Book Review: The Watkins Tarot Handbook by Naomi Ozaniec

BOOK REVIEW

The Watkins Tarot Handbook: A Practical System of Self-Discovery by Naomi Ozaniec (Watkins, 2022)

In the view of author Naomi Ozaniec, Tarot retains power to enchant and transform practitioners beyond everyday fortune-telling. The images on these cards tap into our human desire to make meaning of life within the extraordinary world and cosmos we inhabit and what might lie beyond. So much in society demands unquestioning adherence to dogma. Serious engagement with Tarot, on the other hand, encourages curiosity, adventure, responsibility, personal growth, and creativity. This stack of cards, so portable, turns out to be a theatrical, ceremonial tool of initiation.

With the practice of Tarot enjoying new popularity and re-imagining these days, British publisher Watkins has republished Ozaniec's 2002 volume, Initiation into The Tarot, originally published by Element Books as The Element Tarot Handbook. It is decidedly not a book of arbitrary, easily digested card interpretations for beginners to memorize. If you're game for learning the more esoteric aspects of Tarot and allied traditions from Qabalah's Tree of Life to Carl Gustav Jung's active imagination, this book offers a wealth of material to explore.

In Tarot's Major Arcana, Ozaniec tells us, we find "the search for transcendence, the pull of matter, the power of love, the quality of wisdom...beginnings and endings, birth, death and resurrection...a philosophy enshrined in pictures." After a brisk run through the history of Tarot's development, she proceeds to introduce us to the Major Arcana as if each archetype were a party guest or a character in an elaborate play or novel. ("Everyone steps aside from him but Death knows all their names.") And, next, we're invited to free-associate their characteristics and functions, an excellent exercise that will initiate our own relationship with each of them. This relationship will strengthen and deepen as it goes.

If you have been around Tarot for some time, you know you never stop learning from it. Although I'm well familiar with much of what Ozaniec outlines here in this section, I noted one tidbit that I will treasure--The Emperor card, she writes, "has also been called the Grandfather." Tremendously helpful and, for me, relevant in a personal way!

We next learn the esoteric names of the Majors--something that a lot of Tarot newbies likely have never encountered and which might seem overly precious or intimidating. No worries. Enjoy the poetry of these names--The World as "Great One of the Night of Time," The Hanged Man as "Spirit of the Mighty Waters"--and you might find some that resonate with you, spark your imagination, and help draw you closer to these archetypes and their energies.

A brief account of the connection of Tarot's four elements to Qabalah's four-part Tetragrammaton (Holy Name of God) leads into another free-association exercise (e.g., "What qualities do you associate with the Element of Air? For example, invisible, all-pervading, formless.") Ozaniec always brings these large concepts back to our personal experience and understanding, reminding us of how much we already know. We can build upon this inherent knowledge at our own pace and through our shared human proclivity for imagery, metaphor, meditation, and storytelling.

Here be gods and angels; flowers and trees employed as symbols in various cultural and spiritual traditions; mythic and actual beasts; landscapes and architecture; the sun, the moon, and the stars as they have bedazzled and inspired us for aeons, and so much more.

"The process of integrating even a single symbol cannot be hurried," Ozaniec advises. "Firstly, it has to be intellectually analysed and recognized in different forms. Secondly, it has to be intuitively explored through free association. Thirdly, it has to be internalized and integrated as a living part of the psyche."

That last part interests me greatly these days--how we might seek Tarot within our very flesh and blood, as authors such as Paul Foster Case and Jung once taught, and let its archetypes think through us and transform us. To that end, Ozaniec's guidance takes us from basic book knowledge to active, rigorous self-discovery, meeting each of us at our current level as well as pointing out exciting new opportunities and challenges along the path. The Watkins Tarot Handbook, therefore, is a book to dive into again and again, surfacing each time with more skill and courage.

-- Eva Yaa Asantewaa, hummingwitch

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BelindaGrace on the practice of clairvoyance

You Are Clairvoyant: Simple Ways to Develop Your Psychic Gifts
by BelindaGrace

Llewellyn Worldwide, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7387-2723-3
paperback, 222 pages

Reading BelindaGrace's You Are Clairvoyant is like listening to a kind, plain-spoken counselor. This teacher exudes sincerity and compassion, and this is not a showy book nor a typical New Age manual. It does not feel derivative like so many in this genre. In fact, for some readers, this introduction to clairvoyance might seem a bit tame and too simple to be powerful. But I don't think BelindaGrace intends it for readers who need psychic development guides to be fancy, esoteric and overly complex. She leaves the razzle dazzle strictly between you and whatever will come to your imagination, and that's all to the good.

As you will learn, imagination is the key:

Your imagination is a very valuable tool. Use it, exercise it, treasure and respect it because it is your vital link to the beauty and magic of all the non-physical levels of life. (p. 26)

I greatly appreciate her linkage of imagination in creative ability with imagination in psychic development and her noting that suppression of imagination--"it has no monetary value" to mainstream society--stunts children in so many ways. If you have ever suspected that there's more to you than you've allowed yourself (or been allowed) to express, this book can help.

If you're reading this blog, you're likely quite familiar with many of the topics BelindaGrace addresses--including chakras, visualization, past lives and meditation. However, you might enjoy passing this book along to someone who, new to this type of worldview and practice, could benefit from gentle encouragement in the act of "meeting the Universe half-way."

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, hummingwitch (http://hummingwitch.blogspot.com)

When you're ready to move beyond Oprah...

The gorgeous, always imaginative Rubin Museum of Art is well into a series of seven Wednesday evening conversations called Tibetan Book of the Dead Book Club in association with its special exhibitions, Bardo: Tibetan Art of the Afterlife and Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures. Each Wednesday, curator Ramon Prats explores the TBD from different perspectives with an expert representing a particular discipline. They inquire: Does the TBD have relevance, wisdom and practical application for us today?

This week, I attended Prats's talk with Jungian psychoanalyst Morgan Stebbins on "The Analysis of Dreams," a topic of perennial relevance. According to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, dreams will always be relevant as long as humans exist, as long as humans remain unenlightened. Enlightened beings do not dream. They no longer have to, for to dream is to open onto an altered level of awareness in which we come face to face with avoided, unknown or normally inaccessible issues.

Stebbins discussed how Tibetan ideas and traditions around this heightened state of awareness parallels the theories and practices of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung's psychoanalytic approach, he said, represents a journey into the "totality of one's being--the Buddha nature" where one can gain information on unconscious patterns of behavior, insight into so-called symptoms that are actually "symbolic attempts to get to somewhere new." Dreams herald a shift towards liberation.

And the TBD considers this liberation through hearing, as Prats mentioned, in his intriguing introductory remarks. Why hearing, I wondered? One sentence from a TBD passage read later suggested the reason: "So, recognize what I show you without distraction." We are simply too distracted by illusion to get with reality. Like children in school, we have to be brought to attention and made to hear. The Bardo afterlife process, Tibetan Buddhists believe, first brings the soul to that required place of attention and learning before it can move on in its journey. But dreams offer powerful opportunities for growth within our lifetime.

And what of the images of deities of wrath, featured in so much Tibetan art? And what of our own terrifying nightmares?

"Psychologically speaking, nightmares are great news," says Stebbins. "Wake up! Look at this! It has a lot of energy. You have a lot of energy you're not using. Change is scary."

Upcoming TBD Book Club sessions will feature Rabbi Neil Gillman on "The Death of Death" (July 28), Brooklyn Museum curator Edward Bleiberg on "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" (August 11), medium Jesse Bravo on "Channeling the Dead" (August 18) and Roshi Enkyo O'Hara on "How to Die" (August 25)--all at 7pm. Click here for full information and tickets, and promptness--in both ticket purchasing and showing up to get a good seat--is strongly advised.

Rubin Museum of Art

150 West 17th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan

Directions

Toni Bernhard offers a practice for life

I've had the great fortune to be introduced to Toni Bernhard, author of How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers, scheduled for publication in September (Wisdom Publications). In this lovely, informative volume, Bernhard tells of how she suddenly fell ill in the spring of 2001 while vacationing in Paris with her husband. What at first felt like a tenacious, energy-sapping flu was, in fact, a far more serious viral infection that would make it impossible for her to resume life as she'd known it. The university law professor with a treasured marriage and family soon found herself unable to work, shop, travel, meditate or even enjoy the visits of loved ones without a flare-up of debilitating symptoms.

Bernhard remains ill today, usually confined to her bed. Her book describes how she came to apply her longstanding Buddhist practice to this new reality and to the feelings of frustration, grief and envy of other people's freedom that often arose. Would it surprise you, though, to learn that her difficulties have inspired a lively, enjoyable book? With endearing candor and lucidity, this fine writer and teacher explores principles and practices that should help anyone who suffers, whether physically sick or well, and whether or not that person identifies as a Buddhist.

I have always respected Buddhism but felt distanced from its philosophical ideas and approaches to life and spirituality. In fact, there was much about it that I could not fully grasp. But Bernhard leads readers through easy-to-follow discussions and illustrations of practices such as mudita—taking joy in the joy of others—that not only offer liberation from resentment, loneliness and suffering but, in and of themselves, are just delicious. I suddenly realized that I've been practicing mudita and metta most of my adult life: It has always felt wonderful to enjoy the happiness of others and to sincerely wish them well. The trick is to extend this to all sentient beings and, trickiest of all, to remember to offer this loving gift to oneself. Bernhard shares what has worked for her.

Bernhard's experience reminds us of the preciousness of vulnerability, the impermanence of all that is, the value of the present moment, and the importance of releasing one's anxious tendency to grasp and desperately quest for answers that may never come. She admits that her life with chronic illness is a work in progress. Well, every life is a work in progress, and it is a fine thing to have allies and guides along the path. I am happy to have met Toni Bernhard through her generous teachings in this book and, in gratitude, I wish her peace and freedom.

How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard

Paperback, 185 pages

ISBN-13-978-086171-626-5

Coming September, 2010 from Wisdom Publications 

Also see What are you reading this summer?, posted on InfiniteBody blog on June 29, 2010.