Quest Magazine

Tarot and the Tree of Life: Finding Everyday WisdomIn the Minor Arcana
 by Isabel Radow Kliegman. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, Theosophical Publishing House, 1997. Paperback, xxv + 220 pages.

Choice Centered Tarot
 by Gail Fairfield, foreword by Ralph Metzner
York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1997. Paperback, vi+ 154pages.

What is the tarot? It is a deck of cards consisting of four suits equivalent to present-day playing cards, except that each suit contains an extra face or court card, called the "knight." To these fifty-six cards, called the "minor arcana," are added twenty-two additional trump cards, known as the "major arcana," ranging from a trump card numbered zero (the Fool) to the trump card numbered twenty-one (the World).

The origin of the tarot is a matter for speculation. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century tarot enthusiasts were wont to follow the lead of Court de Gel-elm (1728- 1784) and other French esotericists, who saw in these cards a remnant of mysterious Egyptian sources, especially a legendary book called the Book of Thoth. Others, notably the brilliant writer and esoteric teacher Papus (Dr. Gerard Encausse), drawing on Gypsy legend , discerned Indian symbolism in the cards and attributed the four suits of the minor arcana to the four principal castes of the Hindu social order.

While there is little certainty concerning its origin, the re has never been any doubt about the uses of the tarot. They are threefold: (1) symbolic study of the cosmic and psychic patterns that move our lives, (2) expansion of our consciousness by visual meditations focused on the cards of the major arcana , and (3) divination or securing guidance upon practical matters of a perplexing nature.

I

The first of the two books reviewed here, Isabel Kliegman's Tarot and the Tree of Life, has a just claim to a unique status because it addresses itself to the minor arcana of the tarot. Although most books about the tarot contain a great deal of information about and insight into the archetypal images and mysterious implications of the twenty-two cards of the major arcana, the fifty-six cards of the minor arcana are almost routinely neglected. Most informed sources assure us that the minor arcana represent the human personality and the manifold structures of creation, while the major arcana symbolize spiritual potencies linked to the cosmos and personhood. To contemplate the spiritual side of universal existence and at the same time to remain uninformed regarding the personal dimension shows an attitude lacking in balance. This imbalance has been remedied by Tarot and the Tree of Life.

According to Isabel Kliegman, the tarot is above all a system of self-knowledge, self-integration, and self-transformation. Vital to this integration is the creative interact ion of the opposites leading to an ultimate and balanced union. A symbol system such as the tarot is eminently suited to facilitate this process, which, as C. G. Jung pointed out, takes place on a level of consciousness other than the rational, one where development expresses itself in symbols. In order to undergo successfully this process, we need to avail ourselves of all our psychological resources. Kliegman tells us in simple but impressive language that the neglected cards of the four suits of the minor arcana are indispensable to our psychological development and ultimate wholeness. These cards are "overlooked looking glasses" into the reality of our souls.

One of the most impressive chapters of this book is the second, entitled "Kabbalah: The Ultimate Gift." In a mere twenty' four pages, the author accomplishes what many have failed to achieve in tomes of many hundreds of pages. She presents a clear and practical exposition of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and its relevance to the basic concerns of everyday life, including the relevance of the Tree of Life to the tarot deck. Since the time of Eliphas Levi in the mid nineteenth century, the Kabbalah has been frequently employed to elucidate the meaning of the tarot cards, especially the twenty-two major arcana, which were attributed to the twenty-two interconnecting "channels" of the Tree of Life. The author expertly elucidates the attributions of the ten numbered cards of the four suits to the ten sephiroth (73-176) and presents a refreshingly original treatment of the court cards of the suits in their relationship to the four olams (regions or worlds) of the Tree (177- 215).

The book is replete with examples of people's experiences with the cards and has a friendly, direct tone that cannot help but set the reader at case when undertaking tarot study. A minor area of difficulty the reader may encounter is the author's use of the modernized phonetic spelling of Hebrew names, which is different from the older spelling to which man y readers are accustomed. The religious context of the book is Jewish, which is the author's faith, but which obviously may not be the religious background of many readers. Fortunately, many of the explications of Jewish religious concepts are given in a commendably universal tone, so that they are readily applicable to all traditions. A remarkable and brilliant instance is the author's commentary on the "Shema Yisrael" (17-1 8).

II

Gail Fairfield's Choice Centered Tarot possesses a thrust that is rather different from that of the previous book. Its emphasis is primarily on the tarot as a "psychic tool" and thus on divination. There is very little information presented that might create a context (or the symbolism of the cards; one misses the mythological frame, work expounded by Joseph Campbell or by Sally Nicholls. Even more one misses the Kabbalistic context presented by numerous other authors. (The word Kabbalah does not appear in the text.)

It is of course all too true that one of the most popular uses to which the tarot has always been put is that of divination. Yet divination without a larger philosophical and even transcendental context becomes a dreary business. The late Manly P. Hall expressed this well when he wrote: "To those versed in ancient philosophies it appears unfortunate that these cards should be collected and examined mainly in the interest of fortune telling. Man's place in the universe is far more important than the outcome of h is daily concerns" (The Tarot: An Essay, 21).

It is not that the Choice Centered Tarot is without some practical merit. As the noted figure of consciousness studies, Ralph Metzner, points out in his foreword, the author "emphasizes the psychological meanings of the Tarot, showing ... how the card symbols, which at first seem so perplexing, can yield powerful insights and help people come to greater self-understanding and the ability to make creative and responsible choices in all kinds of situations" (iv). Whether this emphasis appears as clearly and consistently as one might wish is an other quest ion.

Certainly the most annoying feature of this book is its frequent and for the most part quite unjustified introduction of "politically correct" motifs into the discussion of the tarot. What is one to make of remarks such as this: "Most Tarot decks are blatantly racist in that they confine themselves to the use of Caucasian images. The exclusion of people of other races ... reinforces the misconception that the Tarot is only relevant to the white race" (8)? The present reviewer has lectured on the tarot to many audiences of a racially mixed composition and has never heard anyone titter this kind of objection. Where race-oriented "PC" is present, the gender-oriented variety of the same thing cannot be far away: "Many decks and books still reflect the more traditional, rigidly defined sex roles... we need to be aware of the sexist and heterosexist attitudes that they reflect and reinforce" (8). Poppycock! Does the Queen of Swords not hold the most masculine of magical symbols, the sword? And can one imagine a feminine figure of more awesome power than the High Priestess, or a more dynamic and energetic one than the woman on the card of Strength?

Both of these books are useful additions to the ever-expanding body of literature on the tarot , but Tarot and the Tree of Life is more complete and more useful than Choice Centered Tarot. The former shows us how we are instructed by the numinous symbols of the cards, while the latter tells us how we may use these same symbols to serve largely personalistic ends. The difference between the two approaches is significant.

-STEPHAN A. HOELLER

Summer 1998

Spiritualism in Antebellum America

by Bret E. Carroll
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Hardback, xiv + 227 pages.

Historians of American religion have recently displayed a new level of serious interest in alternative spiritualities, past and present, realizing that they have influenced the course of America's radically pluralistic culture and have told American s who they are , virtually as much as "mainstream" religion has done. Bret Carroll's Spiritualism in Antebellum America is a good ex ample of this trend, and fascinating reading it will be for those with a taste {or good scholarly writing and a love of the American past and the manifold varieties of the spiritual quest.

The book is not so much a chronological tracing of the new religion from its beginning in 1848, with the mysterious "rappings" the young Fox sisters heard in their upstate New York farmhouse, up to the Civil War, as it is a thematic study of the new religion in this period, which was something of its golden age. Sensational accounts of mediumship, table-tilting, and spirit trumpets and bells filled the newspapers, and in some places conventional churches were reportedly nearly emptied as seekers swarmed instead to "home circles" and to auditorium programs featuring Spiritualist speakers and "demonstrations."

The chapters of Spiritualism in Antebellum America deal with such topics as "Spiritualist Republicanism," "The Structure of the Spirit World," "The Ministry of Spirits," "The Structure of Spiritualist Practice," and "The Structure of Spiritualist Society." "Republicanism" refers not to the present political party, but to what historians call the "republican" reaction in Jacksonian America against lingering elements of aristocracy, and privilege, in favor of democracy and equality. For many this mood took quite radical forms in the 1830s and 1840s, leading to a rejection of hierarchy and mere traditionalism in religion no less than in the political sphere.

Spiritualism was clearly a beneficiary and expression of this "republican" wave. Anyone could be a medium or form a Spiritualist circle. As Ann Braude has shown in another excellent book on the subject, Radical Spirits, Spiritualism was a movement that offered women opportunities for spiritual leadership and se lf-expression on important issues at a time when they were denied them in virtually all other churches, as well as in affairs of state. Spiritualism was closely connected with most of the progressive guises of the time: abolition of slavery, feminism, socialism, temperance, prison reform, and the decent treatment of Native Americans.

Historians have also come to see how much America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was, in the title of a recent book by Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith. The conventional religions, and even the famous frontier revivals, were only parts of this mix: there were also Deism, magic, Unitarianism, Mormonism, Transcendentalism, occultism, communalism, and then Spiritualism, But against this melange the emergent scientific and industrial revolutions presented yet another challenge, that of sheer materialism. One response to it was what Carroll calls "technical religion," of which he presents Spiritualism as a prime example.

Spiritualists offered their faith" as the most "scientific" of religious as well as the most "democratic." Not only could it he practiced by anyone, but its claims could also be tested by anyone. One could, in principle, check the veracity of what mediums reported about the lives of departed loved ones, or inspect the seance room for hidden props as much as one wished; this was one sect that did not depend on "blind faith" in the infallibility of ancient texts or of a privileged priesthood,

Spiritualism was actually a religion for the technological age in a double sense. Not only was it allegedly the first to be fully subject to scientific verification , it was also the first to be spread by means that the new technologies made available: through the mass print media at a time when literacy was finally approaching universality in a few advanced countries, including the US; through apostles no longer limited to foot , horseback, or sail, but able to carry the message throughout the nation and the world in the relative comfort and speed of hurtling steam trains and ocean liners and even to send messages instantaneously by the telegraph , invented only a few years before the Fox sisters' rappings. No wonder Spiritualist publications had such progressive, up-to-date names as the Spiritual Telegraph and Spiritual Age!

Present -day Theosophists will undoubtedly see in all of this, as did the founders of the Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky and H. S. Olcott-both one- time students of Spiritualism-a foreshadowing of their movement, founded in 1875 in the wake of the first great Spiritualist age described by Carroll. Here too was a democratic form of spirituality accessible in principle to persons of both sexes and all classes equally, progressive in spirit and embracing many people seriously interested in world improvement. It too made much use of modern media for its dissemination-one thinks of all the Theosophical magazines, of Blavatsky and Olcott sailing by steamship through the newly-opened Suez Canal en route to India, and on a deeper level of the way in which modern Theosophy sought to resolve the burgeoning Victorian science- versus-religion crisis of faith. Theosophy did this, however, in a way that went beyond what Spiritualism ordinarily had to offer. It did not so much submit its claims and "phenomena" to scientific verification, though there was some of this, as appeal to a deeper and older stratum of wisdom, the "Ancient Wisdom," which was postulated as secreted within all real religion and science and which when unpacked could provide common ground for understanding them both.

The partial truth and sometime excesses of early Spiritualism produced scathing rhetoric from the Theosophical side in the nineteenth century. Today, however, with the polemical passion of early Spiritualism largely spent, one can appreciate antebellum Spiritualism, imperfect though it may have been, for the fascinating and courageous movement it often was. Bret Carroll's book will be an aid to that appreciation.

-ROBERT ELLWOOD

Summer 1998

Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology

by David R. Oldroyd
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp. xxx + 410. Hardback.

Thinking about the Earth traces the history of ideas about the planet we live on from ancient times to the present. The volume reviews concepts concerning the origin of the Earth, its physical and chemical composition, its surface and tectonic evolution, its history of climate change, and interactions with its biosphere.

The book is largely nontechnical and, hence, should be easily accessible to the educated nonspecialist. The author, David Oldroyd, is a professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, specializing in the history of geology, and the book is very much what might be expected from a science historian. The volume is very well researched, and even relatively minor players in some of the major debates in the Earth sciences during the last two centuries arc accorded their fifteen lines in the limelight.

The book will be of value to anyone in, retested in the development of ideas concerning Earth history, but its coverage of most topics trails off with work from the 1950s to 1960s and it does not attempt to track more recent developments. However, Oldroyd's goal is clearly not to provide an up-to-date review of scientific research but rather to illustrate the historical development of ideas concerning the Earth, and in this regard he succeeds admirably.

A weakness of the volume is that Oldroyd is not willing to admit that certain older ideas about the Earth are demonstrably incorrect and have been conclusively rejected by the Earth sciences community. Indeed, science docs progress with time, consigning some ideas to the trash heap of history.

To give an example, the Earth was once generally held to be the center of the cosmos, about which all other heavenly bodies revolved. This anthropocentric view was subsequently demolished by Newtonian mechanics, which explained the motion of the Earth about the Sun, that of the solar system about the Milky Way galaxy, and that of galaxies through the vastness of intergalactic space as a function of gravitational dynamics. Because Newtonian mechanics is solidly grounded in the laws of physics, a return to a Ptolemaic cosmos is a virtual impossibility.

An analogous case in Oldroyd's volume concerns the face-off between the expanding Earth and plate tectonic hypotheses. Both hypotheses were initially constructed to account for the distribution of continents and oceans on the Earth's surface. According to the expanding Earth hypothesis, the terrestrial sphere once had a solid sialic crust which subsequently split into fragments (i.e., the modern continents) that became separated by ocean basins as the Earth expanded.

The primary problem with this hypothesis is that there is simply no physical mechanism by which the Earth could have expanded by the requisite amount, i.e., roughly a three-fold increase in surface area and more than a five-fold increase in volume. Plate tectonic theory, which I will refrain from discussing here, now has a wealth of geophysical and geochemical evidence in support of it, and the expanding Earth hypothesis has about as much chance of resurrection as a Ptolemaic cosmos.

Philosophically, the point overlooked in Oldroyd's position that current views of the Earth have no greater intrinsic merit than earlier views is that scientific concepts have not merely changed through time but have deepened. By this, I mean that the level of debate has progressed from problems of a broad, fundamental nature to problems that are much more narrowly focused as more information has been generated and analyzed.

As an example, as recently as thirty years ago a major debate within the scientific community concerned the tempo of the evolution of life, i.e., whether it occurred gradually and continuously (as envisioned by Darwin) or whether it occurred episodically following long periods of stasis (the more recent "punctualist" view). Detailed compilations of taxonomic data have led to a widespread consensus among Earth scientists in favor of punctualism, and current research focuses on the factors permitting long-term evolutionary stasis (e.g., "homeostasis," or self-regulating equilibria within biotic communities) as well as those responsible for precipitating rapid evolutionary change (most of which appears to be associated with mass extinction events).

Hence, ideas on a given issue may fluctuate for some period of time, but in most cases enough darn is eventually generated to resolve the issue and scientific debate progresses to a deeper, more detailed level.

In the final section of the book, Oldroyd considers the Gaia hypothesis, one of the most interesting and controversial ideas to tweak established scientific paradigms in recent years. Since its inception, the Gaia hypothesis has fissioned into several versions, reflecting varying emphasis on the holistic, oneness-with-Mother-Earth theme. In the original version published by James Lovelock, the essence of the Gaia hypothesis is that the biosphere has a stabilizing influence on Earth-surface conditions, and that such stability, in turn, promotes a healthy, well-integrated biosphere.

The negative reaction of the scientific community to the Gaia hypothesis resulted, I think, largely from its avid acceptance by New Ager's, who have favored more holistic versions in which the Earth itself is viewed as a living organism. However, the Earth was sterile at some point in the past and will be so again at some point in the future, and it is nothing more nor less than a solid physical substrate on which life has developed (or been introduced) and to which life constantly adapts itself. To his credit, Oldroyd gives a very balanced account of the original Gaia hypothesis and of its potential implications with regard to long-term interactions between the Earth and its biosphere.

-THOMAS J. ALGEO

Spring 1998

The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

by Terrence W. Deacon
New York: Norton, 1997, Hardback, 527 pages.

"Mommy, where did I come from?" Though later asked in mere sophisticated forms, that question of childhood is also a perennial question of our adulthood. We want to know where we, as individuals, as a social group, and as a species came from. Three recent books address the question of our origin as a species from three viewpoints: biological, ecological, and mental.

The biological origin of modern human beings has been accounted for by two theories. One holds that our earlier hominid ancestors spread over much of the world's surface and in various locations independently evolved into present-day humanity but that because of interbreeding, we have been becoming increasingly more alike. It is called the "multiregionalist" theory. The other holds that an earlier variety of the human genus evolved into our kind (Homo sapiens) in Africa and thence spread all over the globe, replacing other hominid species and that present-day differences among us are the result of evolutionary differentiation. It is called the "replacement" or more specifically the "Out of Africa" theory.

Recent analysis of the DNA or genetic code in human beings has shown that, although there are relatively great variations in DNA among groups of Africans, human beings outside of Africa are remarkably uniform, having only very slight variations among themselves and sharing their DNA pattern with some Africans. Since variation in the DNA is the result of mutations overtime, the most probable explanation of this surprising fact is that the human genus began in Africa, where it had a long evolutionary history and about 200,000 years ago developed into Homo sapiens, which later spread from Africa to the rest of the world. Such is the thesis of African Exodus, which dates the exodus from Africa about 100,000 years ago, allowing some 100,000 years in Africa for DNA diversification before the exodus began.

The book argues its thesis passionately and with revolutionary self-consciousness as a refutation of the multi-regionalist view, thereby refuting the romantic notion that science is a gradual, accumulative approach to ultimate truth. The book is also self-consciously a political statement, arguing against the thesis of The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, that intelligence is determined by race, with some races being genetically more intelligent than others. Science, far from being politically neutral, is often done in the service of some social agenda.

One of the interesting features of African Exodus is its emphasis on the unity of our contemporary human species. The differences among us are trivial; we are one people. African Exodus makes that point strongly with respect to our genetic inheritance.

Eco Homo basically supports the "Out of Africa" theory, although it presumes a slightly earlier beginning for the exodus of Homo sapiens "Africa is our ancestral homeland, and even today it still contains a stunning three-fifths to four-fifths of all human genetic diversity" (14). While agreeing with the date for the origin of Homo sapiens of 200,000 years ago, Eco Homo places the exodus earlier, between 130,000 and 175,000 years ago.

The characteristic feature of Eco Homo, however, is its attempt to connect the major stages of our biological evolution with changes in the eco logy: land formation, climate, weather patterns, flora and fauna distribution, and so on. It depicts human evolution, not as something independent of the rest of the planet, but as intimately connected with- influenced by and in more recent times increasingly influencing-the environment. Not only are we a unified species, but also we are unified and interdependent with the whole ecology of the planet.

Both books comment on, without explaining, a curious fact. About 20,000 years ago was one of those axial periods of human history when striking changes occur: "There is nothing in the paleontological record of the evolving human body that rivals the rapidity with which Homo sapiens began to evince advanced 'out-of-body' culture- cave art, music, burial of the dead, clothing, personal ornamentation, diverse tools, and so on....If one is drawn to dramatic 'hiccups' in the history of life on this planet, this certainly ranks near the top" (Eco Homo 217). In brief, human culture -our language, marriage and kinship systems, myths, magic, art, social mores and folkways, indeed everything from ethics to etiquette that obviously differentiates our behavior from that of nonhuman animals - began to appear at that time.

Eco Homo also stresses the remarkable fact of human behavior that we call "altruism" and relates it to that budding of culture 20,000 years ago. Altruistic behavior is evoked from the members of a cultural group "when two social conditions are met: There must be a vital need or threat to the group and there must be a strong sense of solidarity with in the group" (227). Altruism is thus a product of the evolution of cultural behavior and has survival value for the community. It has also, to be sure, its dark side: ethnic chauvinism and racism.

One of the great teachers of another axial period in human history, the Master Kung (or Confucius, as we usually call him), had a prescription for that undesirable side effect. He said that we begin with group solidarity within the family, but extend it progressively to the community, the state, the nation, and ultimately all humanity. The building of a world culture that synthesizes and transmutes local distinctions into a universal brotherhood of humanity is the cure for our social ills.

The Symbolic Species looks at the nature and evolution of language and the human brain and finds in their co-development the key to our modern humanity: "The doorway into this virtual world [of uniquely human abstractions, impossibilities, and paradoxes] was opened to us alone by the evolution of language, because language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought -symbolic representation....Biologically, we are just another ape. Mentally, we are a new phylum of organisms"(22-3).

"Symbolic" is being used here in a sense given to the term by Charles Sanders Peirce, who classified "signs" (things that stand for other things) into three types: "icons," which are pictures of what they stand for, such as portraits; "indexes," which are causally connected with the things they stand for, as the position of a weathervane stands for a direction of the wind; and "symbols," which stand for something by social convent ion, as a wedding ring stands for the marital agreement or the letter "c" stands for a particular sound in words (70-1). In fact, the Peircean symbol is really of two kinds. In one, a symbol is connected with what it stands for quite arbitrarily, as the letter "c'' is connected with the sound "cc." In the other, a symbol is connected with what it stands for metaphorically or analogically, as a wedding ring is connected with the marital agreement by its shape (being an endless circle), its material (being of precious metal), and so on. The analogical symbol is far richer than the arbitrary one, and is the basis of much distinctively human life.

The Symbolic Species also points out that ritual is intimately connected with language and other symbolic systems and thus with our essential humanity:

Early hominids were forced to learn a set of associations between signs and objects, repeat them over and over, and eventually unlearn the concrete association in favor of a more abstract one. This process had to be kept up until the complete system of combinatorial relationships between the symbols was discovered. What could have possibly provided comparable support for these needs in the first symbol-learning societies?

In a word, the answer is ritual. Indeed, ritual is still a central component of symbolic "education" in modern human societies, though we are seldom aware of its modern role because of the subtle way it is woven into the fabric of society. [402]

In brief that remarkable budding of culture and altruism 20,000 years ago was the effect of the efflorescence of language and ritual. Voluntary social cooperation and culture are not possible with out symbolic language, and neither is the kind of thinking that lets us create mental worlds, virtual realities of "might-have- been" and "let's-pretend." "The evolution of symbolic communication has not just changed the range of possible objects of consciousness, it has also changed the nature of consciousness itself." To be human is to think symbolically, to see a wedding ring, not just as a metal circle, but as a pledge of fidelity, commitment, and mutual support.

These three books, the work of established academic anthropologists, point each in their various ways to certain principles of the Wisdom Tradition. Those principles include human solidarity, the interdependence of humanity with our environment, the naturalness of altruistic behavior, the uniqueness of the human mind, and the centrality of symbol, metaphor, and analogy to our perception of the world. One of the great teachers of that Wisdom Tradition wrote, "Modern science is our best ally" (Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett 65/11). Although there is much in all three books that followers of the Tradition might take issue with, the affirmation of those principles justifies that statement.

-MORTON DILKES

Spring 1998