Lisa Freinkel Tishman - Mindful Tarot: Bring a Peace-Filled, Compassionate Practice to the 78 Cards

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Mindful Tarot: Bring a Peace-Filled, Compassionate Practice to the 78 Cards 2019 by Lisa Freinkel Tishman, PhD.

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First e-book edition 2019

E-book ISBN: 9780738758534

Cover design by Shannon McKuhen

Cover art is from Universal Tarot Premium courtesy Lo Scarabeo, Torino, Italy. No further reproduction permitted.

Illustrations from Universal Tarot 2001 by Roberto de Angelis, Tarot of Marseille, and Tarot Sola Busca: Ferrara XV Century are used with permission from Lo Scarabeo, Torino, Italy. No further reproduction allowed.

Images from the Visconti Tarot deck are used courtesy of Lo Scarabeo, Torino, Italy. No further reproduction permitted.

Line art from A. E. Waites The Pictorial Key to the Tarot , public domain.

Translation of the Rumi poem The Guest House used by permission, Coleman Barks.

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Names: Freinkel Tishman, Lisa, author.

Title: Mindful tarot : bring a peace-filled, compassionate practice to the 78

cards / by Lisa Freinkel Tishman, PhD.

Description: First Edition. | Woodbury : Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., 2019. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019001231 (print) | LCCN 2019005658 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738758534 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738758442 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Tarot. | Mindfulness (Psychology)Miscellanea.

Classification: LCC BF1879.T2 (ebook) | LCC BF1879.T2 F745 2019 (print) | DDC

133.3/2424dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001231

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

for Ezra

take what comes,

love covers all

& in memory of Homer

CONTENTS

List of

Preface:

Part One:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Part Two:

Chapter 8:

: Beginners Mind

: Alignment

: Unknowing

: Unfolding

: Structure

: Holding Truth

: Becoming Whole

: Harnessing Desire

: Facing What Scares Us

: Waiting for Light

: Turning Over

: Making Right

: Renunciation

: Rising and Falling

: Reconciliation

: Enfettered

: Ignition

: Faith

: The Depths

: Restoration

: The Trumpet Call

: Letting Go

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Images

All cards in this book are from Lo Scarabeos Universal Tarot by Roberto de Angelis except for the images on (Marseille Tarot).

Preface

A Life of Largesse

I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass

W hat if we could live, in every moment, a life of bounty, openheartedness, joy, and generosity? What if, despite our life circumstances, despite our individual challenges with health, wealth, relationship, and family, we could live with ease and intimacy? What if we could live with hope for our planets future, despite twenty-first-century difficulties such as climate change, political demagoguery, and global conflict? What if our hearts could be made tender by the suffering of others while we nonetheless became engaged and energized by the positive opportunities unfolding all around us?

These what-ifs are not idle questions. They are invitations to you , dear reader.

Theres a wonderful old-fashioned word for the kind of generous, easeful disposition of mind I am describing: largesse . The word means openhandedness and bigheartedness. In fact, it literally means adopting a big outlook on life. Largesse derives from the word large , and so in a sense we could say that largesse means living large in the best of all possible ways. It means living from the standpoint of the Big Self: the self with a large S that is aware of its interconnectedness to all things. This is the Big Self that the nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman describes in his poem Song of Myself:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

For Whitman, the individual self is large because it shares in all of creation. It is composed of, and decomposes into, every atom of this good earth. There is that lot of me and all so luscious, Whitman exclaims, exulting in a life lived in intimacy with the whole planet and all its historywith the whole lot of living creatures, human cultures, rocks and minerals, sun and stars and moon. Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy, he declares, pledging allegiance to the wide world around him.

What if Tarot, when practiced mindfully, could teach us to live with this much joy and bounty? What if it could help us turn toward the world, even in the midst of confusion and trouble, embracing what is with clarity, with love, and with a sense of possibility?

This book invites you to embrace your life, yourself, writ large!

It invites you to embrace the world.

Will you join me on a journey of Mindful Tarot?

A Complete Practice

Mindful Tarot is a complete practice: a practice that is as much about learning to live a more abundant and mindful life as it is about deepening our connection to that wondrous gallery of 78 archetypes, the Tarot.

A complete practice. What do I mean by that? First and foremost, I am signaling the integrity of this work: the integrity born from a path dedicated to integration. (Those two words, integrity and integration , come from the same root: the Latin word for wholeness .) I am inviting you onto a path of practice that has the capacity to transform your life one breath and one card at a time. But, perhaps paradoxically, I am also suggesting that in an important sense this transformation will change nothing . Mindful Tarot is a complete practice because it recognizes that this moment, where we are right now , is already complete. In this moment, nothing is lacking. We dont need to do anything or fix anything. Mindful Tarot is a practice that helps us live in the midst of that completeness.