In another episode of my ‘Cards with McGilchrist’, I see the following:
“Perhaps as the innocence of the adult, where it is achieved, is greater than the innocence of a child, though bought at the cost of much painful awareness. … “But such innocence is rare. Age has a chance of bringing it only if we are very lucky or very disciplined. … an innocence in what one might call their vulnerability. Through it alone they [certain poets] are enabled to achieve an inspired quality which could be mistaken by the foolish, at times, for foolishness. The price of their achievement is that they must make themselves open, even to ridicule, rather than shelter behind a self-protective carapace of ironic knowingness and cynicism.”
How might the above expand one’s perception of The Fool card in Tarot (image is Shimmering Veil Tarot)?
“To accept that some people will always be exceptional is uncomfortable for us. Instead of seeing great art as an indication of what humanity can achieve, it comes to be seen as an expression of what another being, a potential competitor, has achieved. But a society is, or should be, an organic unity, not an assemblage of bits that strive with one another. It is as if every organ in the body wanted to be the head.”
Is it just me or does this reflect in some ways the 5 of Wands in Tarot (image is Intuitive Tarot)?
“Our relationship with the beautiful is different from our relationship with things we desire. Desire is unidirectional, purposive, ultimately acquisitive. In the special case of living beings, desire can be mutual, of course, so when I say ‘unidirectional’ I do not mean, obviously, that it cannot be reciprocated. I mean that it is a movement towards a goal … In the reciprocated situation, there are two unidirectional lines of flow, in opposite directions, like arrows that pass in mid-air.”
And what about this paragraph’s expression as it might relate to the 8 of Wands in Tarot (image is Spirit Keepers Tarot)?
“You could say, to sum up a vastly complex matter in a phrase, that the brain’s left hemisphere is designed to help us ap-rehend — and thus manipulate — the world; the right hemisphere to com-prehend it — see it all for what it is.”
And here, I mean, it’s all too easy to see in Tarot a facet of The Magician (image is Necronomicon Tarot) in the left hemisphere with The High Priestess (image is Circle of Doors Tarot) in the right hemisphere, yes?
[Again, to be clear, the hemisphere hypothesis is both physical AND metaphorical, since the brain ‘does not necessarily give rise to consciousness’ but rather receives or transduces it.]
As I finished “The Master and His Emissary” (the first three quotes are from that book) and moved into Iain McGilchrist’s second tome “The Matter With Things” (the final quote is from this one), I was not at all disappointed. You know how sometimes a ‘sequel’ can be a let-down? Definitely not this time — shaping up to be another brilliant book of across-realms wisdom and insight.
Of course, once we allow and open to a truly holistic experience of life — what we read and watch as well as what we know through our own senses — this takes us to vast worlds of perception. Beautiful!
Barefoot On The Gaia Path 