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Those who have followed this column know that one of my favorite approaches to Tarot develops readings from spiritual traditions. The symbolic images of the modern Tarot, practical as they can be, ultimately derive from spiritual ideas, with figures such as the High Priestess, often dressed in the robes of the Egyptian Goddess Isis, or the aces bringing us gifts from the Other World. As a result we align ourselves most with the Tarot's spirit, even activate their power, when we frame our questions around the wisdom and rituals of spiritual traditions.
Though you will not read this column until December, the month of Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's, I actually am writing it at the beginning of November. As it happens, November this year coincides with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan (based on a lunar calendar, Ramadan takes place at a different point in the solar calendar each year). In fact, the reading below took place during my monthly class in New York City, which fell on the first day of the holiday.
Non-Muslims in English-speaking countries tend to know very little of Islamic traditions. We hear of Ramadan primarily as a month-long fast. From sunrise to sunset during the entire month (a lunar month lasts 29 days) Muslims do not eat or drink, not even water. Sundown suspends the fast, and while some Muslims stay in a spiritual frame of mind by eating and drinking very simply, others treat the evenings as a time of celebration. As one of the people in the class put it, fast in light, feast in darkness.
But what exactly does this month of devotion celebrate? On the most direct level it gives Muslims a chance to shift their attention from the everyday world to the spirit. A friend of mine always spends the week before Thanksgiving in a Zen monastery so that when he goes to his family celebration he will not lose touch with the values of the soul. Ramadan's cycle of light and dark reminds me of that.
According to tradition, however, Ramadan marks a specific event, when the Qur'an, the holy book, came down from heaven into a physical form. Some may find this idea confusing. The Qur'an is a book, like the Bible. Just as many traditional Christians and Jews believe that God gave the Bible directly to humanity, so Muslims consider the Qur'an divinely written.
And there is more. In my book The Forest of Souls (source of the title of this column) I discussed the Jewish mystical belief that the Torah existed in heaven before the creation of the universe, and that God consulted it to form the world. I suggested that we experiment with this idea in terms of Tarot, as if the Tarot images existed before the world, and God consulted the "cards" to create the universe. In a spirit of divine play I asked the cards to show me the reading they gave the Creator to bring the world into existence.
To say that the Qur'an came into a physical form implies that it existed previously in the divine realm, and that its absolute truth predates the relative truths and compromises of the physical world.
This is a tricky issue. To many it will sound simply like fundamentalism, with all the fanaticism that fundamentalism, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, always seems to produce. I do not, however, seek to endorse any religion's view of itself. Instead, I think we can find in this very radical concept a glimpse of a reality that takes us beyond the ordinary world of confusion and distortion, to a sense of eternity, to a hint of something that indeed seems older than the world we know from our ordinary lives.
With no wish to offend any Muslims, or others who hold to a stricter view of religion than I do, I offer a reading inspired by the concepts of Ramadan. We-the class and I-used seven positions, for the Islamic idea of Seven Pillars of Wisdom that uphold the world.
The deck is the Shining Tribe Tarot, designed and drawn by myself.
1. How do we feast in darkness? 7 of Trees. This card immediately demonstrates how the Tarot can illuminate our questions, especially paradoxes. The picture shows a spinal column, with no head, and the Sun shining at the level of the heart. Without a head there is no ego, no outer senses, and so we exist in a darkness of ordinary perception. But the Sun at the heart indicates that when we turn away from outer stimulation we allow ourselves to feast on the light of spirit. The Sufis, the Islamic mystical tradition, teach that true understanding resides in the heart, not the brain. The Italian sculptor Bernini, in his famous statue of the ecstasy of St. Theresa, shows an angel piercing Theresa's heart with a spear of light. In the Tarot card, trees emerge, like ganglia, from the central spine. When we feast on light in darkness we can sense our true union with the world around us.
2. How do we fast in light? The 8 of Trees. This card, which immediately follows the 7 of Trees in the deck, shows a woman leaping free of a burning house, a burning landscape. Simply drawn-her image comes from an 8000 year old city unearthed in Turkey-she nevertheless evokes joy, with her arms out and her hair streaming behind her. Usually, this card means a situation that is burning up, that cannot be saved, and the need to leave it without hesitation or guilt. Here, the burning house can signify the ordinary fire of desire, which constantly feeds upon itself. By fasting we experience the ability to separate ourselves, at least temporarily, from that continuous flame of feed-me, feed-me.
3. What truth comes down to us? 10 of Trees. Once again we see the suit linked to the element of Fire, which in turn brings the divine spark of life into the physical world. If the card had been the Ace, we might have looked at the spark itself, for the Aces signify the pure element. But the Ten, at the other end of the suit, indicates all the detailed ways life energy actually takes form, the wondrous variety of the physical world. The picture shows a Tree of Life, braided with color, as it takes root in the solar system, that is, in the world of our existence. The branches burst with energy and even consciousness. This is the truth that everything is alive. A Pygmy song, quoted in the book Symposium of the Whole (edited by Diane Rothenberg and Jerome Rothenberg), runs "All lives, all dances, and all is loud."
4. How does it take form? 7 of Birds. Remember the reading mentioned above, for God to create the universe? This was the first card. It "told" God that God needed a partner, a sort of mirror of self. We find this radical idea in the mystical traditions, especially Kabbalah, which is closely linked to Sufism. The physical world mirrors the divine, it exists for the divine to know itself. This does not just answer how truth takes form, it tells us why.
5. How does it become distorted? 10 of Stones. The history of religion is the history of distortion. The Islamic creed tells us "There is no God save God" (just as Jews say "God is one"). We can understand this statement as an expression of the truth that divine light fills all existence. How does it become distorted to the belief that only my God is real, that your God is fake, and if you don't accept that "truth" I have to kill you? We saw truth come down to "us," that is, physical existence, in the 10 of Trees, with everything alive. Here, in this other 10. we see religious images painted onto rocks-set in stone, as the old expression runs. We distort truth when we solidify doctrines.
6. How can we return to the real meaning? The Fool. The only Major Arcana card in the whole reading, the Fool shows us leaping free of limited beliefs. The child in the picture has jumped from the hilltop to follow a bird. The picture recalls the 8 of Trees, where the woman leaped free of the burning house of desire. Here the Fool does not so much escape something as go towards the wonder and beauty of divine life. The Fool does not fly through some magic power or secret doctrine. Instead, he acts through instinct, he simply follows where the bird leads him.
7. How do we use this truth? Speaker of Rivers. The Shining Tribe Tarot changes Kings to Speakers. When we reach the culmination of a suit, and understand its elemental power, and receive its gifts, we take on the responsibility to share its wonders, to "speak," to give it in some way to others. This does not mean to impose our views, but rather to share what we can. The large fish in the card opens its mouth to speak, and the others follow, to learn. The picture was inspired in part by the Hasidic master, Nachman of Bratslav, who decided at a certain point in his life to give up teaching by doctrine and instead tell stories. As a pun, the fish's tail contains the words "And on the way I told a tale," a partial statement of Nachman's that ends with the words "that all who heard it had thoughts of returning to God." We use the truth best when we speak it-share it, live it-in such a way that it gives others a sense of their own divine spark. In the picture, the fish swim between a group of buildings on one side and a bowl filled with light on the other. The buildings, based on actual work by the architect I. M. Pei, represent the practical world of daily life. The bowl, a version of the Grail, symbolizes spirituality as expressed in myth. The "school" of fish move between these two aspects of truth. When we speak of our own truth we unite the two worlds.
At the end of the reading we looked at one more card, the bottom of the deck. It turned out to be the World, the other end of the Major Arcana from the Fool. The World also appeared in "God's reading" in The Forest of Souls, as the last card. In the World card we see the union of the physical and the divine in the image of a cosmic "Shining Woman" who stands gracefully on one leg. Light fills her face. Where the 7 of Trees spinal column could only sustain the light in the heart by denying the ego, here the divine energy moves throughout the body. Beyond all limitations of doctrine, or the separation of male and female, she shows us the promise that we might truly understand what it means to say "There is no God save God."
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