Blow your mind

TAROT Interpolation
By Sally Bain

It's no secret that the Tantric Dakini Oracle - created by the super talented Penny Slinger and Nik Douglas - is a favorite deck, having engaged it in practice for some fifteen years. So I find this the perfect blog post to officially introduce you to the Tarot influence in my work. It is, along with Peter Rosson Art, the backbone of r and b creative individual - visual processes, products and services. In many ways I still call the Tarot home.

What I love about the Tantric Dakini Oracle focus is the text featured at the bottom of each of the photomontage images. They offer the client an unusual interpretive experience that's interruptive in nature - what I call 'Tarot interpolation'. Indeed in certain consultative moments they've been known to 'blow' the beholders mind, all of which prepares the way for deeper psych(ic) - meaning psych 'IC' or psych 'in charge' (Bain 2011) - exploration. I'll begin this post with a brief introduction to the the deck. From there I'll offer a definition of 'interpolation' and its application, in a Tarot context, followed by it's influence on the ART Oracle - in particular, The New (Moon) Project Development (ask the ART Oracle), its online application.

The Tantric Dakini Oracle features sixty-five cards. This set of stunning, symbolically rich, surrealist images act as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious mind. In Tarot practice, the images are said to mirror the psychological attitude of the person (1979, p10). This is due to quality of the overall symbol which gives access to the 'inner' (psychological) workings and outer (sociological) situation of the client. The capacity of the Tantric Dakini Oracle to engage the viewer in a dialogue on self and world is magnified by the 'interpolating' quality of the text featured at the bottom of each card.
 
 "Interpolation" from the Oxford Dictionary, in its simplest definition, means "to insert (something of a different nature) into something else" (2011). In this way the words interrupt the interpretive space between the viewing of the image and the processing of the symbol with an unexpected psych(ic) experience. They're partly descriptive, to be sure, acting as titles in the traditional use of the deck, but they're much more than a bridge to the image. In practice the text engages the viewer with the psychological material contained in their response to the symbol. (Keep in mind that in Tarot we engage the symbol, of which the visual art is only a part.) For example, when No 40. Blow Your Mind (the featured card) is selected - at a party when I'm roving the room, for example - the viewer/client invariably has an exclamation moment. 'Blow your mind', they read out loud as they reach over and actually take the card out of my hands (often without asking), laughing as they read those three little words, 'blow...your...mind'. This is the text interpolation doing its job, getting the clients attention.

From there the actual dialogue begins. Like I said, my process doesn't engage the client in a contemplation of the image or have it trigger an intuitive visualization, well not specifically; rather, it begins a conversation with the psyche. For example, after the client says 'blow your mind' and takes the card out of my hand, they play with the image - more deeply than they do with images without the interpolative text - holding it up close and jumping into interpretation. 'Is that a brain', they might say,' What's with the nuclear bomb cloud?, for example. 'What do you think?' I might eventually say, shifting from the symbol to their life. It's then only a 'hop, skip and a jump' away from their psyche, where anything can happen. Eventually they say something like, 'I think that maybe I shock people sometimes...I wonder what that's about..."Aha", or 'gotcha' as I prefer. You see it's the life profiler's job to access shadow material and interpolation is one ways to get into those difficult corners of the psyche - that, and weaving lots of fun through the process. We're at a party, after all.

Try it for yourself, right now. Double click on the Tarot symbol, above, and see what you process first. It may or may not be the text, but whatever it won't be far behind because the words tend to dominate the visual. Read it out loud. Stay with it a minute. (It can be subtle). Now, describe the picture. This will activate the symbol and begin a conversation with your psyche. Write down or record your impressions. Much will be meaningless, of course, but something - akin to a Freudian slip - may just reveal some never before seen, or fully processed shadow material. File your notes and/or simply leave the experience in your memory and let it inform you - it's a lot like the way we process a dream - for as long as it does.

I've found Tarot Interpolation to be exclusive to the Tantric Dakini Oracle. Traditional decks have titles; the Major Arcana, for example, has The Magician, The Hanged Man, Temperance and then there are decks which feature one word descriptions, such as the Thoth Tarot or the contemporary Osho Zen Tarot. The cards in these decks, however, do not feature this interruptive quality, well not to any great degree. This is not to say that every card in the Tantric Dakini Oracle has an interpolative effect - There's a basic Joker, Mercury and High Priestess, for example - however, enough feature texts like Totally Bananas, Wave of Bliss, Dangerous Pussy/the past, Cosmic Carrot, Magic Carpet and Just Passing Through, that do. These texts have a popular art quality, like a captivating line in a pop song. They're not purely descriptive; they're Text ART.
 
I employed Text ART in the r and b creative individual ART Oracles. The featured Word ART is a translation of Rosson’s own provocative (and much loved) use of text – painting titles and visual words imbedded in the body of the artworks. I intend to discuss this further in a follow up essay so it's enough, for now, to give you a link to an example. The New (Moon) Project Development (ask the ART Oracle) (Rosson and Bain 2009). You can begin to explore the interpolative text at the bottom of each card. The genius of the ART Oracle is that the title is embedded within the image, allowing for the text ART to do its interruptive thing.

Interpolative text is used in visual ART all the time, (Rosson was really good at it, though he didn't call it that). Yet in the Tarot consultation the interruptive text offers a unique, and most importantly effective profiling or coaching  experience. The next step is to develop more decks that make use of interpolation, which like dynamite can blow open the entrance to the psyche and illuminate something of the cultural-social impact upon its worldview.

Sally Bain. Copyright 1996-2005-2011.

Reference List

Bain S (2005) Psychosocial Trilogies (course notes), r and b creative Individual, Sydney

Bain S, Rosson P (2009-2011) http://randbcreativeindividual.melbourneitwebsites.com/page/asktheartoracle.html
Bain S (2011) Structural Integrity (Si), viewed August 7th 2011. http://www.integralworld.net/bain1.html

Douglas N and Slinger P (1979) Tantric Dakini Oracle. Destiny Books, Vermont, preface xiii.

Oxford Dictionaries online, viewed January 24th 2011,http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0417590#m_en_gb0417590

Rosson P (2010, 2008) ART Oracle. r and b creative individual. Sydney

Wilber, Ken (2006), Integral Spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world, Integral Books, Boston & London.