My
name is Jez, I am a wizard. I am also a Bright. For over 30 years I
have been a tarot reader and astrologer, by academic training I am a
social anthropologist. How does all this reconcile? I'm hoping
that the site itself shows this but if you're looking for the
definitive response, here it is. Let's first of all deal with The
Bright bit. As you will see from checking the link :
A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview
OK... so how does the wizard bit fit in? And surely
tarot
& astrology are nothing if not mystical and supernatural?
Right. The Wizard bit is maybe a tad fanciful, but a minimum of
research and thought will quickly demonstrate that real life 'wizards'
were scientists before the term 'scientist' was coined. You'll find
Viziers, 'wise-men', even the original 'magician' and some 'medecine
men' & 'shamen' fit the same bill. They investigated things with an
insatiable curiosity about how they worked. Once they had figured
something out, the next step was putting it to a variety of uses
according to their aims - or those of their patron's. Early
'scientists' like this first mapped the heavens, worked out the shape
and volume of the earth (more than 5000 years ago) and were aware of
complex astronomical phenomena such as precession. They used the stars
as a navigation aid. They were
responsible for the technology that constructed pyramids and
Stonehenge, and for the long role call of human technologies that
brought
us here from the Stone Age. Most of these were in response to need such
as devising effective calendars to guide and prompt agriculture. Much
wizardry was essentially practical by nature.
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As
wizarding became institutionalized around a central core of empiricism,
this evidence-based approach of testing hypotheses through experiment
and observation created a professional respectability that left the
more fanciful and unproven 'outside' - in the super-natural. The
natural and social
sciences, with their professional practitioners, the scientists,
educated and trained in the empirical method swiftly became distinct
from those 'arts' and their adherents who were consigned to the
mystical arena. With education largely controlled by the state and/or
the various religions, the demonisation of the mystical naturally
followed. Arthur C Clarke famously wrote that "Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
and the institutionalization of science is the process by which
advancing technology is officially de-mystified - none of us regard the
telephone or electricity as magic but how many of us could fully
explain it and create working models? Wizards, the name associated with
obsessive, robed, bearded men who used arcane symbols and read ancient
texts became naturally associated with the occult - the hidden. Seekers
of life's mystical hidden truths. Scientists are wizards with a white
coat in place of the robe. Before they became scientists, wizards were
the wise men who wrote the Histories, and recorded their experiments in
'Grimoires'. Maybe you thought of a grimoire as a book of spells? Well,
a spell is an instruction, a 'how to', and grimoires were essentially
manuals containing collections of 'how to' information. From 'grimoire'
comes the english word 'grammar'. Thinking of wizards invariably leads
to Merlin, fabled as the mentor to legendary Arthur, and when you think
of spells you need to remember that if there was a golden age for
wizardry it spanned that period which saw the development and
refinement of language and communication. A king gifted in these new
abilities wielded great power to organise and rule, Arthur's most
notable accomplishments - noting that 'Arthur' is likely a collective
for the earliest rulers to bind Britain as a nation, more a concept
than a man. It's worth considering also, given the development of
romantic love along with chivalry, that the strongest and most binding
of spells ever devised is the three simple words 'I love you'.
Astrology
and Tarot, practitioners often reminds us, have been around for a very,
very long time. This is true but scientific respectability does not
come merely with age, indeed, if anything the reverse is true.
Yet although it is true that they have been around for many
hundreds of years, their current best known incarnations are far from
ancient. The 'traditional' tarot reading was formally created in
the 19th century from a broad mishmash of cultural references. Today it
adds new decks and fads on an almost daily basis with angels, faeries,
feminism, cats, aliens... the list of 'tarots' is large and growing -
recognising the theory that the cards might have Egyptian origins,
someone recently produced a 'tarot of ancient egypt'. Since the
popularity of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, Renaissance themes and even a
'Da Vinci Code' deck have appeared. It is
here that the interesting thing with Tarot lies: it effortlessly spans
class, race and religious barriers in its essential appeal as a
'philosophical machine'. The modern notion of astrology, irrevocably
linked to 'sun signs' is as modern as newspapers and probably more so.
Our frame of reference for both, these days, is the notion of 'fortune
telling' which first became popular as a part of travelling fairs and
later achieved much greater popularity with the development of seaside
holidays, where gypsy fortune tellers could be found on the pier and
the prom whilst the developing print media found an ever in demand item
for people to get their astrological fix all year round through
almanacs and, later, newspaper columns. Centuries
of observation and theory were plundered for simple Sun Sign sketches
which, today, the majority of us are very familiar with - especially
'our own', which to a greater or lesser extent we absorb into our own
sense of identity.Through Victorian and Edwardian times, the mystic arts acquired a great sheen of respectability,Theosophy
being the most outstanding example from an era when seances became
respectable parlour activities as well educated devotees strived to
give the mystic scientific respectability.
"cold reading"
I
am often asked 'How can you read tarot if you don't believe?' Exactly
what it is that I am perceived not to believe is dependent on the world
view of the person raising the objection, it could be 'faeries',
'angels' or the more nebulous 'Spirit', amongst many other
possibilities, but the essential thrust is that I don't believe in some
super natural force, and I have to admit that this is true. I
don't discount the 'super-real' by which I mean simply that we tend to
underestimate our abilities to the extent that we are perfectly capable
of confounding and astounding ourselves through perfectly natural
accomplishments. I have one friend who has an almost pathological
aversion to tarot readers (heated debate can be a solid basis for a
friendship) and whose unwavering tarot put down is 'it's nothing but cold
reading'. He is also a great fan of Derren Brown and was also a massive
fan of David Blaine until the glass box by the Thames episode.
This is instructive. Derren Brown, who makes no secret of his
abilities, uses cold reading, subliminal communication techniques and
hypnotic command and suggestion. He explains what he does but does it
so well - one might say unbelievably well - that he is respected as
someone of awesome ability - indeed, I would describe it as super-real.
Blaine, similarly talented, lost respect by trying to show himself as
'super-human' though everyone 'knew' it had to be a trick.
The
'stuff' we are made of, at a molecular level, was forged in the heart
of massive stars - we are indeed stardust. Is it that outrageous
to believe we may be affected, in some way, by the cosmos? I think it
is, given that the substantial body of scientific evidence available to
us today shows no measurable or even vaguely discernible way in which
such an effect might operate. There are so many problems with
astrology, as a science and as a belief, that it is hard to know where
to begin. Or perhaps it's easy. For astrology quite simply is not a
science, and neither is it a religion. Astro derives from the ancient
Greek 'star' and the ology is
courtesy of the Greek 'logos' for 'theory', 'study'. Ancient roots
aside, the terminology is Age of Reason, 17th Century, when astronomy
and astrology were formally separated, the former continuing as the
preserve of serious scientific study, the latter consigned to the
mystic box with alchemy and magick. Astronomers are frequently incensed
when introduced to people who think they are fortune tellers (see Bad
Astrology) but so are many Astrologers. The 'fortune telling' aspect of
Astrology is largely practiced by people whose knowledge of Astrology
barely exceeds knowing the different sun signs. Astrology was an early
investigation into human personality and behaviour later derailed into
an important part of popular culture in many societies.
"we are the stuff of long dead stars, our beginnings in endings"
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves"
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" - I've heard skeptics use the Julius Caesar quote with 'believers' resorting to the Hamlet.
Both, for me, miss the point. The Hamlet line should, I believe, and I
speak of the playwright's intent, have the stress on 'philosophy'. The
skeptic's Caesar invites us
to take responsibility for our own issues rather than blame the cosmos.
Art v Science. But let's turn things around here: astrology in various
forms is found in all civilisations, our Western tradition traces back
via the Greeks to ancient Babylon (the origin of a number system based
on 12), but other 'branches' derive from cultures as diverse as ancient
Egypt, the Mayans and the Chinese. The use of astronomical knowledge to
systemise is as varied as the branches are racially, linguistically and
historically distinct but the starting point is common. The
initial observation is that while people are different from one
another, those differences appear to fall into recognisable groups.With
the use of the stars to provide navigation and agricultural calendars,
seeing a potential link between when people were born and the group
they 'belong' to is far from surprising, as is a belief that
'divination' - foretelling - might be possible. Were it known how 'old'
was the starlight involved, this must surely have been greatly
strengthened - the stars giving us omens, portents of the future. The
Mayan astrological calendar, graphically represented, bears a striking
likeness to the double helix of DNA, which doesn't mean that it was
intended to, but it is far more interesting and intriguing to examine
the various 'schools' of astrology from the perspective of a
sociologist, comparing the similar ways in which each one provides a
classification system. Then look at the modern
psychometric approaches to personality testing and classification which
produce remarkably similar groupings and sub-groupings.
Psychometric
based personality studies are accepted as more scientific but address
the same issues, working first to broad distinctions in the areas of
functions, attitude and lifestyle, and identifying key distinctions
such as the Myers-Briggs usage of dichotomies - extravert/introvert,
sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving, each
'spectrum' providing a 'scoreable' scale. By a less fun and more
po-faced process I find that I am an aimiable-expressive (or possibly
an expressive-aimiable) which is described in very similar terms as my
Leo Sun/Libra Moon, and almost word for word with my Chinese combo of
Snake, Tiger & Monkey. Chinese astrology is centred on
personality and very complex. You are not just one sign, but a mixture
of 3, and these are each multiplied by other variables. The Chinese
concept of using astrological
knowledge is one of knowing yourself and from where you are coming in
order to understand where you are likely to be headed. As Kierkegaard
said, "Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived
forwards" which, far from gazing into the future, is the real point of
both Tarot and Astrology, though Kierkegaard was not referring to
either anymore than Shakespeare was. When it comes down to it,
eBay classes Tarot & Astrology as entertainment, and that's fine -
they should be. Take out the superstition, the supernatural and what
you find is a 'proto-science' preserved in popular culture - Tarot
being a formative step towards
psycho-therapy, retains it's ability to function as a thinking-aid through it's symbolism, and
Astrology, far from 'not having any scientific basis' being founded in
various scientific investigations of human personality and behaviour,
and still an integral part of our sense of identity. Without
superstition, being Aries or Scorpio, or a Rooster, or a Pig still
means
something to us, reminds us of how we are no matter how much we agree
or disagree with it. Whether it describes us or
we become, or see ourselves, as the sign sets out, is irrelevant - it
is a part of us however it works. I'm a Spurs fan, I like Pearl
Jam, I like Yeats' poetry, the works of Andre Breton, I'm a leo, and a
Snake/Tiger/Monkey combo - all these things describe me a little, none
of them speak for all of me.
Jez Rogers has a BA in Social Anthropology, European History & Popular Culture.
He is a writer and poet
and a Leo (overdraft rising)
this
site presents tarot & astrology information for the curious of all
persuasions, and for anyone interested in the entertainment value for
which they are much revered in popular culture worldwide
no belief systems were harmed in the making of this site
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