S'TAROT WARS (and introduction of 2 rediscovered Majors)

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Permalink Reply by Ralph Prospero ° OVerseer on October 14, 2009 at 11:38am

Revised: **TRUTH - "Luke, I'm your father." (A truth) / AND the Force is the greatest power in the Universe (Absolute Truth)

Permalink Reply by Ralph Prospero ° OVerseer on October 15, 2009 at 4:32am

Sonja -
this is very cool! Who knew that Arizona had such fine community colleges (smile).

I can see how Campbell's outline fits well into many adventure stories. Even (especially) The Odyssey. The other one that kept coming to me was The Natural (Robert Redford's ode to baseball). Or even, The Fisher King (Robin Williams/Jeff Bridges).

Some of these stories also have a step that is to preserve the continuity -- call it a hand-off to a new generation. Redford accepting the replacement bat from the batboy would be an example. I can't think specifically of another, but I'm sure of the handoff. OK, here's one, Bill&Ted, when the future B&T tell the present B&T of a few important things not to forget (wind your watch, Ted).

The main difference between Hero's Journey and S'Tarot Wars life path is that Hero's Journey is a legend of a single person vs. S'Tarot Wars being an ensemble story of many characters, all of whose participation is important. The hero's journey is a subset of the larger epic.

Permalink Reply by Omnitheus on October 19, 2009 at 10:34pm

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Halo Ralph - I know the following Star Wars Tarot cards aren't the same as described in your list (which I found quite spot-on)...but I found these on the net and well, just HAD to share. Personally I'm with you in that the older (first three produced) Star Wars films are the best, and are richer in myth & symbolism than the disappointing newer three (which I didn't like at all)...BUT if ever there was a more appropriate Fool from any Star Wars film, it'd have to be - hands down - that bloody annoying Jar Jar Binks!

0: The Fool
Jar Jar Binks

Though friendly and cheerful, Jar Jar Binks often finds himself in others' bad graces due to his tendency to act without thinking. Even Qui-Gon Jinn loses patience with this walking embodiment of his own admonition to "use your instincts". Hopelessly accident-prone, Jar Jar nonetheless seems to lead a charmed life, avoiding serious injury and sometimes even helping himself and others by sheer chance--or perhaps the workings of the Force. He has a childlike view of the universe and of how people should treat one another, and is frequently bewildered by the aggressive behavior and intrigues of those around him.

Meanings: Thoughtlessness. Folly. Immaturity. Irrationality. Insecurity. Delirium. Enthusiasm. Naivete.

Reverse Meanings: Bad decision. Apathy. Hesitation. Negligence.

XII: The Hanged Man
Obi-Wan Kenobi

No one is more intimately acquainted with sacrifice and waiting than Obi-Wan Kenobi, and no one has a deeper understanding of why these things are necessary. We see him as a young man, when the death of his Master Qui-Gon Jinn marks his transition from learner to teacher as he takes up responsibility for young Anakin Skywalker, whom he will later lose to the Dark Side. He is also pictured at the end of his life, emerging from decades of self-imposed exile as Luke Skywalker comes of age. The sacrifice of his own life completes the circle, and marks another transition as he becomes one with the Force and continues to guide Luke with a new level of insight.

Meanings: Life in suspension. Transition. Abandonment. Renunciation. Reversal of the mind and one's way of life. The changing of life's forces. The period of respite between significant events. Sacrifice. Repentance. Readjustment. Regeneration. The approach of new life forces.

Reverse Meanings: Lack of sacrifice. Unwillingness to make the necessary effort. Failure to give of oneself. Preoccupation with the ego. False prophecy. Useless sacrifice.

XVIII: The Moon
Queen Amidala

A young woman of strong intellect and intuition, Amidala augments her power and security through her ever-changing appearance. Elaborate clothing and makeup obscure her youth and unimposing size--the same traits that allow her go mostly unnoticed in her guise as the handmaiden Padmé. She is herself deceived in Senator Palpatine, her people's representative to the Republic, who seeks to use her to further his own political interests. She forms an instant bond of friendship with young Anakin Skywalker, unaware that he will grow up to love and later betray her.

Meanings:Deception. Twilight. Obscurity. Intuition. Disillusionment. Danger. Caution. Bad influence. Ulterior Motives. False friends. Slander. Libel. Unknown enemies. An insincere relationship. There are deeper reasons for what happens. Strange connections between people, beyond their own understanding.

Reverse Meanings: A minor deception recognized before damage is done. Trifling mistakes. Overcoming bad temptation.

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Whoah - your assessment is very insightful...Love this post! I'd heard that George Lucas had delved deep into the mythical/archetypal/symbolic/Hero's jOURney when he made those films (as much as I loved them as a kid...I'm more of a Trekkie...he he).

I'm quite excited & impressed with your Tarot/Star Wars correlation/connection (S'tarot Wars : Utterly BRILLIANT!) ~ It shows an uncanny understanding of humanity's quest to Self/Global Individuation; pop culture's role in The Great Unfolding; and your own profound insights of The 22-stepped Path (or is it 24?).

ONEderful post my friend.

Live Long & Prosper.
and May The Force be with You.
For Always & in All-Ways.

Another Point ov You...

~~~

The Complete New Tarot is the companion book that explains the theories and background to the Tarot in de Herstelde Orde, the Restored Order Tarot : By Onno Docters van Leeuwen & Rob Docters van Leeuwen

The Complete New Tarot was written to accompany the Tarot in De Herstelde Orde, the Restored Order Tarot, a deck of 81 images – 24 major arcana, 16 royal arcana, 40 minor arcana, and one back – and offers a detailed look at their Tarot theories and basis of reasoning for the reordering and extra majors. First published in 1995 by Sevire, as the ‘De Tarot in de herstelde order, theorie, geschiednis, pratijk’, this English translation was completed by Rob Docters van Leeuwen.

The essence of the Complete New Tarot concept is the restoration of two missing cards, Juno and Jupiter, and the reordering of certain cards of the major arcana. Rob and Onno worked for twenty-five years to "restore, structure, integrate, complete and correlate the Tarot", and to produce the card set and the 480-page companion book.

“Because of the absence of pictures on these two cards, it is our belief that the Tarot is incomplete and cannot function properly as a philosophical instrument.”

The book is divided into the following sections:

Preface Introduction 1 – What is the Tarot?
2 – The 24 Major Arcana of the Tarot as the Path of Life
3 – The 40 Minor Arcana and the Structure of Tarot
4 – The 16 Royal Arcana and Their Function in the Tarot
5 – The History of the Tarot
6 – The Tarot Obscured, Restored and Completed
7 – Mathematical and Esoteric Structures in the Tarot
8 – Theory of Divination
9 – Divination with the Tarot
10 - Meanings of the Tarot Cards
Appendices

Chapter 1 explains the authors’ view on Tarot, that it embodies arcane and collective psychological information and archetypes through pictures and symbols. The original order was obscured by the disappearance of Juno and Jupiter, and by the apparent misunderstanding of several cards – The Priestess, The Priest, Empress, Emperor, Temperance and Death. When the cards are reordered into the sequence favoured by the authors, a strip develops, a cyclic story of a man who is born, goes through life, dies, goes to heaven, and incarnates again.

Chapter 2 links the major arcana cards with the cyclic processes, and the cycle of life as a frame of reference, in more detail. The cards, arranged anti-clockwise, in a square with seven-a-side, form a square and the path of life in 24 stages. The corners are the Universe, World, Truth, and Intuition; and these mark the boundaries. “The Major Arcana depict a path of initation, the psychological journey of a human being through two fields of activity, subdivided in four different work domains. Each Arcanum is an intermediate station after which the journey’s characteristic landscape alters.” All the majors are pictured and explained in order, with reference to their part in the story of life.

The idea of the 12 Principal Arcana is explained: the twelve pairs of majors that connect one card with the worldly tendency and one with the spiritual tendency. For example:

Worldly Aspect – The Soul’s Activity – Spiritual Aspect
The Fool – I Want – Strength
Magician – I Offer – The Hanged Man

These pairs form a ‘tarot helix’, a spiral with two windings of the connected pairs; an external spiral movement moving into higher levels of existence.

Chapter 3 focuses on the minor arcana, the forty suit cards numbered from the Ace to Ten, and their part as the life cycle in archetypes. "Each of the four quadrants in the Tarot life cycle is divided into ten specific stages. In this way, a continuous series of forty stages is formed that are called the Minor Arcana."

The minor arcana are described as phases of a task - after ten stages, success is achieved and a transformation completed. Then, transition to a new stage occurs. Images of all forty cards from the Restored Order Tarot are illustrated, along with their keyword and information on their particular stage.

Chapter 4 is devoted to the Royal Arcana, the court cards. These are the ‘collective-psychological family structure in the Tarot’, the governing and leading principles : Family life - the King is the father, Queen the mother, Knight, the eldest child, and Page the youngest child. All sixteen royals are also illustrated in the manner of previous chapters. Along with the images, a physical description of the person and personality, then the interpretation.

This chapter also introduces to the 80-card mandala and the idea of the quartets, enabled by use of eighty cards in the deck, in diagram and in text. In each quartet, the major is the principle or law, the royal guides realization of the principle, and the minors are the actualisation of the principle in two steps. This to me is the most interesting idea put forward in the book, as it is a new way to work with the cards and to group its meanings.

Chapter 5 delves into Tarot history, beginning by linking it with its legendary past in Egypt and Alexandria. Moving onto the Middles Ages and the culture transfer from the East to West, via the Crusades and the Templars; onto de Gebelin and Levi, through Wirth to Waite, and Crowley, and onto the present.

Chapter 6 outlines their understanding of the reasons for Tarot’s banishment, and claims that it was changed on purpose by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to undermine Tarot’s power. (The two cards, Juno and Jupiter, were concealed by hiding them underneath the Priestess and Priest, but other changes were necessary to emphasise the importance of the Church and further hide the traces of its removal.) The ‘concealment algorithm’ is then illustrated, showing pictorially the nineteen steps of the process by which the order was changed. Apparently, the two blank cards found in later decks were left as placeholders to those who could recognize them – they "served for initiated people to supplement and complete the set to the original 24 major arcana" – but no mention is made of the possibility that these blank cards are simply a result of the printing process.

Chapter 7 correlates the 24 majors with esoteric and mathematical structures, linking the cards with taro/orat anagrams and hence with sounds and musical chords, and finally colours. Sheet music is provided for Incantations on the Celtic Cross and TARO-TORA-ROTA: Laws of a Changing Universe, pieces for four voices and variations for guitar and flute.

Chapters 8 and 9 cover divination, explaining how divination may work, the concept of synchronicity, and the approach of Tarot as a psychological instrument and how it may be used in practice. Also offered are several spreads from the Bow Spread to the Celtic Cross to the Ouroboros and Horoscope spreads.

Chapter 10 is straight-forward, offering the keyword and short-phrase divinatory meanings for each card when they are used in readings. There is a list of meanings for both upright and reversed orientations.

The appendices include spread worksheets, a comprehensive glossary, and a quick conversion table for the reordering of a regular 78-card Tarot deck.

The language of the Complete New Tarot is a little academic and wordy, but the plentiful use of diagrams, explanatory illustrations and card images prevents it from being too text-heavy. While I don’t necessarily agree with their Tarot ideas or understand how they came to the conclusions put forward in the book, the authors have at least given us the interesting concept of the Tarot mandala and quartets.

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Tarot in de Herstelde Orde is a Dutch Tarot of eighty cards. Two extra cards, Intuition (Juno) and Truth (Jupiter), have been 'restored' to the deck, and some of the major arcana reordered. The imagery is based on that of the Rider-Waite, but has some changes in imagery and has been rendered in a more attractive and vibrant artistic style.

By Rob Docters van Leeuwen & Onno Docters van Leeuwen
Tarot Deck - 80 Cards - Published by Servire 2003

The changed titles and ordering of the major arcana are:

Fool - 0
Magician - 1
The Priestess - 2
Emperor - 3
Lovers - 4
Intuition (un-numbered)
The Priest - 5
Empress - 6
Chariot - 7
Hermit - 8
Justice - 9
Wheel - 10
Strength - 11
Hanged Man - 12
Temperance - 13
Death - 14
Devil - 15
Truth – (un-numbered)
Tower - 16
Moon - 17
Star - 18
Sun - 19
The Last Judgement - 20
The Universe – 21

Temperance is now before Death; explained as hope and salvation coming before death, and before the pretense and decay. The Empress is immediately before the Chariot, and is then followed by the Hermit – explained as development, via success, that leads to a deepening. In this order, the 24 majors become a ‘life cycle as a story in pictures’, and they can also be divided into twelve complementary pairs, or ‘Principal Arcana’. Each major arcana card is titled in Dutch and also features one of the taro/orat/rota four letter combinations at the top of each card.

The two extra cards ‘restored’ to the deck are Intuition, represented by Juno and standing for the female, negative, and yin aspect; and Truth, represented by Jupiter and standing for the male, positive, yang aspect. The authors, Onno and Rob Docters van Leeuwen, believe that these two cards were historically part of a Tarot deck, but that Jupiter and Juno had been lost; the only vestiges remaining being the two blank cards included in many Tarot decks. The authors are very definite that this is the correct order and number of cards, and that the Tarot can only be properly worked with in this form.

The extra two majors allow the total of eighty tarot cards to be associated with various other spiritual systems – Tao, the Holy Trinity, the Zodiac, the 24 hours in a day, the Celtic Tree Alphabet, Nordic Runes, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table - and to be organised in interesting ways. In particular, they can be organised into a ‘mandala’ of twenty card quartets (groups of four) that are arranged in anti-clockwise order. Half represent the material world; half the spiritual. The four corner quarters in the mandala have two majors and two minors, while the side quartets have one major, one minor, and one royal (court card). For example:

Devil – Truth – Nine of Cups - Ten of Cups
Sun – Page of Swords – Seven of Swords – Eight of Swords
Fool – Page of Pentacles – Ace of Pentacles – Two of Pentacles

"The four arcana within one quartet form a symbolic unit that refers to the principle or law captured by the Major Arcanum in that quartet." It’s an interesting idea, which can deepen the interpretation of a card in a reading - and potentially help with learning the meanings, by linking one card to the others in its quartet.

Ordering aside - the deck’s art by Onno Docters van Leeuwen is a nice rendition of Rider-Waite illustrations. The familiar images, originally by Pamela Colman-Smith, appear with a higher level of resolution, and the background sky has a pretty, dotted mosaic effect. The backgrounds are also generally colour-coded by suit, which assists with interpretations in a reading.

There are some changes to the RWS symbology that slightly change or clarify the card’s meaning. The wands in the Eight are moving so quickly they are shedding leaves; in the Ten of Swords, the swords are not stabbed into the man, but into the ground behind him. In the major arcana: Death holds an hourglass; the Hierophant has a man and a woman at his feet; the Chariot has a very stationary feel with a lack of movement. The Wheel has an image of the Earth at its centre, and is titled the World; while the traditional World card becomes the Universe.

The backs of the cards feature a geometric, gold-on-red design representing Tao, 'the way' and symbolises the cosmos through a line that is without beginning or end.

The cards and the packaged companion booklet are printed only in Dutch, but a 32-page photocopied leaflet in English is available. Titled ‘Instructions to the Complete New Tarot’, it offers a basic explanation on the quartet concept, card meanings, and translations for the card titles. The ‘Complete New Tarot’, a 460-page textbook by Rob Doctors van Leeuwen, offers a more comprehensive information on the reordering, quartet structures, specific meanings, and the author’s theories as well.

Whether you agree with the author’s justification for reordering the cards or not, the Restored Order Tarot deck is an attractive version of Rider-Waite art and, through their concepts of mandalas and quartets, offers a novel way of working with Tarot cards.

*Reviews:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/

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Blessed Be ONE'in'All,
Another (FORTUNE-ate) Point ov You : OM...

Permalink Reply by Omnitheus on October 19, 2009 at 11:31pm

Ok, what do I personally think of the two missing Majors? My 1JJ Swiss Tarot has Juno & Jupiter RATHER than The High Priestess & The Heirophant (or Papess & Pope). I dunno - it makes sense that they were replaced somewhere along the line to appease the Church. I do like the concepts of Intuition & Truth though (even though for me - The High Priestess represents Intuition whilst Justice, The Hanged Man or even Judgement could symbolise Truth). Some of the historical research & conclusions reached in 'The Complete New Tarot' sounds a little too convenient (for the authors) for my liking. And as for the reordering : I would think that the Lovers could only come after The Priestess & Priest/Emperor & Empress were introduced; then again, maybe it's LOVE that acts as the balancing center-point of gravity between them - attracting them into each others' orbits. I'm certainly open to new ideas. And it's all definitely food for thought. I don't have either this book or the 'Tarot in de Herstelde Orde' but after researching them...I want them now! And I just bought 3 new decks today! (Ciro Marchetti's new 'Legacy Of The Divine Tarot' being one of them) AND Dai Leon's tome, 'Origins Of The Tarot' - a great, big, thick book that I just cannot wait to start devouring! (might have to put something up about these in a separate post...) I'm going to have to track down these other ones next week!

Blessed Be,
Another Point ov You : OM...