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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