Tarot for Social Transformation

Workspaces LOTE4 “The Stewardship”
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We are co-creating a Tarot for Social Transformation, and we invite you to contribute.

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The idea at it’s core is to collect the Archetypes, Behaviours, Technologies, and Memes that are Transforming our world, and to use them to build a story of Positive Social Transformation. As well as telling this story the cards can be used for Brainstorming, Forecasting, Generating new lines of intellectual inquiry, and mapping change within your community.

Why the Tarot?

The Tarot has at it’s core a story of Personal Transformation – the Fools Journey. The Archetypes the Fool meets and events that befall the Fool on his way result in his personal growth and spiritual transformation. Despite this linear narrative however, the shuffling of the cards, or conscious use, combined with the opportunity for interpretation of the images, allows for multiple narratives and paths to emerge. The cards offer a point of provocation for us to create patterns and pathways for Social Transformation.

Many stories are being told of our future. These Meta Narratives are mostly either of Technological Salvation, Financial Collapse, Ecological Destruction, or outright Armageddon. It is necessary for us to find new stories, stories that are both positive and inclusive if we are to create a world worth inhabiting.

Date: 2014-09-29 15:20:00 - 2014-09-29 15:20:00, Europe/London Time.

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YES!

I’ve been thinking about this LOTS too over in London.

From what I understand there’s a bit of a lineage from Hermetic tarot icons, through Jungian archetypes and into Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” which, whilst controversial, has huge cultural impact on the stories we tell, values we hold and lives we live today.

I’m interested in a similar perspective, in how we allow and appropriate from wisdom & traditions that are common and useful to inform and shape the decisions about the kind of work we do.

The workplace and meaningful work are disconnected entities right now, with Social Innovation as a collective subculture being the only real consciousness making gradual steps towards amending this as far as I know.

This isn’t a “everyone is ignorant and should do things differently” post - this is a “everyone recognises deeply that we could be living and working better, but the dialogue and tools to do so remain unsurfaced and held with deep suspicion”.

The citygame I’m working to design right now is themed heavily on the RWS Tarot, and is intended to be played IN or around the workplace (beginning to start testing in London).

I’d love to be at your session, or even meet before LOTE to discuss a bit more about this project and how you want it to develop.

Excited.

MK

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Stewarding our future

Welcome on board, Ernest, and thank you for bringing up such an intriguing way to think about the future… I’m in!

You might also want to check out Emanuele’s session - speaking of narratives, he thinks looking into the collective memory and histories might also help build new cultural stories and identities…

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It’s interesting that you want to create a new version of an existing system.

Tools shape the way you think, as the limits of the tools you have, defines the range of range of possible operations that you can do. “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a thumb…” :))

As with physical tools, mental tools are even more so, as their limits defines the limits of the possible frames-of-reference that you can conceptualise.

Working with the tarot requires working within the frame of reference that the tarot has at it’s base. The modern day equivalents are basic extensions of Jung’s work, which in turn can be traced back to the classic western alchemical elements.

Have you looked at any of the work by Austin Osman Spare, Jan Fries, Ray Sherwin, Phil Hines, and Alan Moore?

Spare created some fascinating work on creating “Alphabets of Desire” from scratch.

Ray Sherwin’s book, “The Book of Results”, is a classic. You can find it here, http://www.jaqdhawkins.co.uk/Library.php

“Helrunar” by Jan Fires, is an excellent thesis on Runic systems, and describes his personal journey with this frame-of-reference.

Phil Hines is an excellent geezer, whose work you can find both here, http://www.philhine.org.uk/ and here, http://enfolding.org/

As for Alan Moore, if you haven’t read Promethia, go do so, now… :))

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