The Secret Language of TAROT

brightcrazystar

So, this book went VERY fast because it kept me thinking and flowed well, for the most part. I read it deeply, but swiftly. I started it 9 hours ago. I also watched a movie, cooked dinner, and it couldn't have taken me more than 6 hours. (Note: I finished it last night, and started this post, and then was dragged away from the computer to cuddle)

I think this book is a great place to start, but I do have some issues with some "facts" in their assertions, such as The Moon being almost exclusively female, but their gender dynamic is suited by their interpretation. I long ago stopped trying to make people see that the level of Sun and Moon is far different than that of Male and Female, including many where the son and moon are brothers, or counter-gendered from the usual associations. In old norse poetry, consistently The Sun is referred to as "she" and the moon as "he". The old norse name for the sun (sol) is feminine, and the name for the moon (mani) is masculine. Same with Amaterasu, and Tsuki-yomi for the ancient Japanese, and the two boats of Ra, Mandjet and the Mesektet, and many others.

If people want to assert gender on things within us all, do so, but I can name SEVERAL dominant mythologies where this is not so. I regard these as the most prominent celestial bodies in our clear skies, and therefore likely, in their own culture, to be applied significance according to the spiritual and social dynamics of those cultures.

In Qabala, both of those celestial bodies trend to the Middle Pillar, Tiphareth and Yesod both are on the Middle Pillar, and the Path attributed to The Sun Pours from Severe Hod to Mild Yesod, and path attributed to The Moon from Merciful Netzach to Mild Malkuth. But my complaints are not exactly so overburdened, because the authors seem to communicate in a less than authoritative tone.

I did see their book as a great place to start studying relationships of the cards to each other if people do not do so. I also share some of their obvious correlations. I also loved that their book asked questions of the reader. It made interacting with the book more than fact gathering. The parts that were speaking "at you" seemed to read a bit differently, such as the mechanisms of the stream in environmental science, and some odd pacing makes me think this were largely pulled from outside sources, written at a later time and poorly integrated into the original feel of the book which is fine. It seems these were classroom scripts anyways, and in every class I have held or attended, we deviated from the script to allow for Student and peer input or questions.

I feel they were including these highlights of these to allow for proper reflection on them. As meditating on their functions, it served well. I felt the science textbook and history textbook parts were not really deeply connected enough to the Tarot's use of them. The mentqal juggling of the words, the etymology, the contemplations were all good, but not consistent. I also think the book suffers more from poor editing than anything else.

Their book is by no means definitive or comprehensive, and the authors make no claim that it is. The overall feeling I got from this book was inviting, and reflective. It irked me that each chapter was referring to itself as a series of classes, but I got over it. The meditations in the book were awesome. None took that long, and I did not dwell on them long, because they were guided meditations which I prefer unguided ones.

Also, their classifications of these things Crowns, Pillars, etc. are not always things that I agree with. For example, in the exposition on Towers, they mention Colossus, which I would regard as a Pillar, for it is not a building or domicile.

One last thing:

The Angel Chapter, if you do not know what it has to say, is worth the price of the entire book. As a Magician of over 20 years practice, that is simply one of the best breakdowns of some of the general protocol of how to deal with these beings and their nature that I have seen in a published book.

Now to read 78 Degrees of Wisdom.