Through the Eyes of the Unusual: Magic, Poetry, and Tarot

• Main Authors: Rex Chih-Hsiang Li, 李志翔
• Other Authors: Kurt Cline
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/u63tuf

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 應用英文系碩士班 === 103 === Science, as we know is a process of processing ideas about things that leads to a solid fact. Wisdom, contained in various of the world’s systems of magic, is a way to accumulate self-knowledge, and to interact with the world in a distinctively meaningful manner. Magic represents a continual interaction between inner and outer dimensions of human experience. Science is the dominant paradigm of our modern age, but, like all paradigms have built-in limitations that are exacerbated as it reaches what philosopher Jean Gebser calls the deficient mode. Magic, as I am using the term is a form of Wisdom which is essentially experiential. Of course, science also requires experiences, but these experiences are oriented more toward an outer reality rather than an inner one. Obviously the truth must lie in a fusion of inner and outer, but this is also a movement that classical science has largely ignored. Magic might be thought of as an incipient form of science. Both may be quantified in numbers, for example. The mathematics of Kepler has, however, a different truth-value to it than does the kaballah or tarot. Tarot presents a system much like science. But there are some things that we cannot finalize conceptualized in the kabbalistic meaning of the cards and depicted in their symbolic representations; in other words, there is no unchangeable result to rely on as with science. This is because in the world of magic, we face different kinds of situations and must seek not only new kinds of answers but even new forms of questions; science, on the other hand, is a solid fact that must stay solid.