Member Articles

Introduction

The Fool's Journey to Wholeness depicted in the Major Arcana represents a psycho-spiritual map that initiates of the Tarot follow to attain enlightenment. Enlightenment being a psychic awareness of oneness, the cycles of birth, death and rebirth, egoless-ness, love, and the balancing of energies – masculine/feminine, black/white, chaos/order, nurturance/self care, love/fear, movement/stillness, doing/being, sacred masculine/sacred feminine.

Just as all spiritual paths have prescribed tests that must be successfully navigated for expanded consciousness, in preparation for the ultimate state of wholeness, so does the Tarot. These expanded states prepare the initiate's consciousness to manage, and contain the energy surges rising from the personal and collective unconscious. As experienced Tarotists will testify, this movement to expanded consciousness ever spirals around and upward. You continue to expand beyond your first arrival to wholeness –wholeness is a process not a fait accompli!

It wasn't until I began work on my own Major Arcana(www.tarotbykathleen.com/gallery ) that I fully understood the power of this process acting in my life. At first when I wrote the Major of the Month for the web site I was only struck by the "synchronicity" of how appropriate the card would relate to events taking place in my life. At some point, perhaps two or three months into the work, I was astounded to realize that this was more than synchronicity– this was magic. A resonance between my Majors work and my life events was unfolding.

In a moment I realized that my students were going through the same transformational process in their lives; life events transforming to reflect a powerful resonance with their journey to magical readership. Magical readership is the kind of readership that gracefully and brilliantly combines intuition with Tarot academia, empathy with self-awareness, practicality with frivolity, and Yin with Yang.

Ffiona Morgan, author of the Daughters of the Moon states, "There were times when I feared our intense transformational process would prevent the tarot's publication. Events in my life and the environment threw boulders in my path at every turn."

Morgan describes this same process happening to all the wimmin involved in the Daughter's of the Moon creation almost 30 years ago and many others have discovered this same phenomenon.

Central to my point is "The Initiates Journey to Magical Readership" represents a feminine path to enlightenment. The core of the Tarot experience is reading the Tarot –this is ultimate goal of the Tarot's teachings. The Tarot as Guru-ess, guides initiates along a sacred path to wisdom whereby they will act as wise ones guiding others through their readings. The Tarot teaches and demonstrates the developmental tasks that are archetypal through a series of images that point specifically and uniquely to the almighty power of the sacred feminine.

Additionally, readership is a profoundly relational activity and wimmin develop within relationship, not outside it. (Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice 1982). Also read StarHawk's book Spiral Dance Special 20th Anniversary Edition).

Historically wimmin have been judged lacking in moral development, (ie. their "personal" focus narrows their ability to see the big picture making it virtually impossible for them to possess the necessary objectivity to be judges, politicians, and policymakers). Until Carol Gilligan completed her ground breaking research that demonstrated how wimmin grow to full maturity within the context of relationship, wimmin were described as immature males.

Cynthia Giles, author of two excellent books on the Tarot, points out in her work that women have traditionally been the "fortune-tellers" while predominantly, males have Kinged the presumably loftier positions as the academic esoterics.

I think it's about time for us to reclaim the word "fortune-teller"just as the wimmin's movement have reclaimed other words like "crone", "hag", "witch" and "dyke". This is an important piece of work for us to address as Tarotists in the 21st century. Women as "fortune-tellers" have been doingvaluable psycho-spiritual work in their communities. They have followed a path to enlightenment which profoundly exemplifies what a woman's path to enlightenment looks like! Wimmin doing the grass roots work of nurturing others to enlightenment, empowerment and ultimately freedom. The interpersonal aspects of counseling is exemplified in the vision of a womyn sitting at her kitchen table with friends and their deck of cards; empathetically, and