I'll bite, Ross... I'm procrastinating on pages I have due tomorrow. I respect Mary's position, and understand where she's coming from, but I genuinely believe that the only reason this book still exists is because Duquette's didn't at the time.
The Tarot Handbook is just old enough and so widely distributed that it happens to be sitting on shelves when people go to the mall looking for something on Tarot.
I'm going to just flip through randomly and give you an example from each page I hit. Crappy books are bad for all of us. As useless as Ziegler's book is, Arrien's is deliberately misleading and factually wrong more often than not.
So, on to some specifics:
The classic quote and the one which lets us know how wrongheaded the book is comes from Arrien's intro: (p. 13
Tarot Handbook, Arrien) : "I read Crowley's book that went with this deck and
decided that its esotericism in meaning hindered rather than enhanced the use of the visual portraitures that Lady Frieda Harris had executed. I instantly felt that a humanistic and and universal explanation of these symbols was needed so that the value of Tarot could be used in modern times as a reflective mirror of internal guidance which could be externally applied.... I feel
these visual symbols stand by themselves because of the artist's integrity and commitment to their being representative of something greater, "God's Picture Book".
It is Crowley's interpretation of these symbols, regardless of his reputation, with which I have issue; and it was this issue which led me to interpret these symbols from a cross-cultural and universal view, honoring their visual execution." I'm not going to get into the choice she's made for heerself, but the fact is that Harris painted (brilliantly!) as she was instructed; if there is confusion it is Harris' because even SHE admitted over and over that she was only executing Crowley's work. The thing is that Harris was INITIATED by Crowley and spent most of their correspondence begging him to correct her mistakes. But if Arrien admitted that she couldn't tell us how she FEELS about the pretty pictures.
Mystical tradition as scenic postcard. It's like saying you go to church regularly because cathedrals and their stained glass scenes speak to you personally and spiritually... but you don't agree with anything that Yeshua guy said and you don't like all that icky crucifixion and rebirth business.
Sorry, I got annoyed and disgusted again.
Deep breath. I'm just gonna flip through for some examples.
On Arrien's discussion of the Death trump, because she hasn't done her homework, she doesn't know that the Eagle, Snake, and Scorpion are actually three different ways of magically depicting Scorpio... and flails around with the generic symbolism that you'd find in a continuing ed poetry course carefully keeping everythign upbeat and friendly. From p. 72
Tarot Handbook, Arrien: "the scorpion represents that part of ourselves willing to protect or defend ourselves," "snake sheds its skin", "the phoenix, or eagle reflects the overall vision and perspective that is needed to become even more of what we are." Uhhh, right. Not only can't she identify the actual symbol, she's just slopping the candy coat wherever her logic doesn't follow. She's got enough sense to identify the double crown as Egyptian, but again ties it into her feeble phoenix rebirth business.
Apparently the Eye on The Tower is (from p. 82
Tarot Handbook, Arrien) "The Eye of Horus, the opened and radiant eye at the top of the card, is an Egyptian symbol for the God of Perception." Now for one thing, can you point me to anyone who calls Horus a God of Perception? I'd love to know where in Egypt they had a God of Perception, but I'm going to write that off as typical 80s mush in which New Age authors believe that ancient people worshipped archetypal abstractions in a kind of institutionalized therapy.
Horus' eye was
blinded during the battle with his Uncle Seth, and then restored. THAT is what Crowley is getting at. (Crowley BoT "To obtain perfection, all existing things must be annihilated") In fact Crowley states flat out that the Eye is the eye of Horus AND the Eye of Shiva the destroyer ... only Arrien doesn't like scary words like Destroyer or Blinded or Annihilated, so she's decided it's a big eye of self-help insight.
Then there are just the stupid things: the idiotic phallic stretch on The Knight of Swords: "In Oriental terms, the dagger would be a metaphor for yin (feminine) energy and the sword would be a symbol for yang (masculine) energy," ([WHAT?!] p.107), The Queen of Disks "sitting on a huge pineapple"
bugeyed: p.139), Five of Wands "The state in alchemy which was known as leaded consciousness" (p.180, I'd love to see the word consciousness used in the 17th cent), the fact that Arrien only recognizes the 3 obvious Mercury signs on the 10 of Disks but can't identify the others (p.197). That isn't interpretation... that is
ignorance. Why would I want to pay money to someone writing a "beginner's guide" who couldn't even get their facts right? THAT is the worst of publishing, but it was especially prevalent in 80s New Age massmarket nonfic: people who equated memoir with research, and people who equated typing with writing.
And Arrien's snapshot meaning guide to the deck? Suffice it to say that the skew in her interpretations is towards the self-congratulatory and the facile. The Lord of Pleasure means "Emotional pleasure" and the Lord of Wealth means "Wealth" without edit... but the Lord of Ruin means "Fear of Ruin" and the Lord of Defeat is "Fear of Defeat, Memory of defeat." For Arrien, nothing negative exists in the present tense, only gentle soothing pablum. I realize that the case can be made for this as a kind of elevated philosophical position, but isn't ANYTHING ever wrong in the world? I would argue Arrien should leave poor Crowley and Harris alone and create her own feel-good Tarot of Mystical Opportunism.
I want to be clear: I take Mary's point. I respect her patience with Arrien. I know that Arrien is a much loved teacher and I assume she can read the Thoth, but this book is a train wreck. People do have to find ways to connect to symbols personally and subjectively. BUT... derivative, self-involved books like
The Tarot Handbook are worse than useless. Why would I want to read a catalog of someone else's errors rather than just making mistakes on my own? At least if it's my mistake I am more invested in finding the answers rather than taking it as writ. If all we can expect from a book is someone hugging us sporadically to say that whatever we think is great and we're special and unique (just like everybody else apparently
) then why is the book longer than a greeting card? and
there's the answer: Arrien wrote a 320 page beautifully printed, sporadically articulate greeting card thanking Harris and giving Crowley the fluffy New-Age
finger.
The thing is, symbols are
supposed to be interpreted, people SHOULD be able to find their own meanings, but it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Think about the way we learn to read books: we have
ideas, then learn the squiggles are letters, then the letters make words, words make sentences, the we use sentences to
attempt to communicate the
ideas between two separate consciousnesses. As I said once somewhere else here on the board, every artistic choice is an act of "insistence": "see it this way," "consider this myth," "explore these symbols." To use a deck based on unfamiliar tradition and then make up personal meanings without considering the source seems... strange to say the least; like walking into a library and thinking you were looking at shelves of toilet paper because you'd never seen a book. And that isn't a judgement. It's not wrong to take something at face value and reinvent it. You
can use those pages to wipe, but it wasn't what was intended.
I get very worked up about this (obviously) because I think people should support good books and diligent authors. Books like Arrien's should be left in the rubbish heap of Tarot history. I'm not saying you
couldn't get use out of it. My family always says that there is no one so stupid in the world that you can't learn from them. Readers have one power and that is attention; Arrien's book on the Thoth is
beneath attention. You'd get more value out of reading a book of Egyptian mythology or walking through a piece of great sacred architecture or even just learning basic geometry than reading this self-involved twaddle. By spending your bookbuying dollars and bookreading time on this kind of oatmeal you aren't supporting the material that deserves to stay in print.
Respectfully,
Scion