About the Tarot
Learning the Tarot
by Kathleen Meadows, the Crone of Tarot
The Initiate's Journey to Magical Readership
© 2004 Kathleen Meadows, M.A. Certified Tarot Grand Master
The Fool's Journey to Wholeness is a model of interpreting the central psycho/spiritual message depicted in the Major Arcana. It signifies a psychic map that initiates of the Tarot follow to attain enlightenment. Enlightenment in this case representing a psychic awareness of oneness, the cycles of birth, death and rebirth, egoless-ness, love, and the balancing of energies. This spiritual map guides initiates through a maze of relating, balancing and experiencing the play between 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 Journey of the Fool in the Tarot. These expanded consciousness states prepare initiates 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. The initiate continues to expand beyond your first arrival to wholeness – wholeness is a process, not a fait accompli.
It wasn't until I began the interpretive work on my own Major Arcana that I felt the power of this process manifesting in my life. When I began interpreting original art work for a piece called the “Major of the Month”, for the web site, I was struck by the synchronicity of the appropriateness of the card to events taking place in my life. Two or three months into the work, I was astounded to realize that this was more than synchronicity – this was magic. In awe, I noted a predictable resonance between my Majors work, and my dramatically altering life events.
In a moment, I realized that my students were going through the same transformational process in their lives; transforming life events dancing in step 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.
Fiona 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 engaging all the wimmin involved in the Daughter's of the Moon creation almost 30 years ago, and many more Tarot initiates have become aware of this same phenomenon.
Central to my point is that The Initiates Journey to Magical Readership represents a feminine path to enlightenment.
The core of the Tarot experience is reading the Tarot – this represents the ultimate goal of the Tarot's teachings. The Tarot as Guru-ess, guides initiates along a sacred path to wisdom whereby they will perform 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 power of the sacred feminine.
Additionally, readership is a profoundly relational activity and women develop psychologically within relationship, not outside it. (Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice 1982). Also read StarHawk's book Spiral Dance Special 20th Anniversary Edition).
Herstorically, women have been criticized for 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 policy makers), and until Carol Gilligan completed her ground breaking research that demonstrated how women grow to full maturity within the context of relationship, women 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.
The time has come for Tarotists to reclaim the word “fortune-teller” just as the women's movement have reclaimed other words like “crone”, “hag”, “witch” and “dyke”. This is an important step for us to take as Tarotists in the 21st century. Women as “fortune-tellers” have been doing valuable psycho-spiritual work in their communities for centuries. They have followed a path to enlightenment which profoundly exemplifies what a woman's path to enlightenment looks and feels like. Women 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 woman sitting at her kitchen table with friends and their deck of cards; empathetically, and with words of encouragement, and love sharing their worries, hopes, dreams, fears, angers, and joys.
Meanwhile, the Kings in Tarot (Paul Foster Case, Edward Waite, Aleister Crowley and other known male members of the Hermetic Order) are writing and pontificating on the meanings, dictating how the cards should be read, and determining how the true divinatory meanings must be defined. Meanwhile, they tell artistically talented women how the cards should be painted and then do nothing to insure these women are awarded appropriate recognition and compensation for their extraordinary accomplishment! Studying, reading and teaching the Tarot, is indeed a feminist issue.
The Journey to Magical Readership is women's journey to wholeness, magic, and enlightenment. 99% of Tarot readers are women and 99% of people who go to readers are women. I hear this everyday in my practice, “Why do you think it is that only women go to see a Tarot reader?” One woman joked that she thought it was because men have trouble asking for directions so why would they seek counsel in determining a life direction? But I think this feminine domination of the practice of reading the Tarot, points to a deeper reality.
The Emperor, the Hierophant, the Hermit, the Hanged Man, and The Devil represent the masculine path but they tell a very different tale to women. This is why I maintain that it is crucial that Tarotists wishing to achieve magical readership read only decks that are non-racist, non-sexist, non-classist, and non-hierarchal; in effect that we favour only decks that are inclusive. Magical Readership can only be attained with the right tool!
I warmly invite all women who have studied the Tarot to join me in writing this collective journal of women's journey to enlightenment through her inner and outer work with the Tarot. Let's tell of our journey and be the ones who help to reclaim this word “fortune-teller”. You are all doing powerful work in bringing the wisdom of this ancient teaching to help yourselves, your loved ones and your communities to a greater awareness of these magical universal patterns of mystery. You are the seekers, the students and the teachers of other women who come to you seeking support, guidance, and empowerment and you have chosen the Tarot as your tool and guru.
“The Initiate's Journey to Magical Readership” Continued Here
