1. What is Tarot?
The Tarot is a realized dream of reality – like all experience – in a recognized pattern of 78 entities. The template of this pattern is 22 “Major Arcana”, 16 “Court Cards” and 40 “Minor Cards” in four “Suits”, usually termed Pentacles, Swords, Cups and Wands.
This pattern is usually but not always demonstrated in the form of art upon cardboard; a deck of tarot cards.
2. How Does Tarot Work?
The Tarot works by arising in the same interface (between our sense of Identity and our sense of Universe) as all our experience of reality.
It exists as a stabilized and tested representation through iteration and evolutionary processes. As a reasonably congruent, consistent and comprehensive map of experience, it functions to partially reflect our engagement with the Universe. As such, it provides a blank bible for personal philosophy.
3. What is Tarosophy?
Tarosophy is the living wisdom of the tarot; tarot to engage life, not escape it. It arises from an attitude of curiosity that generates techniques for every oracular moment. We hold that there is no such thing as an accidental oracle.
Tarosophy has a character that can be recognised by experimental, enthusiastic and open play with the limitless opportunities of tarot. It recognizes a full deck of possibilities and celebrates the diversity of divination.
4. What are the key tenets of Tarosophy?
The World is Bound by Invisible Knots – You either Speak with Honey on your Lips from the Book of Clouds, Echoing the Voice of Living Fire in the Trembling Darkness, or you Do Not. There are no half-way Oracles.
5. What is the Aim of Tarosophy?
The aim of Tarosophy is to make accessible the language of tarot prior to delivering the journey into the place in which that language is spoken. That is to say, to teach tarot as a symbolic system in preparation for initiatory, mystical and magical experience in the Western Esoteric Initiatory System®.
6. What is the heart of Tarosophy?
The heart of Tarosophy is the embodiment in the practitioner of the living wisdom of tarot – an applied philosophy mediated by the structure and images of the deck.
The heart of Tarosophy was developed from long-term systematic observation and encounter with hundreds of tarot readers over a decade and comprehensive review of published and unpublished material over the last three centuries.
Tarosophy uniquely bridges academic appreciation of tarot and allied subjects with long-term experience to deliver a powerful revisioning of tarot.
It focuses on teaching correspondence, incorporation and utilization to move the practitioner into the oracular moment – to go from nothing to here, to go from knowledge and experience to intuition and inspiration.
• We teach correspondence to empower elegant readings and prepare the practitioner for work in the Western Esoteric Initiatory System if they pursue that path.
• We teach incorporation to ensure that readings work with the client’s issues and language, not the readers – whilst leaving space for the original interpretation and oracular nature of the reader.
• We teach utilization to emphasize the readers own skills and allow them to develop their diverse methods in an accelerated and flexible manner.
7. What is the Ambition of Tarosophy?
The ambition of Tarosophy is to remove the barriers to entry for all who seek to learn tarot – whether it be for self-development, divinatory and oracular purposes or fortune-telling. We recognize that there are many gates and many paths, all of which lead to one destination.
8. How Does Tarosophy Differ from other Deliveries of Tarot?
Tarosophy teaching critically separates “skills” and “methods” to provide accessible and accelerated training. It also teaches from the destination backwards; understanding how readers read after thirty or forty years and reverse engineering those skills to be taught to beginners.
It has also asked systematic questions of contemporary readers (taking advantage of social media) and derived answers that are unique to Tarosophy and have led to the development of hundreds – if not thousands – of new methods.
9. What are the Unique Foundation Methods of Tarosophy?
There are hundreds of unique methods in Tarosophy; the most prominent are teaching tarot in ten minutes; split-deck methods; standing methods (such as “Finding Hope”); pin-pointing and bridging; chunking to apply any card to any question; the keyword kaleidoscope to generate personal keywords; real-time construction of spreads based on a client’s metaphor; tarot gated spreads (such as “Tarot Life”) and hundreds more.
10. How do I engage with Tarosophy?
The primary book for Tarosophy is the book of that title, Tarosophy, presently sold-out and awaiting a second printing, in the meantime available (in three parts) on Kindle. There are 78 new methods of Tarosophy in Tarot Twist and the absolute beginner’s booklet, Tarot Flip.
To understand some of the oracular nature of Tarosophy, refer to Tarot Inspire. The Gated Spread experiences are to be found in Tarot Life (in 12 booklets), and others such as The Gates of Valentine, The Garden of Creation, The Ghost Train and The Resurrection Engine, etc.
The Western Esoteric Initiatory System is explored in The Magister.
Tarosophy®, Western Esoteric Initiatory System®, and Tarot House® are registered trademarks.
All content (C) Marcus Katz & Tali Goodwin, 2014.