In her book The Passion of Isis and Osiris, Jean Houston discusses Hieroglyphic Thinking and Writing, elaborating on how the Egyptian hieroglyphs were unlike our modern abstract writing system. In our abstract writing system, a letter or word is generally a digital sequence of imposed form and sound to transmit a memorized meaning. The letters and words derive meaning through memorization and redundancy of usage. In contrast, the hieroglyphs were analogical, figurative, phonetic, and symbolic all at once, and so a word connoted multiple layers of meaning. In addition to particular glyphs, the true beauty and richness of the language occurs when glyphs are used in combination. I raise this point, because the Tarot de Marseille is really to me hieroglyphic, and it is perhaps today’s hieroglyph system. Additionally, the Camoin Method appears to tap into the hieroglyphic nature of the Tarot. We only have to discern the meaning of the glyphs for our modern world and within the context of any question. For example, the Egyptian word for soul is Ba (soul or spiritual personality) and is depicted as a bird or hawk with a human head,
, obviously analogous to a bird that resides in both the sky and the earth, essentially taking flight, or resting (in the body), moving freely in the underworld and "overworld". But, Ba was also used in words to connote the unique character of objects, or in its plural form the reputation or powers of a God, its Bau. It can connote the appearance or nature of something, its essence. So, we have one glyph, but multiple nuances. Even changing the sequence of glyphs presented new ideas: Ais (
) is the Brain as a physical mass of tissue. Then, sequenced in reverse, Sia or wisdom or the perceptive mind (
) connotes the wing of spirit inspiring the human eye. While the glyphs certainly denote the phonetic sounds--that is to say, each glyph can signify a sound that combines to form the word, A-i-s or S-i-a-- they also pictorially connote the meaning, as we have an eye, human, falcon, and a wing, all analogous to the Mind, Consciousness, etc. Moreover, the different nuances of Brain or Wisdom are conveyed in the different sequencing in each word. The Tarot de Marseille, in particular, lends itself well to this hieroglyphic system of interpretation because of its apparent childish simplicity and primitiveness. I say apparent, referring again to Egyptian hieroglyphic language, because for some years some Egyptologists condescendingly understood the Egyptian writing system as a lovely, but puerile, graphical system, as if Egyptians went around communicating a kind of Ooga Booga thought structure on their walls: "Me Tarzan, You Jane" in graffiti. Yet, R.S. Schwaller de Lubicz discovered that there were tremendous dimensions to the hieroglyph writing (and Egyptian thinking in general). Likewise, it seems that the Tarot de Marseille, in some corners of the Tarot market (rather large corners, in fact) has been falsely considered to be an old, primitive, and dusty Tarot now subsumed by the apparently more sophisticated Tarots of modernity.
Almost at our final destination now...
Certainly, Egyptian hieroglyphs have been translated (or perhaps transliterated is better) by some scholars in a digital and literalist fashion, rendering a scholarly, but sterile language that loses its nuances. So too, Tarot reading has largely been presented to the public, as a translated (or transliterated) in this denotative fashion, with each card signifying a particular keyword meaning, placed into a keyword position, and then a literalistic answer results. But, this way of reading the Tarot loses the connotation, the poetry, the pun, and the depth of meaning that is conveyed in the analogies, especially those associations that result from the nuanced relationships that occur with cards in proximity or relationship to one another, or in how the cards sequence in a particular ordering. I think the Camoin Method capitalizes on this hieroglyphic system inherent in the Tarot (de Marseille), because this language is achieved through regards, pairs, contrasts, similitude, optical analogies, and so forth. As well, the narrative is allowed to unfold through mechanics inherent to the structure of the Tarot itself.
This could be an entire thesis for a paper. But, I thought I’d share the flotsam and jetsam of my mind.
Now back to bed to dream of sky goddesses and myrrh and the Nile.
