My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I almost gave this 5 stars. The only reason it gets four is that I noticed a couple of what I consider inaccuracies, but they were in obscure areas where I just happened to have different information, and I’m not really sure which of us was right but I think I was. Most of what this book covers as far as mythology, religion and history I have to take on faith, not being an expert, so it bothered me to find a couple of things I do know about that weren’t quite right. These were just little niggling details that I thought could have been researched more thoroughly. But the author warns us up front that although he researched and did his best he’s not an expert in some of these areas.
Over all, though, I think the conclusions drawn make a lot of sense. In nearly every culture that has a phonetic alphabet, there was a kind of culture shock that occurred, first when the alphabet was developed and a lot of people became literate, and later when printing became common. These culture shocks caused waves of violence and/or oppression, especially against women. These periods of time, at least in the West, also coincided with the growth and spread of monotheistic religions and reformations of those religions, particularly those that viewed images as bad and the written word as good. In addition to these effects coinciding with the spread of religion, they also coincided with the spread of scientism and Cartesian ideals, as well as with atheism and Marxism.
I won’t go into much detail, because really the details need to be read as they’re presented in the book in order to make the most sense. There’s too much detail involved for me to remember enough of it for me to make sense. But I recommend this book and, in my opinion, those tiny inaccuracies I think I noticed are excusable considering the amount of information the author sifted through to draw his conclusions.
If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the Goddess in ancient belief and myth, why She vanished, as well as why women have been treated so abysmally at certain times in history in nearly every culture, this makes fascinating and disturbing reading.
If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about and want to know more about SOPA and PIPA, what they would do and why they would be bad for the Internet, here’s an informative video that I found extremely helpful (about 11 minutes in length):
Understanding PIPA / SOPA & Why You Should Be Concerned (YouTube)
P.S. There are two Democratic Senators in California who’ve had my vote term after term, but will lose my support to a third party instantly if they vote for SOPA or PIPA. These bills are just plain WRONG for the United States and for the global Internet.
I request that you vote against SOPA and PIPA. The Internet does not need any censoring. If people were more educated as regards copyright law there would be a lot fewer violations.
I’m a creative writer whose copyrights have been violated, with some of my poetry and an entire novel. I handled those instances on my own. It cost me no money, since the owners of the sites were cooperative as soon as they learned of the violations by their users. Those instances occurred because of lack of education of the public as to copyright law and fair use, and I don’t feel that SOPA or PIPA would have been the answer. We already have laws regarding copyrights. It’s possible we have too many protections, with a corporation able to hold copyrights (for material produced by employees) in perpetuity rather than just one person’s or their heir’s lifetime. I am in fact in support of returning US copyrights to their former limited time span.
Again, I’m a creative writer, but I think there should be a point at which all intellectual property reverts to the public domain.
The Internet represents the first time that everyone in the US (who can afford or use a computer) has had free speech in my lifetime. All other forms of public expression are controlled by moneyed interests with their own agendas and are not readily or freely available to all citizens as a forum for expression. Please don’t let the Internet’s availability for self-education and expression disappear because a few large corporations think it would be more convenient for them.
SOPA and PIPA are wrong, and they will not protect jobs. They will censor all of us unnecessarily and wrongly. Please vote against them.
I’m not a Buddhist, but I’m curious about many spiritual paths. I admire many Buddhist teachings, and I find information about the Tibetan tradition intriguing.
Everyone deserves clean, healthy water, including Mama Gaia and everything that grows on her. Please start the year fresh by supporting Waterkeeper Alliance. If you’re on Twitter, you can help by following @waterkeeper and helping them reach their end of year goal of 20,000 followers.
I’ve never been one for New Years resolutions, with one exception. In January 1995 I was determined to do two things: 1) lose a lot of weight and 2) take on and complete a large, intense creative project, one with depth, one that I felt passionately about, one that was personally risky, emotionally and in the time and energy I needed to invest in it.
I don’t consider myself high in the willpower department, and though I was never sure exactly what set me back the other times that I failed to carry through with something, it never surprised me. I thought of myself as an underachiever. What I’ve found most years is that if I set a resolution, it doesn’t pan out. But in 1995 I accomplished both my big goals.
Why? First, they were goals that were both important to me, things I felt strongly about at the time, and they’d been on my mind for months and even years before the point of crystallization that caused me to go for them.
There was one other secret that I’m now convinced got me through that year.
I didn’t tell a soul about these two goals.(more…)
I’m hoping that this is not just a few new posts, but a new trend for me, that I’ll find my blogging muse again. It’s nice to be here doing a little scribbling and checking in on some other people’s blogs again. I spent quite a lot of time at Facebook in the past couple of years until becoming thoroughly disenchanted and feeling nostalgic for my blog.
I’ll likely not open comments, for now, but if you want to contact me, just use the contact page. (Link in upper right menu.) It will be nice to be in touch again if we’ve lost touch. Thanks for visiting and being patient with my absence for so long.
In spite of it freezing up Firefox on me (hopefully a problem unique to my computer setup), I’m sharing this awe inspiring video from PBS of winter in Yellowstone. The wildlife footage is some of the best I’ve ever seen, including a pack of wolves taunting a herd of elk stags, and a red fox diving into the snow after voles or mice. I’m a fan of nature documentaries, and this one is astounding. Stark evidence that there’s a reason they call it “Wild Wyoming.” Enjoy! (more…)
I’m not usually a painter, though I love the medium, admire great painting, and can’t help dabbling now and then. You wouldn’t think advice for painters would help me that much to nurture my whole creative self. But then I saw this post at JanasJournal.com: (more…)
I’ve been reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain (ISBN-13: 978-0140196016 Penguin), which explores changes that took place in various ancient cultures when alphabets and writing became common. (more…)
The Fool asks — Am I in control of what’s happening? Or are other forces at work? Does it matter?
Modern tarotists sometimes relate the Fool to the planet Uranus, but in the era in which we first know that Tarot existed, this was impossible, since no one yet knew Uranus the planet existed. Only seven planets were named. Back then it’s believed the Fool may have corresponded to the Air element.
While the mental or airy nature of the King of Swords may be seen as the mastery of, or complete focus of the powers of the mind, as the ultimate in mental discipline, in fact ultimate mastery of the mind may very well belong to the Fool. Not only is the Fool so focused, on one hand, that he’s oblivious to the dangers around him or to the possible folly of his path. He’s also, on the other hand, able to let go of instinctive control, of his survival needs, just as a mad man or an innocent child might. He may also do this with full conscious intent, in order to let go, fall, create, risk, imagine, and explore inner and outer realms with absolute freedom. He embodies conscious and unconscious focus, as well as conscious and unconscious abandon. He has few attachments to the material world — only the ragged or comical clothing he wears, his knapsack, and possibly an animal guide. He could conceivably be a shamanic kind of healer, willing to enter another plane of existence without fear, with his trusty animal guide there to pull him back into our reality when his work is done. At his most powerful, the Fool can be all these things or none. He can be an error in thinking, a blunder. He can be a surprise.
While many tarotists place the Fool at the beginning of the major arcana, as number zero, in fact zero isn’t a beginning at all. It is no thing. In some of the earliest known Tarots, the Visconti, none of the major arcana were numbered. When they later were ordered and numbered, the Fool remained unnumbered. Where in the series of 22 cards would one place this being who seemed to exist out of time, outside the material world, even outside the social classes? On one hand he’s a beggar, an idiot, a mad man. He matters not to the ordered classes. On the other he’s the court jester, the only one who can make fun of the King or Emperor without fear of losing his life. He also has the King’s ear and might sometimes whisper words of wisdom of the kind only a child might utter, or deliver news that no one else dare. He’s a truth teller, for isn’t that what makes a good joke, a humorous illustration of truth? So he must remain of no account, as one who will never be taken seriously.
The Fool may be a “natural fool” or a “licensed fool.”
Today, instead of court jesters we have comedians who point out the flaws of our leaders — and who don’t seem to take sides in their truth telling. Every leader seems to fall subject to their jests.
Many a family has a child like this, one who will tell family truths, truths the family doesn’t want told, who is therefore cast into the role of no-account by becoming the family scapegoat. In a dysfunctional family this role is sometimes relegated to one child. In some families the role is shared. It gets changed off from one member to another, from one time or circumstance to another. Perhaps even a parent takes a turn at being the scapegoat/truth teller.
The Fool is also the Child in all of us, the Child archetype that Jung and others have sometimes called the Divine Child and considered important as a symbol in dreams.
The Fool can be seen as both the beginning and the end of one’s journey. One starts life as an infant, a child, an innocent who knows no good or evil. Vulnerable, unlearned, unconscious, the child looks at the world and life with his eyes wide with wonder. Toward the end of life, if one is fortunate, one may reach the other end of the journey with a new kind of Fool-like awareness, an ability to see beyond good and evil, to recognize them as merely light and shadow, both necessary for balance. The Fool may have a sage-like wisdom that knows no boundaries and sees beyond our material existence. The Child Fool may be fearless because he’s innocent of danger. The Sage Fool understands danger and realizes he need not fear it. He moves through his fear with awareness.
Every now and then my cat Tara decides to look for new sleeping perches and hiding places. It’s as if she sees the whole house with new eyes, and notices things she never has before. Dark shadows open up into cozy corners. Vast heights are brought down to her level. Everything morphs into a new scene, which she traverses or manipulates (sometimes including her people) to suit her purposes.
It sounds an awful lot like creative work, doesn’t it? But it also reminds me of Tarot reading.
In our dreams the same thing happens. Our unconscious presents things we’re familiar with, but they appear in new ways. Home furnishings that wouldn’t in waking life survive a flood are sometimes submerged in dreams, and so are we, able to traverse the depths in our own houses without drowning. Sometimes we fly. In my flying dreams I often need to move my limbs a little, just as if I were dog paddling, but in the air rather than in water.
If we can view Tarot cards with these same dreamers’ eyes, bending the rules of reality a little, we can read them in a whole new way, the way we look at abstract artwork or find shapes in clouds.
The ability to see the same old cards with fresh eyes brings a depth to my readings that I don’t achieve any other way. That’s essentially how intuition works. It skips over the logical steps and paths that our mental processes usually take, and arrives at an answer anyway, sometimes a surprising answer that is equally surprising in its accuracy.
In each reading, I can retreat back into traditional or learned meanings if I choose, or I can see the cards with new eyes. Sometimes I find that a combination of the two works for me. I also sometimes see multiple layers of meaning in one card.
Next time you look at a Tarot card, pause for a moment to see it with new eyes. I’ll bet you can if you try. Tara is certain you’ll like it. And by the way, will you move your stuff off that shelf up there so she can nap on it sometimes?
This past week’s card was the Death card, number XIII. In many older Tarot decks, the Fool wasn’t numbered, and card XIII was never named.
Many Death cards depict a skeleton wielding a scythe as it mows down kings, clergymen, rich and poor, powerful and lowly alike, thus portraying La Mort as the great equalizer. In some decks, Death is portrayed as a cloaked figure with a scythe riding a pale horse through fog, storm clouds, or a desolate landscape. Again, the dead strewn across the landscape are people from all ranks of life.
In movies, the Death card usually predicts an actual death, much to the disappointment of Tarot users who’ve tired of that stereotype. While XIII Death can indicate physical death, several other Tarot cards can too, and that’s not the Death card’s usual interpretation. The image in the card is a symbolic representation of an archetype, a typical process that humans experience in many forms besides physical death. But the stereotypical meaning, taking the symbolic representation as literal death, is what many people think of when they first see the Death card. It’s scary to them because they’ve learned to fear death. It makes Tarot appear to them to be full of evil portent and curses, when in fact it’s a great tool for introspection and self-understanding.
XIII Death reminds us that all things come full circle, much like the hands on a clock, from beginning to end — and in the end is an inherent fresh beginning. Death as a physical transition from this life is natural in that it comes to all living things. We fear it because of its unknown aspects, such as when it will happen, how, whether we’ll be prepared or feel that we have too many loose ends left in our lives. We may fear that we’ll have tasks, lessons, goals, or adventures left unfinished — or relationships we don’t want to split apart, even temporarily. We may have regrets that haunt us and remain unresolved. Then there’s the inevitable question of an afterlife. Is there one? What will ours be like? We also fear it because it’s out of our control, and in our modern world we like control. We insist upon it.
Some of us resist death as if we could cheat it, or be the one person it somehow passes by. Some seem to do the opposite and rush toward it by courting danger. Others unconsciously invite death by way of dangerous habits, or apathy. We sometimes borrow a little death by fearing it.
In Tarot, the Death card rarely indicates the end of physical life, so its appearance in a reading shouldn’t be frightening. It usually indicates other kinds of transitions. It’s the inevitability of these changes that seems to be most consistent, with this card, and that’s how its meaning most resembles physical death. One is faced with the inevitable. One must change.
There are many kinds of change that are as inevitable, irresistible, and irrevocable as death. A few examples are the end of childhood, the end of pregnancy in the relentless throes of labor, the need to move on from a spent relationship, leaving a job that no longer suits us — or no longer exists. It’s usually an expected change, one that on some level we knew would come eventually. Perhaps we’ve put off preparing for it, hoping it wouldn’t. Resisting such change is futile, and in many cases will make matters worse or prolong someone’s suffering. It’s best to let go as gracefully as possible, allowing the remains to feed the future and the resulting emptiness to be filled with something new and perhaps better, fresher, more vital, more timely. We can’t see what that might be, and that makes it all the harder to let go. In this regard it’s more like a stalled or prolonged grieving process than death itself.
I sometimes think of this card as the Tarot’s recycling center, or compost heap, because it represents the kinds of endings that are also beginnings, whether we can see or believe in them or not. The remaining energy is best put to other uses.
As each day ends and we retire for the night, most of us do so in the knowledge or faith that a new day will soon dawn. But worry can make the dawn seem a long ways off. It’s in resisting the unknown and inevitable change, in worrying over them as if that worry could somehow thwart them, that we kill ourselves, by refusing to move forward in life, to be present as we meet our future.
The Death card is as much about internal change — life lessons or phases, and how we process them — as it is about external matters. The change might take place inside us, completely unseen by others except as it alters our outlook and behavior. It can be as mundane a change as, “Vacation’s over; time to get back to work.” Although the Death card always requires an adjustment, it’s never a reason to panic. What good would panic do, even if it was an indicator of death? There are more constructive ways to meet the future.
The Twos in Tarot can be dualistic, bipolar, two-faced, and filled with conflict or tension. They can push or pull in two directions, or unite somewhere in the middle in a tense, semi-structured and semi-permanent balance. Their energy can also build to a release point that will occur in the Threes.
Going back to Gail Fairfield’s geometric analogy, Two is two points connecting to form a line. Remember back to Geometry class, the abstract notion that a line extends into infinity in both directions, and you have an idea of the potential of the Twos in Tarot — especially the most prominent Two in the deck, the Papess or High Priestess. (more…)
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain
