Tarot Talk
Tarot is one of the most powerful tools for developing self-awareness, it allows you the chance to develop your own choices and journey in life, and to bring greater awareness to your sense of purpose, destiny, or vocation. Tarot is timeless. Tarot inspires, creates pathways, gives guidance, and can make a dramatic difference to the way you live your life and deal with its challenges. It is a wonderful tool for self-analysis and self-improvement.
Tarot not only brings fresh insight into making choices and allows you to develop trust in your instincts and intuition, but it also opens new horizons in relationships, career issues and personal fulfilment. By tapping into the energy of the moment, you are tapping into your own psyche. It can also bring you closer to the spiritual and psychic side of your nature.
The word 'divination' derives from the Latin, divinus, meaning ' to be inspired by the gods.'
Many cultures throughout the world and over the ages have 'foretold' the future, using anything from tea leaves, tossed twigs, rune stones, to patterns in puddles after the rain. The desire to know' 'what will be' is a strong human desire.
The tarot is a hugely helpful tool in self-analysis. 'Why am I feeling like this?' ' How can I regain my strength?' ' What advice am I looking for?'
What is it about these strange picture cards which continue to exercise such a mysterious spell even over those individuals who consider themselves sensible and not ordinarily prone to believing in occult mysteries? In part, the answer may be that the Tarot cards are not 'occult'- that is, they are not supernatural or magical in in the sense that those words are used, and they are not the especial property of the esoteric initiate.
The tarot is a symbolic language that draws on two symbolic sources: numbers and images.
These archetypal symbols trigger profound feelings within us and connect us to timeless myths and collective dreams. The word 'myth' can also imply a scheme or plan, and it is this meaning which we must consider when we look at the Tarot cards. Mythic images are spontaneous pictures, sprung from the human imagination, which describe in poetic language essential human experiences and essential human patterns of development. Psychology now uses the term 'archetypal' to describe these patterns. Archetypal means a pattern which is universal and existent in all people in all cultures at all periods of history.
Birth, for example, is an archetypal experience, this is obvious as we have all been born! However, a birth is also a psychological experience as when we begin something new or enter a new phase of life, a 'birth' occurs. A similar meaning applies to death and puberty.
Myth portrays archetypal patterns in human life through pictures and stories. But where is this symbolic pathway leading us? Is it a learning curve or a divination method for making choices? The answer is that The Tarot is both.
There are two avenues by which to approach the Tarot cards. We can take the historical approach, which is factual or the psychological approach, which is archetypal. With the first we can try to explain- the origins and intentions of the cards. But the second opens the issue of their eternal fascination, even though we are more scientifically knowledgeable. In the imaginal world of the psyche, experiences are not connected by causality, but by meaning. Patterns other than the concrete ones are at work within us, and unless we have some understanding of the psyche, the strange coincidences of the Tarot can seem frightening or disturbing.
Connections between events in outer life and the images of the cards are not because the cards are 'magical' but because there is a shared meaning. This is what we mean by birth, death and puberty being inner as well as outer experiences. We meet these experiences repeatedly on various levels at separate times in life and thus there is a Tarot card which will describe each of them, and which will somehow, mysteriously appear without apparent cause in a spread of cards now, when we are inwardly experiencing such an archetypal event.
Thus, the way in which the Tarot 'works' is as a kind of mirror of the psyche.
Tarot not only brings fresh insight into making choices and allows you to develop trust in your instincts and intuition, but it also opens new horizons in relationships, career issues and personal fulfilment. By tapping into the energy of the moment, you are tapping into your own psyche. It can also bring you closer to the spiritual and psychic side of your nature.
The word 'divination' derives from the Latin, divinus, meaning ' to be inspired by the gods.'
Many cultures throughout the world and over the ages have 'foretold' the future, using anything from tea leaves, tossed twigs, rune stones, to patterns in puddles after the rain. The desire to know' 'what will be' is a strong human desire.
The tarot is a hugely helpful tool in self-analysis. 'Why am I feeling like this?' ' How can I regain my strength?' ' What advice am I looking for?'
What is it about these strange picture cards which continue to exercise such a mysterious spell even over those individuals who consider themselves sensible and not ordinarily prone to believing in occult mysteries? In part, the answer may be that the Tarot cards are not 'occult'- that is, they are not supernatural or magical in in the sense that those words are used, and they are not the especial property of the esoteric initiate.
The tarot is a symbolic language that draws on two symbolic sources: numbers and images.
These archetypal symbols trigger profound feelings within us and connect us to timeless myths and collective dreams. The word 'myth' can also imply a scheme or plan, and it is this meaning which we must consider when we look at the Tarot cards. Mythic images are spontaneous pictures, sprung from the human imagination, which describe in poetic language essential human experiences and essential human patterns of development. Psychology now uses the term 'archetypal' to describe these patterns. Archetypal means a pattern which is universal and existent in all people in all cultures at all periods of history.
Birth, for example, is an archetypal experience, this is obvious as we have all been born! However, a birth is also a psychological experience as when we begin something new or enter a new phase of life, a 'birth' occurs. A similar meaning applies to death and puberty.
Myth portrays archetypal patterns in human life through pictures and stories. But where is this symbolic pathway leading us? Is it a learning curve or a divination method for making choices? The answer is that The Tarot is both.
There are two avenues by which to approach the Tarot cards. We can take the historical approach, which is factual or the psychological approach, which is archetypal. With the first we can try to explain- the origins and intentions of the cards. But the second opens the issue of their eternal fascination, even though we are more scientifically knowledgeable. In the imaginal world of the psyche, experiences are not connected by causality, but by meaning. Patterns other than the concrete ones are at work within us, and unless we have some understanding of the psyche, the strange coincidences of the Tarot can seem frightening or disturbing.
Connections between events in outer life and the images of the cards are not because the cards are 'magical' but because there is a shared meaning. This is what we mean by birth, death and puberty being inner as well as outer experiences. We meet these experiences repeatedly on various levels at separate times in life and thus there is a Tarot card which will describe each of them, and which will somehow, mysteriously appear without apparent cause in a spread of cards now, when we are inwardly experiencing such an archetypal event.
Thus, the way in which the Tarot 'works' is as a kind of mirror of the psyche.
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