#81 Mythology - Conversations with Richard Roberts, part 4

We are continuing our series of conversations with an author, a poet, a Tarot scholar and a mythologist Richard Roberts.

In the 1960s, Alan Watts presented Roberts with a letter of introduction to Joseph Campbell, which led to a 20-year mentorship with the famed scholar of mythology – a partnership which included collaborating in seminars and writing books, and which lasted through the remainder of Campbell’s life.

In his college days, Roberts had vowed never to write a novel until he had an idea no writer before him ever had. In a vision, he conceived of a book in which his characters would “go into” other literary classics and interact with the characters, all the while writing in the style of the original authors of those classics. Roberts regards the resulting book, The Wind & The Wizard, as his life’s masterwork.

In this episode, Richard Roberts dives into his research of life after death and the works on the subject, consciousness of the Universe, Gnosis, and his collaboration with Joseph Campbell on their book Tarot Revelations.

• From ghosts to enlightenment
  • Earlier, Richard studied ghosts to find out if souls survive after death. In the same way, later he started to study gnosis to approach enlightenment. One day he found himself in a conscious sleep, and asked the question of “What is the meaning of everything”. He was given a telepathic symbol
• The Symbol of Gnosis
  • Richard describes how to draw the symbol and its meaning
• William James afterlife
  • William James (in the book published by Jane Roberts about his afterlife) says that he never encountered the God of the Bible, but there was this presence, a light that would give him anything that he needed to grow his consciousness in his afterlife state.
• Consciousness of the Universe
  • Growing consciousness. We are part of God and God’s consciousness, and God’s consciousness grows as we grow our consciousness.
• Indian myths of reincarnation
• Collaboration with Joe on Tarot Revelations
  • Joe’s contribution – the arrangement of the Marseilles deck
• A Disguise of Hidden Knowledge
  • Game of Tarot has been designed to appear as simply playing cards
• Tarot Revelations – a unique book
  • No one else at the time could have written this book, due to the combination of literature and study one had to go through
• Western “Book of the Dead”
• Richard’s & Joe’s palm readings