The Page of Wands wears a Wonder Bra

Roots of Asia, 2001

Our last card from the Roots of Asia Tarot (AGMuller, 2001) is Page of Wands. This is a lovely image, filled with symbolic objects. Unfortunately, the LWB doesn't explain all of them. We are told that the tiger represents clear perception, and fire indicates energy, passion and endurance. There are also irises all over this card, and I do not know what significance an iris has in Asian/Buddhist symbolism. In flower symbolism, it means faith, hope and wisdom. I really don't think this card is pointing to the Greek goddess, Iris, the goddess of the rainbow. But maybe it is...

The divinatory meaning given in the book is 'Following my heart.' So that is what I will do today.

Vision in the darkness--wisdom of the owl

Roots of Asia, 2001

Wow, that's amazing. I've drawn another 8 from Roots of Asia Tarot today! That's three 8s in a row.

Today we have 8 of Swords. This card's title is 'Restricted Thinking'. You can see that the figure, though covered with winged patterns that speak of freedom to fly, has his face covered with his hands. He's trapped himself, even though the owl, the symbol of wisdom, sits wide-eyed on top of his head. This guy is not trapped at all. He's only frozen by his own illusions of being trapped; he's created his own bonds.

'The causes of our blindness and inability to fight against our pain and suffering are: the addictions to the things of our body, putting ourselves into negative environments, wasting time and energy on mindless and negative entertainment, indulging in gambling and games, association with negative companionship, habit of laziness, indulgence of the senses, extreme asceticism.' ~ Roots of Asia LWB

You may notice that the number of items or lessons listed in each card description corresponds to the number on the card. Eight of Swords, eight causes of 'blindness' and suffering.

The question for today is, in what way am I causing my own suffering? Am I addicted to things of the body? How do I put myself into negative environments? How have I wasted time on mindless entertainments? Have I really indulged in gambling and games? How have I been lazy, out of habit? I think we can all find answers to these questions. We are none of us perfect, nor called to be. This card does not call us to perfection, does not convict of us sin. Instead it asks to look at these harmful behaviours and habits and to recognize how they limit us, how they create suffering rather than relieve it.

This is profound work.

Boats against the current

Roots of Asia, 2001

'I was so excited, my head was swimming. I felt as if some very tiny, cold, little fish were swimming in my veins. All I kept thinking was, I kept thinking -- you can't live forever. You can't live forever.' ~Myrtle, The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald 

'Potential has a shelf life.' ~Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye*

Hey, it's another 8 from the Roots of Asia Tarot! Today it's the 8 of Cups. I drew this same card on Saturday, so clearly this must be something that I need to pay closer attention to. It seems to me I am being called to investigate ways I am clinging to 'old seasons' of my life, and ignoring new paths that present themselves to me.

I should watch out today for things I say 'No' to, considering if these things are actually new paths opening before my feet. I need to be able to 'move freely within and between the seasons that come to me' (LWB).

I believe I will prop this card up and meditate on it this morning.

*Thanks to Sharyn at Quirkeries for a quote that clonked me between the eyes.

Oily-phant

Roots of Asia, 2001

One of the many things I appreciate abut the Roots of Asia Tarot (AGMuller, 2001) is that the titles of the cards have not been changed. It seems so tempting for some tarot deck creators to change the names, and I see no point in it. Why change from cups, wands, swords and pentacles to clovers, pool cues, steak knives and manhole covers (or what have you)? It's annoying! Particularly when a themed deck already gives you a layer of philosophy, fairy tales, mythology or just pictures of cats to wade through in order to get back to the original tarot meaning. When you add changing the names (and sometimes the elemental attributions being switched around, which is pretty much a deal breaker for me), that just makes me want to say forget it and try trading the deck to someone with a bit more patience. Fortunately, the creators of the Roots of Asia Tarot, having layered the deck with Asian imagery and saturated it with Buddhist doctrine, have left the traditional titles so that some of us will have a lifeline to familiar ground.

So here we have the 8 of Pentacles, the card of hard work. I won't be working hard at work today because today is my day off  in the week for the coming Saturday, so perhaps this card is pointing toward work of another type. Let's look at the Little White Book: 'Obtaining the fruit of life. Dedication to service. Apprenticeship and craftsmanship etch out financial security.' I like that the pentacles suit has elephants in it. The elephant reminds me of Ganesha, who reminds me of the root chakra, the grounding of our physical reality. Perfect for the earth suit, really.

What can I do today that will both ground me and help me be of service to others?

The thunderbolt

Several of the Roots of Asia cards depict a figure in sitting meditation. Today we have the Judgement card. The figure has expanded to gigantic proportions, his head breaking through the outer atmosphere and into space. His body descends and breaks into the bedrock of the earth. He has become earth and heaven in his meditation, and his personal sense of self seems to have broken down entirely, merging with the elements of the earth and sky. There is a huge chasm down the middle of the figure, and rocks drop with a waterfall down toward the figures lap, in which rest his folded hands. At the figure's solar plexus chakra, there is an evergreen tree with a glowing orb at its centre. The figure's face is similarly lit up, identifying features obscured by the light, but also by the clouds and the darkness.

All in all, this image appears to show the disintegration of the self and merging into the whole. In other words, enlightenment.

I have notes written in my LWB, I can't remember where they came from but someone somewhere posted suggested card titles for each of the majors. I think these come from the deck creators themselves. The suggested title for Judgement is 'Conditioned Arising.' This is a Buddhist doctrine also known as 'Dependent Origination.' Understanding of Conditioned Arising ('Pratitya Samutpada') is the means to enlightenment (or the end of suffering). Thus it would appear that in this card image, we witness the moment of understanding the nature of Pratitya Samutpada.

A creed outworn

Roots of Asia Tarot, AGM 2001

This week I'll be blogging with the Roots of Asia Tarot by Amnart Klanprachar and Thaworn Boonyawan (AGMuller, 2001). The deck is now out of print and hard to find, but when I bought it, it was cheap. In fact, shortly after I bought my deck (a few years ago), I saw absolute heaps of them in a bargain bin in a bookshop in Glastonbury, going for £5 each. If I had been a clever clogs, I'd have bought several of them and later made my fortune. Ah, not really.

I was always rather fond of this deck, but deeply disliked the green borders, so one day I impetuously cut the tops and sides off, was appalled at the result, and, ashamed of myself, put the deck in the box and let it languish in the back of my collection. There were plenty of other decks to play with. Recently I nearly sold it; only someone's reticence to use Paypal kept it in my collection. It was when I was preparing it for packaging to be sent that I got to looking at it again. Since it didn't sell, it will remain with me now for a while longer. In fact, I believe I will keep this one. I have to admit, the artwork doesn't do much for me, and even now the strong chemical smell of the AGMuller decks is still clinging about it -- but the LWB is really rather phenomenal. Each card takes the opportunity to teach important lessons in Buddhist thought.

For example, let's look at today's card. In the Rider Waite Smith tradition, the 8 of Cups is often looked upon as making a break from old patterns of thinking or feeling, or actually setting off on a new path, leaving behind outworn habits or literal people and places. The Thoth Tarot calls the 8 of Cups 'Indolence', and suggests it represents the point at which we feel we can't endure our current situation anymore, and begin to feel the need to leave the 'bogs of numbness'  -- so more or less the same meaning. (People seem to think that RWS and Thoth are radically different from one another, but they are both derived from Golden Dawn, and the two paths nearly always converge! But I digress...) The Roots of Asia 8 of Cups is also about change, but approaches from a different angle still:

'Eight of Cups: Awareness of Change and Impermanence. As nature has the motion and changes of the seasons of the year, so too our lives hold various changes and times. We wish to hold on to those seasons of happiness and run away from those seasons of anxiety. Our goal is to learn how to move freely within and between the seasons that continue to come to us. The eight seasons of our lives are: time of accomplishment, time of loss, time of dignity and fame, time of obscurity, time of being blamed, time of being praised, time of happiness, and time of pain. Divinatory key: Searching for insight. Introspection.'

So we see the Roots of Asia Tarot teaching us gentle lessons about change. You don't change from path A to path B and that's that. Things come back around. It's natural. It's to be expected. It's to be accepted. To me, the best thing about this deck is its LWB, and whenever I've used the deck, I've happily referred to the LWB for its lessons in mindfulness and its gentle tone.

Looking at the card image, we see someone in contemplation, the creatures of the sea and the cups and the flowing water reminding us of the water element represented by the Cups suit. The LWB of Roots of Asia Tarot expands on this and explains that the Cups suit represents the 'emotional pathway', where we seek to open our minds to let go of old beliefs, and make way for new learning for the attainment of supreme wisdom and development of trust, generosity, stillness and self-reflection.

What outworn belief can I let go of today?

Nobody said transformation was pretty

Roots of Asia (AG Muller 2001)

 'Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,

The tree of life is blooming there.'

                                       ~WB Yeats

Today's draw from the Roots of Asia Tarot by Amnart Klanprachar and Thaworn Boonyawan is major arcanum number 13--Death. This is one of the most striking Death cards I have seen. We have two curious rock formations such as sometimes seen in images of Asia, but as the eye moves down the card, you realise that the landscape looks like a woman lying on her back, arms outstretched, knees up. The knees become the mountain formations. Growing from her heart centre is a tree. Her hair streams into the water. Her body is slowly being changed from its human form and becoming a natural landscape. You get the feeling that in time, she'll have disappeared completely into the land. At the top of the card, the sky is dark and there's a glowing orb, could be either sun or moon, encircled by three rings, then the curious wispy orange sky that features in nearly every card in the Roots of Asia pack. The woman's 'body' lies in an abundance of water in rivers, pools and streams, and on the twin peaks of the mountains, there are spectacularly high and dramatic waterfalls. A mist rises over the entire scene from the water. It is a card that is both earthy and ethereal.

Turn turn turn

Roots of Asia Tarot was one of my first decks, purchased as a sort of replacement for my very first deck, Osho Zen. The Osho Zen and I fell out. I decided it made me feel bad, and it just seemed to want me to feel that way. But I resisted buying Roots of Asia because to me the art was muddy, imprecise and, well, foreign. Someone on Aeclectic Tarot recommended it to me because I was seeking a deck with a deeply Buddhist sensibility, and I truly don't think you can get much more Buddhist than this deck. I know the deck is by a Thai artist who is/was possibly a Buddhist monk, and he used his hands and a knife to create the art, but that's all I know and to be honest, I'm not really terribly interested in details like. When it comes to decks, I'm more concerned with my personal reaction.

Two things I really appreciate about this deck. One, the names are all traditional RWS names, which is unusual when a deck is adapted to a theme. It really annoys me when people mess around and change the suit names. You got a Native American deck? Oops, better change the suits to sticks, arrows, rocks and peace pipes. You got a cute girly deck? Uh-oh, quick,  make that buttons, bows, lipstick cases and curling irons. It's ridiculous. But I digress. Two, the LWB is amazing. It's 87 pages long and uses every card meaning as an opportunity to educate the reader in solid Buddhist teachings. Plus it contains 3 powerful spreads and a surprisingly detailed introduction to insight meditation!

One thing I don't like about this deck. The backs. I think they're just repulsive. There's something here that is deeply sinister to me. Some people have that reaction to the Haindl backs. Well, I love the Haindl backs, I find them soulful. But Roots of Asia backs? No...just horrible, nightmarish even. I may have to devote a whole blog entry to parsing this back, but just look at it. A nose spouting smoke out of its nostrils. At the top of the nose, the eyebrows sort of turn into arms and then it looks like a man's back, with the red dot for the back of his head. But the arms/eyebrows are flaming claws, and one eye's a shiny moon that looks like the eyeball has been punched out and this light is piercing through. The other eye is covered over by a buxom angel with glowing nipples. Which then leads the eye around to notice all the big-breasted angels on this card. There's one at the bottom that seems to have three boobs, each one spouting a beam of light onto a smiling mouth. Then you notice the hands at the bottom of the card and realise the whole thing is a portait of a meditator. But if this is the stuff swirling in the mind when meditating--no way! Speaking of swirling, what is that gaping maw in the middle of the card sucking everything into it? Why is it between the nose and the mouth? Oh, it just doesn't bear thinking about. I never look at the backs of these cards if I can help it. They just freak me out.

But back to the reading. I asked the cards, 'Why am I drawn to use Roots of Asia this week'? I then pulled Hermit, Magician, 8 of Cups. Well, I've just embarked on a new project this week, and there's the Magician. I am feeling drawn again into my magical/spiritual/meditative path, which I've been away from for many months, and there's Hermit and 8 of Cups.

Let's have a look at a sample of one of those wonderful LWB tidbits:

8 of Cups. Awareness of Change and Impermanence. As nature has the motions and changes of the seasons of the year, so too our lives hold various changes and times. We wish to hold on to those seasons of happiness and run away from those seasons of anxiety. Our goal is to learn how to move freely within and in between the seasons that continue to come to us. The eight seasons of our lives are: time of accomplishment, time of loss, time of dignity and fame, time of obscurity, time of being blamed, and time of being praised, a time for happiness, and a time for pain.  Divinitory key: Searching for insight. Introspection.

I have noticed something about the seasons in the last couple of days. It's a curious thing. But I'll share that with you later.