Rite or Religion

Michael Sternbach said:

Didn't you write a book on reversals? So I guess you can see that what you find to be contradictory meanings is simply the polarity that exists in each card?

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Religious wars are fought over contradictory meanings! People die over contradictory meanings. It's as good an excuse as any for Tarot not being a religion.

Further, I am surprised to hear the opinion that Tarot's symbolism is anything less than universal from the person who popularized the method of calculating personality/soul/annual cards like no other. If that works, doesn't it prove that there is a precise and objective reality underlying the Tarot symbolism?

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Tarot works because it is useful, because people find meaning in it - but not always the same meaning. I haven't seen any objective, scientific proof of anything regarding the Tarot besides its appearance at certain dates/places. Is the Hanged Man card the shame portrait of a traitor or debtor, or is he a god being painfully sacrificed or is he Waite's shipwrecked and drowned giant?

Teheuti said:

Religious wars are fought over contradictory meanings! People die over contradictory meanings. It's as good an excuse as any for Tarot not being a religion.


Tarot works because it is useful, because people find meaning in it - but not always the same meaning. I haven't seen any objective, scientific proof of anything regarding the Tarot besides its appearance at certain dates/places. Is the Hanged Man card the shame portrait of a traitor or debtor, or is he a god being painfully sacrificed or is he Waite's shipwrecked and drowned giant?

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But studying how a querent's personality/soul cards relate to them gives you the opportunity to go beyond this arbitrariness and gather some repeatable observations.

Starshower said:

Interesting quotation. Do the positions of stars & planets 'above' influence what transpires
here 'below' - or reflect it & vice versa? Influence is a causal connection, whereas correspondence needn't be ... it can be fractal

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I go with fractal. They reflect core patterns - no cause and effect involved.

Michael Sternbach said:

But studying how a querent's personality/soul cards relate to them gives you the opportunity to go beyond this arbitrariness and gather some repeatable observations.

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Unfortunately someone always wants to legislate their observations - not accepting that another's observations may be equally as valid.

Jung said that a symbol has infinite references. Religions always want to dictate what references are acceptable and what aren't.

Have you "observed" the Fool to be Aleph, Shin or Tav; Air, Fire, or Saturn, first, last or next-to-last, or something else entirely? I'm sure the "Church of Tarot" (or some heretic branch) would want to fix it.

nisaba said:

How can Tarot be both a religion and that religion's sacred book? Christianity is not the sacred book of Christianity - the Bible is. Argh!

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Thats just nomenclature. If you insist then <sigh>

tarot would be the religion and tarot deck would be the scripture ( and books on tarot the 'theology' )

<gives her a reassuring pat >

Michael Sternbach said:

Didn't you write a book on reversals? So I guess you can see that what you find to be contradictory meanings is simply the polarity that exists in each card?

Further, I am surprised to hear the opinion that Tarot's symbolism is anything less than universal from the person who popularized the method of calculating personality/soul/annual cards like no other. If that works, doesn't it prove that there is a precise and objective reality underlying the Tarot symbolism?

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I think that sometimes people forget that, although tarot symbolism can be seen from a modern ' Neo- hermetic' perspective and that symbolism came from an age before us, that the age before us that developed the symbolism was steeped and flooded in hermeticism in the first place ?

Teheuti said:

Religious wars are fought over contradictory meanings! People die over contradictory meanings. It's as good an excuse as any for Tarot not being a religion.


Tarot works because it is useful, because people find meaning in it - but not always the same meaning. I haven't seen any objective, scientific proof of anything regarding the Tarot besides its appearance at certain dates/places. Is the Hanged Man card the shame portrait of a traitor or debtor, or is he a god being painfully sacrificed or is he Waite's shipwrecked and drowned giant?

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they are minor detail that reveals the possible manifestations in the underlying archetype. Thats why some of us dont like 'scenic' representations as they are often mistaken as meanings and not possible outcomes from the central symbolic meaning. It isnt much of a jump to conclude the examples you give all relate to a very similar thing .

If a symbol has infinite references , why have separate cards with different symbol sets on them. Where has the theory of correspondences and ideal form gone ? Is Jung correct in every single thing he wrote, especially considering the previous statement ?

Can the symbol of a crescent Moon be said to symbolise fire heat and danger ? Not without a whole lot of extensions and fudging IMO.


Thats why IMO it takes two to get an accurate reading and one that may relate to certain details in someone' s actual life . Consulting with the client can narrow the field of interpretation, more so than predicting any one of a possible set of outcomes; eg. Are going on a boat trip .. have debts ... been spying ... etc .

Nowadays people are all caught up in ' A meaning' and dont understand 'form' and 'possible manifestation'.

The position that Ravenest and I are taking can be characterized as an essentially Platonic approach.

According to the Platonic model, the world of our experience emerges out of a multidimensional space. Jung spoke of a "psychoid space". The archetypical world is seen in this view as the realm of original Divine "ideas" which so to speak provide the blueprints for manifestation on any psychological and physical, internal and external level (see Plotinus).

Now, Plato was especially thinking of numbers as such "original ideas". As I mentioned in my previous response to Teheuti, the observed aptness of a querent's soul/personality/annual cards is one (of several) confirmations that the Tarot Trumps as we know them are a translation of the archetypical numbers into human terms. Their interpretation may somewhat vary and take forms specific to a time and culture, but their essence is not man-made and remains ever the same.

Frater Benedict said:

I do not entirely recognise the image of religion as necessarily being about 'instruction'. When attending a Hindu sacrifice of a lamp, some flowers, some yoghurt and some incense it is not at all about 'instruction', but about worship, connectedness to the divine and contemplative mindfulness about the symbolic actions. The same is true about a weekday Eucharist – Anglican or Roman Catholic – which, unlike the Sunday Mass, doesn't have a sermon. A sermon is usually not a part of a weekday Shacharit in a synagogue: It is purely a prayer service, and among the Hasids it is celebrated in a contemplative way informed by Kabbalah. A Buddhist meditation session may be preceded or followed by a Dharma Talk, but most of the time it is not. So 'instruction' is not a universal feature of religion. In most religions it occurs now and then, but far from all the time, and it is not the centre of religion. Personally, I would say that connectedness to The Absolute is the centre of religion.

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Well, go back and read what I really said. I said ritual is also involved---and it is. I don't understand why you disagree with what I said, but it's okay if you want to disagree. I still stick with maintaining that religion does include instruction AND/OR if you prefer, rituals. Rituals are certainly a part of the religion of Buddhism or Hinduism or others that don't include verbal lessons or instruction. However, no matter how it's "instructed", whether verbally or just by allowing others to observe the performing of the rituals so they then know how they can perform the rituals themselves is still a form of religious instruction.

I hope that made sense. I'ts 3am here, which is a long time past my bedtime. Interesting discussion and food for thought.

But the purpose of Hindu or Buddhist rituals are not primarily to instruct how they are to be performed. Neither are the celebration of Eucharist or (Hasidic) Shacharit (outside Shabat).

Instead of the cerebral and analytic activity you expect of religious practice, they are participatory, contemplative, illuminative and unitive activities. Focus is not on information, on a preacher or on the leader of a ritual, but on an inner reality however perceived (commonly God, but this does not apply on Buddhism, and among polytheists deity is perceived as manifold).

Your expectations seem to conform pretty well to some forms of Protestant religion, but not to other expressions of religion. Even after this narrowing down, your description of religion doesn't apply to all Protestants – the Quakers do not preach, instruct or even do rituals. Quaker meetings are silent.

Earth is a planet with more than 7 000 000 000 human beings living on it. Most do NOT practice a Presbyterian or Revivalist form of religion. Please, do not expect Anglicans, Neo-Pagans, Roman Catholics, Buddhists, Eastern orthodox Christians, Hasidic Jews, Thelemites, Hindus, Sufi Moslems, Sikhs or Zoroastrians (in no particular order) to conform to a Revivalist/Mainline Protestant or Reform/Conservative Jewish pattern of behaviour.