I. Origin of the Osho Zen Tarot deck Major Arcana Osho Zen Tarot Deck Minor Arcana Osho Zen Tarot Deck 1. Water Suit Osho Zen Tarot Cards 2. Clouds Suit Osho Zen Tarot Cards 3. Fire Suit Osho Zen Tarot Cards 4. Rainbows Suit Osho Zen Tarot Cards

The Osho Zen Tarot deck, illustrated by Ma Deva Padma (1947), is one of the decks considered to be quite challenging to perceive and interpret. However, Tarot readers will feel somewhat answered if carefully studying the accompanying manual. Osho Zen Tarot deck is based on the teachings of the late Zen master Osho (December 11, 1931 January 19, 1990), whose real name is Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, after which he called himself Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in the 1970s and 1980s, and eventually took the name Osho in 1989. Throughout his lifetime, he was seen as a mystic teacher, guru, and spiritual master. Osho left a huge number of works with hundreds of books and countless lectures, helping people understand clearly the truth, clarifying things that no one has ever touched before.

Osho argued that meditation is not only a practicebut a state of awareness maintained in each moment an overall awareness thatawakens individuals from the sleep of mechanical response controlled by beliefand expectation. He applied Western psychotherapy in the stages of preparationfor meditation to make people aware of their own mental and emotional patterns.

Therefore, the meaning of the cards gives you thefeeling of being taught, and often the profound statements about specificconcepts or actions. But not everyone agrees with these concepts.

This deck is designed in a liberal style in order toattain enlightenment through meditation. While traditional Tarot deck, which isRider-Waite, aims to satisfy the desire to search for the past and the futureand answers questions like What will happen in the future?, What will myhealth and children look like?, or What if I choose one option over theother?, etc, Osho Zen Tarot focuses on the task of helping readers andquerents enhance their perception of the present. The similarity between theOsho Zen Tarot and the Rider-Waite Tarot is that it is not intended to makepredictions. It is a system based on the enlightenment of Zen, which helps usto examine external events to clarify what is happening inside us.Additionally, impressive images help you blend in with your sensitivity,intuition, compassion, creativity, acceptance, and personality.

The Osho Zen Tarot consists of 79 cards: 78 cards asusual and the Master card added, each containing a picture of the card and anaccompanying reading. This section includes a quotation from Oshos works and aparaphrase of the author illustrating this deck.

Overall, it represents the ultimate transcendence ofthe individual ego in enlightenment and the illustrated 176-page manual.Besides, each Osho Zen Tarot card has an explanation of the illustration aswell as insight into its meaning. The manual also provides some spreadsheetsand a glossary of symbols.

Somewhat helpful to the Tarot readers, theaccompanying manual describes in great detail the cards as well as theirmeaning in common sense. These descriptions lead Tarot readers to immerse in thecard and interpret the images in the card with feeling and reflection. Thisapproach can be found to be a big help when reading cards and discovering whatcard images are trying to convey. Usually, in the manual, you will find a storyabout Buddha, more perfectly describing the meaning of the card, and leavingsome information about the Zen culture of Osho and the life of Buddha.

Osho Zen Tarot deck itself is a brilliant piece of art, paired with 79 cards. It is also one of the few Tarot decks purchased mainly because of its high artistry. Still, the art used in the deck is quite odd, from the use of watercolors to featured geometric designs.

The cards in the Major Arcana are still in the traditional order and meaning with Zen-themed visual representation. However, the card name was changed as follows:

The additional card in the Major Arcana of Osho ZenTarot the Master shows what people can become when they escape the eternalcycle of birth and death (the journey from Fool to Completion) and find theEnlightenment. It is not surprising that the Master card is depicted with aportrait of Zen master Osho. Besides, this Master card, based on the meaningshared by the author, is not the master above others but the image of a masterof himself, who mastered his own mind and is unaffected or enslaved by theoutside world. The master does not teach us anything but only a reflection forus to look into it and realize ourselves. Only when understanding, one canfully comprehend Osho Zen Tarot. If intentionally eliminated this card, thisdeck would immediately lose part of its meaning.

The new name of the Major card will be quite unusualif you do not look through the image. It is the images in this card that conveythe meaning and complement the name of cards in a great way. Images used arevery sacred and anecdotally express their meanings. For example, the cardInnocence (Sun) depicts a silver-haired man smiling wittily with a deep gaze onthe green mantis perched on his index finger. This image is like touching thesoul, and people often find themselves through such cards.

The Minor Arcana cards of Osho Zen Tarot aresignificantly changed. The card name, for example, the Five of Swords, is notshown on the card, but instead is a keyword that conveys meaning on it.

The four suits: Fire, Water, Clouds, and Rainbow,are equivalent to Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. On the Minor cards, youcan see the card number according to the color of the suit in a small diamondshape: Gray Clouds, Red Fire, Blue Water, and Seven Colors Rainbows.Just like the Majors cards, the images on the Minor cards are conveyedexcellently, both anecdotally and symbolically. But you will only contemplatevery little if not associated with the keyword on the card.

For example, the Eight of Waters, with the keyword Letting go Give describing droplets of water remaining on the foliage are falling down on the lake.

Court cards also have no name. Instead, inside the colored diamond shape representing the suit, is an arrow pointing to one of the four main directions: North () is King, East () is Knight, South () is Queen, and West () is Page. It will be a little difficult to get used to at first, but Court cards are greatly supplemented with keywords on it. Unexpectedly, in the Osho Zen Tarot deck, Court cards are depicted without actual human figures as they are more about conveying concepts than talking about people. For more information, the back of the cards is stunning in a very mundane and oriental way. With the back design, Tarot readers can easily know whether the card is in reverse or upright.

Based on the analysis above, it isclear that Water represents the first 6th consciousness exposed to thephenomenal world, Cloud represents the 7th Consciousness, Fire represents the8th Consciousness, and Rainbow represents the outside phenomenal world, whichis also called Name and Form. Form, connected with 6 internal senses, led tothirst, whereby the 7th Consciousness silently ego-grasped. Eventually, all aregathered into the subconscious mind, thus generating cause and effect,ignorance, samsara and birth, old age, illness, death.

The Osho Zen Tarot deck focuses on the task ofhelping the Tarot readers improve their current understanding. It suggests thatthe events that occur in the outside world merely reflect our thoughts andfeelings, even though we may not truly comprehend our own feelings andthoughts. Therefore, what we need to do is not to pay attention to what happensoutside, but instead, seek to clarify our insights and thoughts from the bottomof our hearts.

The conditions and mental states depicted innon-traditional modern visual cards are also the clearest descriptions oftransformation and transition. These images are also the life experiences thatpeople approach in life, from the beautiful to the ridiculous and the mundane.

Briefly, the Osho Zen Tarot is not a Tarot deck forbeginners or those who only feel a little philosophical value of Osho or ZenBuddhism. However, this is a very attractive deck of cards and is forenthusiasts who collect Tarot decks at a high level. Reading these cards can bechallenging at first, especially for purifying, healing, and strengthening thespirit with your standard Tarot spreads.

And finally, if you are a person who has struggledand confused with standard Tarot decks, and felt they are too scary ornegative, are more concerned with the present than the future, lovemeditation-related topics, want to have an enlightened Zen teacher to guidewise things, choose Osho Zen Tarot.

The most common and simple spread of Osho Zen Tarotis the Diamond spread, which seems to also reflect the intent of this deck.This spread requires the querent to draw 5 cards and place them in a diamondshape (at first glance, it is easily related to a cross).

If digging a little deeper, applying Buddhist knowledgeto interpret, it can be said that the first to the fourth card are the fourtypes of conditions according to the Collection of Long Discourses: causalcondition (the condition of causes and also includes all causes of mutualdependence), immediately preceding condition (talking about impermanentconsciousness that follows one another), objective condition (the conditions oftreaties, the conditions outside of us), fundamental condition (is a conditionto help the previous conditions develop), while the fifth card is the possibleresult of those conditions, require to use the mind from which to reflect andthen realize what needed to do.

There are many reasons to say that Osho Zen Tarot isnot a traditional Tarot deck, it is more like a non-standard one, or rather, asan Oracle deck, except that in spreading cards, cards in the Major Arcana stillhold an important role than the cards in the Minor Arcana. Interestingly, thereare quite a few people who are engaged in approaching this Tarot deck accordingto this aspect. Most people who have owned this deck want to interpret theircards more intuitively. The reason for this is probably because the cards inthe Osho Zen Tarot deck are highly intuitive, and straighten things as theyare, and so it is more positive, considers everything with wisdom andcompassion, doesnt accept the boundary, and doesnt admit the fiction. That isprecisely the spirit of the Middle Way.

Perhaps for all these reasons, Osho Zen Tarot is not only the most widely known of the decks related to the Zen master Osho but also one of the quite famous Tarot decks in general.

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79 Osho Zen Tarot Card Meanings - Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh | TarotX