By Polly Young-Eisendrath (Edited by Art Rosengarten)

[From HAGS AND HEROES A Feminist Approach to Jungian Psychotherapy with Couples, Polly Young-Eisendrath, Inner City Books, 1984.]

One day King Arthur is out hunting in the North, in Inglewood Forest, where he stalks a white hart until he wounds it with an arrow. Just as he goes to gather his kill, a monstrous fellow steps out of the woods. He calls himself, “Sir Gromer Somer Jour” and threatens Arthur instantly with death by his ax. Shaken and confused, Arthur responds that he is unarmed for battle, and Sir Gromer grants him a twelve-month span in which to answer a riddle or return for his death blow. King Arthur departs this encounter entirely crestfallen and confused about the intent of the riddle.

When he arrives back at the castle, only Sir Gawain, among the Knights of the Round Table, can elicit the story of the adventure from the king. Reluctantly, Arthur describes the details of his confusing encounter and ends with great perplexity about the riddle posed by Sir Gromer. Gromer has asked Arthur to answer correctly the question, “What is it that women most desire, about all else?”

Both Gawain and Arthur suspect this question is a trick because it seems so inconsequential. Gawain is optimistic, however, saying “After all, we have an entire year to collect answers throughout the kingdom. Surely someone will know. “ Arthur is less certain.

For an entire year, Arthur and his companions set about gathering data in their notebooks, asking the question of a broad and diverse sample of their population. Ultimately, they come together and compare notes, Gawain feeling certain that one of the answers will be right. Arthur doubts and worries, secretly assuming that no answer can be found to such a ridiculous question. With only a few days to go, he meanders again into Inglewood Forest, not too far from the place he originally shot the hart.

Out of the woods scrambles a hideous old hag who introduces herself as “the Lady Ragnell.” She challenges Arthur, saying she knows he does not have the right answer to the riddle.  Arthur is astounded by her officious manner, and replies that he cannot see how she might be concerned with his business. “The impudence of the woman!” is all he can think. Ragnell presses forward with a confidence that is startling to the king.  She insists that only she can offer the correct response since she is the stepsister of Sir Gromer and privy to information that Arthur does not have.

Himself unconvinced of the answers he has collected, Arthur finally responds by offering her land, gold or jewels for the right answer. Ragnell refuses his material rewards, replying, “What use do I have for gold or jewels?” and asserts that only one thing will do”: “If your nephew Gawain agrees to marry me, I will tell you the correct answer. That is my condition.” Arthur says that Gawain is not his to give, that Gawain is his own free man. Ragnell replies that she is not asking for Arthur to give her Gawain: she is only asking him to propose the matter to Gawain and to discover what Gawain chooses to do, of his own free will.

Although Arthur asserts that he cannot put his nephew on the spot in this way, he immediately goes back to the castle and makes the proposal. Seeing his uncle almost groveling before him, Gawain cannot but take pity on the poor king and vows that he would wed the Devil himself in order to save the king’s life. Together they go back to Ragnell and Gawain agrees to marry her if the answer she gives them is the one that saves the king’s life.

On the appointed day, Arthur and Gawain ride solemnly out to meet the monstrous Sir Gromer. With his sword raised and his eye glinting, Gromer listens to Arthur read off the answers the two men collected in their research. None of them is the right one, and just as Gromer is about to let fall his ax, Arthur blurts out Ragnell’s response to the question: What women desire, above all else, is the power of sovereignty, the right to govern their own lives!”

At this Gromer dashes off, spitting hateful remarks about Ragnell and screaming that Arthur could never have found that answer on his own.

Arthur, Gawain and Ragnell ride back to the castle in silence. Only Lady Ragnell is in good spirits. There follows a great wedding banquet attended by the lords and ladies of the castle. Everyone is uncomfortable, squirming and commenting on the ugliness and bad manners of the bride. Ragnell, however, is unabashed; she eats heartily and appears to have a very good time.

In the wedding chamber later that evening, Ragnell seems pleased with Gawain’s responses to her. “You have treated me with dignity,” she says, “You have been neither repulsed nor pitying in your concern for me. Come kiss me now.”

Gawain steps forward and kisses her on the lips and lo!, there stands a lovely and graceful woman with beautiful grey eyes. She turns round before him and queries, “Do you prefer me in this, my true form, or in my former shape”?” “Well, of course in this shape. I mean, what….what a beautiful woman you are!” Gawain stammers. Then he leaps back with a challenge: “What manner of sorcery is this? What is going on here?”

Lady Ragnell explains that her brother had cursed her for being so bold as to disobey his orders. His curse was that she should appear as a loathsome hag until the greatest knight in all of Britain willingly agreed to marry her. Arthur’s mistake of hunting in Inglewood Forest (the land Arthur had given to Gawain, but which rightfully belonged to Sir Gromer) was her first opportunity to be in contact with the king and to try to break Sir Gromer’s vengeful spell.

Overjoyed, Gawain rushes toward his bride, crying, “You have done it! You have freed yourself from your brother’s angry spell and now you are my own lovely bride!”

“Wait!” Ragnell interrupts. “I must tell you that only part of the curse is broken. You now have a choice to make , my friend. I can be in this my true shape during the day, in the castle, and take my other form at night in our chamber—or I can be in my true shape at night, in our bed and in my former ugly shape by day in the castle. You cannot have it both ways. Think carefully before you choose.”

Gawain falls silent. Pondering the intent of the question, but only for a moment. “It is your choice, Ragnell, because it involves your life. Only you can decide, “ is his answer.

With this, Ragnell becomes radiant with joy and ease. She says, “My dear Gawain, you have answered well, because now the spell is entirely broken. The final condition was that if, after I became the bride of the greatest knight, he freely gave me sovereignty over my own life, I could return to my true form. Now I am free to be beautiful by day and beautiful by night.”

Thus began the marriage of Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell.

A 5 Part  Interview w/Dr. Art Rosengarten for the Swedish-based radio program Red Ice

Click above for fascinating interview with author/psychologist Dr. Art Rosengarten discussing Jungian and Buddhist psychology as they relate to tarot cards, divination, and synchronicity, the deep unconscious, the power of oracles  for modern psychology, and the makings of his own tarot deck using miniatures and digital photography as his medium. Illustrated with images of Dr. Rosengarten’s work.

By Art Rosengarten, Ph.D., January 21, 2000.

Like many of my generation, I still hold the Sixties with reverence for its underlying vision, its music and emotion, its call for change and possibility. Such things resounded through my youthful imagination like thunder through lightning.

In the Seventies I did graduate study in philosophy, religion, and psychology in San Francisco, and discovered the practice of psychotherapy to be the perfect professional calling. Compassionate and intuitive, creative and effective, intellectual and spontaneous, how better to align my spiritual and artistic passions with meaningful employment?

I was then first introduced to Tarot in a Graduate Weekend Seminar. Despite my innate cynicism for faddism and fakery, I was touched to the bone by the cards. All questions and answers of a personal nature seemed to coalesce under their spell. I spent the next three years during off hours from my clinical practicums making daily Tarot experiments until my world, such that it was, seemed more an outer confirmation of my cards, than the reverse. Words failed to describe the compelling synchronicities of this phase, and I remained largely in hiding like some protective keeper of great secrets.

Then came the Eighties. I wrote the first accredited doctoral dissertation on Tarot (which I compared with dream interpretation and projective storytelling) and demonstrated statistically the reliability and validity of the Tarot method. This was amazing, but I didn’t know how to estimate exactly how amazing? I asked my Committee Chair, a well-known expert in the field, how my findings would be met in the conventional academic world? He said my study would probably garner more interest if I had demonstrated Tarot’s lack of validity and reliability. Academic psychologists would chomp at the bit to scientifically dismiss Tarot as another medieval anachronism. Even the Parapsychologists (wolves in sheep’s clothing) would likely be uncomfortable (threatened) by a mantic method that couldn’t easily be controlled in their experimental trials. (Technically, Tarot readers are not psychics, but diviners). So much for my noble efforts.

I put the work on hold and focused instead on my clinical development in conventional psychology. Through internships and Fellowships I worked for years in private psychiatric hospitals, residential treatment centers, and eventually full-time private practice which I continue to this day. I took as much advanced training and personal analysis as I could, and received two professional licenses in California. But I was not done with Tarot. I continued teaching, reading professionally, and experimenting on the side. I knew the power of conventional psychotherapy, and indeed the beauty, yet to my mind it paled next to the potentials of an instrument like Tarot.

I felt strongly that the real Tarot has been improperly lumped with gypsy folklore, raffish occultists, and New Age-ism and if it belonged anywhere given its Italian Renaissance roots, it would more likely find its natural home in the psychology of the individual, including Jungian, Humanistic, Dynamic, and even Existential psychologies. Other systems, particularly in this turbulent age of brief, cost-contained, issue-targeted modalities, might also benefit from Tarot’s rich, image-based, multi-level, non-linear language which seems to possess some uncanny knack for mirroring subjective experience. Nowhere does it say psychotherapy must remain dull.

Unfortunately, I could not find a single book that did poetic justice to the spectrums of psychological meaning and healing laden in Tarot. I decided if I couldn’t read it, I would have to write it myself. I prefer not to be alone. TAROT AND PSYCHOLOGY: SPECTRUMS OF POSSIBILITY has been a most satisfying culmination of this love affair.

Art Rosengarten

Emily E. Auger (ed) This volume is expected to total over 900 pages and includes 24 colour plates.

Reviewed by Arthur E. Rosengarten, Ph.D., a Clinical Psychologist in Encinitas, California, and the author of Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (2000), creator of Tarot of the Nine Paths: Advanced Tarot for the Spiritual Traveler (2009), and Owner/Moderator of the website/discussion forum Tarotpsych

Tarot in Culture is both original and extensive in its attempt to distinguish the complex streams of history, sociology, and metaphysics that have entwined Tarot ever since its first appearances in Northern Italy in the early fifteenth century.  The fascinating narrative of this famous metaphysical deck of 78 cards is advanced significantly through fine scholarship from many perspectives. In an entertaining and thought-provoking collection of papers from contemporary scholars around the world, we discover the vast scope and variance of thought surrounding the deck itself, if only in the sheer range of analysis presented in this tome.  Tarot, to varying degrees, has been cast by its purveyors as exalted, recreational, clandestine, archetypal, cliquish, magical, revered, and debunked.  Hence its unique fascination.

Much of the discussion in Tarot in Culture is a kind of scholarly mystery tale that engages both sensibility and imagination, particularly given the disquieting fact that no agreed upon theory or evidence of the first designer(s) today exists.  The vacuum left for heady and arcane speculation is filled here, however, with grounded research that allows a useful laying to rest of the popular fables. Essays regarding Tarot’s origin and original purpose make a strong case for something no more esoteric than a trump-bearing card game, stemming perhaps from the Middle East and akin to bridge, thus ruling-out the more common romantic notions of ancient Egyptian beginnings (which persists today, regardless, in some darkened corridors under the aegis of “popular misconceptions”).  Likewise rendered moot is a very thorough accounting of Tarot’s mistaken saddlebag of associations with the gypsies, and the legacy of fortune-telling, which has been challenged convincingly by historians.

The Tarot lineage is traced skillfully up through the French school of Tarot de Marseille– referring to a deck style originating in the sixteenth century in Italy and appearing in France in the mid-seventeenth century– onto the milestones of Tarot’s occult beginnings including the Eteilla Tarot published in 1789, marking the first tarot designed with a divinatory aim, History of Magic by Eliphas Levi (1860) which strengthened Tarot’s developing associations with Masonry and Caballa, and leading to the grand finale of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London (founded in 1888), the hotbed of Tarot’s famed British incarnation, with such turn-of-the century notables as MacGregor Mathers, William Wynn Wescott, the poet William Butler Yeats,  the often-acknowledged fathers  (and mothers) of the modern movement, Arthur E. Waite (with Pamela Colman Smith) who authored of the Rider Tarot (1909), and Aleister Crowley (with Lady Freida Harris) who authored The Thoth Tarot (1944).

In Tarot and Culture, a web of socio-cultural forces and precedents inform this previously-documented linear history. One feels safely-educated here in the otherwise elusive journey through the deck’s evolution and its current relevance as a map of consciousness as ascribed by some Jungian scholars. The book showcases a slice of Tarot’s contemporary era, marked by a profusion of creativity, commercialism, artistic experimentation, human potentials, and cultural funkiness, as first splashed down onto the scene of the American 1960’s and has grown remarkably through its adolescence over ensuing decades.  As a part of popular culture today, Tarot’s appearance in twentieth-century literature and film is discussed, including how it grapples with its counter-cultural costumery, and as well, its undressing in through the lens of postmodernist deconstruction. Tarot’s liminal stance at the threshold of social acceptability, its ambiguous relation to the law, as well as its coming of age initiatives, relative successes and failures with professionalizing and credentialing organizations are also laid out.

In one of Auger’s own entries a particularly fascinating distinction is made regarding the post-modernist notion of “heterotopia.”  Referencing Michel Foucault’s (1926-1984) definition as “real locations where otherwise incompatible spaces intersect or events that are incompatible with social norms occur (Auger, p. 236),” Auger suggests Tarot itself is a “heterotopian radiating point,” one that has inspired the creation and use of a vast array of different Tarot and other meditational decks.  I find this a credible elucidation of what occurs in psychotherapeutically-based readings with Tarot as well; an opening of the “real locations” in one’s subjective life occurs and intersects with the spiritually-laden symbolism of the cards in such a way as to deepen one’s understanding and visually capture the complex web of simultaneous forces operating in the moment.

Through it all, however, Tarot morphs in our imagination to an entity holding a special category unto itself, much as Auger and the contributors would bear out.  Embedded in Tarot’s arcane layers of meaning and mythology as these pages so wittingly reveal are parallel layers of misnomer and mythologizing, or as author James Hillman might reframe, pathologizing. Through the wider eyes of cultural discernment this added shadow grants a complexity and compelling interest to the Tarot phenomenon in its entirety. The cumulative effect, perhaps, not unlike like guns, incense, or bibles, hinges less on the object’s intrinsic merit or virtue, and far more on the user’s motivation, interpretation, application, and experience. A good reading, therefore, is never the final word on a subject so much as a rich invitation for continued exploration.

_______________________________________________________

The Association for Tarot Studies is pleased to be able to announce the forthcoming collection of important essays from a variety of well-known authors and researchers.

This volume is expected to total over 900 pages and includes 24 colour plates.

Release date (expected): June 2011

The recommended retail price is expected to be around AU$ 95 (approx €65 / US$ 90) plus postage and handling. Airmail to most parts of the world will depend on final weight, but is expected to be in the vicinity of AU$ 30.

Total expected cost (including postage): AU$ 125

Paying now helps us with printing costs and avoids increased postal charges.

by Martine Bachelor

Tricycle, Fall 2008: pp 38-41

Martine Bachelor offers a Korean Zen koan practice to refresh our minds and open us to creative wisdom. Martine Batchelor, the author of Women in Korean Zen, was a Zen nun in Korea for ten years. She teaches meditation worldwide. Her latest book is Let Go: A Buddhist Guide  to Breaking Free of Habits

IN sixth-century China, the Buddhist schools were quite scholastic and focused on the scriptures. To move away from this academic direction and toward the Buddha’s original teaching of practicing meditation and realizing awakening in this very life, the Zen school developed its koan practice, in which stories of monks’ awakenings became a starting point for meditative inquiry. By asking and focusing on a single question as a meditative method, Zen practitioners aimed to develop a rich experiential wisdom.

In the Korean Zen tradition, one generally meditates on the koan What is this? This question derives from an encounter between the Sixth Patriarch, Huineng (638–713 C.E.), and a young monk, Huaijang, who became one of his foremost disciples: Huaijang entered the room and bowed to Huineng. Huineng asked: “Where do you come from?” “I came from Mount Sung,” replied Huaijang. “What is this and how did it get here?” demanded Huineng. Huaijang could not answer and remained speechless. He practiced for many years until he understood. He went to see Huineng to tell him about his breakthrough. Huineng asked: “What is this?” Huaijang replied: “To say it is like something is not to the point. But still it can be cultivated.”

The whole story is considered the koan, and the question itself, “What is this?” is the central point—hwadu in Korean, or huatou in Chinese. The practice is very simple. Whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, you ask repeatedly, What is this? What is this? You have to be careful not to slip into intellectual inquiry, for you are not looking for an intellectual answer. You are turning the light of inquiry back onto yourself and your whole experience in this moment. You are not asking: What is this thought, sound, sensation, or external object? If you need to put it in a meaningful context, you are asking, What is it that is hearing, feeling, thinking? You are not asking, What is the taste of the tea or the tea itself? You are asking, What is it that tastes the tea? What is it before you even taste the tea?

My own teacher, Master Kusan (1909–1983), used to try to help us by pointing out that the answer to the question was not an object, because you could not describe it as long or short, this or that color. It was not empty space either, because empty space cannot speak. It was not the Buddha, because you have not yet awakened to your Buddha-nature. It was not the master of the body, the source of consciousness, or any other designation, because those are mere words and not the actual experience of it. So you are left with questioning. You ask, What is this? because you do not know.

We are not speculating with our mind. We are trying to become one with the question. The most important part of the question is not the meaning of the words themselves but the question mark. We are asking unconditionally, What is this? without looking for an answer, without expecting an answer. We are questioning for questioning’s own sake. This is a practice of questioning, not of answering. We are trying to develop a sensation of openness, of wonderment. As we throw out the question What is this? we are opening ourselves to the moment. There is no place we can rest. We are letting go of our need for knowledge and security, and our body and mind themselves become a question.

You are giving yourself over entirely to the question. It’s like diving into a pool: the whole body is engaged in the act, and the whole body and mind are refreshed. You are trying to develop a sensation of questioning and an inquiry that brings about the sense of bewilderment you feel when you have lost something. You are going somewhere, you put your hand in your pocket to grab your car keys. They are not there. You check this corner and that corner of the pocket again and again, and there is nothing. For a moment before you try to remember where you’ve left them, you are totally perplexed; you have no idea what might have happened. This is very similar to the sensation you are trying to develop in Zen questioning.

Concentration and inquiry are brought together with this technique. Concentration is developed as you come back again and again to the words of the question, back to the present moment. The question is the anchor of your meditation, the fixed point. By cultivating concentration, you allow for a certain calmness and spaciousness to develop. The process of inquiry is vivid, because you are not repeating the words like a mantra—the words themselves are not sacred, nor do they have a special resonance. They are just the diving board from which you dive into the pool of questioning. By repeatedly questioning with the energy and interest of someone who has just discovered she has lost something, you evoke a brightness in your whole being. This questioning gives you energy, because there is no place to rest, and it allows for more possibilities and less certainty. It is a kind of wonderment similar to a young child’s when he discovers and marvels at the world around him—very immediate, not lost in the future or in the past. This practice is just being with the moment and looking deeply, asking What is this? and being open to this as it happens to be.
If you meditate in this way, your mind will become more flexible, and you will start to see that actually you have more choices in your actions and behavior than you thought possible. This seeing will allow you to respond creatively to thoughts by knowing what you are thinking and realizing when you come into contact with a new thought. Normally, a thought emerges so fast that you are not even aware of its arising. You just think it and act impulsively or habitually. When you meditate, sitting quietly, trying to focus on the question What is this? you start to notice what takes you away from your focus. Generally it is a thought of one kind or another. The meditation is intended not to stop you from thinking but to help you discover what and how you think.

THERE are different practical ways to meditate with this method. The easiest way is to ask the question in combination with the breath. You breathe in, and as you breathe out, you ask, What is this? Master Kusan used to suggest asking the question by making it like a circle. You start with What is this? and as soon as you end one question you start another What is this? Another way is to just ask the question once and remain for a while with the sensation of questioning. As soon as it fades away, you ask it once more, staying with the pregnant sense of questioning until it dissipates again. You have to be very careful not to ask the question with too tight a mental focus. Usually it is recommended that you ask the question as if it were coming from the belly or even the toes. You need to bring the energy down and not tighten it like a knot in the mind. If the question makes you feel agitated, speculative, or confused, just come back to a simple and calming breath practice for a while before returning to the question.

Keep in mind that you are not trying to force yourself to find an answer. You are giving yourself wholeheartedly to the act of questioning. The answer is in the questioning itself. It is like a child who has never seen snow. You tell him it is white and cold. He thinks it is like a piece of white paper in the fridge. You take him near a mountain and show him the top. He says that it looks like coconut ice cream. It is only when he touches the snow, feels it, plays with it, and tastes it that he really knows what snow is. It is the same with the question, and the tasting is in the questioning itself.

Master Kusan was reputed to have had three awakenings—breakthroughs in understanding confirmed by his teacher—and still he continued to ask the question. A Western monk asked him why he continued questioning. After three awakenings, surely he must have found the answer. Master Kusan told him it did not work that way. As you meditated with this question, the practice developed in its own way and slowly evolved. So of course we asked him how he did the questioning at that point. He would not answer. He said that we had to find this out by ourselves. Any descriptions of his would give us misconceptions.

The most important part of the practice is for the question to remain alive and for your whole body and mind to become a question. In Zen they say that you have to ask with the pores of your skin and the marrow of your bones. A Zen saying points out: Great questioning, great awakening; little questioning, little awakening; no questioning, no awakening. ▼

GUIDED MEDITATION 
What is this?
• Sit in a quiet and secluded place. Keep your back straight. Remain poised, at ease, and attentive. With your eyes half-closed, gently gaze in front of you.
• With the first few breaths, connect the question to the out-breath. As you breathe out, ask, What is this?
• You are not repeating the question like a mantra; you are cultivating a sensation of perplexity, asking unconditionally, What is this?
• This is not an intellectual inquiry. You are not trying to solve this question with speculation or logic.
• Do not keep the question in your head. Try to ask it from your belly.
• With the whole of your being, you are asking, What is this? What is this?
• The answer is not found in the Buddha, or in a thing, or in empty space, or a designation.
• You are asking What is this? because you do not know.
• If you become distracted, come back to the question again and again.
• The question What is this? is an antidote to distracted thoughts. It is as sharp as a sword. Nothing can remain on the tip of its sharp blade.
• By asking this question deeply you are opening yourself to the whole of your experience, with a deep sense of wonderment and awe.
• When the session is finished, move your shoulder, back, and legs, and gently get up with a fresh and quiet awareness.