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Tarot: Yoga of the West
The Dream
 I was in a deep sleep, and dreaming.
I was dressed in a plain leather jerkin, with a white shirt beneath, brown leather pants and boots reaching to my knee with large flaps hanging down from the top.
Jane and I were in a large, high-ceilinged wooden-beamed room, like a cathedral, sitting in high-backed chairs facing a group of 30 or 50 people dressed as if for the Renaissance Fair. We were their guests. The leader of their group sat in a similar chair next to us. He leaned over and whispered to me that it was time for me to speak about the Tarot, for that was the purpose of the gathering.
 There was a window in the room, and that window, a mosaic of colored glass, contained a luminous image of the Divine Lovers, locked in an embrace of unearthly beauty and unending bliss. Behind them I could see two trees, and on the branches of one tree a white dove and a black raven. On the other tree I saw fruits that looked like diamonds, glistening as though wet with dew, composing a geometric diagram upon the living plant.
I became nervous and sweaty, and looked around for my notes. I found a folder with some poetry I had written 30 years ago, when I first began to study the Tarot, but I realized that it was not appropriate for this occasion. Still, I thought, I could read some of it.Then I began to search the area around my chair, and the table next to me, for other notes on the Tarot.
I became increasingly agitated as I looked, and realized that I had no notes. Then I found some notes, but they were sketchy, and somewhat esoteric in nature, not a coherent outline, much less a written speech.
The leader of the group said it was time for me to begin my talk.
I walked to a dais set in the center of the room and sat cross-legged, still sweating, and fumbling for my written text. Then I reached inside my shirt and found my notes a couple of folders filled with papers. I looked at them and realized they were worthless. I began to speak.
I said, Tarot isthe Yoga of the West, the story of the genesis of the Universe, and the blueprint for the unfolding of the human spirit within an earthly body, and for the ascent of spirit to spirits highest home.
Tarot is Rota is Orat. The Tarot is a wheel (Rota) and the Tarot is the Word (Orat, like orate, meaning to give a speech, third person singular of Ora, Latin verb meaning pray, worship, adore, beg, ask for.). The Word is the Source of Creation. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word is a Wheel and the Wheel is a Tree. The Tree of Imagery is the Tree of Life and the Tree of Life is Tarot. Tarot is the Tree of Life and the Tree of Life is the Tree that gives us the true knowledge, which takes us beyond knowledge of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Tarot is the Yoga of the West.
I was still very nervous, looking around at all the people sitting very still like statues, sweating, and feeling self-conscious. I kept thinking that I was not doing a very good job of this. I cast about in my head for some wisdom that would be useful to these folk, who I perceived to be initiates, and thus fluid in their use of the Tarot, adepts with great knowledge of the cards and the spiritual system they represent.
The Tarot is a system of visual images, glyphs, or symbols designed to awaken our souls memories we bring with us from the world of spirit into this world of matter, and of course the memories we have of spiritual teachings we have received in our previous incarnations.
 As powerful as these visual images are, they are but shells, for the true power of the Tarot is the power of numinous, numerical Truth. Tarot is the Yoga of the West. Yoga means Union, and especially the union of the self with the Self, of the individual with the web of life, of the soul with the Source of Creation.
The relationships between the individual Tarot cards reveal the secret sacred geometry of the Universe, and the secret blueprint for the microcosm of the human body, which is equivalent and analogous to the cartography of the entire Cosmos. These relationships are expressed mathematically, but they can be grasped in their fullness through a simple exercise that requires little or no mathematical sophistication. Simply place the cards in patterns of various kinds, and you will see the hidden relations between spirit and matter, soul and Self, self and Self, Self and Source. You will understand the inter-related states of being that correspond to the various stages of creation, the various stages of the long and winding road that comprises the journey of human life, and the steps each of us must take to climb the mountain of spiritual aspiration to the very peak of enlightenment and Self-realization. The Tarot is the Yoga of the West.
Let us begin by visualizing the small cards in the deck. There are four suits, wands, cups, swords and disks, corresponding to the four elements of fire, water, air and earth. In each suit there are ten small cards, numbered from 1 to 10.
Herein is a great secret for understanding and self-transformation. The nine of swords is cruelty, and when we are beset by cruelty, self-judgement, despair and sorrow, our desire is to escape these negative states of mind and emotion. Yet the way out is the way in. It is within our power to transform our own inner attitude, our own relationship to the events, thoughts and emotions that constitute the stellum of cruelty. And that way leads us to the state of being described by the two of swords, which signifies peace, especially peace of mind, as the swords represent mental activity.
This is an example of a great mathematical and philosophical and spiritual law revealed in the Tarot. In every suit, the small cards represent a state of being. (The Trump cards represent a pathway between states of being, and more than that, of which we shall perhaps speak, and some of which we shall not. The court cards represent personality types, fragments of the Universal Soul.)
I felt that hopefully I was going to offer some useful information to this gathering of great beings, for now I so perceived them, as I became increasingly aware of the finery they wore, the jewels they bore on their collars and their cuffs, their fingers and around their necks, and the wise and learned demeanor they all assumed, men and women alike, in equal numbers, gathered round about the dais on which I sat cross-legged, in a half-lotus position. However, I was beset by doubt and fears that this august company assuredly already knew and was totally conversant with the neo-Platonic number theory of Marsilio Ficino and its pagan roots, the pagan debt to the cosmic mathematicians of the East, specifically the yogis and holy rishis of ancient India, and thus with the rather superficial and rudimentary wisdom I was dispensing in my talk.
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