Theos-Talk Archives (June 1995 Message tl00001)

Sy,

I certainly will add Nicks book to my list.  My only difficulty
is that the bookseller in Winnipeg are sometime pretty pathetic
and greedy when it comes to getting other than the Celestine
Prophecy - best sellers.

> Not being really knowledgeable about Tarot, I cannot deal with
> your question, but I am fascinated by the idea of additional
> major arcana, which is why I wondered if anyone had "seen" them,
> as archetypes or however.

Jung made a helpful distictinction between archetypes and
archetypal images.  Archetypes are quasi-genetic potentialities
of pattern or (meaning) making - they literally can not be seen
at all they are potentially seen.  When we get to see archetypes
we see the cultural and personally created images of them.  I
think it is a problem to confuse the pattern itself with the
archetypal image.  Jung speaks of the elasticity of the
archetypes they actually stretch and can be wrapped around many
images.  For instance, Nick's The Downed Sleeping Titan, has much
in common with say the Sleeping Lord of John Matthew's
ArthurianTarot both can be related to the Judgement card.  To
make distinctions too clear cut is a problem since they all
participate in some basic archetype which is slippery to define.

One of the heretical questions I have is where or not even
caballistic imagery or any esoteric schemata are not archetypal
images clothed as the archetypes themselves.  After all we do
have a propensity of trying to control our reality through words.
I am just a bit suspicious and prefer to be a hermeneutical(
interpretative) agnostic.  Perhaps I perfer the awe of a mystic
to the secret knowledge of the esoterist.

> Can any of you Tarot students comment on these suggested
> additional major arcana and Nick's idea that there will
> eventually be 38 known major arcana in accordance with how he
> counts the letters of thu Hebrew alphabet?

IMHO, getting the tarot to exactly conform to any metaphysical
schemata is hazardous.  There are wonderful analogies and
correspondences but flexibility is the word when it comes to
symbols.  I love the harmonies and the subties and the wonder of
a free symbol, truly a gift!

Arthur Paul Patterson