Tarot and the Flat Earth Society

Imagine this: It is the year 1492. You are Christopher Columbus and you have just discovered that when you stand on the beach, you can see waves, but when you stand on a cliff you can see the ocean but no waves. Did the waves disappear? No, of course not. You simply changed your vantage point and that made you see a lot more.

This got you thinking. You noticed that when you approach a blind hill, it looks like the top of the hill is the end of the earth. But when you get to the top of the hill, you discover that the road continues into the horizon. This makes you feel really brave. You continue to walk, expecting to reach the end of the earth any day. But the road ends on another beach.

Now you are really curious. You build yourself a nice big boat, and you decide to sail on the sea until you either reach land or fall off the earth. A few months later you return triumphantly and tell people about the land you discovered. You even show them specimens of the strange fruit and animals you discovered on this distant land.

You do notice that people are initially in awe of what you tell them, but then they start to avoid you. When you go to town, they cross the street so as not to bump into you. When you want to visit them, you hear them tell their children to tell you they are not at home.

All this is a bit confusing, but you know your facts and nothing can change that. You have discovered that the earth is round and not flat.

Then you meet a new friend called Maggelan. He listens carefully to your tales and takes you seriously. He even goes a step further. He sails away, vowing to keep sailing in the same direction until he returns to the point of departure.

Meanwhile you have received some warnings from the church to stop spreading false dogma. You decide to keep a low profile until Magellan returns – and you wonder whether you will ever see him again.

Then, three years later, when your neighbours are talking to you again and the church is happy that you have stopped being a troublemaker, Magellan returns. He confirms your story that the earth is round.

Of course this makes you very happy, and you want to shout your discovery out to the world. You do notice the church men huddling nearby, but you are not so elated that you completely ignore them.

You hear some snippets of their conversation: “ . . . keep quiet . . . Ptolomy . . . that heretic Pythagoras . . must get fear back . . cannot have this . . . “

In the dead of night, you manage to sneak into the church. Your mission is to find out more about the conversations you overheard. You know that there are some books in the church, and you have learnt to read. You are hoping to find some of these books. But no such luck. You discover that there is a meeting of church officials.

They are discussing the latest developments in town. And they are packing the church books into crates. “We cannot let the truth get to ordinary people”, the leader says emotionally. “We must hide these books! We must make an example of those people! What will the world come to if everyone starts to use their common sense and think for themselves?”

Why am I telling you this story? Because in the past few days I have re-lived some twenty-first century versions of this scenario. Replace the flat earth with 2012 and the “end of the world”, or with tarot and the knowledge of life.

How do you answer an intelligent person who says to you “I have heard about 2012 but I am too afraid to find out what it is about and please don’t tell me”?

What do you say to a person who says “Tarot is sinful, and it is all about death and the devil”? How do you explain to the person that tarot is an encyclopaedia of life, and one of the richest sources of information about our existence on this earth?

When I encounter an attitude like that about tarot, I have even more respect and admiration for the people that managed to retain the knowledge that was captured in tarot. If that same knowledge had been captured in books only, all those books would have been burnt by those that were in a position of power. They would have done everything to ensure that the ancient knowledge remains available to only a select few people that would have abused the sacred knowledge for their own purposes.

By capturing the knowledge of tarot in richly illustrated cards filled with symbols and nuances, the geniuses who decided to do that ensured that the knowledge remained available in plain sight.

Of course there are still many members of the flat earth society who would happily play with the cards – or with the variation that is used for gambling – and they would have no idea of the sacred knowledge that they have access to. Of course there are also those members that deliberately choose to play the roulette of life by staying as far away from the tarot cards as possible. They are unable to give reasons for not wanting to know anything about tarot, because they simply block their minds and find equally ignorant people who agree with their prejudices to justify their choices.

Either way, by closing our minds to the things that we were taught to fear for no reason, we become spiritually poorer. The only way to open our minds is to challenge any obstacles and boundaries and find our own truth. The same people that describe tarot as “from the devil” are told in the Bible in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Test everything. Hold on to the good.” For me this means use your God-given mind to explore, and decide what resonates with you. Do not hand the power of that decision over to another person who becomes stronger because you chose ignorance. And this means explore everything, not just the things that you are told to explore.