John Starr Cooke

Acid Dreams pg. 157, 158

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<p>The Word of One: Tarot Wisdom of the Ages

“There is ONE only. You are that ONE.

Each droplet of the ocean is totally individual from all others,

yet they make ONE body of water.

Even in the depths, there are no levels.”

-from The Word of One: Aquarius Tarot Notes,

by John Starr Cooke and Rosalind Sharpe.

On a cool October night, on a high cliff overlooking the sea, a wizard and his crew set to work. Taking a large sheet of paper, they wrote out the letters of the alphabet. The wizard reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver dollar, and placed it on the paper. With fingers lightly resting on the coin, the communion with the entity known as “ONE” began again. (A name was never given to the group; when asked “Who are you?,” the answer was returned – “We are ONE.”) On this particular night, ONE had something special to bring to the group. Tonight, through the improvised Ouija board, ONE would introduce the New Tarot for the Aquarian Age. This “wizard” was a man named John Starr Cooke, and his “crew” included his sister, Alice Kent,the artist Michael Bowen,

John Starr Cooke was born to a wealthy family in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1920. John became interested in Tarot at the age of nine, when he mistakenly purchased a Rider deck, thinking it was a deck of regular playing cards. Thus began a lifelong passion that would lead to that fateful October night at his home in Carmel, California.

John was a magnetic figure who naturally drew people in. He was full of humor and passion for life. He was a trickster and a visionary. Above all, John sought out truth. His spiritual journeys encompassed the Church of England, the Sufis of North Africa, Pak Subuh in Indonesia, L. Ron Hubbard, and Meher Baba of India. John travelled to Ojai, California to visit Jiddu Krishnamurti, to France to meet George Gurdieff, and throughout northern Africa in the 1950’s, guided by the Ouija board. He studied Theosophy through the writings of Madame Blavatsky andAlice Bailey; and and steeped himself in the work of Carl Jung, deeply exploring consciousness and transformation.

John was an influential figure in the counter-culture movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. His circle of friends included William S. Burroughs, Michael Bowen, Brion Gysin and Timothy Leary. His home in Tepotzlan, Mexico became a hub for counter-culture visionaries, and his influence drove the vision for the Human Be-In in San Francisco in 1967, attended by least twenty thousand people, including Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lenore Kandell, The Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company. The event is widely recognized as the catalyst that led to the Summer of Love later that year. (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Starr_Cooke" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmouseover='LinkshimAsyncLink.swap(this, "http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Starr_Cooke");' onclick='LinkshimAsyncLink.referrer_log(this, "http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Starr_Cooke", "\/si\/ajax\/l\/render_linkshim_log\/?u=http\u00253A\u00252F\u00252Fen.wikipedia.org\u00252Fwiki\u00252FJohn_Starr_Cooke&h=ATNDu8phhH9VNQeI3EfglvzykhDyuBo8eiU6DeMbUuRzrIn8GKy4Fphxo_4qARA1uEM_kNCoSOjCvS5vRDqMK2GUHw6DKbRiDNy76Dg7mTYrlFwqY-qbJkqhPDF7NKRGbHCtpbV455Zs04T9&enc=AZOdflBKUXdvBP_5Bz4IXJco3VkMTBawSX8j2_7MN3b7kEZsz_4OqH2MVDwYCyMvcgNrbsbU0wZuhTmjG35I-XIfntaazUL0C62CEEJ7sKI5bht8qdI_J9LLIsLxKE0RR_uywdKyoDpNN2vlJmhdhTkP0B091rI0yCPJ_QM91p7DQiVU-Ibl8Hc9qEiZzK9vvpZDDnq3PpOVEzFlFx-9IfII&d");'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Starr_Cooke</a>).

In 1968, John published meditation posters from the original paintings of the New Tarot deck he had painted from the 1962 and 1963 channeling. In December of 1968, John and Rosalind Sharpe Wall, a member of the original group, published a transcript of the Ouija board sessions as a book entitled “T: The New Tarot”. In 1969, the completed 78 card New Tarot for the Aquarian Age was finally issued as a boxed set. It is clear from reading the transcripts that this is no ordinary Tarot deck. Those who took part in the channeling, and John himself, were clear that this was the progression of deep archetypal images bringing in the Aquarian Age. Each card is a direct progression of the previous Medieval (Piscean) card. Taken with the Atlantean deck which John believed preceded the Medieval deck, the three decks illustrate the very evolution of human consciousness.

This span of consciousness was codified in 1979, when Alice Cooke Kent took her brother’s vision and published Communify: A Game – Tarot Insights from the Ages. This was the fulfillment of John’s work – a “game” he created to immerse others in the language of the archetypal images referred to as “Tarot.” John saw the Tarot as “a language in itself, a universal language…deliberately changed from time to time to… keep the awakening mind in tune with the forces and powers present as age succeeds age.” John witnessed the birth of the new age – a time when he believed we must look to community and the inner light rather than to external authoritarian figures. His intent was to draw us into an awakening that groups of individuals would bring about through deep collective understanding.

John died in 1976, shortly after completing the filming of a documentary called “Prophecy of the Royal Maze”. In it John performs a reading for the Aquarian Age to come. Although weakened from cancer, John’s reading rings with the truth of what we are seeing – that we must see the deep connections among us. As John is quoted, “We are all being together. The whole universe is being. All move by the force of eternal life.”

In 1992 T: The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age and Communify were re-issued by Chamba and Amy Cooke as The Word of One. Chamba, John’s son, worked closely with John’s sister, Alice Kent, to develop the complete set of all three decks representing Tarot wisdom throughout the ages. Through numerous readings and collective exploration using the decks, Chamba, Amy and Alice continued the communal manifesting that has marked this work since its inception in 1962 on that cliff high above the Pacific. This set is now poised to guide a new generation of seekers as they form communities exploring the challenges and the opportunities of the Aquarian Age.</p>

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John Starr Cooke

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