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Tarot Reflections

 July 01, 2003

Dr. Art Rosengarten.is an eclectic Jungian psychologist and widely recognized expert on the psychospiritual use of Tarot cards. He is author of the much acclaimed Tarot And Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Paragon, 2000), considered by some the textbook for this emerging interdisciplinary work.

A Diplomate of the American Psychotherapy Association and Advisory Board Member of the American Tarot Association, Art is also the Director of Intuition Mind Seminars - highly engaging  one day multimedia workshops on Tarot, Jungian, and Buddhist Psychology.

A dynamic teacher, writer, and speaker on Tarot, creator of The Tarot Circles of California, Art has twice been the featured guest on Coast To Coast AM with George Noory, and will write a monthly column starting in August for the exciting new Meta Arts ezine. The column is titled: Memos From The First Tabugian.

Art can be reached through his website www.artrosengarten.com

The nakedness of a Tarot reading quickly transports a seeker of self-knowledge to intensely private places. Like no other oracle, Tarot commingles the flames of magic, emotion, wisdom, and visual stimulation much like, well, falling in love. From my own 25 years with the art, I have observed that always the best readings, the truly urgent readings, invariably command the subject of love and its concatenations.

But this should come as no surprise. Reliable roadmaps to guide us are virtually non-existent, perhaps due to the highly subjective nature of the complicated territory. Kooch and Victor Daniels offer one such roadmap in their original and tasty new book Tarot D'Amour.

The book offers a competent and readable introduction to the cards and adds to the usual occult correspondences with astrology, Jungian archetypes, color symbolism, and chakra, centers, such new categories as Affects, Sexual Links, Anatomical Influences, and Sex and Spirituality.

But where this book comes most alive for me is in its witty, insightful, and sexually comfortable extended lexicon, where two pages are dedicated to each of the 78 tarots. Discussions for each card are broken into sections: Romantic Interpretation, Emotional Interpretation, Sexual Interpretation, and Reversed Card Interpretation. The lucky 22 majors are given the additional section of Sexual Play. The most graphic divinations come from this last category, as for example with The High Priestess:

Awake in the ecstasy of the moment, The High Priestess may use feathers or fur to tickle playfully her partner's love spots. With gentle cat bites, she nibbles on sensitive places to arouse her partner's passions, and then sits astride her magician in a kneeling position where she can freely move her thighs up and down on his magic wand.

Not simply savory, however, there are equal parts savvy in the language of Tarot D'Amour. The Fool, we are told, when reversed "often indicates the error of being spontaneous and open without listening to your own wisdom about what suits you and what doesn't, what's dangerous and what isn't."

You will probably wish you had read this before launching into your last heart-extracting misadventure as I did. In the 'Sexual Interpretation' of the Seven of Cups, we learn: "You don't want to say yes today and regret it tomorrow. On the other hand, this may be a time to move beyond confusion, doubts, or inhibitions to ignite fiery, emotional alchemy." Now who hasn't drawn that card at least once? Be truthful.

But like the Tarot itself, in every card a tangy new detail, angle, strategy or as I prefer "possibility" quite magically seems to motion you over to its raison d'etre like a stacked blond in a convertible. Advice given by the authors is always psychologically prudent, if at times adventuress. There is so much to learn. Tarot D'Amour, in my opinion, is the perfect companion text to the "full catastrophe," as Zorba called it, of love itself.
 

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