Tarot Meditations Inspired by Creation Spirituality

By Rev. Dr. Richard E. Kuykendall

Tarot Meditations Inspired by Creation Spirituality is a book that has a threefold purpose. First, it provides those who read it with meditations on nearly every aspect of life, from a spiritual perspective. Secondly, it provides much of the newest understandinig of the tarot that we have to date. And "No" the tarot did not originate in Egypt or some other esoteric place, but rather in Northern Italy in the mid 1400s. And finally it provides you with the means for doing "art-as-meditation," in that you can color most of the tarot card images. In other words, you can meditate on the tarot images as you color them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781698714134

Rev. Dr. Richard E. Kuykendall

Rev. Dr. Richard E. Kuykendall holds both a Master of Divintiy degree, and a Doctor of Ministry degree in Creation Spirituality. He served as a minister for over 35 years, and has led his Creation Spirituality Community, Spiritwind, for over twenty years. Kuykendall is also the author of fifteen books, including: The Dream Life of Jesus, Liturgies of the Earth, and The Way of the Earth.

Book preview

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PART 1       THE MAJOR ARCANA

PART II      THE MINOR ARCANA

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

END NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to first thank Susan Green for introducing me to the tarot, and Laura Clarson, whose simple book on the tarot (The Tarot Unveiled) touched me deeply, and has been my tarot Bible for years.

This book would have been impossible with out the help of Linda Wilkins, my father, and my friends at Bethel Congregational Church, and Spiritwind, my study group for Spiritual Adventurers. It was through their generous support that I was able to fulfill my dream to do doctoral studies at Matthew Fox’s University of Creation Spirituality.

The people that actually oversaw the work I was doing on this book were Rev. Dr. Mel Bricker, Rev. Jeremy Taylor, and Rev. Elizabeth Nicks. I thank each of them for their willingness to support and advise me on this project. And of course, I must thank Matthew Fox for his vision in creating a doctoral program which is unique in its purpose to teach the students to creatively reinvent their work in a way which will not only enrich their lives, but will help transform the communities in which they work and serve.

Of course I can never forget my wife, Ava—she is my Empress!

INTRODUCTION

In July of 1988, after college, seminary and a switch to a different denomination, I was ordained as a minister in the United Church of Christ. Later that fall, I heard Matthew Fox speak at a minister’s convocation at the School of Theology at Claremont, California. This event was just one month prior to Fox’s being formally silenced by the Catholic Church.¹ Though the Dominican priest was seen as a radical within the framework of the Catholic Church, his presentation rang true to my heart. I truly felt that his theology was the closest to my own, of any I had ever heard. Fox referred to his brand of theology as Creation Spirituality--a spiritual tradition which he saw rooted in the Bible as well as in the writings of medieval mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Mechtild of Magdeburg (1210-12-80), Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1327), Julian of Norwich (1342-c.1415)--as well as Sufi mystics such as Rumi and Hafiz, and such modern mystics as Howard Thurman and Mary Oliver. It is a spiritual tradition which moves upon four paths: the Via Positiva, which is the path of awe and wonder at creation, the Via Negativa, which is the path of darkness, silence, suffering and letting go, the Via Creativa, which is the path of creative expression, and the Via Transformativa, which is the path of prophetic justice and compassion.² The four paths are not walked in consecutive order but rather our lives weave in and out through them time and time again. These four paths provide the spiritual adventurer with, not only a map for finding where one is on the spiritual journey, but a framework for understanding one’s deepest held beliefs about God and the Universe.

Little did I know that ten years after I had heard Fox for the first time, that I would be working on a doctoral degree at the school he founded in Oakland, California. In the years that followed my first encounter with Matthew Fox, I began a spiritual community which I called Spiritwind. Spiritwind, from its inception, has been committed to the ideals of deep ecumenism--a term which was coined by Fox to mean extending the ideals of the ecumenical movement to all the world’s religions, faith traditions and spiritual movements.³ As Fox puts it:

Deep ecumenism is the movement that will unleash the wisdom of all world religions—Hinduism and Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, Taoism and Shintoism, Christianity in all its forms, and native religions and goddess religions throughout the world.⁴

It was at Spiritwind that I had my first introduction to the tarot through a woman who was a part of our group. Being an artist of sorts myself, I was fascinated by the images in the tarot. This woman began my introduction to the tarot by giving my first tarot reading as a birthday gift at a birthday party Spiritwind had for me. She did not at first tell me what all of the card meant, rather she wanted me to sense intuitively what they meant to me. After some time she taught me the meanings of the cards and even taught me how to use the cards in doing readings. Now after over 40 + years I have been studying the tarot and Creation Spirituality together.

I’m sure to many—especially Christians—it seems a bit strange that an ordained Christian minister would write a book about tarot cards. And because these cards are often stereotyped as being inseparable linked with the occult, I’m sure that some Christians would even consider such an enterprise to border upon blasphemy.

In spite of such fears, I have determined to do this, seeing no conflict between my faith and the use of these cards. In fact, I have found that working with these cards has actually enriched my spiritual experience.

Those who would criticize such an endeavor would more than likely claim that their criticism was based upon the Bible—sighting such texts as Deuteronomy 18:10 which says that divination is an abomination, and so are those who practice it. Such an appeal to scripture however ignores the fact that whenever the ancient Israelite’s consulted the urim and the thummin⁵ or resorted to casting lots in making their decisions,⁶ they were in reality using a form of divination.

That being said, though tarot cards are in most cases used as a tool for divination, I would like to suggest two other uses which I have found to be quite helpful, as well as more acceptable to Christians. One is using them as a catalyst for discussing various psychological issues in a way similar to how a psychologist or psychoanalyst might us the Rorschach Ink Blots--to see what the client sees in the cards, and then share with them the meaning in view of their interpretation of the cards. The other is using them for personal meditation in a way similar to how Catholics use the station of the cross or Lectio Divina as objects of meditation, and as Tibetan Buddhists use mandalas.

Before we begin however, I would like to briefly share with you some back ground information concerning the tarot.

The tarot is a deck of cards consisting of the major arcana and minor arcana.⁷ Some historians believe that our modern playing cards were created about the same time as the tarot. Thus, as in our playing cards there are four suits: spades, heart, clubs, and diamonds—the tarot’s minor arcana is composed of fifty-six cards which fall under one of four comparable suits: swords, cups, rods (or wands) and coins (or pentacles).

The tarot’s court cards are similar as well: page, knight, queen, king. You’ll note however, that there is no knight in our modern deck, leaving us with jack, queen, and king.⁸ Thus it is that our deck has fifty-two cards instead of the minor arcana’s fifty-six.

Of the twenty-two cards (0-21) which comprise the major arcana, or trump cards as they are sometimes called, only the fool has any comparable counterpart to our modern playing cards in the Joker ⁹ and that idea has been rejected by most. And whereas the major arcana depicts what Jung and others have seen as various archetypal themes, the cards of the minor arcana depict more specific situation which arise in the course of our everyday lives.

Although many occult writers have claimed that the tarot had its origin among such mystical groups as the ancient Egyptians,¹⁰ the Gypsies or even in Atlantis, the earliest tarot cards which survive date back too the early fifteenth century. Joseph Campbell in fact saw a connection between the writings of Dante and the images he saw depicted in the Marseilles deck.¹¹ Beyond this he wrote that,

What the set of four suits represent are the four estates or classes, of the medieval social order. The Swords signify the nobility; the Cups, suggesting the chalice of the Catholic Mass, are for the clergy; the Coins, for the merchants, or ‘third estate,’ the towns men, the burghers; while the Staves, Clubs or Batons, stand for the ‘churls,’ the peasantry and servants.¹²

If Campbell was correct in seeing the origin of the tarot in the late Renaissance period of Christian Europe,¹³ then though these cards may now be associated with