Chance Encounters
A Tarot-Guided Tour Through
OPUS Collections
Presents
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About OPUS and its Collections
OPUS Archives and Research Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve, develop and extend to the world the archival collections and libraries of eminent scholars in the fields of depth psychology, mythology and the humanities. OPUS is a “living archive” and offers scholarships, research grants, educational programs, community events, and research access to the collections. The Archives are free and open to the public.
Archives and Manuscript Collections of:
Joseph Campbell | Marija Gimbutas | James Hillman
Marion Woodman | Christine Downing
Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Joseph Balch Wheelwright
Katherine Sanford | Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig
Tony Joseph | Jill Mellick
Rare Book Collections of:
William Henry Barnes | John Sanford
Chance Encounters Exhibits
With this mini exhibit, OPUS is engaging the archetypal dimension of our archives through an in-house divination artform. A single Major Arcana card was drawn by chance from one of the tarot decks personally owned by Joseph Campbell. This card served as a guide for our Curator to select items from OPUS’ collections that relate meaningfully to the card’s theme, images, and prevailing interpretations.
The Deck
The deck selected for this drawing is the well-known Tarot de Marseilles, an influential deck design likely originating in 15th-century Italy, widely-used as playing cards in 17-18th century France, and consulted ever since in practices of cartomancy. Campbell’s deck was produced in the 1960s by the French card manufacturer Grimaud. In the 1990s, esoteric filmmaker and tarot master, Alejandro Jodorowsky, collaborated with a descendent of the Camoin printmaking family to reconstruct the Tarot de Marseille to resemble its original design and color scheme.
Having sorted out the Major Arcana, our Curator pulls the first card
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The Fool
Tarot de Marseilles
Our first guide through the Archives will be…
The Card
The initiatory card of our series – though selected completely by chance – could hardly feel more predestined for this first draw from Campbell’s deck. The Fool (Le Mat), stands apart from the rest of the deck for being the only unnumbered card of the tarot; he is “card zero.” In tarot card games, The Fool is the valuable rogue card, playable independently of the usual rules, and a likely ancestor of the modern Joker card. Adorned with bells, he is sometimes considered a jester, a beggar, pilgrim, madman, or some combination of all four. He is certainly a venturer of some sort – pictured mid-stride, carrying a staff and bindle, and goaded (or perhaps guided) along by a small dog. The Fool’s eyes gaze outward and upward. Though he occupies no set position in the sequence of the deck, he is often imagined as the final or, most commonly, the starting card of the Major Arcana.
It is this starting position that inspired Campbell to see The Fool as a hero at the beginning of a journey. The monomythic pattern of the hero’s journey as charted by Campbell goes roughly as follows: the hero is called to adventure; departs from his familiar home; encounters various mentors and challengers in his quest into and through the unknown; obtains a boon and finally returns home to bestow the achievement of this gift to his community. As Campbell writes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder [...] the hero is symbolic of that divine creature and redemptive image which is hidden within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life.” (30, 39).
The Card – continued
We may relate to aspects of the hero in our personal journeys and to the stage of The Fool in our initial steps into uncertain pursuits. The fool-hero is the naive initiate, nomadic seeker, or curious protagonist, who will proceed through the transformative byways of the Arcana and the course of life itself. Indeed, before Campbell popularized the notion of the hero’s journey, tarot divination practitioners introduced the Major Arcana progression as the “Fool’s Journey.” Through the archetypal encounters along this progression, our fool’s perspective deepens beyond itself and into compassionate and purposeful relationships to The World (the final card of the Major Arcana) – a world which continually rebirths new fools and new journeys.
As Jodorowky writes in The Way of Tarot, Le Mat is a principle of liberation and/or flight, depending on the manner in which it approaches other cards and the initiatory passage through mystery. Le Mat “represents the original boundless energy, total freedom, madness, disorder, chaos, or even the fundamental creative urge [...] The Fool evokes an enormous burst of energy. Wherever he goes, he brings this vital impulse with him” (121, 123).
The Archives
With such a wide array of materials housed at OPUS, it is easy to be inspired to explore and make connections between the collections of our eminent scholars. Our Curator used the card she pulled to select items based on her associations with its various meanings and images. The items that follow may not be directly related to tarot, but were all part of her journey through the collections and illustrates a path of discovery available to all who visit our Archives.
Archives and Manuscript Collections:
Joseph Campbell | Marija Gimbutas | James Hillman
Marion Woodman | Christine Downing
Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Joseph Balch Wheelwright
Katherine Sanford | Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig
Tony Joseph | Jill Mellick
Rare Book Collections:
William Henry Barnes | John Sanford
James Hillman
Page of an edited draft from James Hillman’s 1967 Eranos lecture, "Senex-Puer: An Aspect of the Historical-Psychological Present"
One of Hillman’s greatest mythological fascinations was the relationship between archetypal figurations of the puer aeternus (the hopeful, instinct-driven eternal child) and senex (the wisened, order-driven old man). On this page, Hillman describes the puer-senex configuration as materialized positively with excitement, eros, and a sense of meaning in seeking, questing, and questioning. In the negative version of their configuration, however, Hillman describes the puer-senex relationship as akin to an early frost on a spring flower or an abundance of activity without meaningful purpose.
Christine Downing
Portion of the first page of Christine Downing’s lecture notes for her 2012 talk “Buen Camino: Walking the Way, The Outer and Inner Journey”
On this page, Downing begins the story of her journey along the Spanish Camino pilgrimage that she took with her wife, River Malcolm – a 350 mile walk undertaken while Downing was in her 80s. While acknowledging that her Camino was an experience of transformative personal significance, Downing emphasizes from the start that the Camino – as a journey undertaken by millions and often repeatedly – is a walk in the steps of the archetypal.
Marija Gimbutas
Photograph of a dog on a vase, probably Cucuteni B culture, c. 3800-3600 BCE. From the symbol research archives of Marija Gimbutas.
To seek animals in OPUS is to turn to Hillman’s work on animal dreams or to Marija Gimbutas’ vast symbol research archives of Goddess-related imagery. As Gimbutas describes similar pictorial designs in her book, Language of the Goddess, a primary theme of Cucuteni B vases is the image of a dog or dogs in conjunction with crescent or full moons. Jumping dogs, such as this one, are thought by Gimbutas to stimulate the regeneration of plants, animals, and the phases of the moon – an “ancient symbolic connection [that] comes down to us today in the potent image of a wild dog howling at the full moon” (233).
The relationship between dogs with the moon and themes of death and regeneration is richly elaborated in the Greek goddess Hekate’s accompaniment and announcement by dogs. “In ancient Greece,” Gimbutas writes, “dogs howled at the approach of Hekate, a nightmarish lunar goddess. The hound is her animal epiphany; dogs were sacrificed to Hekate […] As with his Mistress, the hound was an overseer of cyclical time. In addition, dogs were guardians of life and very influential in the awakening of slumbering vegetation and in stimulating the rise of plant life” (197).
Marion Woodman
Ornament of a leg, figurine of Ganesha, and clown pin from Marion Woodman’s ornate collection of personal keepsakes.
These items were selected to amplify imagistically and playfully The Fool’s qualities of jesteriness, stepping forward, and the encounter of obstacles along the way – whatever that way may be. The elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesha, is known for the myths of his divine childhood and is often invoked at new beginnings.
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