Description
“The traditional Zen attitude toward life is to laugh, live, enjoy and celebrate. Zen is not the denial of life, it is the affirmation of life. It accepts all that is.”
When life seems to be full of doubts and uncertainties, we tend to look for a source of inspiration: what will happen in the future? What about my health, the children? What will happen if I make this decision and not this one? This is how traditional Tarots are often used to satisfy the desire to know about the past and the future. The Osho Zen Tarot focuses on better understanding the here and now. It is a wisdom-based system that says that events in the outside world simply reflect our own thoughts and feelings, even if we ourselves are not sure what those thoughts and feelings are. So it helps us to turn our attention away from external events so that we can find a new clarity of understanding about what is happening in our innermost hearts. The conditions and mental states portrayed by the contemporary images on the cards are all shown to be essentially transitory and transformative.
Based on a Zen Buddhist philosophy, the Osho Zen Tarot is a non-traditional deck of 79 cards. There are many changes to suit the Zen theme, including an extra Major Arcana card for Osho and four suits of fire, clouds, water, and rainbow. The letters cover the whole range of human experiences, from the incredibly beautiful to the ridiculous and mundane.
This Tarot was used as another tool to transmit the teaching of the late Zen Master, Osho. As such, the meanings of the cards are described in a way that makes one feel like a speaker, and often things said about certain concepts or actions seem like extended statements, and statements that many people would not agree with. An example of one such statement can be found in the description of the Lovers’ letter: “Sexuality is very animal. But having said that, it is also safe to say that these statements are based only on subjective belief, like most statements like this. It is understandable, therefore, that not everyone accepts it.
For those who have difficulty with the Osho-Zen Tarot approach to card meanings, the book also includes very nice descriptions of the cards and their meanings in a more general sense. These descriptions act to bring the reader into the letter, often explaining what the figures in the letters are feeling and thinking. In the book, you will find a story about the Buddha that perfectly illustrates the meaning of the cards and serves to inform a little more about Osho’s Zen tradition and the life of Buddha.
The deck itself deserves high praise, as each card is a beautiful work of art. You can easily sit and look at this deck over and over again and not get tired of it. The artwork varies, however, from delicate water-colored pieces to bold geometric designs and then to more cartoon-like images.
The Major Arcana, while keeping the traditional meanings, often use different images. Some are renamed: Magician|The Existence; The Priestess|Inner Voice; The Empress|Creativity; The Emperor|Rebel; The Hierophant|Nothing; The Chariot|Consciousness; The Force|Heart; The Hermit|Solidarity; Wheel of Fortune|Change; Justice|Advancing; The Hanged Man|New Vision; Death|Transformation; The Devil|Confined; The Tower|Ray; The Star|Silence; The Moon|Past Lives; The Sun|Innocence; The Trial|Beyond Illusion and The World|Completion
There is also an extra Major Arcanum, the Master, which shows what can become when we finally break away from the endless cycle of birth-death-rebirth, and find Enlightenment. This master card is illustrated with a painting by Osho himself.
These images are very spiritual and often humorous, conveying the meaning in a rather anecdotal way. For example, the Innocence (Sun) card shows a white-haired man, laughing merrily, totally engrossed in the predatory-looking praying mantis that is perched on his index finger. These images touch the heart, and often one finds oneself “amazed” by the cards!
The Minors are changed considerably. In the Minors the card number can be found inside a small diamond of the color of the clothing: gray (clouds), red (fire), blue (water) or rainbow (rainbow). Like the Major Arcana, the images on the Minor Arcana convey the meaning very well. These images are often very funny, anecdotal, and other times very symbolic.
The court letters also have no titles on the letters. Instead, inside the colored diamond that represents the suit, there is an arrow that points in one of the cardinal directions. North is King, East is Knight, South is Queen, and West is Page.
It also contains a 176-page (English) book. Both are contained inside a cardboard box.
Tarot Sizes
Some authors and publishers have chosen to have several tarot sizes of this same copy. They are: Pocket, medium or standard and large or deluxe. They differ between them only in the size of the cards and the guide book. There are also kits that are a more enhanced build of this same deck.
We can compare a Tarot Kit to a home computer and the other tarot sizes to a Tablet or Mobile Phone. As its name implies, a kit is much more complete. The boxes are stronger and more robust, brings a larger and more complete book with images and even card release schemes, the tarot story and more. Cards are usually the same size as the average or standard tarot, except for some authors. When you buy a Kit, you buy a more sophisticated product of this tarot. It is suitable for those who want to understand this tarot in depth or for those who are starting in the art of perceiving energy and messages through cards.
Language: French
Author: Osho & Ma Deva Padma
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