The Magic of TAO in the TAROT

The origins of civilization and the interaction of cultures have always fascinated me. This book is the culmination of some years of reflection on the underlying similarities of two traditions of divination - one from the west, the Tarot, and the other from the east, the I-Ching. Both go back to the earliest times of our historical culture and both are much more than simply a means of reading the future.They were debated and discussed along the Silk Road - the ancient trade route connecting Europe and China - for more than a thousand years. 

First published in 2013 as The Tao in the Tarot, it compares the cards of the Major Arcana with selected hexagrams of the I-Ching and shows an underlying similarity in the fundamentals of each tradition. This new version, The Magic of Tao in the Tarot, includes the Minor Arcana and connects it with the numbers of Pythagoras, the Grail Legend, and more. All diagrams and pictures are my own creation

 The Magic of TAO in the TAROT

A Synthesis between the Tarot Cards, Selected Hexagrams from the I-Ching, and other Fundamental Traditions.

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Read an Extract:

Extract from Part 1:

A Circular Journey

 Human beings in their spiritual quest are a bit like trans-continental travellers who have woken up at a hostelry with a severe case of amnesia. We have forgotten where we came from and have not much idea of our destination. Most of us just hang around enjoying the food and entertainment, forgetting that we ever set out on a journey in the first place. It has always seemed strange to me how we are set down here for a brief span of life on earth, and we have no satisfactory clue why.

Humanity is suffering from a mammoth case of disorientation. Yet there are many signs to where we should be heading. The Tarot and the I-Ching give us some hints and markers, but it is a bit like a treasure hunt: a search for the Holy Grail. We need to hunt for those clues that may lie beneath a load of sand over which we have already travelled, without recognising the footprints of those who have gone before.

A lifetime of journeying on land and sea has blessed me with opportunities to expand both inner and outer horizons. We may also see the Major Arcana of the Tarot as a journey through life; a psychological or spiritual odyssey to enhance the physical road on which we travel daily. ...

 My interest in all things esoteric gave me the idea of placing the Major Arcana cards of my tarot deck in an oriental way, circular, like clock patience, rather than following the traditional western method of lines and blocks. 

It seemed natural to me to place them in an anticlockwise direction, but I could just as well have set them out clockwise. I noticed some cards fell into pairs (the Empress and Emperor, Sun and Moon, Death and the Hanged Man, for example), whilst others (like Strength and Temperance) stood alone.

At this point, I was only concerned with the Major Arcana. The four suits of numbered cards are dealt with later in Part 3.

Placing the tarot cards in a circle portrayed the flow of Tao, which is the essence that runs through the whole of the I-Ching. It made me believe that the Tarot itself must go back to an equally early root as Taoism. It is a root so early and so basic that it comes from an era before the formal religions of our present age...

With my tarot cards placed in a circle, it was apparent that the top of the circle joined with the five combination cards to form a perfect hexagon. The hexagon comprises two triangles: masculine, solar energy flowing down to earth in the upper triangle, and the female, earthly spirit opening up to receive it. The two together symbolise complete harmony within the world (represented by the circle) and the peace and unanimity that such a combination creates. This design, the Star of David, symbolises the union of heaven and earth, of fire and water, of gods and humans. This simple diagram symbolises the fundamental spiritual requirements for a harmonious life.

The I-Ching functions in the same way by utilising two trigrams joined to form a six-line answer to a divinatory question. The harmony of Tao, the movement and union of opposites, is the basis of the I-Ching. This was another signal to me that both sources work similarly.

I was a little bothered about the anticlockwise direction around the circle in which I had placed the cards. It seemed the natural way to me, but I knew that most people would expect them to go clockwise. I needed to move the circles apart so that the masculine cards (in red) followed a clockwise direction and the feminine cards (in blue) followed the anticlockwise direction. When I did this, the circles naturally formed into the motif called a Vesica Pisces.

This ancient symbol ...  has come down to us in the revived philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, said to be an original teaching of the primordial Egyptian god, Thoth. Amongst ancient wisdom cultures, a vesica was a hermetic symbol of the highest spirituality. With each circle’s centre point on the circumference of the other, intricate mathematical equations ensue. The mandorla is in the shape of a fish, and Jesus took this shape as his own symbol, the Ichthys, at the dawn of the astrological era of Pisces. It became the secret symbol of early Christians in times of persecution.

The overlapping circles of the Vesica Pisces hint at the connection between the opposites, reminiscent of the eye in a yin-yang symbol. The tarot cards in the Spiritual Section of the Major Arcana lie within the two points where the circles overlap, the part known as the Mandorla, or the Ichthys. This is where the opposites come together. It is also the section that includes the Grail Legend in my interpretation.

I could not help noticing a correlation between the words Tao and Tarot. We have the TA(R)O(T) and the TAO, and the Jewish TORA. There is also the Egyptian TAU - the symbol for life and resurrection, and their TAR RO, meaning Royal Way. Surely there must be a connection! ...

The Tao is the fundamental life principle that runs through the I-Ching. Taoism is one of the oldest religions of the world. We know of it in the West through the commercialisation of the yang/yin symbol, which has the idea of movement and change as the vital principle of life. Tao speaks of two principal forces in the world: Yang and Yin, the firm and the yielding, the creative and the receptive, male and female, positive and negative. Neither is inherently good or bad; they are purely the opposites seen in every form of life. Each bears the seed of the other in its heart; hence, in the yang/yin symbol, each incorporates the eye of the opposite, just as the two circles of a Vesica Pisces overlap Forever flowing between them is the Tao, the force of life, of movement, of change, and particularly of time...

 Extract from Part 2

Card 0/22 The Fool. The Innocent/The Unexpected/The Integrated

 (Musical Note ‘Ti’)

The Fool is our companion along the way. He is the Elite Traveller who - like the joker in a pack of cards - can slip in anywhere and add to the value of its companions. With many changes of clothes, he appears in a new guise at every caravanserai. When we reach our destination he disappears into thin air, pointing again towards a new beginning.

On first acquaintance he seems innocent enough, but by the end of the journey we realize he is the wisest man around, in a clever disguise. When he disappears over the horizon, we see how insignificant we are in comparison, as we stand waiting on the deserted roadside, wondering if we should not have been brave enough to continue the journey at his side.

The Fool is only foolish when viewed from the standpoint of the worldly man. His designated number is 0: Naught. A hole: yet Whole. Nothing and everything. Empty yet complete: Holy!

Apart from its role as the Joker within a hand of cards, by being designated as zero we can see the Fool is not part of the system. It stands outside the world and its conventions. Therefore, like a joker, it refuses to obey the rules laid down by the rest of the pack. It is neither male nor female, for it has no truck with the guilt associated with sex in western society. Full of joy and freedom, it cares nothing for society and the confines of regulations or expectations. In worldly terms it represents someone who has no care or thought for tomorrow; who would happily give his last penny to a beggar then step onto a bus without the fare. A fool indeed!

In my image of the Fool, his purse is open and coins fall to the ground. He has no use for possessions, so his simple bag is also open. Out of his bag fall the magic symbols that he leaves behind as a trail for us to follow: tarot cards, a key, a grail cup, a sacred triangle, and yarrow stalks. The stick with which he carries his bag over his shoulder is an ordinary tree branch, but it glows with light, and flowering shoots sprout from it. His clothes are in tatters, but they too are golden with light. Light also shines through his hair like a halo. He is translucent!

The Fool in my picture steps unhesitatingly into the void...

The Fool is the kingpin, for this trump takes us out of our comfortable world-circle of 21 ÷ 7, into the realms of sacred geometry, thus adding a three-dimensional element: the lift-off pad. It is the jumping-off point from worldly affairs onto a higher plane of existence. The Fool is an escape artist! He gives us a way of escaping from the round of birth and death within this world of sorrows.

 For many years I have seen the Fool as ‘the Innocent’, a term used for those with the light in them. The Innocent is the aegis of the Boundless Light. It is not only the portal through which those in the world can perceive the Light beyond the visible light, but also the shield and protection of the Light from the material world. This can only happen through a mind unsullied by the confines of worldliness, like an image shining out of a clear mirror or through a clear pane of glass. The Innocent is innocent of its involvement. It simply exists in that condition of being. If the mirror or glass becomes cloudy, the light cannot shine through; it becomes distorted or faint.

Hence, this card represents the Innocent as the unsullied child who, because of the involvement of Time, sadly has to follow the path to maturity and through to old age. By then, will he have become the Integrated Fool? Or will his existence within the material world have turned him into a foolish old man or woman clutching at the straws of life in the face of the darkness of an impending death?

As the Innocent, this card also relates to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were the Innocents before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were inevitably expelled into the world of sorrows and hardships that we all experience.

Without the Fool the Major Arcana forms a circle of 21 cards which divide neatly into 3 sections with 7 cards in each section: The Material Sequence, the Psychological Sequence and the Spiritual Sequence. This is the neat circle of life which brings us back to the same starting point (Figure1) – though of course nothing is quite the same next time around ...

Arguments over the position of the Fool within the Major Arcana have been going on ever since the Tarot came to light in the West. Placing the Fool as a Joker [within the circle] expands the circle into a spiral, allowing us a way forward onto a higher level of existence. The Fool’s inclusion [within the circle] changes our simple idea of 21 divided by 7, into 22 divided by 7, which is π (Pi) with an infinite number of decimal places.

By its position inside the circle it expands our circle into a spiral, by which we can glimpse beyond our own small worldly circle into a greater ‘beyond’... At the end of the Tarot, the Fool steps out of the circle as the Integrated.

 We may therefore regard the Fool as both inside and outside the circle. Without the Fool, the 21 cards form an equally spaced circle, but including the naught-y joker our circle becomes a spiral, spiralling into infinity. The Fool represents the Pythagorean comma, the glitch in vibratory language that transforms the music of the world into what Pythagoras called the Music of the Spheres: the harmonious interplay of the vibrations put out by everything in nature and the cosmos when all are in harmony. All would naturally be in harmony, except for humankind, which has gone against the laws of nature and upset the balance ...