What is neoplatonism as related to
Tarot? Speaking in broad strokes, neo-Platonism is a tradition
in which consciousness is the direct unmediated presence of the
divine without a second. Traditionalism along the lines of
Frithjof Schunon and Rene Guenon tends to grasp broad aspects of
the this idea, usually, mixing it was an idealized historicism
that is not traditional.
I think the analogy that all is water and Neo-Platonism is about
plumbing. Most of us are interested in drowning in the delight
of the divine, whereas Neoplatonists are interested in mapping
how the rivers get down to the sea, how the dewdrop can hold
infinity.
So I might be a swimmer but I also like to have an appreciation
of plumbing.
To bring the analogy to the tarot, the cards are life prisms
that break up the pure light of awareness into a rainbow of
experience. Each person brings their own light of consciousness
to the cards and thereby the card’s authenticity. But the cards
give us is an opportunity to experience light in waves we might
otherwise overlook.
For me the nature of consciousness is pure unicity. If I were to
characterize it, being well aware that no characterization can
hold its fullness and ineffability, I would call this awareness
identical to life-love-light.
Just as the cards are a prism so with life they channel our
attention to aspects of experience we might otherwise overlook
or not give enough attention.
Love is the most fulsome word in any language. Following the
Greeks we see love as Eros the drive towards existence and to
reproduce. And love his friendship finding oneself in the
alienness of the other, where affinity and complementarity. Then
there is the love of knowing and discovering the world and
ourselves, and being quickened more by questions than by
answers. And last there is Agape that love it follows to the no
Otherness of the divine itself, leaving nothing behind and
abandoning all.
As tarotists we find it easy to make connections with the life
and light-gnosis analogies with the symbols of the cards in
their mix. But it is also a challenge to recognize that each
card is a tale of love and also an admonition to live the good
life, a moral challenge.
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