Recover Your Symbolic Literacy

[00:00:00]When reading literature, many people focus only on the literal plot and ignore the symbolic layers of the text.

[00:00:07]But I want to talk about the ability to see beyond the literal story or narrative and how to discover in objects, images, situations, higher cosmic or symbolic meaning. And this could be broadly called symbolic literacy. A good example of this is when Shakespeare's Hamlet leaps into the grave of Oilia, fights with her brother Leertes and then jumps back out out of the grave. And it occurs amidst the graveyard scene which on one level is very funny and mundane even. You have the clowns and you have the Yoric siloquy. Uh but on a mythic level, on a cosmic level, Hamlet's declaring his love for Oilia, leaping into the grave, grappling with Leertes and jumping back out of it reenacts the archetypal pattern of many myths around the world.

[00:01:00]It's got the catabasis, the descent into the grave or the underworld, uh the test or the battle with opposing figures, and finally the reemergence from the grave through a symbolic resurrection. And this pattern is is is a form of narrative that's common to many religions and ancient mythologies. It's deeply cosmological. Uh you've got the Sumerian goddess Ishtar and her descent to the underworld and Greek figures such as Orpheus uh or even Odysius and in the Hebrew texts you have the the fable of uh Jonah and the whale which also reenacts this going in a test and then reemerging different. Okay, so that's just one example, but all of literature, some of the best works of literature operate in this way on multiple levels beyond the mere literal. So in this video, I want to talk about the origins of archetypal thinking and how on we're studying the tarot as an archetypal grammar, one that can be used to understand literature and to help with your creative process. So in training your mind to see and to recognize patterns and archetypes within literature and to understand how literature moves is a really important part of literacy. And literacy of course involves more than just knowing how to read words on a page. And as a way of strengthening that literacy, that symbolic literacy, I've been hosting the lecture series on the major arcana of the tarot. So I want to talk a little bit about that as well.

[00:02:30]It's probably known in popular culture for its association with fortunetelling, but we're reading the tarot as an encyclopedia of visual archetypes and scenes and character types as a way to strengthen our ability to recognize these types in literature and to read literature on multiple levels. So, these lectures have been hosted and made available on my teaching platform, Vers.

[00:02:54]We've just completed over 12 hours of recorded lectures and we've made it halfway through the major arcana. And to commemorate this important milestone, I want to talk in this video about the origins of archetypal thinking and and where tarot might have come from. But first, let's begin with the origins of archetypal thinking. Archetypal thinking is a way of organizing patterns of human life and experience into larger meta categories. That's at least one dimension of it. The early concept of types or archetypes uh is common to Plato's theory of forms which one of the earliest theories the archetypos or the archetupos uh means first molded. So an archetype is something that existed before uh material forms in Plato's uh understanding. And Plato used this to refer to forms that existed on a different plane of existence often called the realm of forms or the ideal.

[00:03:51]And this is where the ideal inhabited.

[00:03:54]So his theory was that particulars have their origins in the ideal. So for example, there are many types of tables.

[00:04:00]I'm using one now. there tables to eat on, tables to work on, tables for holding uh decorative objects, but they all fall under this broader category of of table under this ideal or idea of of table. And that's one way you can kind of understand begin to understand these these larger categories because characters in literature could also be grouped in this way. You take the stock character of the fool for example.

[00:04:26]There's so many different kinds of literary fools uh that would fall under this category. You've got the simpleton uh the the vulgar fool, the wise fool, the holy fool. And this stock character larger category of the fool can be found across all world literature and mythologies and fables and fairy tales.

[00:04:48]And this kind of thinking would lead to Carl Jung's theory of psychological archetypes of human consciousness. Uh we're not going to deal with that.

[00:04:56]Although in the lecture series, Jung comes up quite a bit. But before ar before analytical psychology made popular the archetypal ideas. Um stock characters and types were a form of literary theory and criticism. Take for example the character sketches of Theoprastus of the 4th century BC. He cataloged an entire list of character types that included the kinds of characters that make up culture. uh he had the boar, the talkative man, the mean man, the late learner. Interesting to think of that as a as a character type, or the coward, etc. And he categorized all these into into a study.

[00:05:36]So when when we study the tarot deck, we encounter a library of stock figures like the fool, the emperor, the lady, wisdom, strength, temperance, and justice, and many others. We also encounter situations such as the tower.

[00:05:51]But the major arcana are really interesting because we don't know where they come from. So let's talk about the speculated origins of the tarot and what we do know. How the tarot originated, no one really knows, but the first known decks do go back as far as uh the 1400s in northern Italy when the 78 card tarot decks were used in a card game called Terrochi. And some of the oldest surviving decks uh were the Viscanti decks which were beautiful um beautifully illustrated and illuminated.

[00:06:24]And then you also have the woodcut style French Marseilles tarot deck. And these decks by the way are the ancestors of the modern playing cards. You know wands became clubs, swords, spades, chalicees became hearts etc. And so they originally contained 22 major arcana or trump cards as they were called and then the 56 minor arcana in of the four suits. Uh and later the the trump cards or the major arcana were were taken out of the deck to simplify it for for different forms of card playing. Um so so eventually the major arcana were omitted but it's those that I think are some of the most interesting uh arcana or mysteries that these decks contain.

[00:07:09]And it really wasn't until the 18th or 19th centuries when French occultists began taking these cards and linking them to archetypes and astrology uh ideas from the cabal uh mapping it onto the the tree and started using them as magical instruments which led to the creation of the most popular deck now.

[00:07:32]Uh and if you know anything about tarot it's probably this deck you've seen the most. It's the writerweight Smith deck of the 1909.

[00:07:39]And this, as I said, it's the most popular. It's designed specifically for oult purposes rather than as playing cards. Uh so we're not really studying uh the writerweight smith. We're studying the Marseilles in my lecture series to go back to the kind of older form there, but we often do have recourse to illustrations from modern decks. It's interesting what people are doing with tarot cards these days. I was recently at the uh I was at the Emily Dickinson Museum and I found an Emily Dickinson themed tarot deck uh which looked really interesting. I didn't buy it but it looked like it had you know some praying mantis in there and the narrow fellow in the grass appeared and u it's kind of interesting to see as a as a form of curated art like a little museum what these decks are becoming now. So that's that's our take and for the purposes of this course the symbolic imagination we've been reading the French Marseilles deck and which you can see here I'll have those on the screen and we've been studying how each of the trumps represent a certain archetypal situation or character in every lecture and we do three things at least three things every lecture one we interpret the symbolic elements of the card the uh characters the objects the situations then We see how the symbol corresponds to patterns and characters in history and in literature. And three, we discuss how each of the arcana can serve as a creative principle for artists, teaching people how to exercise their creative ability. I think it's very useful to use to to use tarot cards instead of going to chat GPT or any other kind of AI tool in order to stimulate creativity or solve problems and plot. you really should be having recourse to your own dreams if you are an artist or if you are a poet or if you know if you're scarce on dreams a tarot deck but just don't ever don't ever use AI for for creativity um never outsource the greatest part of your humanity to this machine and so we're we're also looking at how the cards are lessons for artists and I feel like that's where we're really getting into some unique territory here with these lectures let me show you how it works and I just want to show you the first 22 two of the cards and these are the major trumps. So we've we've divided it into two schema or two schemata. Here's the first one, three paths of seven. You see you have the 22 major arcana there. And then I've also got two paths of 10 with the fool and the world separated from from the path. And I'll show you how how this works. It's almost a story. So one of the ways you can read these these decks is as a hero's journey. And uh by no means the first person to do this. There are books about this. Uh the fool is the hero. He's the first card zero.

[00:10:27]And he progresses through stages of education. Um so he encounters the magician, higher wisdom, uh the mother and the empress, the father and the emperor, the religious figure and the pope, his own heart and the confrontation of love between the two the two women. And then finally the discovery of his own desires and wills and the driving forward in the chariot of that. That's one way to read it.

[00:10:50]Another way that we've been doing in this lecture series is as a form of of the development of the artist. So this first level seven has principles of creativity. So here the magician is the principle of play.

[00:11:05]The homol ludins. You must be creative.

[00:11:07]You must be playful and not critical.

[00:11:10]Then you must appeal to the higher wisdom found in the lady pope symbolized here with the open book. The principle of reflection. the duality represented by the two. Then you move on into nurturing your art as the mother would as the empress who's sitting there um clearly uh seated in reflection and nurturing and your your purpose is to bring the work of art as and to allow it to become what it is and what it wants to be. And then of course the emperor or the father will prepare your manuscript for public service for the public eye for civic speculation and perusal. Uh this is the editing process.

[00:11:49]And then here's the teacher card the pope. Uh it's understanding the principles of the tradition. The pope repres represents tradition more broadly. So when you're creating art you want to be true to yourself and also what the work wants to be. You also want it to be you want it to have the blessing of tradition and that's what the benediction here is represented in the pope uh the lovers card. We move from the pope to the lover where you have the hero here in some kind of a dilemma. This is interesting. I we corresponded this card to that scene in Jane Austin sense and sensibility when poor Edward enters the room with Lucy and Eleanor both in the parlor and and there was this awkward moment where he was split between them. obligation and where his heart really wants to go. And that's exactly what we see in this card here. But for the artist, it means figuring out the separating between what you should do or what you feel like you should do and what you actually want to do and then understanding how that that operates within tradition and then finally driving forward with discipline and will represented by the chariot. So that's one of the ways we've dissected that that scheme there and I think it served us really well for understanding kind of the artist's journey. The physical world is really represented on this first path with um principles of of creativity represented on the second and then going out into the world represented by the third. Uh I won't get into that here, but that's one way to divide it. I want to show you too what's been really interesting about dividing these into tens is that each one has a mirror image. So you go down, you see the playful uh magician play without effort, work without effort, mirrored by strength or force which is forced effort. Here you have the principle of reflection in the lady pope mirrored when you divide it into 10 here by the 12th the hanged man which of course makes sense because it's upside down and understanding the dynamics of duality there. Uh the mother the principle of life is mirrored by card 13 death. The principle of order represented by the civic figure of the emperor who maintains control and keeps things from going into flux is mirrored by the 14th temperance where you have that exchange of energies in the chalice. The pope giving the blessing to the two men below his demonic shadow is a card number 15, the devil, which also informs kind of how that relationship works. Here you have the divine god about to uh the god arrows about to pierce the heart of the lover. And here you have divine judgment piercing the tower.

[00:14:33]Number seven, the chariot.

[00:14:36]Number 17, the star. So instead of controlling the reigns of the horse, you now have uh the influence of the stars.

[00:14:44]I think you're getting the the picture here of how the cards speak to each other depending on how you divide them.

[00:14:49]and they're all helping us understand how to um well, how to see the world and read the world symbolically. It's all we're doing here.

[00:14:59]And I think the stakes are very high.

[00:15:00]Why is it so important to learn how to strengthen your symbolic literacy?

[00:15:04]Whether you're using tarot or using scripture or mythologies or dreams. Why is it so important to learn this? One reason I believe is because we're entering into an era of mass media, mass consumption, political propaganda, and cultural brainwashing. And you need in the coming decades, we're all of us going to need to be able to interpret literature and content on many levels.

[00:15:26]It will increase your awareness of propaganda and manipulation. You will be able to recognize more easily when somebody when somebody is trying to sell you something or to distort the truth or mutilate facts for their own gain by by having exercised this faculty of interpretation. Being able to read symbolically is ultimately going to help you stave off nealism so apparent on the surface of modern existence. When you look around the world and you're constantly uh in America right now, there are a lot of ads on the bus and on the train and for gambling. It's very strange. A lot of gambling ads, a lot of like Candy Crush games and all of these things just to stimulate your senses and to and to distract you from what from what is true and good and beautiful. And if you stare too long into the void of digital culture at the present time, one risks seeing life reduced to consumerism and pointless materialism. Viewing life that way is it's very very depressing.

[00:16:21]It can lead to some very dark patterns of thought. But reading symbolically can help you recover greater meaning in life to see beauty, harmony, truth, and love that much contemporary culture is seeking to crowd out at the moment. And that's the importance of what we do on Vers and on this channel. you all who have been subscribing to my YouTube channel and supporting it um are all participating in this function of close close reading of closely reading literature and if you can learn to see the layers of significance and meaning and beauty in literature you'll be able to do the same for your own lives when you strengthen your ability to identify meaning beauty and significance and truth in books you'll be able to find that in your own life and I think that's what that's basically what we're really doing here um with poetry and it's something that's going to be very important I think now as it's always been and perhaps even more so than ever in the coming decades. So I hope you'll join us on verse for the recorded lectures. They're also live lectures. We have some really great discussion afterwards where we compare artwork and literature and some people bring other tarot decks and we compare the symbology of each. It's very interesting and I think it's actually doing a lot of good to the imagination and it's such great fun. So I hope you've enjoyed this this lecture and I hope to see you there.

[00:17:39]Thanks for watching.