Tarot and the Tree of Life

by Isabel Radow Kliegman

  We learn the meanings of the cards best by relating them to our flesh-and-blood lives. They repay us by clarifying and sometimes even defining our experiences when we seek the card that governs them. A corollary of these convictions is that exhausting the meaning of the Tarot is no more likely than exhausting the mystery of human nature itself. Each of us can continue to bring meaning to—as well as find meaning in—the cards for as long as we interact with them. This book is written for the intelligent reader: reflective, astute, spiritually driven, and open to self-examination. If you share in my conviction that meaning can be derived from the Tarot, what follows is an approach to how that meaning can be discerned and/or created.

  The idea for this book was engendered by comments I heard most frequently after my lectures on both Tarot and Kabbalah: “Now I understand!” or, “The way you put things, they made sense for the first time!” and, “I’ve read a lot of books on the Tarot, but they only confused me more.”

  The line between reductionistic thinking and the translation of abstract concepts into concrete experience is a thin one. I hope I have not crossed it. If, however, meaning is experienced rather than vaguely ideated as a result of explicit example, then the Tarot can come alive in a new way. It is my hope that the cards can have a pulse.

  Many works on the Tarot, of which those by Waite are an example, offer brief, formulaic interpretations of the cards that need to be memorized by rote. The reader, consequently, is dependent on the source, and must continually refer to the written word in the course of the reading. The unprofessional nature of working in this way and the lack of expertise it proclaims to a client are the least of its problems. Far more serious is the effect on the consciousness of the reader in trusting an external and, finally, arbitrary authority for absolute, closed-ended definitions of rich images that are designed to be evocative and mysterious. This is a problem for those who memorize the definitions no less than for those who refer to them. (I am particularly amused by such identifications as the Queen of Cups as a blond, blue-eyed woman; thus, there are entire continents for which this card is irrelevant.) It is my hope that in addition to providing the proverbial fish, this book will teach the serious reader “how to fish” from the Tarot.

  Much has been written on the Major Arcana; our discussion will be restricted to the less-explored, relatively accessible, and highly evocative Minor Arcana. It is the Minor Arcana that reflect our daily experience; the Minor Arcana are where we live! I have confined my subject to these cards for three reasons.

  First, they are the portion of the deck that is usually treated as of secondary importance and in consequence, dealt with summarily. Many books on Tarot exclude the Minor Arcana completely, focusing entirely on the twenty-two powerhouses of archetypal force, the Major Arcana. It is my conviction that the Minor Arcana have received short shrift and are deserving of fuller exploration than I have seen in my studies. The dazzling stature of the Tarot Trumps, or Major Arcana, in no way diminishes and should not blind us to the considerable potential for discovery carried by the “small secrets” of the Minor Arcana.

  Second, the relative simplicity of the Minor Arcana imagery makes them, for most of us, more accessible than the Major Arcana. For the novice or those whose interest is tentative, the Minor Arcana prove less formidable, more inviting companions with which to initiate a relationship with the Tarot. While the Major Arcana can be seen as archetypes whose likeness we are never to encounter on this earth, the Minor Arcana, in almost every case, portray people involved in ordinary behavior that we see around us in the course of our own lives. These images have an unremarkable, immediate nature. From homey to frightful, from joyful to painful, what we see is generally simple to identify and easy to identify with.

  From this perspective, it is clear that the importance of the Minor Arcana cannot be overemphasized. The key to their usefulness is their availability. If I am caught up in the grief of loss, the Five of Cups reflects my pain. My anxiety, regret, and isolation are mirrored back to me with force and compassion by the Nine of Swords. (The universality and intimacy of these cards are underscored by a simple fact I have observed in my practice: the intentionally androgynous central figures are almost invariably perceived as male by men and as female by women. We each see ourselves in these images.) The Nine of Pentacles shows me fulfillment and peace in a way that is direct; when I am standing my ground under challenge, my experience is revealed to me in the most straightforward way by the Seven of Wands.

  Once the initial gut-level recognition occurs, we can learn a great deal from working with the card. We can move from merely identifying with its image to exploring it in detail and depth, thereby learning something new about the experience that led us to it and therefore about ourselves. Does the image of the Five of Cups shift the way we feel—and if so, how? What are we to think about the symbols on the quilt of the Nine of Swords? Is that actually a snail we perceive in the foreground of the Nine of Pentacles? What does its presence tell us? What is our sense of a person who, like the figure in the Seven of Wands, wears one shoe and one boot?

  We next can relate the image we see in the card to one of the vessels that make up the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Each vessel, or sefirah, is associated with a numerical value. Thus, for example, we can associate the fives in the Tarot deck with the fifth sefirah of Gevurah. The nines of each suit pair with the ninth sefirah, Yesod, while the sevens belong to the seventh sefirah, Netzach. Since each sefirah is characterized by a distinct quality, we can gain further insight into the card. We can ask in each case how the sefirah supports or expands what we have discovered.

  With few if any exceptions, the Major Arcana do not mirror our lives, experiences, or states of mind in this obvious yet provocative way. Only the Minor Arcana offer us the opportunity to see ourselves as we are, without the temptation for self-aggrandizement offered by the Major Arcana.

  This brings us to the last of my reasons for devoting my attention exclusively to the Minor Arcana. It seems to me that the way we can best understand the Minor Arcana is substantially different from the way in which we can most profitably approach the Major. The latter, in their geometrically more complex structure and symbolism, require either scholarship or highly evolved meditational practice to release their meanings and, ideally, both. The humble Minor Arcana are content simply to be examined with care and responded to with openness. We are all experts on what it is we perceive and how we respond to what we see.

  The purpose of this book is twofold: to provide information about the fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana (the fish) and to suggest an approach for gleaning information from the cards (a method for catching your own fish). My intention is to offer concepts that may be useful to the reader in exploring the Tarot and deriving meaning from it. It is not my intention to lay down meanings cast in concrete.

  If I am right in holding that the Tarot can facilitate our understanding of our lives—and conversely that our life experiences can lead us to a deeper grasp of the Tarot—then this book is offered as a bridge between the two. By use of anecdote, it is my hope that the abstract may become accessible, not just intellectually, but experientially. The meaning of the cards is not an abstruse concept set out by me, but your experience of them when provided with down-to-earth, immediate perspectives. My intent is to offer a book that is readable without being reductionist.

  If the Tarot is of universal and enduring value, it must be understandable in contemporary terms, amenable to a practical and personal view. In taking this approach, it has been my goal to demystify the cards, which in no way diminishes their mystery! With modern medicine came accurate anatomical charts, invaluable instruments in demystifying the body. We now know that organs belong to various systems, that air moves from nostrils to lungs and not to intestines, that embryos develop in the womb and not the stomach. The mysteries of life—of respiration, of reproduction—remain in pristine majesty, unassailable and remote. The Tree of Life provides the structure that supports sev
enty-eight images that might otherwise be perceived as random. Within the Kabbalistic system, an order emerges from this visual jumble. The great mysteries of the Tarot cards are only enhanced by our clearing the confusion that shrouds their grandeur and providing a chart by which they can be understood and remembered.

  What I wish to impart to the reader through this work is manifold: a context, a system within which to understand the Minor Arcana; an orientation that allows each card a range of meanings that is virtually inexhaustible; a willingness and capacity to work with multiple interpretations of a single card, confident that there is no need to choose among them; and equal confidence that any new idiosyncratic interpretation of a card that can be justified graphically, ideologically, or intuitively has validity.

  I hope as well that my readers will find in the Tarot a source of insight, comfort, and spiritual guidance; a source of empowerment, a reference point for processing experience and deepening understanding; a way, even in difficult times, to flip from the perspective of ego consciousness to that of the greater One. These, in addition to belief in ourselves as interpreters of the cards and trust in our own perceptions, responses, ideas, and inklings, will, I hope, generate a lasting excitement about the Tarot. Perhaps for some this book will be a stimulus to creative consciousness in which the Minor Arcana prove a generous facilitator.

  While I don’t suggest that you lay out the Tarot cards in patterns called spreads (or readings) for interpretation without some knowledge and understanding of the Major Arcana, it is possible to use the Tarot cards from the outset of your study. A simple yet valuable procedure can be performed daily; an appropriate attitude is the sole requirement. The cards should be shuffled thoroughly, particularly if the deck is new. Taking care to turn half the deck with each shuffle assures that about fifty percent of the cards are facing in each direction, so that there is roughly an even chance that a card drawn will appear rightside up or upside down.

  Once shuffled, the Tarot deck can be kept in a night-table drawer, handbag, or glove compartment, depending on your lifestyle. Each morning or evening or whenever the day affords a quiet moment, the deck can be cut. While it might not seem that much can be learned from looking at the card exposed by that single cut, practice and experience will soon dispel that illusion! If you are prepared to work with the card in a serious way, it will begin to reveal its wealth of usefulness immediately. It is often helpful to have a particular question in mind before cutting the cards and, at first, one that is limited to a specific situation. For example, “What difficulties am I likely to encounter at the work place today?” or “How will the disagreement with my friend over where we vacation resolve itself?” By limiting the question in this way as opposed to “Am I in the right job?” or “Am I with the right mate?”, it is possible to avoid repeating questions that the Tarot has answered earlier in this process.

  After the question is formulated, it is useful to calm the mind and open yourself to the cards. Cut the deck; the card that emerges at the bottom of the pile can then be observed closely. There are, to my knowledge, no randomly chosen symbols or random designs in the deck. Applying what you perceive, feel, think, or intuit to the question raised can be an exhilarating awakening! (If your daily cut turns up a Major Arcanum and your experience with the cards is limited, you might choose to cut again until you get a Minor Arcanum, with which this book may be of help to you.)

  In this context you can already begin to work with the tricky issue of reversed cards. The suggestion that reversal signifies meaning opposite to its interpretation when it is rightside up seems to me both simplistic and foolish. The image is there, present for us to explore. How can its reversal mean the absence of that image? Yet a reversal does change the card’s meaning.

  We can imagine, in the case of the first hypothetical question, that our focused cut reveals the Five of Wands. Even at first glance, most of us perceive conflict of some sort and degree. When the card is reversed, some spin must be put on that observation, and only experience, heightened intuition, and reflection will reveal what that variation might be. Is it more bitter, harsher, because of the reversal? Is it perhaps subtle, opaque, a current running under the surface that is not overtly exposed or clearly understood? Is it perfectly obvious, but handled with denial so that a patina of politeness covers genuine malice?

  In relation to the second question, let us imagine that the single cut reveals the Two of Cups, a couple in harmonious union. The indication here is that in the context of a loving, mutually respectful, growth-promoting relationship, where you vacation will be of little moment in terms of the big picture. If the card is reversed, however, the suggestion might be that the issue could develop into an argument with serious consequences. How the two of you succeed or fail in solving disagreements could determine the course of the relationship. Inability to compromise, to make adjustments, could turn the relationship on its ear.

  If your days are hectic and you are pressed for time, this simple experience can transform a long traffic light from a source of irritation to a welcome opportunity. Once the card is released from the deck it can be kept on a desk, in a drawer, or on the passenger seat, and referred to at intervals throughout the day when the moment allows it. Meanwhile, the single image is making multiple impressions on the brain, and the unconscious mind continues its dialogue with the card independent of conscious transactions of a mundane kind. The work has begun.

  When your schedule permits, more committed exercises can be performed in relation to the single-card cut. You can cut the card just before going to sleep, making it the last image you feed into your unconscious for the day. You can ask your unconscious for a dream involving the image on the card. You can leave it on your nightstand, assuring that it will be the first image you focus on the following morning. If you were to sleep with it under your pillow, you wouldn’t be the first.

  Meditation using the card as a mandala can be helpful, as can journaling, using the card as a stimulus. In meditation, apart from simply allowing the image to work on the quieted mind, you can engage in more active imagining. You could, for example, become any or each of the figures pictured, relating to the environment in which you find yourself. Or, still entering the card, you could join the figures pictured and enter into a conversation. With which of the figures in the Five of Wands do you identify? (This alone entails a close and feeling-toned scrutiny of the card.) What would you ask the couple in the Two of Cups if you encountered them in the course of a journey?

  Journaling can begin as a record of such meditations, but it can go further. Releasing the unconscious from the need for logical progression or sensible juxtaposition can yield astonishing revelations. For some, automatic writing, usually done with the less dominant hand, facilitates free associations whose connections are more profound and deeply felt than the rational ones of conscious discourse. Is the red of the winged lion in the Two of Cups exciting? Why? Disturbing? What memories are triggered by it, perhaps only partially recalled? What else is red? What does red make you want to do? How about wings? Snakes?

  Lest anyone feel that a single card is that and only that and is therefore limited in the amount of information it can impart, let me suggest that the information gleaned is limited, not by the card, but by the question posed, the time, and the depth of thought and feeling that you bring to it. In terms of subtlety and depth, you could ask, “What quality that irritates me in others is a disowned part of myself?” or “What is the secondary gain that accrues to me from my worst fault?” The Knight of Wands, Four of Pentacles, Seven of Swords, and many others offer food for thought ample for weeks of rumination!

  Enter into a relationship with the Tarot in the way you would enter into any relationship in which you experience initial excitement and sincere interest. Spend time with the cards. Stay in close touch. Ask questions, express delight, pay attention. The result will be a companionship of which you will never tire and that you can never outgrow.

  CHAPTER ONE
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br />   Fifty-Six Mirrors:

  Overlooked Looking Glasses

  WELCOME to the great adventure! Together we are about to embark on an exploration of a time-honored facilitator of psychic growth—the Tarot cards. Before our scrupulous, respectful investigation of individual Tarot images, however, I would like to introduce you to the Tarot as I understand it and offer a perspective that will prove essential in the work to follow. Both a clear grasp of what a Tarot deck is and how, from this writer’s view, it can be used to greatest profit are necessary orientation for what follows.

  Many facets of the Tarot’s origins, history, and evolution remain enmeshed in controversy and mystery. However, the briefest of introductions will do for our purposes: a concise context within which we can focus on the interpretations of the cards for inner growth.

  Tarot refers to a deck of seventy-eight pictured cards which most people associate with Gypsy fortune tellers. Others, for various reasons, have traced their origins back to the Egyptians. A more scholarly approach would say that Tarot first appeared in thirteenth-century France, in the still-available Marseilles deck. At that time, they were produced on leather and metal, predating both the invention of paper and the arrival from India of the Gypsies.

  The seventy-eight cards are of two basically different kinds: the Major Arcana (Arcana, as in our word arcane meaning “secret,” “esoteric,” or “hidden away”), of which there are twenty-two; and the Minor Arcana, of which there are fifty-six. So we have the “great secrets,” the Major Arcana, and the “small secrets,” the Minor Arcana.

  The Major Arcana relate to the soul’s journey. For those of us who believe in reincarnation, they refer to that part of us that outlives the body and returns to the earth plane. For those who do not, they relate to that part of us that continues after the body is gone, the God energy that has become manifest in a vessel that it outlives. Clearly then, to associate them primarily with fortune telling is as erroneous as associating them primarily with Gypsies!