Becoming the Real
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TAROT LIFE
BOOK 10
Becoming the Real
Authors Note : This is Month 10 of our 12-booklet Tarot Life series; you will require the previous Months 1-9 booklets to follow the sequence over the year. Most of the exercises in each booklet may be carried out as stand-alone pieces of self-discovery or re-purposed for use in daily, personal or client readings.
By Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz
Copyright © Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz, 2013
Published October 2013 by Forge Press, Keswick
No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without written permission from the publisher.
Tarosophy® is a registered trademark
WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY …
I am extremely thankful for these exercises. I feel like I could spend years contemplating these results and still not get to the bottom of the insight I have gained.
C.C.
This exercise as well as the others have spoken volumes. Thank you for sharing this experience with us.
R. G.
Incredible knowledge so easily shared … This has been a journey in which I have learned a lot of new things and feel very satisfied.
L. J.
Very moving and effective. I cannot wait for the next gates!
Y.
I suddenly realized I have been dreaming like crazy since I started these exercises! Very intuitive stuff about my situation, and about my Tarot!
L.
We have used real-life examples and authentic feedback throughout this series, anonymously, from our students in Tarot-Town. We thank them for their engagement with these experiences over the years.
About the Authors
“If Tarot is a map, what happens to it when you get to where you’re going?”
Goodwin to Katz, Typical Conversation.
Tali Goodwin is the co-author of award-winning and #1 best-selling Tarot books, including Around the Tarot in 78 Days, Tarot Face to Face, and Learning Lenormand. She is also a leading Tarot researcher and is credited with the discovery of A. E. Waite’s second tarot deck, kept secret for a century, published as Abiding in the Sanctuary. She has also uncovered and published the Original Lenormand deck, and with co-author Derek Bain, the original Golden Dawn Tarot images in A New Dawn for Tarot. Her research into the life of Pamela Colman-Smith with new photographs will be published as The Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot by Llewellyn Worldwide in Spring 2014. She is co-Director of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide) and organizes the international tarot conventions, TarotCon.
Marcus Katz is author of the ground-breaking Tarot book and teaching system, Tarosophy, and is the co-founder of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide). In addition to Tarot books with Tali Goodwin, he is the author of The Magister, an 11-volume opus on the Western Esoteric Initiatory System, The Magician’s Kabbalah, and the forthcoming Path of the Seasons. He teaches students privately in the Crucible Club, available by application.
Contents
WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY …
About the Authors
Contents
Introduction
The Real
Chapter 1: Becoming the Real
Chapter 2: Riding the Tarot Currents
Chapter 3: Tarot Everywhere …
Chapter 4: Every-Day Tarot List
Conclusion
Bibliography
Websites & Resources
Kindle Tarot Books & Series
Introduction
Tarot to Engage Life, Not Escape It.
Marcus Katz
In this series of Kickstart books of Tarosophy teaching, we take a break from our other tarot books, such as the reference work of Tarot Flip, the seventy-eight innovative Tarot methods in Tarot Twist, and the spiritual considerations of Tarot Inspire, to offer a unique practice of our work.
You are about to change your life with Tarot, and whether you are a newcomer to tarot or experienced reader, you are about to do something totally new. In using what we call a Gated Spread – a linked sequence of tarot readings whose questions are determined by the results of real-world activities – you are going to fundamentally alter the way you experience your life.
We have combined here the wisdom of the Tarot with years of practical testing and the latest research in psychology and the biology of willpower, belief, habit and other aspects of our being.
This series is designed to be experienced a month at a time, and in the sequence given, although there are many methods you will learn that can be used simply by themselves, for yourself or others.
You can start at any time, although New Year; your Birthday; or the Spring Equinox are all powerful starting times.
This series is accompanied by a private Facebook group for discussion and questions about your experiences as you make this journey. We look forwards to your engagement of tarot with your life – it is about to become a truly Tarot Life.
Before you begin, you may wish to join our Tarosophhy Tarot Association Facebook group if you have any questions about Tarot, and you can also download our free keyword guide to all 78 tarot cards and 12 standard spreads from our site:
www.mytarotcardmeanings.com
The private Facebook group for Tarot Life students is given at the end of this booklet and at the conclusion of all booklets in the series.
Marcus Katz, The Tarosophist &
Tali Goodwin, TaliTarot
The Real
I’m embedded in this world, yes – but I am not bound, not imprisoned.
David Abram
In our previous gate 9, we brought together gates 1-4, and now we bring together gates 5-8. We then bring gates 9 & 10 together in gate 11, and wrap up the entire experience in gate 12. If you are a fan of the TV series, “Breaking Bad”, which recently concluded at the same time as the editing of these final Tarot Life booklets, you will see a similarity between this present book and ‘Ozymandias’ in that TV series. That was the third but last episode, and brought everything from the whole of five series together, before the penultimate and concluding two episodes, which almost served as epilogues to the main storyline.
In a sense, we can compare such epic story-telling and tarot as they both – at their best - follow the structure underpinning our life. A good tarot reading reflects the querent’s life story and provides a “chapter” for them to consider as a context for their situation. It provides “teasers” and back-story, it provides characters, conflicts and resolutions – all essential to plotting. We have provided these tools throughout this present series of gates.
We can now, at this climatic stage, reveal where we have been heading for so long over this year of Tarot Life. It goes far beyond the usual spreads and games involved with tarot cards. All the exercises have been leading to install a certain type of awareness in anyone progressing through all the gates. An awareness that tarot – and life – are constructed of hidden (“occult”) patterns and relationships, bound together – and made visible - by correspondence. It is this magical mindset that the Tarot Life gates are primarily designed to initiate in the journeyer.
A Tarot Life is a constructed narrative to recognized patterns, archetypes, events and situations – which, in its construction, turns our fate into destiny. So we have become story-tellers of our own life, enriching our experience, deepening our understanding and developing our wisdom, through the Tarot. This is Tarosophy – the living wisdom (Tarot + Sophia) expressed in tarot life.
As our life is unified with our experience, our actual life starts to change as we build a stronger narrative; more consistent, comprehensive and congruent to wha
tever reality may actually be, underneath and beyond our perception.
Your Tarot Life is about to get even more powerful …
Becoming the Real
In Gate 5, we saw how we can embody “secret missions” in our daily lives, and practiced delivering these missions. In Gate 6 we then took this practice and extended it to offering “service” by ‘lighting our hermitage’, which was in effect our daily life. Gate 7 then presented us a balancing mechanism within a duality in our experience (‘regrets and recognitions’) and Gate 8 delivered us into the Tarot Life method; of experiencing real life as a reading, using all of the previous learning.
Gate 9 located our Union card, Gate 10 now provides us our Cascade card. We then join these together (equating to Sagittarius/Temperance and Capricorn/Devil, or the Angel and the Devil) in Gate 11 as ‘Keys to Freedom’, leading ultimately to the tarot initiation into the path of “Deep Divinity/Divination” in Gate 12.
These gates are all modeled on the 12-month astrological progression through the signs of the zodiac, ritualized to everyday life through their tarot correspondences. We hope too that you have come to experience how powerful any every-day event in life can be when viewed through the lens of tarot.
We have indeed travelled a long way together, and we hope that you are still with us down the rabbit hole signposted with nothing more than a tarot card! We now see how we can use Tarot Currents in our life to become the real …
The Tarot Currents
Riding the Tarot Currents
There are two parts to this month’s gate; the first is optional but may provide interesting structure to the constant practice of the second part. In this first part, we consider aligning ourselves to the Tarot Currents, fastening ourselves to “reality rails” that hide just beneath the surface of perception.
Through correspondence, the Sun and Moon relate to the Sun and High Priestess cards in the Tarot. These represent the pairing of the conscious and unconscious minds; the obvious and the subtle; the seen and unseen; the awakening and the dreaming; the day and night. As the real Sun and Moon travel through space, and in relationship to the Earth, we see that they pass through the zodiacal sequence every year and every lunar month.
In doing so, the currents of the Sun and Moon pass through the signs in which they inhabit for that window of time, and these invisible currents provide powerful energies of which we can take advantage. Even if you do not believe in any particular energies or correspondences, you can use this exercise as a means of providing helpful “random reminders” along your journey. Who knows, you may find that they turn out to be nor so random after all!
So during this month of tarot life (and here is where you get to do work for yourself) you should consult an online almanac or ephemeris and discover where the Sun is placed during the month, and through which signs the Moon is passing – and when.
In the Sun’s case, over a month, it may be passing through one or two signs, depending on your chosen start and end time for the gate. In the Moon’s case, it passes through each sign every couple of days.
Here are two sites that provide Lunar information:
http://www.lunarium.co.uk/calendar/universal.jsp
http://www.cafeastrology.com/thismonthsephemeris.html
In each case, you will see the zodiacal sign into which the Moon is passing, and the time at which that occurs, and then a couple of days later the next sign, etc. For this exercise, use the approximate times as they generally apply to each day, i.e. dawn to sunset, when you are likely most active. So if the Moon is in Scorpio from 8 am of one day, and leaves it the following day at 9pm, then Moon in Scorpio is chosen for your Tarot Current of those two days.
If you need any assistance or want to check your choices, just ask in the Tarot Life Facebook group.
You will then have the Sun and Moon signs for every day over a month-long period. Obviously, you can make this even easier by starting the exercise when the Sun moves into a sign, say Aries at the Spring Equinox of March 21st, etc. However, that will limit the potential of discovery which is opened by another Solar current and its combinations with the Lunar currents.
Interpreting the Tarot Currents
Once you have discovered the Solar/Lunar positions in the zodiac over your chosen month, you can then interpret them – in advance, or ahead of each particular 2-3 day period.
Simply lay out the Sun and High Priestess cards, and then underneath them place the corresponding pair of Zodiacal cards to the signs of the Zodiac in which the Sun and Moon (High Priestess) are placed in the heavens.
So if the Sun was in Cancer, and the Moon in Scorpio for two days, we would take the Sun and High Priestess, and place below the Sun, the Chariot Card (Cancer), and the Death card (Scorpio) below the High Priestess. This gives us our Tarot Current layout for those two days.
We take the current as a push-me/pull-me type of energy circuit. The pair of Sun and zodiacal card create a positive pole, and the pair of Moon and zodiacal card create a negative pole. This is in the sense of energy rather than “good” and “bad”.
So we read the Solar Pair and the Lunar Pair, and then see how they may be providing us an opportunity to harness their energies – much as we have done in previous gates. However, here, we are connecting ourselves to the very heavens.
We have provided several examples of interpretation below, for a sample period of the 6th July – 29th July of a particular year, and another period of 10th August – 16th August, so we can show how interpretation of the Solar cards changes as well as the Lunar cards.
You may also consider adding this consideration into your readings with friends, clients or for yourself. You can work magick or perform readings at particularly favorable Tarot Currents (windows of 2 days) or advise timings based on considering these currents. In effect, it is a tarot shortcut equivalent to looking at astrological solar and lunar transits!
First, here are the Zodiacal Cards as a reminder.
Zodiacal Correspondence Cards
Aries
Emperor
Taurus
Hierophant
Gemini
Lovers
Cancer
Chariot
Leo
Strength
Virgo
Hermit
Libra
Justice
Scorpio
Death
Sagittarius
Temperance
Capricorn
Devil
Aquarius
Star
Pisces
Moon
Sample Tarot Currents
14-16 Aug: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Death: Whilst you make progress, something is letting go inside. By your work you are changed.
12-13 Aug: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Justice: Are you sure you want to do that? Take a moment to reflect and balance before charging forth!
10-11 Aug: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Hermit: From a still voice inside comes all the power you need. Breathe in. Breathe out. Silent Going.
28-29 July: Sol/Strength+Luna/Moon: Reflecting on the strength of fear, you find the fear strengthens your resolve to fight.
25-27 July: Sol/Strength+Luna/Star: During the Full Moon on 25th, be brave & listen to dreams. They are YOURS, align to them!
23-24 July: Sol/Strength+Luna/Devil: A tough time revealing what you cannot let go off – yet. A clue to a better relationship.
20-22 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Temperance: Things combine together in front of you - bind them to your cause. An alchemical time!
18-19 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Scorpio: Ditch the emotional baggage & transform to an urge of joyful innocence. Project yourself!
16-17 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Libra: You'll need to balance work/play for a couple of days after recent activities! Play fair!
14-15 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Hermit: Drive forwards but ensure you are setting a good example by being true to your own vision
12-13 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Strength: Two days to harness your drive to what feel
s intuitively to be the right relationship.
10-11 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Chariot: Two days of power, make every act of might and courage, true to yourself and your aims!
8-9 July: Sol/Chariot+Luna/Lovers: Plan ahead to rein your forces in reflective partnership with others who share your joy.
6-7 July: Sol/Chariot + Luna/Hierophant. This time is good for gaining control of direction with intuitive advice of an expert.
The Cascade Card
Tarot Everywhere …
In the living tarot practice for this gate, we accelerate the process of mapping real life to the tarot cards in everyday experience. This is essential to build up the velocity for the initiatory two gates to conclude this experience.
You will need a notebook, or a mobile phone/tablet equivalent, or voice memo system, to carry about with you during this month. Your exercise is to see as much tarot in your moment-to-moment experience as possible. Everything and everyone should be converted via correspondence into a tarot card equivalent. You can note down any particular insights, peculiarities and obvious (or not so obvious) correspondences as they occur, or try and write down everything as it happens, if you can.
You can see these cards enacting themselves through subtle or obvious ways, or on TV or through film. I (Marcus) was joking with Tali that her suggestion of “Volcano” was somewhat obscure for the Blasted Tower, as how many people would be likely to experience a volcanic eruption (literally, not symbolically) in their lives over an average month?