This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. For more information and a list of instalments so far, see right.
There
is also a third and, I hope, final version of the previous instalment ‘A New
Age’ which you might like to read before this one, if you haven’t already.
Frog
had a pack of tarot cards and several books on their history and meaning, and
he’d impressed me when we first met by doing me a reading.
I found the cards fascinating and spine-tingling, with their strange markings and mysterious characters such as The High Priestess and The Emperor. I couldn’t read them myself however as the pictures in his pack were symbolic rather than real, with stick people making stylised gestures, and the more I read about the cards the more confused I became.
So when Cheryl offered to teach me about them, I leapt.
At the same time, I was researching their background for the encyclopaedia.
They first surfaced, I discovered, in Europe in the fourteenth century but may have been much older than that and drawn their influences from all over. The Hanged Man card for instance derives from Norse mythology. The early New Agers related the entire structure of the pack to the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition that dates back to before the Middle Ages. The four suits reflect the traditional elements of earth, air, water and fire, also found (with extras) in Chinese traditions dating back four thousand years.
The early twentieth-century psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, whose ideas had stuck in my mind after I read about them (in my blue Penguin Introduction to Jung’s Psychology) when I was twenty-one, called the images on the cards ‘archetypal’, by which he meant that they were the bricks of our ‘collective unconscious’, a layer of the psyche common to all humans and which we are born with. This is the layer that surfaces in dreams, fairy stories and myths.
The cards may originally have been used simply for ‘divination’ (fortune telling) but they may also, according to the early New Agers, have been a record of the mystical side of all religions, kept secret for fear of persecution – and perhaps ridicule I thought.
No wonder I was confused, no wonder the cards gave me the shivers, and no wonder I had always conducted my real life in secret from everyone except Frog, seeing as so much of what makes us human had been forced into hiding for so long. It wasn’t only me.
Frog joined me in learning about the cards from Cheryl, as did Beth’s charming but alcoholic ex-partner, a musician. We sat round a table in Cheryl’s moody sitting-room, curtains drawn and incense burning. I felt as if I was going to be inducted into the mysteries of the universe.
The best known tarot at the time was the Rider-Waite pack of 1909, named after its male creator and publisher but omitting any mention of its female artist Pamela Colman Smith. This was the pack Frog had, whereas Cheryl used a modern pack called the Cosmic Tarot.
As she fanned it out in front of us, real people with recognisable expressions flicked past. I craned over them, hardly daring to breathe in case I missed something.
‘There are twenty-two Major Arcana,’ she began.
I’d already looked up the word ‘arcana’ and knew that it came from ‘arcane’, yet another word for secret and yet another word like ‘occult’ ‘esoteric’ and ‘hermetic’ loaded with extra meaning, not all of it complimentary. For me however these undertones only increased my fascination.
She picked out a few of these cards and placed them on the table – The Lovers, The Chariot, The Star – and something stirred deep inside me. I knew what Jung meant.
‘These describe our soul’s journey and they begin and end with The Fool.’
She held up a card which showed a jester dancing on the edge of a mountain with a little dog dancing at their heels. The picture touched something from childhood, something I’d forgotten until then. It reminded me of how I felt when I met Frog.
‘The other cards are arranged in four suits like playing cards.’
She sprinkled a selection, and people doing things I recognised, like yoga or DIY, or kissing, or fighting or clutching their heads in pain, confusion and sadness, popped up.
‘These cover everyday ups and downs.’
Yes, I could see that so clearly.
‘They are arranged in four suits – pentacles, swords, cups and wands.’
I tingled. Even the names sounded magical.
‘Pentacles cover the practical, physical side of life, swords represent thoughts, cups our emotions and wands creativity.’
How obvious. How simple. Now it was all starting to make sense, in a way none of Frog’s learned books had done.
‘The four court cards represent real people. Look out for them when you’re doing a reading.’
She pulled out a few. Princesses, Princes, Queens and Kings.
‘I’ve always identified with him,’ said Frog pointing to a card called the Prince of Wands.
Yes, I could see that too. The prince was a young man with an open face and long curly hair, like Frog’s hair when I met him. Exactly like Frog, he had thoughtful eyes and a dimple in his chin.
‘You can lay the cards out in any order you like, so long as you’re clear in your mind what the positions mean. These patterns are called “spreads”.’
I remembered all the complicated arrangements in the books and the diagrams which had only made me more confused, and breathed out, my shoulders dropping in relief.
‘Let’s try a few.’
And so we began.
We continued to meet as a group, reading for each other again and again until the given meaning of each card was fixed in our memory.
Like hypnotherapy the cards uncovered a part of me that had lingered for eons in the dark corners of my mind. They helped me to see connections, make stories and find ways out of seemingly impossible situations.
I began to understand that they weren’t the work of the Devil, they were a language, and once you’d learnt that language you could do with it whatever you wanted.
Or so I thought at first.
One day Cheryl asked me to read for her.
Two cards popped up. Death, a skeleton with a scythe and ruins all around. The Tower, flames shooting from the top of a tall building and people plunging to their death.
I found the cards fascinating and spine-tingling, with their strange markings and mysterious characters such as The High Priestess and The Emperor. I couldn’t read them myself however as the pictures in his pack were symbolic rather than real, with stick people making stylised gestures, and the more I read about the cards the more confused I became.
So when Cheryl offered to teach me about them, I leapt.
At the same time, I was researching their background for the encyclopaedia.
They first surfaced, I discovered, in Europe in the fourteenth century but may have been much older than that and drawn their influences from all over. The Hanged Man card for instance derives from Norse mythology. The early New Agers related the entire structure of the pack to the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition that dates back to before the Middle Ages. The four suits reflect the traditional elements of earth, air, water and fire, also found (with extras) in Chinese traditions dating back four thousand years.
The early twentieth-century psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, whose ideas had stuck in my mind after I read about them (in my blue Penguin Introduction to Jung’s Psychology) when I was twenty-one, called the images on the cards ‘archetypal’, by which he meant that they were the bricks of our ‘collective unconscious’, a layer of the psyche common to all humans and which we are born with. This is the layer that surfaces in dreams, fairy stories and myths.
The cards may originally have been used simply for ‘divination’ (fortune telling) but they may also, according to the early New Agers, have been a record of the mystical side of all religions, kept secret for fear of persecution – and perhaps ridicule I thought.
No wonder I was confused, no wonder the cards gave me the shivers, and no wonder I had always conducted my real life in secret from everyone except Frog, seeing as so much of what makes us human had been forced into hiding for so long. It wasn’t only me.
Frog joined me in learning about the cards from Cheryl, as did Beth’s charming but alcoholic ex-partner, a musician. We sat round a table in Cheryl’s moody sitting-room, curtains drawn and incense burning. I felt as if I was going to be inducted into the mysteries of the universe.
The best known tarot at the time was the Rider-Waite pack of 1909, named after its male creator and publisher but omitting any mention of its female artist Pamela Colman Smith. This was the pack Frog had, whereas Cheryl used a modern pack called the Cosmic Tarot.
As she fanned it out in front of us, real people with recognisable expressions flicked past. I craned over them, hardly daring to breathe in case I missed something.
‘There are twenty-two Major Arcana,’ she began.
I’d already looked up the word ‘arcana’ and knew that it came from ‘arcane’, yet another word for secret and yet another word like ‘occult’ ‘esoteric’ and ‘hermetic’ loaded with extra meaning, not all of it complimentary. For me however these undertones only increased my fascination.
She picked out a few of these cards and placed them on the table – The Lovers, The Chariot, The Star – and something stirred deep inside me. I knew what Jung meant.
‘These describe our soul’s journey and they begin and end with The Fool.’
She held up a card which showed a jester dancing on the edge of a mountain with a little dog dancing at their heels. The picture touched something from childhood, something I’d forgotten until then. It reminded me of how I felt when I met Frog.
‘The other cards are arranged in four suits like playing cards.’
She sprinkled a selection, and people doing things I recognised, like yoga or DIY, or kissing, or fighting or clutching their heads in pain, confusion and sadness, popped up.
‘These cover everyday ups and downs.’
Yes, I could see that so clearly.
‘They are arranged in four suits – pentacles, swords, cups and wands.’
I tingled. Even the names sounded magical.
‘Pentacles cover the practical, physical side of life, swords represent thoughts, cups our emotions and wands creativity.’
How obvious. How simple. Now it was all starting to make sense, in a way none of Frog’s learned books had done.
‘The four court cards represent real people. Look out for them when you’re doing a reading.’
She pulled out a few. Princesses, Princes, Queens and Kings.
‘I’ve always identified with him,’ said Frog pointing to a card called the Prince of Wands.
Yes, I could see that too. The prince was a young man with an open face and long curly hair, like Frog’s hair when I met him. Exactly like Frog, he had thoughtful eyes and a dimple in his chin.
‘You can lay the cards out in any order you like, so long as you’re clear in your mind what the positions mean. These patterns are called “spreads”.’
I remembered all the complicated arrangements in the books and the diagrams which had only made me more confused, and breathed out, my shoulders dropping in relief.
‘Let’s try a few.’
And so we began.
We continued to meet as a group, reading for each other again and again until the given meaning of each card was fixed in our memory.
Like hypnotherapy the cards uncovered a part of me that had lingered for eons in the dark corners of my mind. They helped me to see connections, make stories and find ways out of seemingly impossible situations.
I began to understand that they weren’t the work of the Devil, they were a language, and once you’d learnt that language you could do with it whatever you wanted.
Or so I thought at first.
One day Cheryl asked me to read for her.
Two cards popped up. Death, a skeleton with a scythe and ruins all around. The Tower, flames shooting from the top of a tall building and people plunging to their death.
I began to shake.
‘There are no “negative” cards,’ Cheryl had
said. ‘Everything that appears is there to help us. If a card appears
upside-down, note that but turn it the right way up.’
Why then did these two cards terrify me?
I forgot everything Cheryl had taught us about their meanings – sudden change, change forced upon you because you’ve left it too long - and stared at her, speechless.
Cheryl nodded back at me and I knew that she knew what they meant, what they meant for her, even if I didn’t.
Then I realised that the cards weren’t simply cardboard pictures after all. Sometimes a higher power spoke directly through them.
Why then did these two cards terrify me?
I forgot everything Cheryl had taught us about their meanings – sudden change, change forced upon you because you’ve left it too long - and stared at her, speechless.
Cheryl nodded back at me and I knew that she knew what they meant, what they meant for her, even if I didn’t.
Then I realised that the cards weren’t simply cardboard pictures after all. Sometimes a higher power spoke directly through them.
To be continued . . .
