Meditation - The highway to tarot proficiency
- Janne de Jong
- Sep 7, 2024
- 4 min read
I am currently revisiting the book The Tarot of the Magicians by Oswald Wirth.
Oswald was a Swiss writer, Freemason and occultist. Many would be familiar with his Tarot deck from the late 19th century, consisting of only the 22 cards in the Major Arcana.
I was gifted his book in the mid 1990s when I first started reading the Tarot. I have to admit, it went over my head at that moment in time - it was a hard read for a 16 year old, trying to understand the secrets of Tarot. I am so happy I kept this book even thought I did not really read it for many years. Books are the only items I rarely get rid of. For me, books are not items. They are knowledge, wisdom, insights, treasures.
And right this evening, I discovered a hidden treasure. How many tarot books do we not read, listing possible meanings, explaining symbols, teaching the history of the cards and the imagery. We try to memorize, read more, write down, memorize again. Does it work? Hardly. Why? The obvious answer is - we are stuck in our brain.
I repeat my own story to every person who is new to tarot and asks for advice. I repeat myself to the brink of boredom: It was not until I quit reading other peoples view on the cards and their meanings, and started to meditate on each and every card, that I developed the relationship with the Tarot which led to flowing and smooth readings.
And today, in this book, where Oswald is lecturing, page up and down, about Kabbalah, the Hebrew alphabet, the cards connections to the tree of life, to astronomy, to astrology, explaining all the secret symbols in the major arcana, there I find it:
"What would be the lot of the Tarot today, if it remained enigmatic, just as it has come to us, without being accompanied by some interpreting text, however slight? We are in a hurry and no longer have the leisure time for meditation; to think entirely for oneself takes too long. We need ideas explained clearly to achieve a quick assimilation or immediate rejection." (Wirth, 1927)
Wirth himself got the chance to retreat and engage in necessary uninterrupted meditation, during the summer holidays of 1924 and 1925 (two years before this book came out). He writes that he is visited by his spirit guides during these retreats, in meditation. He writes: Our true initiators often do not reveal themselves to our senses, and sometimes remain as silent as the symbolic composition of the Tarot.
What does he mean? Well, he means that silent contemplation and meditation, is the way to enlightenment. It is the way to be able to connect to your own inner wisdom, to creativity and to intuition. Meditation is also a way to reach the spirit world, the guides, the universal knowledge, the wisdom keepers.
Wirth writes about how the Tarot are, with intention, a set of images without words, because our words cannot reach the depth of the wisdom which lies within the universal and sacred knowledge that the cards are meant to teach us about. Only through the images and the hidden knowledge in them, can we truly understand the message of the Tarot.
This sounds both enigmatic and hard to grasp, but in fact it is not. Explain with a more mundane answer, you can compare the word "love" with the image of a small child running with excitement and happiness towards their mothers open arms and again with feeling of love that you experience i your body in a moment when true unconditional love flows through you. Which one makes you understand the concept of love best?
You can compare it to the word "moon", the image of the moon, or a meditation where you look up on the moon in the clear, dark blue sky. Which of them makes you understand the moon best?
From meditating on the cards and concepts, experiencing them from within, will we able to understand the true meaning of the cards, much better than when we memorize the meanings from other people's work,
"To make the Tarot speak is our objective, but the arcana only speaks to this who have learned to understand them. [...] Alas, what a poor divination they will practise, those who are in haste." (Wirth, 1927)
As you have understood, I am a huge believer in building a personal relationship with the Tarot. It takes time to meditate, but it will be worth it. Card by card, your relationship with the cards will improve, and the enigma will seem less terrifying to try to solve.
Like Oswald is describing in his book from the pre-war period; people are busy and have no time to meditate, so is it also for us. But if you really want to make time for the enigma of the Tarot - maybe you could do as Oswald did, make your next summer holiday a meditation holiday?
Wirth, Oswald: The Tarot of the Magicians, Samuel Wiser Inc. (1985)
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