Tarot and the Tree of Life Read online

  Learn more about Isabel Radow Kliegman and her work at www.questbooks.net

  Copyright © 1997 by Isabel Radow Kliegman

  First Quest Edition 1997

  Quest Books

  Theosophical Publishing House

  PO Box 270

  Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

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  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Book and cover design by Beth Hansen

  Illustrations from Universal-Waite Tarot Deck reproduced by permission of U.S.

  Games Systems, Inc., Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Copyright © 1990 by U.S. Games

  Systems, Inc. Further reproduction prohibited.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kliegman, Isabel Radow.

  Tarot and the tree of life: finding everyday wisdom in the minor arcana /

  Isabel Radow Kliegman. — 1st Quest ed.

  p. cm.

  “A publication supported by the Kern Foundation.”

  “Quest books.”

  ISBN 978-0-8356-0747-6

  1. Minor arcana (Tarot). 2. Tree of life—Miscellanea. 3. Cabala.

  I. Title.

  BF1879.T2K55 1997 97-47

  133.3’2424—dc21 CIP

  ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2108-3

  8 7 6 5 4 3 * 05 06 07 08 09 10

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOREWORD

  by Stephan A. Hoeller

  INTRODUCTION

  Mystery Without Mystification

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fifty-Six Mirrors: Overlooked Looking Glasses

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kabbalah: The Ultimate Gift

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pentacles: The Soul of Bread

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cups: Plumbing the Human Heart

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Swords: The Edge of Truth

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wands: Life More Abundant

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Court Cards: Out Many Selves

  AFTERWORD

  Grasping the Baton

  Author’s Biography

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY DEEPEST gratitude is to my mother, Rae Radow Kliegman, who was convinced I could do anything and made a point of telling me so, and to my father, Moe Kliegman, who has always expressed his amazement and pride in my accomplishments. Every day convinces me further that I am uniquely blessed. Loving thanks, too, to my daughter, Alisa Tatiana Radow Gilinsky, a highly gifted Tarot card reader and my closest friend, and to Gary Scott Fowler for his enthusiasm, patience, and support.

  HEAVY DUTY thanks to Mark Kampe, for his incomprehensible, incalculable generosity of time and effort on the computer. In no way can I adequately express my gratitude for his long and diligent labors.

  Heartfelt thanks to my spiritual teachers (who may well disagree with much I have written): Bishop Stephan Hoeller, who first introduced me to Kabbalah and was my first Tarot teacher, and Rabbis Ted Falcon, Mordecai Finlay, Stan Levy, Steve Robbins, and Don Singer. You have restored my soul in ways you will never suspect.

  Thanks to Mark Kampe, for his merry nature and lively involvement in our work.

  Thanks to Jerry Ziegman, who showed me my first deck of Tarot cards, Tricia Kelly who encouraged me to work with them professionally, and Beverly Hollidy, who helped me when I most needed her.

  Thanks to Mark Kampe, whose insights about the cards were uniformly fascinating.

  Thanks to Ivan Hoffman, for offering me the benefit of his experience, both as an author and a lawyer, and to Anthony Pearson, who actually got me to smile for the camera!

  Thanks to Mark Kampe; his perspective on the book and organizational suggestions were more than helpful.

  Much appreciation for Beth Hansen’s beautiful cover and the hard work of everyone at Quest: Sharron Dorr, Vija Bremanis, and most of all Brenda Rosen. It has been an education, as well as a pleasure, to work with her. I will always be grateful for her crisp, orderly direction, her fine suggestions, and her respectful attitude toward my preferences. Because of her this is a better book than the one I submitted. Most of all, I am grateful for her transforming me from a writer into an author.

  Thanks to Mark Kampe for his interesting ideas regarding both content and style.

  And finally, thanks to Mark Kampe for teaching me the difference between “which” and “that,” assuming that he has.…

  FOREWORD

  by Stephan A. Hoeller

  INTEREST IN the mysterious Tarot is at an all-time high. Only a few short decades ago, one had to send to distant and obscure sources if one wished to procure a deck of these intriguing cards, for they could not be found in local bookstores or even at dealers of antiquities. A choice among several designs was unknown; one was lucky to find even a solitary deck. Today there is a profusion of Tarot decks on the market. One could spend a fortune if one desired even the majority of decks of various designs available.

  What then is the Tarot? Ostensibly it is a series of seventy-eight playing cards displaying symbolic designs, many of which claim ancient provenance. Aficionados tell us that after mastering the interpretation of these cards, one gains access to the future and to other mysteries of existence. While such enthusiastic claims may appear exaggerated, admirable and insightful persons over the centuries have expressed views not unlike these. Madame Helena Blavatsky, the redoubtable founder of the Theosophical movement in the late nineteenth century, is said to have carried an old hand-painted Tarot deck in her battered suitcase on her many travels. My neighbor in the Hollywood Hills, Aldous Huxley, a few months prior to his death in 1963, became vitally interested in the Tarot and asked a mutual friend to procure a deck for him. Albert Einstein was known to study the Tarot on certain occasions. Shakespeare refers to Tarot cards (or at least to cartomancy) in Hamlet (V.i.) when he writes:

  How absolute the knave is! We must speak

  by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

  But perhaps the most impressive tribute came from the French magus and Kabbalist Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant) who stated that if one were confined for a long period in a deep dungeon or on a secluded island, one would only need a Tarot deck to keep one informed and inspired.

  Tarot cards are the oldest form of playing cards handed down to us. In a more credulous age of esotericism, it was sometimes assumed that they could be traced as far back as the times of fabled Atlantis. It was sometimes assumed that Chaldean or Egyptian initiates received the Tarot from Atlantis and eventually carried it to Europe. At the turn of the last century, the French leading light of esotericism, Papus (Dr. Gerard Encausse), was equally convinced that the Tarot originated in India and that its four suits symbolize the four principal castes: cups standing for priests, swords for
warrior-rulers, coins for merchants, and wands for agricultural laborers. The mysterious Gypsies, whose origins might well be in India, then carried the Tarot cards into Europe and from there to America as well. Certainly in my childhood I observed the divinatory activities of many Gypsies who employed Tarot cards as well as a deck that is closely related to the Tarot, called Tarock. Tarot wisdom was often passed on through the oldest wise woman of the tribe. Most Gypsies I encountered believed that they, as well as their divinatory arts, originated in India.

  Aside from such informal accounts, the mystery of the origins of these cards remains unsolved. There is virtually no factual information available about the history of the cards and their symbols past the early centuries of this era. We can’t even be sure what the word Tarot means. Some have suggested that it comes from an Egyptian hybrid word meaning “royal road.” This hypothesis is unproven, though very frequently accepted.

  The experiences one has using the Tarot deck tend to leave a lasting impression. As a student and practitioner of the Tarot, I can certainly attest to this. Some of my greatest joys and deepest regrets were connected with information I received by way of the cards. One card, which I drew at a particularly critical time of my life, instructed me to await some singularly promising opportunities which were hastening my way. If I managed to take advantage of the opportunity thus arising (or so I discerned from the symbolism of the card that was before me), I would be lifted out of my sorrow and hopelessness and carried to exciting places. The prophecy of the Tarot was fulfilled in three days time! A more tragic incident started with a telephone call from a close friend who had decided to undergo heart surgery. The card I drew from my deck to illuminate the matter turned out to be the Major Arcana card called The Tower, which carries catastrophic implications. Despite my apprehension, I refrained from advising my friend against the surgery, since he was quite enthusiastic about the prospect. As a result of complications arising from surgery, my friend died in great agony some three weeks later. I still feel a good deal of guilt for the sin of omission I committed by not cautioning him more vigorously on the basis of the Tarot prognostication.

  As the author of this book tells us, the uses of the Tarot are manifold. In my experience I have found three. First, the Tarot serves as a pictorial textbook of the universal symbolic philosophy and cosmology. Second, the plan and structure of the deck depicts the structure and development of the human psyche, somewhat in the manner envisioned by the analytical psychology of C. G. Jung. The last and most controversial use of the Tarot is, of course, divination, which, as Isabel Kliegman wisely reminds us, is a very different thing from fortune telling.

  In ancient times divination was the art whereby one consulted the gods, who were also known as divinities. The ancients believed that these divinities are essentially benignly disposed toward humans and thus are likely to offer useful guidance and advice when consulted. While the belief in divinities is not particularly great in our day, the philosophy of divination that developed on the basis of such a belief is still valid. In order to effectively consult an authentic oracle such as the Tarot, we must first of all possess an attitude that is appropriate for the invoking of helpful forces of a superior character. The proper attitude is one that lies somewhere between superstitious awe and frivolousness. If we employ an oracle in idle jest, the results will be appropriate. At the same time, it is good to be reminded that the cards in themselves are not sacred objects worthy of veneration. We need not keep them in precious containers, wrap them in red silk, or approach them in elaborate ceremonies. The magic is not in the cards but in ourselves. What matters is the response the cards evoke from the deeper regions of our psyches; all else is of small importance. The divinities I referred to above may be most profitably envisioned as at least related to psychological archetypes, if indeed they are not themselves the archetypes.

  Another important requisite for accurate divination is what has been called “magical imagination.” This is the ability to relate meaningfully subjective or psychic reality to the material clues of the cards. A talent for this kind of imagination may be found to some degree in most folk, but with skill, one may foster its growth. The once very-prominent Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn used the Tarot expressly as a tool for developing the magical imagination. These days much publicity is given to the ideas which are directed to what is called “creating one’s reality.” It is my view that most of these teachings are nothing more than an excessive application of the principle of magical imagination. It is not very likely that we shall ever truly create our own reality, but with the aid of the Tarot, we may discover a reality that is vastly preferable to the humdrum consensus reality in which the majority of our culture lives.

  Isabel Kliegman is one of the most truly skilled and sensitive practitioners of the Tarot I know. A number of years ago it was my good fortune to introduce her to this field of study and practice, and the strides she has made since that time impress me deeply. As the following pages reveal, her greatest dedication has been to the so-called Minor Arcana, or the four suits of numbered cards of the Tarot, including their uniquely powerful and revelatory court cards of Kings, Queens, Knights, and Pages. While many of us are justly fascinated by and devoted to the sublime archetypal images embodied in the Major Arcana (Trump Cards), it is obvious that the Minor Arcana, with their symbols of the manifest cosmos, are of immense significance also, although this significance is often overlooked or neglected. This neglect has now been insightfully and eloquently remedied by the author of this book, which may well become the normative text on the Minor Arcana, even as the splendid work of the late Paul Foster Case, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages is still the basic text on the Major Arcana. My much more humble book, The Royal Road: Kabalistic Meditations on the Tarot, published by Quest in 1975, may still serve the student of the Tarot who wishes to use the cards of the Major Arcana as visual tools for meditating on the symbolic contents of the cards, but the present work may be said to pick up where mine leaves off. Readers who enjoyed my efforts in The Royal Road will assuredly be delighted when they follow it up with reading Tarot and the Tree of Life.

  The Tarot is an endless source of wonder and delight to those who enter its inner precincts. Still, its practice and study are somewhat curtailed when not combined with the mystical system of the Kabbalah. Although Eliphas Levi is generally credited with making the connection between Tarot and the Kabbalah available, the most effective advocate of this connection was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization that in spite of its brief public functioning exerted an immense influence on the Western esoteric tradition. My late friend, Dr. Israel Regardie, one of the last adepts of that Order, always held that without the Kabbalah, the Tarot tends to become a mere plaything. The author of The Tarot and the Tree of Life has earned the gratitude of those of us who respect the Golden Dawn and its teachings. Anyone reading this book will never again wish to separate the disciplines of Tarot and Kabbalah.

  Often when I contemplate the cards of the Tarot, I perceive a sunlit medieval landscape with small, luminous figures moving like magical toy figurines. The Fool with staff and bundle, the Emperor on rock-hewn throne, the Empress in her flowering garden of delights. Death is reaping his harvest of souls, the Hermit climbs unsealed heights with staff and lamp, and the Hanged Man swings serenely from his gibbet. To these we may now add, as a result of Isabel Kliegman’s efforts, the Queen of Cups gazing in rapt attention at her mystical Grail, the Knight of Swords charging into furious battle, the Hand of God holding the Aces of the four suits, and many more. Behind them all looms the Holy Tree of Life, mystical diagram of the Heavenly Human and map of the ascent of the soul to its final home. The ten Sacred Vessels glow with the luminosity of a world in which things are never what they seem but are revealed in their meaning that is ordinarily concealed, while the twenty-two flaming letters pulsate on the branches of the Tree. Perhaps a vision similar to this may arise in the minds of some who read this book. Of
one thing, however, we may be certain: Whatever visions and feelings may be stimulated by such reading, boredom and lack of inspiration will not be among them.

  INTRODUCTION

  Mystery without Mystification

  THIS BOOK is intended for use by anyone whose imagination is fired by the Tarot. For the total novice, it offers a system by which fifty-six of the seventy-eight cards can be rescued from chaos, finding their places in a reasonable order without losing their individual timbre. Much of what would be experienced as an overwhelming kaleidoscope of isolated, unrelated images suddenly snaps into a manageable, conceptually consistent pattern.

  This order is derived from examining the cards in the context of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. While distinct in origin and self-contained, Kabbalah and Tarot have long been combined in a search for guidance and truth. Over the last hundred years, the very designs of the cards have been heavily influenced by Kabbalistic symbols. Such giants in the history of Tarot as Eliphas Levi, Papus, Arthur Edward Waite, Aleister Crowley, and Paul Foster Case have drawn on the Kabbalah to illuminate the cards. While Kabbalah, like all great metaphysical systems, is universal in application, its origin is in the Jewish tradition. This rich legacy sheds light and warmth on the Tarot. The midrashen, or traditional interpretive stories, are expressions of fundamental perspectives in the Jewish cultural heritage, meant to give authenticity and authority as well as flavor to the interpretations offered.

  For the experienced card reader, the advanced student, the serious practitioner, this book offers an opportunity to vary and perhaps improve skills. I am confident that at least some of the material will be entirely new for the simple reason that it is autobiographical. I include it, not in the conviction that my personal experiences are of unique value, but rather as an expression of two of my most deeply held convictions about the Tarot: 1) there’s a card for it; and 2) conversely, there’s an experience for it!