94stranger
Entered for the current willow tree carnival (30 September) – see link for address.
In this third and concluding part of my reflection on tarot, Rainring, tea leaves and so on, I want to ask the questions: ‘Why not just read tea-leaves?’ and ‘What difference does it make whether I use Rainring, tarot, I Ching or anything else?’
I want to state at the outset that I have only some preliminary remarks to offer on this subject – this is my first word, and I suspect won’t be my last, still less the last. Tea leaves and tarot can both be used to stimulate clairvoyance or clairaudience – psychic seeing or hearing. There are mediums who don’t need to use anything – no crystal ball, no cards, no sweaty palms – they tune in to the ‘other side’, where they have guides or advisors ready to plug them in to whatever is open to access from this source.
I speak from experience, because I have visited such a person, and this has thrown up many questions for me, which I suspect the lady in question would probably not be able to answer – quite simply because in order to operate as an effective channel, my impression is that it is advisable, perhaps even necessary, to be the kind of person who takes things on trust and does not complicate transmission by having squadrons of one’s own personal queries zooming around getting caught in the wires and cables… you catch my drift.
For what it is worth, the cards, tea leaves and the rest can be replaced by accessing directly the wisdom available from such contactees on the other side. For me, there would have to be an issue about what is known and understood ‘up’ there. I would certainly not take it as gospel that comprehensive, complete, objective wisdom and understanding was automatically available from any and every respondent who a sensitive was able to contact on the other side. Two difficulties could arise: either the respondent does not have all the answers, or the medium does not have perfect access. Like on the wireless, sometimes the reception isn’t good enough to pick up everything clearly. My medium lady was being shown objects, actions and situations, for example, whose symbolic significance she ‘read’. This kind of intuitive reading of symbolic material involves subjective judgement, and there is always room for a margin of error there.
Anyhow, I have no expertise here, as you can see, so I hope very much that some people with greater awareness and understanding of this area than me will leave comments to shed further light on the issues raised above.
My primary concern here is to ask what the I Ching, the tarot or Rainring can bring to the table, over and above what the unaided medium, the crystal ball, tea-leaves coffee-grounds, animal entrails, bones etc can offer. And the heart of this answer has to be that the I Ching, tarot and Rainring are views of the world – they are cosmologies, or descriptions of the structure and dynamics of the energies which compose the cosmos we inhabit. These views or descriptions are, of course, intuitive ones, arrived at by inner search and reflection, not by study and analysis of physical phenomena external to the researcher.
The latter is the method of study currently in vogue in the mainstream, and indeed the only one accepted by official and respectable institutions. For example, BBC Radio 4 will call upon the opinions of hundreds of scientific experts in the course of a week, but would probably not consult, as an AUTHORITY, a single individual claiming to have insight and understanding derived from a subjective source such as mediumship or card-reading. I mention the BBC because it prides itself, as an organisation funded by the license-fee payer, on fulfilling its remit to report impartiality and without bias. My impression is that the management of this institution is completely unaware of having any bias in this regard. ‘Science deals in truth and the rest is hocus-pocus’, I take it would be their view of this issue.
The cosmology of Rainring and the others, then, is not of the ‘scientific’ type. This does not, however, mean that there is no way to validate its effectiveness. Systems with a long pedigree, the tarot and I Ching included, have survived and flourished over time because they have been found to resonate with those who use them. In the case of the tarot, moreover, an element of plasticity has also emerged. There has been a very substantial development in the interpretations being given to the tarot over the last hundred years or so. To some extent, the tarot can be seen not as a fixed view, but as a loose, flexible framework into which the attitudes, insights and understanding of users can be injected. I am not informed about the I Ching, but I assume that modern users, not having at all the mindset of 2,500BC, do not understand it altogether in the same way as the early practitioners would have done.
I believe nonetheless that we should not take this line of argument too far. It may be that the explosion of tarot packs which seem often to have only the most tenuous link with classic tarot such as the Marseilles is an indication that the original cosmology of the medieval period has grown too confined for the contemporary psyche. This is the point at which the advantage of Rainring comes into play: it has its roots in a world which has been profoundly influenced by a century of psychology. This has not only involved an attempt to understand the workings of the individual psyche, but to fathom the relationship between the individual and wider cultural, typological, even universal constituents of psychic life.
In other words, the claim I am making for these three at least - I Ching, tarot, Rainring - is that they have the potential, not present in tea-leaves, to teach a view of life. Perhaps this is not quite true. It might be more correct to suggest that, like the agora of ancient Athens where Socrates was wont to accost his fellow-citizens and engage them in dialogue, these sytems provide an arena in which the user can explore and experience the great issues of being and meaning. Rainring certainly has answers to Socrates’ question of ‘How should one live?’ Looked at in another light, it has resemblences to the cryptic utterances of the oracle, such as the one at Delphi, inviting the user or reader to put to it any question, and to attempt to decode the answers that it gives. Since, in the full version, it is capable of supplying over 7000 answers, this gives it a fair amount of scope.
Whether Rainring satisfactorily harnesses the essentials of this new awareness is obviously a matter for study and debate. Aside from this, however, is the validity of the general premise: that we may have a more extensive view of human nature, thanks to psychology and psychotherapy than was possible five hundred years ago. Also, of course, advances in all the natural sciences – for example in neuroscience or pharmacology – interface at many points with areas of concern to those who work with the psyche.
I describe Rainring as a ‘psycho-cosmology’, which means that it is a description of the world from inside, in terms of the psyche if you like. Therefore, Rainring offers a view not only of the structure and dynamics of psychic life, but also of the world. Again, the last century has seen the appearance of an enormous amount of anthropological literature. We now have access to many accounts of the cosmos which do not originate in western culture, such as those of the bushmen of the Kalahari, the aborigines of Australia or the Hopi Indians of North America, to name but three famous examples. These descriptions lie outside our own traditions, so that once we become aware of these or similar non-western ones, we are faced with the need to explore whether or not our own views require to be modified or enlarged to take them into account. Here, once more, we are beyond the medieval world.
Rainring is no more than a staging post along the developmental road of the human psyche. At this point, when it is essentially still unknown to the public at large, I think we can perhaps only approach it in a spirit of open-mindedness mixed with scepticism. Yet one thing, it seems to me, should incline us favourably towards giving it at least a hearing: namely, the very great benefit which we could all in principle derive from being able to work within a framework which belongs to our own age, addresses our own issues. Rainring is not a system from a previous age which we have to mould and manipulate to try and use as a conduit for the contemporary psyche. It does not have to be made contemporary, because it is contemporary.
(For readers who are concerned with the issues raised here, I would like to draw attention to an excellent book excerpt discussing divination, synchronicity and so on at the following address:
http://www.tarot.com/about-us/articles/divtrend )
In this third and concluding part of my reflection on tarot, Rainring, tea leaves and so on, I want to ask the questions: ‘Why not just read tea-leaves?’ and ‘What difference does it make whether I use Rainring, tarot, I Ching or anything else?’
I want to state at the outset that I have only some preliminary remarks to offer on this subject – this is my first word, and I suspect won’t be my last, still less the last. Tea leaves and tarot can both be used to stimulate clairvoyance or clairaudience – psychic seeing or hearing. There are mediums who don’t need to use anything – no crystal ball, no cards, no sweaty palms – they tune in to the ‘other side’, where they have guides or advisors ready to plug them in to whatever is open to access from this source.
I speak from experience, because I have visited such a person, and this has thrown up many questions for me, which I suspect the lady in question would probably not be able to answer – quite simply because in order to operate as an effective channel, my impression is that it is advisable, perhaps even necessary, to be the kind of person who takes things on trust and does not complicate transmission by having squadrons of one’s own personal queries zooming around getting caught in the wires and cables… you catch my drift.
For what it is worth, the cards, tea leaves and the rest can be replaced by accessing directly the wisdom available from such contactees on the other side. For me, there would have to be an issue about what is known and understood ‘up’ there. I would certainly not take it as gospel that comprehensive, complete, objective wisdom and understanding was automatically available from any and every respondent who a sensitive was able to contact on the other side. Two difficulties could arise: either the respondent does not have all the answers, or the medium does not have perfect access. Like on the wireless, sometimes the reception isn’t good enough to pick up everything clearly. My medium lady was being shown objects, actions and situations, for example, whose symbolic significance she ‘read’. This kind of intuitive reading of symbolic material involves subjective judgement, and there is always room for a margin of error there.
Anyhow, I have no expertise here, as you can see, so I hope very much that some people with greater awareness and understanding of this area than me will leave comments to shed further light on the issues raised above.
My primary concern here is to ask what the I Ching, the tarot or Rainring can bring to the table, over and above what the unaided medium, the crystal ball, tea-leaves coffee-grounds, animal entrails, bones etc can offer. And the heart of this answer has to be that the I Ching, tarot and Rainring are views of the world – they are cosmologies, or descriptions of the structure and dynamics of the energies which compose the cosmos we inhabit. These views or descriptions are, of course, intuitive ones, arrived at by inner search and reflection, not by study and analysis of physical phenomena external to the researcher.
The latter is the method of study currently in vogue in the mainstream, and indeed the only one accepted by official and respectable institutions. For example, BBC Radio 4 will call upon the opinions of hundreds of scientific experts in the course of a week, but would probably not consult, as an AUTHORITY, a single individual claiming to have insight and understanding derived from a subjective source such as mediumship or card-reading. I mention the BBC because it prides itself, as an organisation funded by the license-fee payer, on fulfilling its remit to report impartiality and without bias. My impression is that the management of this institution is completely unaware of having any bias in this regard. ‘Science deals in truth and the rest is hocus-pocus’, I take it would be their view of this issue.
The cosmology of Rainring and the others, then, is not of the ‘scientific’ type. This does not, however, mean that there is no way to validate its effectiveness. Systems with a long pedigree, the tarot and I Ching included, have survived and flourished over time because they have been found to resonate with those who use them. In the case of the tarot, moreover, an element of plasticity has also emerged. There has been a very substantial development in the interpretations being given to the tarot over the last hundred years or so. To some extent, the tarot can be seen not as a fixed view, but as a loose, flexible framework into which the attitudes, insights and understanding of users can be injected. I am not informed about the I Ching, but I assume that modern users, not having at all the mindset of 2,500BC, do not understand it altogether in the same way as the early practitioners would have done.
I believe nonetheless that we should not take this line of argument too far. It may be that the explosion of tarot packs which seem often to have only the most tenuous link with classic tarot such as the Marseilles is an indication that the original cosmology of the medieval period has grown too confined for the contemporary psyche. This is the point at which the advantage of Rainring comes into play: it has its roots in a world which has been profoundly influenced by a century of psychology. This has not only involved an attempt to understand the workings of the individual psyche, but to fathom the relationship between the individual and wider cultural, typological, even universal constituents of psychic life.
In other words, the claim I am making for these three at least - I Ching, tarot, Rainring - is that they have the potential, not present in tea-leaves, to teach a view of life. Perhaps this is not quite true. It might be more correct to suggest that, like the agora of ancient Athens where Socrates was wont to accost his fellow-citizens and engage them in dialogue, these sytems provide an arena in which the user can explore and experience the great issues of being and meaning. Rainring certainly has answers to Socrates’ question of ‘How should one live?’ Looked at in another light, it has resemblences to the cryptic utterances of the oracle, such as the one at Delphi, inviting the user or reader to put to it any question, and to attempt to decode the answers that it gives. Since, in the full version, it is capable of supplying over 7000 answers, this gives it a fair amount of scope.
Whether Rainring satisfactorily harnesses the essentials of this new awareness is obviously a matter for study and debate. Aside from this, however, is the validity of the general premise: that we may have a more extensive view of human nature, thanks to psychology and psychotherapy than was possible five hundred years ago. Also, of course, advances in all the natural sciences – for example in neuroscience or pharmacology – interface at many points with areas of concern to those who work with the psyche.
I describe Rainring as a ‘psycho-cosmology’, which means that it is a description of the world from inside, in terms of the psyche if you like. Therefore, Rainring offers a view not only of the structure and dynamics of psychic life, but also of the world. Again, the last century has seen the appearance of an enormous amount of anthropological literature. We now have access to many accounts of the cosmos which do not originate in western culture, such as those of the bushmen of the Kalahari, the aborigines of Australia or the Hopi Indians of North America, to name but three famous examples. These descriptions lie outside our own traditions, so that once we become aware of these or similar non-western ones, we are faced with the need to explore whether or not our own views require to be modified or enlarged to take them into account. Here, once more, we are beyond the medieval world.
Rainring is no more than a staging post along the developmental road of the human psyche. At this point, when it is essentially still unknown to the public at large, I think we can perhaps only approach it in a spirit of open-mindedness mixed with scepticism. Yet one thing, it seems to me, should incline us favourably towards giving it at least a hearing: namely, the very great benefit which we could all in principle derive from being able to work within a framework which belongs to our own age, addresses our own issues. Rainring is not a system from a previous age which we have to mould and manipulate to try and use as a conduit for the contemporary psyche. It does not have to be made contemporary, because it is contemporary.
(For readers who are concerned with the issues raised here, I would like to draw attention to an excellent book excerpt discussing divination, synchronicity and so on at the following address:
http://www.tarot.com/about-us/articles/divtrend )
