a conversation with marcus katz

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ:  Let’s start with something simple: why Tarosophy?

MARCUS KATZ: Enrique. It is a perfect question and I would preface my response with the same statement I give at any lecture, teaching work or presentation: By our Work we are Changed. Having said that, let us begin. When I commenced my formal teaching work of Tarot, leading to what Naomi Ozaniec has graciously called “the restoration of the spiritual dignity of Tarot”, it was necessary to create a temple – a separation – in which this Work could be sealed. So with commercial sensibility and magical intent I looked to secure and register a trademark. I was advised to find a “meaningless word” and so looked to the formulation of Magical Squares to locate a word which would at least have some significance to divination, prophecy and the nature of oracular insight. As I consulted the magical squares in the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (a work I performed several years ago which after six months constant practice and seclusion creates a profound mystical fugue in which the Holy Guardian Angel is experienced) I found only pseudo-Hebrew word-jumbles. I was about to switch track when the word TAROSOPHY came into my mind – complete with the O-S-O connecting graphic. I only then realised that the magical square from which I was attempting to derive a word was that of the twelfth chapter, square 2, “To know the secrets of words”. On further research, the O-S-O symbol, known to many as that adopted by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, was found to be from a magical grimoire, the Red Dragon, and symbolises Saturn. An astrologer colleague tells me this indicates the nature of tradition, teaching, order and revelation within the word itself. Only then turning to the word, one can see that it is a conflation of Tarot and Sophia, “triumph” and “wisdom”. It is now a registered trademark and the title of my book on Tarot, and something very dear to me. Once upon a time, words were magic, and this is a word given through me.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: O S O looks like a snake moving from one cave to another one. Perhaps we are looking at the ‘footprints’ of a snake! The mark a rattlesnake leaves in the sand reads like an invitation to silence: “Sssssssssss…” It is nice to notice how these two letters, the S and the O, can be turned around 180 degrees and still be the same. The letter O, is it full or it is always empty? Maybe both at once? In any case it feels like a centered ego, while the letter S shows a constant flow that goes up and down. Perhaps it is connecting Above and Below.

So, which one it is? Is the letter O full or empty?

MARCUS KATZ:  The sigil created by the letters O-S-O in Tarosophy could well be taken for a snake passing between two caves, or a loose ladder of ascent between the All and the Nothing. This is why both ‘O’s are full and empty. In the Western Esoteric Initiatory System (WEIS) I teach, the formula of “0=2” is the primary ontology; Aleister Crowley called it “the unique, the simple, and the necessary solution of the Riddle of the Universe” and I am delighted to see it present in Tarosophy.

So the Snake (Wisdom) descends and the Ladder (Intelligence) ascends, but Angels may pass between both eyes. When contemplating the images of Tarot, as the ‘footprints’ of a snake, we are seeing only the memory of truth. As Umberto Eco remarked, and could have been so eloquently describing the divinatory moment, “truth is brief, the rest is merely commentary”.

The letters of the word Tarosophy and the Tarot cards themselves are, I believe, emergent principles arising from the relationship of Self and Universe. They are snapshots in structure of the engagement of Self in Universe and Universe in Self. We see this elegantly posited by the Fool and the World cards. The images of Ciro Marchetti often allude to this relationship, one within the other, more so than other deck designers. I have chosen a particular image of such – the Fool dancing upon the World – for the cover of Tarosophy.

But I feel we must be careful not to get overdrawn into graven images. All images and words are pointers only to experience. Even the poet Keats, when he wrote Hyperion, lamented that he would not be able to shape into words the tragic nature of the fall that had beset humanity. But there is redemption – and a re-memorising – for whilst Kabbalists talk about the ‘shattered shards’, the Gnostics the ‘sparks’ hidden by Sophia until the Archons return, we Oracles have our Tarot cards – like Saturn, in Hyperion, waiting for us to give them voice:

“Sat grey hair’d Saturn quiet as a stone,

Still as the silence round about his Lair.

Forest on forest hung above his head,

Like Cloud on Cloud. No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on a summer’s day

Robs not at all the dandelion’s fleece:

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more

By reason of his fallen divinity”

The stream is deadened and even dry, perhaps – whilst Jupiter and the Olympians overthrew Saturn and the Titans, Apollo – the God of Prophesy – would also become stilled, for the last oracle of Delphi is said to have told Julian the Apostate:

“Tell to the king that the carven hall is fallen in decay;

Apollo has no chapel left, no prophesying bay,

No talking spring. The stream is dry that had so much to say”

So it is time to recover their voice – the voice of the Oracles. We must ensure the Tarot do not become the “monstrous forms” of their images, as Keats alluded often to the Titans becoming as their own statues, fixed and silent. The Oracular Voice is a word, is a speech, is the snake passing between the caves of the known and the unknown. Tarosophy is an attitude that leaves behind it a trial of techniques – diverse spreads, card rituals, oracular mannerisms and esoteric methods.

I sometimes teach that Tarosophy is a “Tarot to engage life, not escape it”. By this I mean that one could spend a few hours online writing about how many “celebrities” one could ‘spot’ in Tarot cards (i.e. figures that reminded one of the appearance of others), or rather one could take two Court cards, and say to one’s partner, “How do you think these two would make love – show me”.

In the former ‘exercise’, one is being badly trained to learn a psychotic behavior (one I would have to undo with any of my clients in therapy) and in the latter exercise one would generate an experience not otherwise present which would ensure a profound and pleasant discovery to reflect upon for many months. One is an entirely escapist pursuit to fill in time until we become worm-food, and the other at least occurs in generative and creative activity. This is why Tarosophy differs from many other Tarot teachings.

With regard to many of the exercises given in Tarot, I am reminded when I first read as a teenager, in the fantasy epics of Michael  Moorcock, the lament of Prince Corum, watching as the forces of chaos destroyed the cities of the civilized world.  I have since learnt it was a phrase originally given by a Byzantine noble ruing the destruction of Constantinople by the barbarian hoards; “If only they understood what it was they were destroying, I would despair less”.

Our community of Oracles must return to the very wellhead of inspiration and draw more from the depths until eventually the stream flows again – blow away the dead leaves of past expectation and light again the torches of innovation in the carven hall of tradition. Otherwise we will become what Keats again mourned of the Titans, “What benefit canst thou, or all thy tribe, to the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing, a fever of thyself”.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Why do you think the tarot has acquired such a bad reputation these days?

MARCUS KATZ: I covered a lot of this ground, on Tarot and its reputation, in a paper on “Tarot organizations and teaching (1888-present)” which is part of the presently unpublished “Tarot in Culture” anthology edited by Emily Auger. It’s also something we cover in our Marketing Guide for Tarot Professionals, in a section provocatively entitled “Half your Market think you are Evil”. Whilst all Tarot readers can attest experiences both positive and negative when introducing their Art to those who are “the public” when it comes to Tarot and divination, there have been few proper surveys into the perception of Tarot outside of Tarot readers themselves. The only one I discovered was a fascinating piece of research done on behalf of an media advisory board in the UK. Whilst the survey itself is terribly flawed, it revealed something quite fascinating – and we could perhaps return here to the O-S-O symbol to explore it. In fact, as that sigil embedded in Tarosophy is itself a symbol of Saturn, constraints and tradition, fixed thinking, and the slow passage of time, it is somewhat appropriate.

The survey reveals that whilst a majority of people think of “Astrology” as ‘not occult’ and therefore ‘harmless’ (the word ‘occult’ is used in a pejorative manner in the survey to indicate ‘evil’) they think of “Satanism” as ‘occult’ and therefore ‘evil’. So far, so good – in a way, unless you know of very charitable Satanists and terribly manipulative Astrologers. The survey also had palmistry and Yoga in the almost random mix of subjects it surveyed! Now the thing is this – the ‘evil’ and ‘occult’ end of this spectrum was classified by the surveyed population of 3,000 people as the area which ‘messed with your mind’ or gave advice other than ‘general or positive’ information. In effect, the population do not want anything that is directly relevant and may cause change to their life. The fact that Astrology was seen as positive was specifically given as “because it is in the newspapers” and was seen as giving non-specific advice that could be ignored as a “bit of harmless fun”. I think this is why Tarot readers degrade their art by stating the often non-required and often illegal in itself “for entertainment purposes only” small-print. Not because it is required by law (we cover this in our legal guide) but because it attracts more customers! If I advertised “Not for entertainment, these readings will change your life forever” (which I feel is the only absolute requirement for a divinatory Tarot reading) my potential market would probably drop by a factor of 90%.

Tarot was placed by this same population right on the threshold between harmless/good and occult/evil. A 50/50 split of opinion, hence “half your market think you are evil”. This is reflected in the O-S-O symbol. The Tarot standing as the snake, the connecting principle, between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen. Whilst it is the way out of Plato’s cave, it is also the shadow. It is utilized as a threshold significator by popular culture in all media forms, accounting also for the fact that the ultimate threshold – Death – is the most commonly depicted and recognized card. So Tarot is our own placeholder of the mysteries. It serves to remind us of the profound depths of the Universe whilst remaining merely a stack of 78 pieces of cardboard. It is true then, that in encountering them, we must tell truth and then hold silence, like the passing of the snake of which we speak. In fact, the snake was seen as sacred to Apollo and connected with the Oracles – as well of course as all the other symbolism of the serpent as bringer of knowledge. You either speak with honey on your lips from the Book of Clouds, echoing the voice of fire from the living darkness, or you do not. There is no such thing as a half-way Oracle.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Last night in was watching David Byrne talking about how the music musicians make is constantly evolving to adapt to the architecture where that music is played. The same phenomena can be seen in birds, whose callings adapt to the specificity of the terrain where those birds live. The talk got me thinking on the notion of ‘adaptability’ and how it seems that the tarot, and the whole Western Esoteric enterprise, seem to have failed to adapt to the 20th Century. The survey you mention seems to confirm my own suspicions: it is the link between the tarot and the occult what gives the tarot a bad reputation, because occultism is basically at odds with the way contemporary Western society sees itself. What seems specially interesting to me is that the link between the tarot and the occult can be traced back to a specific point in history. I am referring to the misreading Antoine Court de Gebelin did of the tarot in 1871. While we should be thankful to Court de Gebelin for expanding our understanding of the game of tarot to include divination, we should also acknowledge the absolute lack of validity of his views.  It won’t be easier to simply dismiss all that nonsense? From where we stand now, we can see roughly 300 years of tradition of the tarot as a game, in which the images may have had a moralizing intention, and where we even have a well developed connection between the tarot and poetry (all of those are notions that would cause no rejection in our contemporary audiences) and then, another couple of centuries where the tarot has been linked to any possible counter-cultural doctrine, occult model and conspiracy theory. As a matter of fact, from were we stand today, we even have enough information about how the brain works to understand why we like the second part of the tarot’s history better, even if it is not sustained by facts. Cant we just acknowledge the misreading? Even Pope John Paul II apologized for the crusades! When a man gets out of prison on parole he needs to rebuild his reputation. That is why the terms of his release include not to seek the company of crooks. Shouldn’t we put the tarot on parole, and keep it away from bad company?

I confess I lack the sensibility required to find beauty in the occult. Could you tell me what do you see in it?

MARCUS KATZ: Aplogies for the delay in response – I have been immersed in convoluted research to investigate issues of cybersquatting, typosquatting, trademark law, intellectual property rights, copyright agreements inbetween countries, etc., for a forthcoming magazine supplement on business practice in Tarot. We are also working with a few publishers of Tarot cards to investigate abuse of images on forums, filesharing sites, etc. At Tarot Professionals Ltd we are looking to ensure that best practice is maintained, so we are issuing a supplement to our magazine in a month or two on legal considerations in Tarot practice. This is part of our remit to professionalize Tarot and raise expectations through education.

So, with that heady commercialism and legal world set to one side – although we are going to return full circle to it – let’s discuss Tarot and Esotericism. Although perhaps we can first refer to what you call the “bad company” that Tarot has kept – in your case, intimating this as the esoteric misreading of Tarot. Hmmmmm. I entirely agree. But not in the same way, maybe, as I am a complete apologist for the Western esoteric initiatory system – or WEIS as I abbreviate it – and my next book following Tarosophy is a description of this system and its spiritual discipline and goal.

In my paper on ‘Tarot on the Threshold’ for Emily Auger’s 2-volume anthology, Tarot in Popular Culture (which has now found a new publisher, it seems, so is again “forthcoming” in publication) I researched and reviewed the association of certain motifs with Tarot. These included the symbol of “the pyramids” and the notion of “antiquity” associated with Tarot. This is seen most obviously in the title of the “Ancient” Celtic Cross spread and similar confusions. Whilst we can admit that the conflation of ideas started with the ‘Book of Thoth’ and other esoterica suggested by de Gebelin, it is surprising how the notion was actually rejected (in part) but then deliberately utilised by following occultists. In fact, what few people recognise is the knowingness of popular reception that some occultists utilised. Whilst everyone may have an ‘idea’ of Aleister Crowley’s striking image, they haven’t seen the thirty or forty photographs (for example) of the same pose which Crowley then vetted to ensure the best one was released. As ever ahead of his time, Aleister Crowley was fully aware that he was the “brand of the beast” and he used that branding quite knowingly to further his aim to popularise himself and his message.

So in effect, the initial confusion has been promulgated knowingly as a ‘shared misunderstanding’ or “invalid knowledge” (as seen through the lens of cultural studies) by esotericists, the public and by the commercial marketeers. Hence we come full circle to commercialism. The early decades of the last century saw many adverts deliberately associating Tarot with antiquity merely to sell the decks. Once that had permeated popular culture, it would be a brave publisher who went against that grain. Many occultists – Waite, Crowley, et. al., had a somewhat knowing ‘wink’ at such confusion, but of course utilised it to meet popular misconception, hence strengthening it in the meantime.

The adaption of Tarot to the 21st century is somewhat akin to the esoteric response. If we see esotericism as merely a “flight from reason” (Webb) or a response against the “disenchantment of the world” (discussed by Owen), or even worse, as one scholar (Gibbons) put it, “a nonsense so palpable [that] mysticism is its best defence” I think we lose something important. A sense of our own mystery, and the potential of the Universe to surprise us. The relationship of the Fool (awareness) and the World (the universe) is always a fundamental mystery, as is the Hermit (time). In fact, each card is its own mystery.

In recently discussing ‘Street Tarot’ with Ferol Humphrey and talking about introducing Tarot outside its “confines” I remarked that Tarot – as a “threshold artifact” in popular culture – requires a “transition phase”, hence the candles, shawl and accoutrements which serve to alert people of the threshold. Otherwise the jump is too big. However, as was suggested by James Ricelef, environment is intrinsic to delivery. So when we look to take Tarot outside of its box – its perceived environment – it is good to work out how we do that. I think using ‘Urban Art’ is a good bridge (hence Tarot Professionals part-funding of Adam Mcleans ‘Art of Japanese Tarot” exhibition at the McIntosh gallery, attending as reader-in-residence of the gallery launch of the SPILL photographic deck images at Lancaster University and more recently our promotion of the Tarot of the Boroughs) and innovative decks that are not instantly recognised as Tarot (hence our interest in the Transparent Oracle). We can also use iApps etc., as Ciro Marchetti and Kat Black have done to deliver Tarot ‘within’ a recognised ‘safe’ environment. The fact that Astrology is not seen in the same way as Tarot is – and I quote survey respondents here – because ‘Astrology is in the newspapers’ so must be acceptable. We certainly have a way to go to ‘normalise’ Tarot in society, and this is one of the overarching visions of Tarot Professionals Ltd.

On the other hand, the beauty of the esoteric project is that it remains esoteric. Whilst I can talk about the elegance of the initiatory schema, intimate the profound resolutions and experiences it offers, we remain our own workshops. And as it is written in Sufism, “the worker is hidden in the workshop”. The Tarot provides a convenient arising of stabilized images projecting into the same unknowable reality as everything else, hence their import in the schema. We might as likely take any other system, or object, such as a grain of sand. Tarot captures the imagination before it shows (and here we turn to your prison analogy) that “the exit door leads in”.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: What I like about Crowley’s anecdote is how, by understanding how important was to get the picture right, he understood a fundamental premise on the way we perceive the world: we confuse symbols with concepts. The image has to be right because the image is it’s own message. Oliviero Toscani, the creative force behind all these ad campaigns that put Benetton on the map, used to tell the story of how, instead of marrying his girlfriend, they went into a set dresses up and took dome pictures of them getting married. It was all it took for friends and family to take the union as real.

I think you are mentioning something that is key: the tarot giving us “A sense of our own mystery, and the potential of the Universe to surprise us.” But going back again to taking symbols for concepts, why should we assume that esotericism is our best shot at keeping that mystery alive? What seems to be happening is that our culture at large doesn’t find a sense of the mysterious in there, and rightfully so, I would add. As you pointed out, the amount of misconceptions, misinformation, misreadings and plain commercial deception is too high to ignore, and any informed reading we make of these things end ups convincing us we are in the realm of conmen and madmen (I often think all these things are fundamental components of esotericism itself) unless, the aesthetic pull of these symbols is so strong that we choose to overlook their obvious conceptual pitfalls.

If I want to get a sense of our own mystery, I look into neuroscience. What we are uncovering there in terms of our own nature and potential is both mind-blowing and awe-inspiring. It really give us a sense of hope. Astronomy, and not astrology, give us a sense of the potential the universe has to surprise us. The abstractions of physics equal the beauty of the best poetry. We have art to instill in us a sense of transcendence and truth that can be put back where it belongs: within the experience of beauty. When I look at the tarot, this is, when I look at the two verifiable components of the tarot experience: images being seen by a person, I see potential for wonder to be placed right between the realm of neuroscience an art. Not only can we use the tarot to understand these two thing better, but since these are manifestations of our own being, we can use it to experience our own wonder.

Today we have way more elegant ways to talk about the tarot than the Golden Dawn had.

It is not enough to think the Western world at large got derailed from the ‘olde ways’ and should somehow get back on track. The Western world got derailed from the ‘olde ways’ to discover things like penicillin, so a whole range of diseases could be fought with something more than burnt sage and hope. There is no ‘going back to the olde ways’ unless we experience a rise of irrationality and a decay of critical reasoning. It is actually quite hard for the Western mind to find something in that bargain. I suspect that accepting that as a starting point is fundamental for a healthy tarot practice, and a healthy tarot business.

It seems more appealing to know what Crowley knew about getting photographed than knowing the formulas and incantations he memorized (or made up). After all, I suspect that’s where the true craft of the magician lies.

What I have read from you suggest you have a sober business sense and practical acumen. Why do you think there is so little academic interest in the tarot? Why do you think we don’t have a Fulbright Award for tarot readers, or a ‘tarotist laureate’ at the White House, or a ‘Divination’ category for the Nobel price? Why aren’t we invited to the ‘big boys’ pool?

MARCUS KATZ: I’d quite agree that there is no benefit to be gained in promoting regressive tendencies or superstition in Tarot. I’d also agree in part that Neurobiology has much to reveal about the mystery of consciousness and our experience of the world. I particularly refer my own students (both in therapeutic practice and esoteric practice) to Benjamin Libet’s work, Mind-Time, where it is proposed that so-called conscious intentionality follows unconscious readiness to perform action. Libet later went on to propose consciousness as an emergent field-like property arising from the activity of the brain.

I find these theories fascinating and extremely potent in exploring my experience of Tarot after thirty years. It is interesting that there is no comparative survey of how using Tarot regularly for a great deal of time changes one’s perception of time – or indeed, the physical structure of the brain. I address this issue in Tarosophy – there are comparative studies that demonstrate that regular meditation changes the physical structure of the brain. I wonder the same about regular practice of divination. There are also many mysteries to explore with regard to quantum science notions of granular time.

I’d also direct people to Julian Jayne’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, particularly with regard to Theurgy and Divination. He also speaks of the Oracles of Delphi as an example of the ‘bicameral paradigm’, which has four aspects – the collective cognitive imperative (belief system), an induction (ritual), trance (diminishing of the anaologue ‘I’) and archaic authorisation. It is this latter prescription that interests me most – by whose authority do oracles now speak? Our culture does not widely accord to the Apollonian view, and to respond to your question about academic interest, there is little validity given to the contemporary mantis (the Greek for the ‘freelance’ diviner). So without a culturally projected authority, we have little voice. The spring now indeed lies silent, the leaves have fallen and lie still on the floor of the oracular shrine.

Jaynes rightly – in my view – points to the spatialisation of time, a phenomena we see in any Tarot spread where “position 2” or similar “is” the future. This is something that I use in NLP work with clients – re-framing their own representation of their experiences in time which is invariably spatial. We say “I look forward to tomorrow” or “put that behind you now” as if time is a spatial construct. Tarot reflects this tendency in spreads, and hence when we work with such esoteric concepts as the “Cube of Space” we inevitably change our own sense of time through spatial considerations.

You might also be interested – if you haven’t read it – in the essay ‘What is a Concept, That a Person May Grasp It?’ by Ray Jackendoff, in his collection, Languages of the Mind. I particularly equate his thoughts on percepts as ‘focal values in a continuous domain’ as a Tarot reading. When we consider the multivalency of each symbol, and the several quintillion variations of a 10-card spread using a deck of 78 cards, it is indeed a miracle and a mystery that each of us, with relatively minimal training, can interpret each and every example of the several quintillion patterns.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: You are now getting into what I call the ‘exciting work’. I believe there were George Lakoff and Mark Johnson the ones who suggested all of our thoughts are of a metaphorical nature. We understand time because we move through space, we understand that ‘up’ is good and ‘down’ is bad because we lie down when we are sick -or dead- and we raise -here, another metaphor!- when we are healthy. Up to very recently, it was thought metaphors were just embellishments of language, when in truth, they are more likely to be the fabric of thought itself. The most interesting, and also challenging, aspect of that notion is that the body ends up being the epicenter of our experience of the world. The theory of embodied meaning suggests that we build our more abstract thoughts on top of our bodily experience of the world. We use our experience of what we know to understand what we don’t know, from the very basic directions, like up, down, straight, horizontal and vertical, backwards and forward, to the most complex mental operations we are capable of, like mathematical or philosophical inquiry. Most of the metaphors we use are mapped from the experience of our bodies in space. Life would be described in a very different way if we were given a different body, or no body at all!

I wrote a small article on that topic. The Association for Tarot Studies published last November.

I often think I got into the tarot for the wrong reason: I am actually interested in the images! By getting ‘down to the body’ we can work out a feasible way of understanding, and utilizing, the way images move us. The mere -literal- description of a tarot card is a more engaging process we could initially suspect. Right there, we are fostering the ‘making’ of meaning in the client’s mind, not only in terms of these memories and associations the cards elicit, but in terms of the physical experience the cards suggest in the person looking at it. Have you seen a client who looks at The Hanged Man and says something to the effect of “I won’t want to be like that!”? That very statement implies he already put himself in the Hanged man position! Staring down at the body allow us to use the client’s bodily experiences as a common ground, both to the elicitation of a response (these can take the form of memories, associations, emotions, but also, physiological responses) and to pacing the  meaning-making process into more abstract notions. That common ground is also key to lead the client into the prescriptive side of the work: the post-session suggestions people usually call ‘predictions’. It all starts in the images. One can learn to use an image as one uses a harmonica, or a colored pencil.

Now, you mentioned NLP. I am now conducting a few of these conversations with people within the field of hypnosis. I tend to suspect that tarot readings ‘run’ through hypnotic patterns. What are your thoughts on that? What has been your experience in that regard?

MARCUS KATZ: Yes, we have navigated our course into the beating heart of the body of Tarot. In fact, our next issue of Tarosophist International is themed on embodiment in Tarot, so we will talk again on this – we are also featuring articles on wholeness, wellness, healing and being. And of course, Life and Death in the cards.

Back to our conversation earlier about neurobiology, I think the mirror neurons of the brain really do respond deeply and profoundly to the constant shocks (as Gurdjieff would call them) of the world. We then have a complex array of psychological buffers (“kundabuffers” in Gurdjieffian terminology) that inure us from the dazzling depth of the Universe – suppression, repression, projection, introjection, depression, etc.

When we encounter the Tarot, we are activating, even by the merest scanning of images, the deepest parts of ourselves that are usually protected by these buffers – the part that wants not to die, the part that wants to keep living, the part that fears, the part that loves. I find on my intermediate Tarot course, where I do a lot of narrative skill-building and exposure to many cards many times in teaching the Opening of the Key method, that after exactly 1.5 days, students stop being able to read the cards at all for an hour or so. It is a curious “wall” they reach, and always at the same time, no matter their experience – one or forty years. They look at the cards, the images, but their brain can no longer turn them into meaning. I’ve tested and replicated this phenomena over a range of events over the years, and can safely predict exactly when it will occur with any group. I liken it to the overfilling of the unconscious by archetypal encounters, even those reflected by images. Of course, nowadays that’s when I show various videos or we play narrative games with sounds – so no-one notices the gap!

Jung of course spoke of the embodiment of the collective of images:

“These fantasy-images undoubtedly have their closest analogues in mythological types. We must therefore assume that they correspond to certain collective (and not personal) structural elements of the human psyche in general, and, like the morphological elements of the human body, are inherited” (CW 9i, 262)

This moves us straight into our conversation on Tarot and hypnosis. As you know, I’m a hypnotherapist and licensed trainer of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and Hypnotherapy. I am particularly a therapist who uses the approach of Steven Gilligan (Self-Relations Therapy) and Neo-Ericksonian approaches. Although NLP is relatively disorganised as a modality, I work with it from the post-modern perspective of Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy (see Wake, 2008).

I’m interested in what you quote with regard to metaphors as based on spatial and embodied awareness. I’m far more interested in how this relates to time – a perennial concern of mine and I see as the philosophers stone of Magic; the mercurial touchstone that changes all things. Although I read in New Scientist magazine only today that “Time does not exist”. I’m glad that’s resolved then! In NLP we utilise the natural ability of human beings to represent time as a spatial construct – we’ve touched on that earlier, with regard to spreads. We might also wonder how and where the client places themselves in their termporal worldview when they are having a reading. I like to ensure they are taken totally out of their existing time representation, and I use NLP language patterns to ensure this occurs – verb tenses, chunking and a few other confusional language patterns. I aim for the reading to be an atemporal construct. The solution must exist outside of the state.

Whilst I write a lot about my utilisation of NLP in Tarot in Tarosophy, I can’t talk too much about that here prior to publication, but there’s something in Jung I came across that made me think about the usage of “synchronicity” in Tarot books and this phrase is often invoked by readers in an explanatory context. But the thing is that people haven’t read Jung in detail, so they don’t realise that at best a Tarot reading is a “synchronous event” but not synchronicity.

Jung saw people making this mistake and went at great lengths to write a supplemental piece to explain the difference in layman’s terms, even bullet-pointing the elements that compose synchronicity. By Jung’s actual definition, if I understand it correctly, a Tarot reading is only a synchronicity if it carries the elements of what Jung called a “vision” (in his case, a dream or powerful imaginary incursion into consciousness).

Most experienced readers will know this to be true. There are some readings that take on a certain trance-like quality, time passes in a strange manner, a connection is made between those in the reading, and strange dream-like events may even occur – such as a deer arriving at the window, strange music starting in the apartment next door, a voice yelling a message outside. This is when the reading becomes a synchroncity – not with those events, but with the event in the actual life of the client for which the reading is being performed. This is the heart of Tarot – when it transports us as a tool into a timeless yet embodied engagement with life.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: One of the things that interest me the most about the tarot as a suggestive tool is the fact that such understanding unveils the potential harm a reading can do if the operator is either unaware of being implanting suggestions or deluded by the idea that his or her connection with a ‘higher’ power entitles him or her to say whatever comes to his mind, no matter how potentially harmful it may be. There is a scary amount of readers, and healers, who dismiss the need of knowing anything about suggestions, hypnosis or NLP. Still, there is not really a choice there. Either you  purposefully implant suggestions, or you do it without knowing what you are doing. Not knowing what you do, but doing it anyway, can be seen as irresponsible. But knowing what you do, in this case, have you constantly walking on the vecinity of manipulation. Milton Erickson was very vocal against demonizing the notion of ‘manipulation’. In his view, even when we are walking on a sidewalk and we stop, so another person can pass us by the right, we are manipulating that person. He was a firm promoter of accepting the power that comes with the role of a therapist. I know this makes many contemporary therapist uncomfortable. To some extent, Erickson embodied what now we call the ‘trickster’, just like another person you just mentioned: Gurdjieff, who was a skilled deceiver. I personally won’t put Gurdjieff in the same category than Erickson, but still, both made me think of that quote attributed to John Fire, a.k.a. Lame Deer:

“A medicine man shouldn’t be a saint. He should experience and feel all the ups and downs, the despair and joy, the magic and the reality, the courage and the fear, of his people. He should be able to sink as low as a bug, or soar as high as an eagle. Unless he can experience both, he is no good as a medicine man.”

The ability we have to acknowledge other people’s pain is founded in the pain we have experienced. But the tarot reader is not there to simply share, or validate, the client’s pain. This plays a big part on what we do, I would say, but still, the tarot reader’s main goals is to affect the client. I guess some readers may have problems with that, but the fact of the matter is that we aren’t supposed to leave the client untouched. Some readers would accomplish that by telling a person what is going to happen. Some other readers will give the person tools to deal with whatever happens. Some other readers will make room for the client to find an answer, some give the client strength, and some others will give the clients that answer right away. In any scenario, the reader aims to affect his client, so the client doesn’t leave the reader’s table untouched. Some of these ways to affect a client I just mentioned include a higher degree of manipulation than others, but still, to affect is to manipulate. Are you comfortable with that? Otherwise, what is your rationale to deal with the effects that all of these techniques you use have in your client?

MARCUS KATZ: Before I make any presentation, I quote the alchemical saying, “By our Work we are Changed”, and to conclude the presentation, I quote the Sufi statement, “The Worker is hidden in the Workshop”. It is the former that touches upon our present discussion, as all communication changes us – and our unconscious patterns, as Erickson so elegantly and powerfully taught are ever present. As we perform a reading, change is occurring. Communication takes place – a dialogue between reader and cards, reader and intuition, between the reader and the querent, and an often missed dialogue between the querent and the cards. There are even moments of inspiration where another level of dialogue opens between any of these actors (and I deem the cards such also) and the divine. I think any reading that doesn’t entirely change a persons life is a wasted opportunity. A successful reading demonstrates to the querent that the world is bound by invisible knots, and their life is part of an unfolding miracle.  As I think I have already said, you either speak with honey on your lips from the Book of Clouds, echoing the voice of fire from the living darkness, or you do not. There is no such thing as a half-way Oracle.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: You are the epicenter of an incredibly active tarot organization that feels very expansive, both in activities and scope. What do you hope to accomplish?

MARCUS KATZ: The work of Tarot Professionals Ltd was described beautifully by Naomi Ozaniec as “restoring the spiritual dignity of Tarot”. However, on the grounds that a picture does indeed paint a thousand words, and our time together in dialogue has sadly come to an end, I offer an image. The Video I recently created in honour of my students at The Far Away Centre, which has a song especially written by one student for us, features a series of photographs, one of which is of three women and a young girl. It follows the text caption “The Return of the Oracles”. These people are professional individuals, drawn to the study of the Work and are fully engaged in mainstream activities – in their cases, training, psychiatry, and marketing. When this photograph was taken, they were participating in a sacred rite to Apollo, and developing their oracular talents, in a huge cavern in the Lake District. All of them use Tarot in their work and in doing so are returning the oracles to culture – we are answering Keat’s question, “What benefit canst thou, or all thy tribe, to the great world?” The benefit of joining and working with Tarot Professionals Ltd is that we are returning the living oracles to a world which lies dreaming and awakening ourselves in the process. Tarot might be considered a picture of a ladder with 22 rungs, a toolkit of 40 tools and a machine with 16 settings. What you do with it is up to you – we choose to see through our own hearts and into life through it, climbing the ladder, using the tools and switching on the machine.

[http://www.farawaycentre.com, press play on the video and click on the full-screen option]

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Poet Arthur Vogelsang wrote:

“Life is uncontrollably sad all the time

Unless we divert ourselves with art objects”

Do you think he was right?

MARCUS KATZ: With regard to Vogelsang, I am impressed by his vision above the waves of a “white hole, in which fate doesn’t stand a chance” (in the poem, ‘Character’). I think the delicious terror of life is the joy we find in our ability to envision and reflect upon the whole of creation in such a white hole. There. Even the Tarot cards. Suddenly go still. And we realize all along – they were dancing, and we were not. But it is not too late – you can see them sometimes. There. Beckoning you to dance.

May a full deck of possibilities be yours.

New York – Lake District, England, July 2010