Nature vs. Nurture in Tarot Education
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I may not be the ideal person to comment on this subject since there were no local teachers or mentors back in 1972 when I began my tarot journey and since then I haven’t needed any, so my awareness of what is available in the way of tarot education (outside of self-study via books) is limited to a few rather dull introductory YouTube presentations and some advertising. But I’ve never been shy about my opinions, and I have little patience with “talking heads” at the best of times. I certainly won’t pay for the privilege of suffering their “oral diarrhea;” these days, anyone with a smattering of knowledge, a video-capable phone and an internet connection can become an “instant expert” and overnight sensation among those even less well-informed than they are. As one who has observed the decline of the Weather Channel into “edu-tainment,” I’ve noticed that the same superficiality can afflict online presenters: in the interest of being entertaining as well as informative, they barely shut up long enough to take a breath. I recently watched someone performing a tarot reading who didn’t stop talking even when supposedly concentrating on the question.
I’ve noticed that there is now an “embarrassment of riches” when it comes to video instruction for learning to understand and interpret the tarot cards; some — miracle of miracles! — claim to do it in just a few days. Are any of these upstarts worthwhile from a cost/benefit perspective when their often hefty price tag is taken into account? Let’s just say I’m skeptical since so much of our personal relationship with the cards is subjective and can’t be spoon-fed. Perhaps certain drills can be recommenced to good effect, but the real “meat” in the learning process comes through practice and more practice interspersed with deep thinking on the metaphysical content encoded in the artwork. We can be led to the information but we can’t be made to comprehend it through external reinforcement, that must come from within through intense desire and focused application. Ideally, we will form an enduring mental/emotional bond with the symbolic significance of the imagery (which, it must be said, should be far more profound than the “pretty pictures” evident in so many tossed-off modern decks). The signposts can be pointed out to us, but we must still walk the road and, as semanticist Alfred Korzybski once said, “The map is not the territory,” a truism that is abundantly clear when beginning to decipher the tarot.
Aleister Crowley put it perfectly when describing the cards as “living beings:” (I’ve condensed his thoughts a bit in these quotes.)
“(The student) can only come to an understanding of the Tarot through experience. It will not be sufficient for him to intensify his studies of the cards as objective things; he must use them, he must live with them. They, too, must live with him.” He goes on to say “Then how is he to use them? How is he to blend their life with his? The ideal way is that of contemplation. The practical everyday commonplace way is divination.”
It didn’t take me long to realize that pulling daily cards and painstakingly journaling every insight was the fastest way to kill my enthusiasm for “living with the tarot.” Of much more import was flooding my brain with all the esoteric philosophy I could cram into it within the emerging New Age culture of self-discovery promoted by publishers like Samuel Weiser (for example, Dion Fortune, William Gray, Gareth Knight, Israel Regardie, Frater Achad, Franz Bardon, Paul Foster Case and, of course, Aleister Crowley). The upshot of this extensive period of study was the crucial impact of their wisdom on my growing facility with the Thoth Tarot of Crowley and Frieda Harris, primarily through contemplation in the early days and then through divination that was dedicated to the exclusive use of that deck. This has become a life-long pursuit, punctuated by periodic re-reading of my source material, particularly the Book of Thoth. I have since added other decks to the mix for my public practice (Waite-Smith, Tarot de Marseille, Etteilla, Lenormand to name a few) but the Thoth is still my “gold standard.”
Since 2011, when I first discovered the online tarot community through my association with the Aeclectic Tarot forum, I’ve found a great deal of stimulation in conversing with like-minded esoteric thinkers; but Aeclectic folded in 2017 and we will probably never see its like again. Most attempts to replace it have understandably been forced to “monetize” (I don’t think Aeclectic was a money-making venture for Solandia), which makes them feel less like platforms for the free exchange of ideas and more like for-profit “hotlines.” Furthermore, much of what passes for dialogue now is of the “Please help me interpret these cards” variety, frequently driven by romantic angst. I don’t mind helping if the topic and the cards pulled are of particular interest to me, but all too often it’s neophyte stuff and not why I visit the tarot pages. Fortunately, writing regularly for this blog (some might say relentlessly) keeps me actively engaged and sharp.
When I created the Tarot 101, My Way course material that was posted previously on this site and published in my e-book, I poured a good deal of my acquired learning into the guidance, organizing and editing it into concise “knowledge-based” statements as a useful preface to my own card-by-card observations. If you’re looking for a source that encapsulates brief, digestible snippets of traditional lore from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Arthur Edward Waite and Aleister Crowley to jump-start your learning, it would not be a bad place to start. Until you develop your own vocabulary, you can take my contributions as personal opinion and food for thought rooted in my five decades of intellectual exploration and practical experience.
https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/tarot-101-my-way/
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on November 13, 2022.
