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 | "L-Brain/R-Brain Dichotomy" | |
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| Q:What are Tarot cards? A: They are a link between consciousness and your own inner world. They provide a means by which your left brain can make available the insights of the right brain. They are also pictorial representations of patterns of behaviour and stages in human development, much as are the intellectual constructs of complexes used by psychiatrists. They differ from complexes in that, instead of being exclusive to Greek mythology, they have a much wider database; having their counterparts in the myths of a great number of peoples from many places in the world. |
| Q: What purpose does the Tarot serve? A: Its use is to clarify your own standing with yourself, and your relationships with the world and others; thereby providing a guide to more appropriate actions in your dealings with them. During the long course of its history, humanity has seen various personality profiles emerge. Most are a composition of a number of traits. When we speak of people as being basically honest, or rather lazy, or pretty brave; we are describing a major, or dominant, facet of their behaviour at that time; but there is tacit recognition that there exists other parts of their make-up. Occasionally history, or legend, records a character type that is an almost pure example of a particular personality. That person comes to exemplify the behaviour pattern. They typify bravery, or evil, goodness, loyalty, virtue, greed, foolishness, trickery; or any other of the many attributes that we each have in varying degrees. These characters become racial archetypes and their lives and deeds form our myths. When trying to formulate a valid description, an inner map, of ourselves or others, there exists great difficulty in presenting a verbal picture that is easily discernible to the person to whom we are attempting to convey the description. Because of the complexity of human nature, to attempt such a description becomes tantamount to attempting to separate the ingredients of a cake once it has been baked. By considering the person to be described, alongside a pantheon of archetypes, it becomes possible to see that they exhibit varying percentages of the mind-sets of those mythic figures. |
| Q: How is this useful in day to day living? A: Many of us attempt to change our personalities to conform to patterns that we would prefer. A major problem is that of defining what it is in ourselves that we wish to change, and in which direction do we wish the change to take us. Most of us are so caught up in the travails of daily living that we tend to see ourselves as a series of reactions to people and events that effect us, rather than as discrete beings in our own right. A working knowledge of archetypes and myths helps to clarify facets of behaviour as well as providing examples of how those archetypal persons faced and dealt with situations and events. By emulating archetypal behaviour we take on the qualities of the archetype. It may be argued that the ordeals faced by historic figures no longer exist in the present day. That may be true in form but not necessarily so in content. Labyrinths and mazes appear in the myths of cultures as disparate as those of the Hopi Indians, Crete, Scandinavia and Cornwall. In each case, the Hero or Heroine finds their way into the maze by learning the names of guardians of the inner recesses, and their way out by marking their trail. Government bureaucracies display all the attributes of a labyrinth with their tests, cryptic writings and trials of patience at every turn. The only way to succeed in dealings with them is to ask the name of every person who confronts you, keep a record of everything that transpires, and refuse to permit emotions to over-ride intellect. Not too different from the ways in which legendary figures achieved success. Today's dragons may come in different forms but they still require fortitude if they are to be vanquished. |
| Q: Can the Tarot be used to tell fortunes, to predict the future? A: These are two separate questions; the answers to which are both, Yes and No. Unless everything has been pre-ordained, the future being already written and immutable, then any effort to predict a fixed future is doomed to failure. By the same factor, not everything is a result of happenstance; of pure chance. When an arrow is fired from a bow, one can look along its flight path and predict its destination; providing nothing acts to deviate it from its path. The same can be said for patterns of personal behaviour. People who do not tailor their responses to fit in with a current situation will constantly find themselves the pawn of a predictable outcome. All of us have heard people regretting a course of action that has led them into unwanted problems. All too often, the wailing has included words to the effect that the victim is amazed that they did not see it coming; although all the evidence pointing to such an outcome had been plainly visible. Once set on a course of action, we often become blind to facts that are plain to others; unless such details are drawn to our attention. |
| Q: How can the Tarot be put to use? A: Human beings are the creatures with 4 brains. Each brain has evolved through time to deal with the changing situations that have confronted the organism. Each one of these brains still has its functions, but only the one that is commonly referred to as the left-brain is able to communicate its ideas to the outer world; the reality that is common to all of us. Because of this, we live, in the main, in a left-brain world. That is to say a world in which logic and other manifestations of the intellect dominate our rationale. The left-brain forms its own symbolic dialects to express its workings. Mathematics, music, physics, engineering, et al, have exclusive languages by which intellectual concepts can be transmitted and understood. The right-brain also has its own language. It is non-verbal, being constructed of visual symbols. This is the language of dreams; the language by which the right-brain attempts to communicate its findings to the outer world. Certain symbols are common to all humanity; repeatedly appearing in our dreams, art, and folklore. Invariably each symbol, or set of symbols, has been found to trigger an answering response in the left-brain. Bodies of water featuring in dreams, tally with the left-brain's concept of the dreamer's own sub-conscious mind. Squares and circles portray the ideas of wholeness; many-roomed buildings have been found to represent the image of differing aspects of ourselves and our reactions to people and events in real time. Dreams are a useful source of information, supplying us with another viewpoint on subjects that hold our conscious interest at any given time but remaining largely intransigent to demands that they perform on request. A randomly chosen selection of Tarot cards can provide these triggers. They are chosen at random because, when we go looking for something that is normally hidden from consciousness, we do not know what it is we are looking for. If we could choose the symbols that would lead directly to the answer to a question, it would be an implicit condition that the answer was already known. We are creatures of habit. We constantly search for patterns in everything. A random selection of cards can act individually to focus one's attention on concepts peculiar to each card. Our minds then attempt to find linkages and relationships, to form chains and sequences. To find the patterns in the tapestry. By its very nature, the right-brain sees things, and subsequently describes them, in a different way to the left-brain. It offers a different viewpoint of situations about which we may feel we have exhausted all avenues of enquiry. It is this ability to open our minds, to see things from an entirely new perspective, that leads to growth in our personal awareness. Tarot cards are but one of many useful tools that are not accessible to cold logic. |