Tarot Discussion - Talking About “The Rebel” card from OSHO deck

 

 

Many people use the Osho tarot deck or the iPhone app to help get feedback on their lives or to help them find a suitable meditation topic for the day.

A while ago, I wrote about THE REBEL card.

Tarot Discussion – What Does Mankind Need to Watch for In Feb 2010 

 

A reader emailed me with some questions about The REBEL card.  With her permission, I am using her name and repeating the email conversation.  I am grateful to Dianne for asking the question, and for allowing me to share this discussion.

Namaste.

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Email from Dianne:

I read you piece on The Rebel of Osho's Zen Tarot.  Thank you for your site.

I love Osho's stuff and his Tarot set too!

I am rather confused however about how The Rebel relates to its equivalent card in traditional tarot, The Emperor.

I did a reading of 5 cards:  Situation,  Past Influences, How I really feel, What others are thinking, environment etc, Probably outcome.

Under Control as my initial card for 'others view'etc, I added three more cards, and one of them was The Rebel, the final one.  The others were Guilt and Politics.

Given the situation, question which was actually about my previous therapist with whom things went rather awry and resulted in the mental health authority treating me quite

Harshly, I asked the question:   "Will there be an effective seeking for closure from DW (the therapist within the mental healht organisation).. in the near future?"  ( I have felt very traumatized by events, and victimized)...

Can you help me make sense of The Rebel, as it seems so different from the Emperor?  To me the Emperor is very controlling, restricting, and full of rules and structures, whereas the Rebel has a much more positive feel.  As it relates to the people who have caused so much trauma to me, how can I see the Rebel as pertinent?

Thank you.

 

Judy’s Response:

Dear Dianne,

This response has taken me a while to do.  Your email made me think, a lot! :)  I believe that therapists are teachers, like all the other people in our lives... including me.  Teachers help us to learn about boundaries, I think. 

First, REBEL comes up a lot for me.  Rebel is about getting out of being controlled by Organizations, Religion, Politics, and other people.  Rebel is about being your own person... owning your issues, events in your life, and the drama in your life.  It is about "seeing" the lesson in each event.  While it is lovely to say that an event is not your fault, and we are victims of time and place and circumstances - staying the victim will leave you to be controlled by others.

The OSHO Tarot is not to be a match to a traditional tarot other than the number of cards and the similarity in layouts.  Each Tarot deck with its particular background is about possibilities.  For me, different decks are like layers of understanding.  If decks were ranked one out of ten, with zero being a low ranking and ten being the highest, I would say the WAITE deck is a two, and the OSHO deck is a six.   Remember that Tarot is also a form of teaching.  It is to expand our thinking, not to control our lives.  Sometimes, it points us on the path that we need to travel.

I thought that your question was quite relevant to the energy going on right now, and I would like to share your question and my answer on the blog.  Do I have your permission to do that if I leave out your name?  If you want me to include your name, I will.