., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970/1963), paras. 28-30. See also William Nicholson’s The Church Compared to the Moon (1862), accessed November 20 2016, http://gracegems.org/Nicholson/church_compared_to_the_moon.htm.

  From the Ariyapariyesana Sutta in Nanamoli Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, p. 264.

  Asvaghosa, Buddhacarita, 15: 117.

  From the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, op. cit., p. 265.

  Asvaghosa., op. ci
t., 15: 112.

  From the Dhammacakkavattana Sutta in Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, p. 78.

  A poem by “Sumangala’s mother” in Mrs. Rhys Davies, trans., Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters, accessed November 20 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos07.htm.

  Ling, The Buddha, pp. 123, 124.

  Paul Carus, Buddha: The Gospel (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1894), accessed November 20 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg18.htm.

  The Sun (19)

  James Hillman, Inter Views: Conversations with Laura Pozzo on Psychotherapy, Biography, Love, Soul, Dreams, Work, Imagination and the State of the Culture (Washington DC: Spring Publications, 1991/1983), p. 25.

  Sigmund Freud, J. A. Underwood, trans., The Future of an Illusion, (London: Penguin, 2008/2004), p. 5.

  In words deeply appropriate for our times, Jung saw the repressed forces of religion bursting forth like some wild and misshapen beast into conscious life, provoking “international suicide.” See C. G. Jung, CW 10, para. 32.

  Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, pp. 125-6, 121.

  See Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances.

  From Sophocles’ “Root-Cutters,” quoted in Sorita D’Este, “The History, Powers & Myths of Hekate” in Sorita D’Este, ed., Hekate: Keys to the Crossroads (London: Avalonia, 2006), pp. 20-38 (p. 27).

  Harold W. Wood, Jr., “Modern Pantheism as an Approach to Environmental Ethics” in Environmental Ethics, Summer 1985, Vol. 7, No 2, pp. 151-64 (p. 156).

  Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p. 203.

  Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, “Witches of the West: Neopaganism and Goddess Worship as Enlightenment Religions” in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Spring 1989, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 77-95.

  Nichols, Jung and Tarot, pp. 328-9.

  Nicolas Berdyaev, “Salvation and Creativity: Two Understandings of Christianity” in Matthew Fox, ed., Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1983), pp. 115-39 (pp. 115, 116, 118, 124, 123).

  Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 165, 239.

  Matthew Fox, trans., ed., Meditations with Meister Eckhart (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1983), p. 88, 79.

  G S P Misra, “Logical and Scientific Method in Early Buddhist Texts” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, Vol. 100, Issue 1, January 1968, pp. 54-64 (p. 64).

  From the Vatthupama Sutta in Nanamoli and Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses, pp. 120-1.

  Davies, Psalms of the Early Buddhists, accessed November 22 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud//pos/pos17.htm.

  From the Kalama Sutta in Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, p. 90.

  This story is retold in Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (New York: Dover Publications, 2003/1951), pp. 104-5.

  From the Culamalunkya Sutta in Nanamoli and Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses, p. 535.

  Ling, The Buddha, p. 106.

  Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 278.

  The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), pp. 3, 13.

  Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs, pp. 36, 37.

  The Dalai Lama, op. cit., pp. 66, 67.

  Matthew Ricard & Trinh Xuan Thuan, Ian Monk, trans., The Quantum and the Lotus (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001/2000), esp. pp. 63-9.

  The Dalai Lama, op. cit., p. 63.

  ibid., p. 133.

  Judgement (20)

  Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 166.

  Fairfield, Choice Centered Tarot, p. 101.

  Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 134.

  Greer, Tarot Reversals, pp. 90, 91.

  See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edition, (Chicago: Foundations of Unity Science Series, 1970/1962).

  Constance Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and our Coming Age of Barbarism, revised edition (Louisiana: Huntington House, 1983), p. 159.

  Based on reporting by dpa, ITAR-TASS, and Interfax, “Russian Patriarch Says Gay Marriage 'Sign Of Apocalypse,'” accessed November 23 2016, http://www.rferl.org/a/patriarch-russia-gay-apocalypse-kirill/25052758.html.

  This is a term used by Ralph Metzner to describe the contours of what he considers to be an emerging paradigm shift from an “Industrial” to an “Ecological” worldview, incorporating convergent trends across a wide spectrum of fields and disciples; including ethics, epistemology, science, politics, education, theology and religion. See Ralph Metzner, “Age of Ecology” in Resurgence, November/December 1991, No. 149, pp. 4-7.

  Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature” in Carol J. Adams, ed., Ecofeminism and the Sacred (New York: Continuum, 1993), pp. 13-23 (p. 21).

  Jung, CW10, par. 293.

  Gardner, The Tarot Speaks, p. 129.

  In this regard see Michael S. Howard, “Tarot and Alchemy: Two Parallel Traditions,” accessed November 26 2016, http://tarotandalchemy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/star-moon-sun.html.

  Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, pp. 45, 46.

  See C. G. Jung, Collected Works Vol. 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East, R. F. C. Hull, trans., second edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975/1958), para. 742.

  Pollack, op. cit., p. 134.

  From the Agganna Sutta in Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol 3, translated from the Pali by T.W. Rhys Davids and C.A.F. Rhys Davids, London, Oxford University Press, 1921. Vol. IV of The Sacred Books of the Buddhists series; at SuttaCentral.net, accessed November 26 2016, https://suttacentral.net/en/dn27.

  Swami Prabhupada, Srimad-Bhagavatam Twelfth Canto: The Age of Deterioration, e-book edition (The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 2011/1984) 12:2: 19-20.

  From the Dhammapada in Wagiswara and Saunders, The Buddha's Way of Virtue, accessed November 26 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/wov/wov12.htm.

  Bhikkhu Sujato with Jessica Walton, trans, Verses of the Senior Monks (Sutta Central, 2014), accessed November 26 2016, https://suttacentral.net/en/thag16.8.

  ibid., https://suttacentral.net/en/thag1.113.

  ibid., https://suttacentral.net/en/thag1.33.

  Davies, Psalms of the Early Buddhists, accessed November 26 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos11.htm.

  Sujato with Walton, op. cit., https://suttacentral.net/en/thag16.1.

  ibid., https://suttacentral.net/en/thag1.10.

  Davies, op. cit., http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos06.htm.

  ibid., http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos10.htm.

  Kurt Spellmeyer, Buddha at the Apocalypse: Awakening from a Culture of Destruction (MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010), pp. 59, 35.

  In that it appears to identify the “barbarians” with Islam.

  Alexander Berzin, Introduction to the Kalachakra Initiation (Boston: Snow Lion, 2010/1997), p. 45.

  ibid., p. 46.

  John Newman, “Escatology in the Wheel of Time Tantra” in Donald S. Lopez Jr., ed., Buddhism in Practice, abridged edition (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995/2007), pp. 202-7 (pp. 203, 204).

  Giuseppe Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala (Massachusetts: Weiser, 1970/1949), pp, 59, 60.

  Berzin, op. cit., p. 54.

  The World (21)

  Waite, The Pictorial Key, p. 156.

  Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, p. 221.

  C. G. Jung Collected Works, Vol. 18: The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings, Gerald Adler, ed., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950/1980), para. 585.

  Jeremy Yunt, Jung's Contribution to an Ecological Psychology: Understanding the Psychic Roots of Environmental Issues (Santa Barbara, CA: Barred Owl Books, 2009), p. 9.

  Don Cupitt, Solar Ethics (London: SCM Press, 1995), pp. 54, 56.

  Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex & Polit
ics, second edition (London: Unwin, 1990/1982), p. 38.

  Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees, p. 139.

  Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self, 7, 205-6.

  See Vivian Giang, “Transgender is yesterday’s news: How companies are grappling with the ‘no gender’ society,” accessed November 27 2016, http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/gender-fluid-binary-companies/. See also Sarah Marsh, “The gender-fluid generation: young people on being male, female or non-binary,” accessed November 27 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/23/gender-fluid-generation-young-people-male-female-trans.

  C. G. Jung, Collected Works 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East, Gerald Adler, ed., R. F. C. Hull, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1958/1969), para. 753.

  Mary Grey, Redeeming the Dream: Feminism, Redemption and Christian Tradition (London: SPCK, 1989), see esp. pp. 27, 31, 36.

  Gottfried de Purucker, “The Four Beasts of the Christian Apocalypse,” The Theosophical Forum August 1944, accessed November 27 2016, http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/forum/f22n08p358_the-four-beasts-of-the-christian-apocalypse.htm.

  From the Mahaparinibbana Suttanta in Davies, Buddhist Suttas, accessed November 28 2016, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe11/sbe1103.htm.

  ibid.

  ibid.

  Susan Murcott, First Buddhist Women: Poems & Stories of Awakening (California: Parallax Press, 2006/1991), p. 16.

  See for example Nancy J. Barnes, “The Nuns at the Stupa” in Ellison banks Findly, ed., Women’s Buddhism Buddhism’s Women: Tradition, Revision, Renewal (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000) pp. 17-36 (p. 19).

  From the Anguttara Nikaya 7:59 in Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, p. 123.

  From the Anguttara Nikaya in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 229.

  Buddhismus Aktuell and Michaela Doepke, “Interview with the Dalai Lama about the Full Ordination of Women,” accessed November 27 2016, http://info-buddhism.com/Interview_Dalai_Lama_about_the_Full_Ordination_of_Women.html.

  See Karma Lekshe Tsomo, “Gender Equality and Human Rights” in Thea Mohr and Jampa Tsedroen, eds., Dignity & Discipline: Reviving Full Ordination for Buddhist Nuns (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2010), pp. 281-9.