Women's Empowerment Stories ...

Tarot: a Tool for Inner Knowing

An Interview with Jean Ure

Jean Ure is a reader and teacher of Tarot whose involvement with the cards spans a 35 year period. She works with the intention of bringing light into people's lives.

Jean has studied with Angeles Arrien, internationally acclaimed anthropologist, educator and consultant; Anne Armstrong, noted California counsellor and psychic; and the late Dick Price, gestalt practitioner and co-founder of Esalen Institute.

How did you discover the Tarot?

My introduction to the cards was one of emotional reaction to hearing the names of some of the cards in T.S. Eliot's writing even though I didn't know what they were. That reaction eventually led me to the place of feeling that this is a long association—that Tarot and I have done the dance before this time.

I learned that these references in T.S. Eliot were a set of cards. When I first saw Tarot cards for sale a few years later, I bought the Waite deck and began reading for people. In retrospect, I don't think I knew what I was doing. But I just went by the book, like everyone does when they first start. I would often lay out the cards and just hang out with them.

When I lived in California in the '70s, I connected with Angeles Arrien. This was a junction in my life—I rearranged a lot to be able to study with her.

For 3 1/2 years, I studied both Tarot and light work. Using these two systems, I began a period of deep and systematic healing for myself. The cards—the Thoth deck—helped me identify and sort my way through this extremely turbulent period of turning my life around.

When that transformation time ended, I began to teach and read for other people, using Angle's teachings and my own experiences as my foundation.

For those new to Tarot, please describe the deck.

A Tarot deck is 78 cards, with pictures on them, divided into the major and minor teachings, or major and minor arcanas. "Arcana" at its root means secret, but these teachings aren't secret anymore.

The major teachings are 22 cards that portray the development of an individual to her fullness. They fall in a progression, numbered zero through 21. We see them in a circle. You don't just experience those parts of life once—you go around and around the circle. Sometimes you're here, sometimes there, and sometimes you're in several places at once. The minor arcana of 56 cards is divided into four suits: disks, wands, cups and swords. Earth, fire, water, air. These four basic elements are the building blocks of the cosmology or the understanding of the universe in medieval times.

We have such a resurgence now of people looking to put mysticism, the mystery of life, and soulfulness back into life, as in medieval times. The work of Thomas Moore, for example. That point of view towards the cards is built into their structure.

Each of the four suits is associated with an aspect of our experience. Disks are associated with our physical experience: our health, physical world, lifestyle, relationships, work, and finances. Wands with our fire within, our own light, our spirituality. These cards show us our growth, our authenticity. Cups: our emotions, our feelings. Swords: our thinking, our attitudes.

The sword in the Tarot is never about violence; it's about cutting through. The sword is a symbol of valour, of heroism. It's a tool, to cut away doubt and confusion, through repeated patterns and attitudes that shut us down or that need to be softened.

Each of these four divisions has 14 cards, numbered one through 10 and four royalty cards: the Prince, Princess, Queen and Knight.

Like any tool that supports spiritual growth and personal clarity, the more respect we show towards how we use the tool or use the system, the more benefit there will be for us.

Could you show us Tarot's history?

Traditionally, there were two ways of looking at Tarot cards. One was the perspective of fortune tellers, who often were people who had psychic gifts, to read energy, or to read past or future, or to pick up on what was going on in an individual's life, and they used the cards to do that. There may have been some scam artists, but we don't want to rule out the genuine gift that psychic people bring to working with another person, using the cards.

The second traditional view would be that of the occultists, usually well- educated people, who systematically explored Tarot cards in correlation with things like the Kabbalah (the mystical teachings in the Hebrew system), with musical notes, colour, levels of consciousness and so on.

At the turn of the last century, occultists were associated with the development of magic, with the secret societies. The study of Tarot required extensive knowledge, and was considered to be something for only the elect few.

We now have a third perspective on Tarot: as a personal growth map, as a way to take some readings on ourselves, our development, our learning. I'm solidly in this school, and studying with Angeles Arrien gave me a systematic positive approach to using Tarot as a personal map.

Could you explain systematic positive?

Systematic positive means that through the entire deck the message or the interpretation of every card can have something positive to say to us. Even if it's a challenge card—what we might call a negative card—or even if it may seem scary, like the Death card, for example. There's a way we can see any card as being for our good, in a way that supports ourselves, that doesn't scare us.

How do the cards work? How much of the reading is in the cards, and how much in the reader?

Carl Jung, in an introduction to an early translation of the / Ching, talks about how any moment in our experience is readable. So when I turn a card over, it catches this moment—it's going to reflect something about my experience right now.

Tarot is always from the inside out for me. The cards have been an external something that's allowed me to map, and learn and know my inner territory.

My notion is that as people come to the cards—they present themselves for a reading—they are indicating some interest, some willingness to get information from their own depths or from the heavens or from the angels or however you configure where the good stuff comes from. That willingness and interest co-creates with the angels, the high self, the energy of life— that supports our knowing ourselves, moving forward—and influences, in that moment, the card they pick.

It's beyond language, it's beyond mental, it's not in that territory. So when we struggle to get it, sometimes we get entangled in thoughts. It's an intuitive, natural process.

Are the cards always willing to speak to us?

I say these cards are pieces of paper with pictures on them. I see it as a circuit, a linkage from you through the cards to the source of information—your high self, the angels, life, whatever. The cards are the link, in tangible space and time, that we can put on the table and have some visual, possibly visceral, association with. So then the question needs to be retrained, doesn't it? Is my high self always available? Are the angels always available? But of course!

And the part of the reader in all this? I believe the essential link is between the individual who comes for a reading and their relationship to their deepest self, their deepest knowing. I see myself as a reader facilitating that—through the cards—by giving information. I also hold the space for them to make that link and receive it.

What do you mean by "hold the space “?

Once when I was interviewing for a therapist, I said, "I need someone who will take a torch with me into my deep caves and make sure that I get back out again. I don't want you to tell me what's going on with me, because that makes me crazy—I want and have to do that for myself. But I need someone to hold the light for me." That's what I mean by "holding the space"—holding the light, staying steady in another's behalf.

Sometimes people believe that the cards themselves have energy. If they pull a certain card, or if they pull one repeatedly, they can scare themselves. What's that about? I think there's a mythology about Tarot that's dark. There may have been times when Tarot was used in a manipulative and conniving way. Perhaps that's why I feel so strongly about doing it in a businesslike, practical way.

I am passionately committed to demystifying working with Tarot cards, to make this experience available and accessible to people in a nonthreatening way. So having a place, setting time aside, handling the arrangements in a business- like fashion is part of grounding the work, a work that some people may see as spooky.

Could you comment on the different decks?

We have hundreds of contemporary decks now. I don't assess different decks, because let there be space for everybody's expression. When choosing a Tarot deck, a person should like what they see because the power of the visual is how they're connecting with the symbol. So, ask yourself, "Do I like it?"

And where is the person who created the deck coming from? A deck of cards needs to be accompanied by a book of interpretation because you can't rely totally on your intuitive responses at first. There's no way to check them out. But be aware that the interpretations in the book will reflect the mindset of the creator.

I'm using a system that cobbles together the Thoth deck that was creatively visualized by Aleister Crowley, drawn by Frieda Harris, and reinterpreted by Angeles Arrien in the 1960s. But I wouldn't touch Crowley's interpretation— it's very dark.

If two people in separate sessions drew identical spreads, would they receive the same reading?

They'd get some of the same information but they wouldn't get exactly the same reading. When a card comes up in a position, 1 could have 15 or 20 possibilities of where to start. The process for me is quite automatic now; I just wait for a perspective to come into focus.

It's of interest to me what comes up with an individual. I ask: who guides the focus? I make myself available to be of the greatest service; a person comes with a willingness and openness to receive information and to learn; the physical set up is good. Well, I just leave that guiding to life.

That's the nub of the ways of knowing, isn't it?

That we co-create. Maybe that isn’t the right word. That knowing isn’t just us in a vacuum. Actually, I’m not sure I have the language here. That knowing is relational? The knower and what you’re knowing? It does seem to me to come under the banner of co-creation. This notion that if I’m part of everything that is, when I feel moved to speak about a card in a certain way, that’s got something to do with me but it also has something to do with what the other person needs, and with the way life cooks the situation.