Early on in our Tarot teaching life, we got used to recommending two or more Tarot books for our enthusiastic Tarot explorers to use. When someone would return, complaining that the books didn't agree, we would say: Exactly! Precisely! Because...for all that everyone says and writes about Tarot (and they and we all say a lot), ultimately you have to make it your own and learn to see how it speaks to you personally. Tarot, like all symbolic languages, or meta languages as they are sometimes called, will reflect an interior language of thoughts and images that you have going on inside of your head that you use to process your experiences. It will, through its well polished and wide range of archetypes and symbols, mirror back to you these thoughts and actions. Hence its value in broadening your perspective of yourself and your world.

Charque and I got our first Tarot decks back in London in 1971, as well as our first I Ching. We were also exploring Buddhism at that time. Buddhism offered us our first formal instruction on perception, namely to "Step back and become the observer of your life. Become the watcher and the watched." This is, to my mind, the number one instruction in the Drivers' Manual to Life. It's as basic as remembering which side of the road to drive on. (When I took my drivers' test here in the US, that was all I had to say or do i.e. remember to drive on the correct side of the road, in order to pass the test!) The number one instruction that comes with Tarot is "Know yourself and you will understand the whole universe". This observation was traditionally associated with the ancient Greek oracle at Delphi and is core to the Western or Hermetic tradition of mysticism. It, like its Eastern Buddhist counterpart, points to THE KEY MYSTERY of life: namely, that if you observe yourself and your world, you will begin to notice that they are related, interconnected and not accidental, nor a chance encounter. The one in fact mirrors the other. Another key in the Western or Hermetic tradition is "As above, so below". Or you could say, as on the inside, so on the outside, or vice versa. The relationship between the two is always there. One of the fundamental teachings of A Course in Miracles is: you don't have to change the world, you have to change your mind about the world. The world is not the source of your experiences and problems, it is their reflection. This represents A or THE major change in perspective.

Growing up, I had a Dad who always said, if you have a problem, sleep on it! Well, what he actually said was, go to bed, and maybe it will all (whatever disturbance in the local or family cosmos was going on) look different in the morning. Sometimes we would wonder if he was just hoping that it would all go away! He was a man of peace and preferred to avoid conflict. On the other hand, leaving it all to rest for a while, stepping back from it, sleeping on it often does alter and expand the perspective. My Mum, who was less peaceful, would say "let it simmer!" But it wasn't until Charque and I were into one of our early conflicts (very early on, still in Friedrichshafen in southern Germany) and he said, you will feel differently in the morning (uh oh, I'd heard that one before), that I had an aha moment and realized that he and they were all correct. Why? Because emotions change. Duh! That's why they're called EMOTIONS. They move, change, flow, sometimes smoothly like awoodland stream, sometimes choppily like a mountain cataract. What you do when you step back from your emotions and observe them, is apply Mind, Consciousness, Awareness. As we learned later on, these are the key ingredients of Meditation (which again we have the Buddhist Society in London to thank for). Pema Chodron, the Canadian Buddhist nun, in her book "Start Where You Are" tells you to sit with your experiences, your emotions, your pain, whatever it is, right where it is at now, in the moment, with no controls, no judgements, no undermining or debasing of yourself. If you do fall into the chasm of self judgement, watch that too! None of it is the core you. It is just you having an experience one way or another in the world and observing your reactions to that experience.

Perception and perspective can and will change with observation and meditation. Through this process, you will begin to engage another part of your mind, one that is different from your conditioned, taught and educated mind. I have long believed that the left brain generally represents your conditioned and trained mind and that the right brain, which is more chaotic, creative, andat times seemingly dysfunctional,represents your intuitive mind, which in turn is connected to Source. Jill Bolte Taylor's experience having a stroke and surviving to speak and write about this experience, point in this direction too. She was formerly, before the stroke, a Harvard brain scientist. Since the stroke, she has become a teacher and communicator of the science of the (whole) mind. She talks about the right brain as "nirvana". You have to work between these two parts of the brain and of the mind. But if you do not access the insight and teaching or guidance of the intuitive mind, your left brain takes over and become very dogmatic and judgemental of your world and of yourself. Jesus's statement "Judge not, that ye be judged" is no idle statement. Belief is core as to how you see yourself and how you experience your world. What beliefs do you carry that lie behind your experiences? That is what you are observing and learning.....through meditation, through spiritual practices, through working with Tarot.

In Tarot, the Hanged Man (number 12 of the major arcana) is the card that pictures this stepping back and observing process. The Hanged Man hangs upside down because he perceives and experiences the world 180° differently from what you might call normal and physical. A similar idea exists in Nordic mythology and teaching. Odin hung upside down on Yggdrasil, The World Tree, for nine days, until he espied the Runes, which, like the Tarot, are another key to observation of self and world. There is always a symbolic period of time for awakening and becoming conscious. Jesus experienced three days from crucifixion to resurrection or enlightenment. So, maybe you should sleep on it for three days, or even nine days, whatever it is!! Gandhi actually meditated for ten days, contemplating a path to get the British out of India. He came to the Salt Marches, which was brilliant, since the Brits had a monopoly on salt that could be challenged by the local people extracting their own salt. Meditation, as you can see, also has some very practical applications. AND one more thing concerning perspective: Charque and I now have a LIKE page on Facebook. Well, we've had a Friends' page for a number of years already, but have now just established a Like page, if any of you are interested and do Facebook. It is called, well how original, "Ruth and Charque". We have just posted the Hanged Man and his teaching, since that is what we are currently exploring