02-10-2014, 10:08 AM
Steve, I found it genuinely heart-warming that you have made your Origins of the Tarot Deck freely available on your website HERE.
I, obviously haven't read the entire thing, just speed read parts of it. I noted what you said about there being two main branches of tarot research, namely the fortune telling branch that has focused on the images themselves, and the "world gaming" branch that has sought the origins of there cards themselves (I think I have this broadly right?).
I think that occultists work on the basis that there is a correspondence between the 22 letters of the Hewbrew alphabet and the 22 major trumps - as you have pointed out, and adding that this link is untenable. But it is my understanding that the "fit" derives not so much from a contrived alignment but because both correspond to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life.
And herein lay one of the best kept secrets of the occult Qabalah that was not made public until 1983 (according to what I was told), when it was revealed that the great significance of the pathways of the Tree of Life, and the 10 - now 11 - Sephiroth themselves, were that they were used as imaginative doorways and a roadmap of the soul and the Collective Unconscious [microcosm/macrocosm] via the technique of meditational Pathworking. The purpose of this Great Work was, clearly, aimed at Consciousness.
This has powerful correspondences to Jung's Analytical Psychology, as Jung practised his own form of this that he called Active Imagination. It is my understanding that these techniques amount to the real inner workings of the Qabalah, Tarot, Alchemy etc.
Of course, the images of the Tarot change somewhat with the deck used. And, so far as I know, different decks are often peculiar to different occult schools, each of which have slightly (sometimes largely, I suspect) differing means of achieving their objectives. My father, who studied these things, concentrated on the Paul Foster Case tarot (though I can't now remember if he used Case's deck or not - he had a few, which I now have along with all his papers) because that was the one his school had adopted for use, although they had nothing directly to do with B.O.T.A.
Anyway, I wondered if you had done any study of Pathworking/Active Imagination on these subjects?
I, obviously haven't read the entire thing, just speed read parts of it. I noted what you said about there being two main branches of tarot research, namely the fortune telling branch that has focused on the images themselves, and the "world gaming" branch that has sought the origins of there cards themselves (I think I have this broadly right?).
I think that occultists work on the basis that there is a correspondence between the 22 letters of the Hewbrew alphabet and the 22 major trumps - as you have pointed out, and adding that this link is untenable. But it is my understanding that the "fit" derives not so much from a contrived alignment but because both correspond to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life.
And herein lay one of the best kept secrets of the occult Qabalah that was not made public until 1983 (according to what I was told), when it was revealed that the great significance of the pathways of the Tree of Life, and the 10 - now 11 - Sephiroth themselves, were that they were used as imaginative doorways and a roadmap of the soul and the Collective Unconscious [microcosm/macrocosm] via the technique of meditational Pathworking. The purpose of this Great Work was, clearly, aimed at Consciousness.
This has powerful correspondences to Jung's Analytical Psychology, as Jung practised his own form of this that he called Active Imagination. It is my understanding that these techniques amount to the real inner workings of the Qabalah, Tarot, Alchemy etc.
Of course, the images of the Tarot change somewhat with the deck used. And, so far as I know, different decks are often peculiar to different occult schools, each of which have slightly (sometimes largely, I suspect) differing means of achieving their objectives. My father, who studied these things, concentrated on the Paul Foster Case tarot (though I can't now remember if he used Case's deck or not - he had a few, which I now have along with all his papers) because that was the one his school had adopted for use, although they had nothing directly to do with B.O.T.A.
Anyway, I wondered if you had done any study of Pathworking/Active Imagination on these subjects?
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14