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Nov 12

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The Quintessence Spread

Quintessence, the Quinta Essentia, the Fifth Element: to philosophers and alchemists it’s the spiritual dimension underlying the material world; the subtle fluid that binds all creation together; the spirit that shines from the heart; and the vital force that animates the four elements.

We can extract the quintessence of a situation with a spread found in nearly every European tarot book. Four cards are laid out to the left, right, top and bottom like the center of the Celtic Cross. A fifth card in the center distills the essence of the four cards. Read more

Oct 26

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The Soprafino Deck of Carlo Dellarocca

A new Tarot deck style was born in 1835 when the Milanese printer Ferdinand Gumppenberg commissioned a deck from the artist/engraver Carlo Dellarocca. As the most elegant and refined Italian deck of its time, it quickly became known as i tarocchi sopraffini, the super-fine tarot. Many of its unique design elements were adopted by 19th century card printers. In the 1990s it experienced a revival when two publishers reprinted Dellarocca-inspired decks. Read more

Sep 15

Tarot Artist Niki de Saint Phalle

French-American Artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) is having a retrospective this month at the Nohra Haime Gallery in New York City. So, this seems like a good time to talk about her iconic Tarot Garden, an installation of twenty-two monumental sculptures depicting the major arcana. Read more

Sep 8

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The Worst-Ever Booklet for a Tarot de Marseilles

The other day, I was looking at a 19th century Tarot de Marseilles, the 1JJ, that was published in Switzerland with an accompanying booklet written in French. The booklet has a Rider Waite Smith image on the cover! What were they thinking? Read more

Sep 5

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Do We Need a New Tarot Paradigm?

At the Bay Area Tarot Symposium (BATS) last weekend, I nearly fell off my chair during the Sunday afternoon panel discussion when Mary Greer asked rhetorically, with a slightly exasperated tone, if we’re ever going to get beyond the Rider Waite Smith paradigm. This is like the Pope asking if we’ll ever get beyond going to mass every Sunday! I think Mary has done more than anyone, except perhaps Eden Gray, to enshrine the Waite Smith deck and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn astrological correspondences as our unquestioned tarot paradigm. Read more

Sep 2

BATS – Bay Area Tarot Symposium

BATS is the Tarot highlight of my year – two full days packed with workshops, panel discussions, shopping, readings, raffle prizes, and mingling with authors and deck creators. With three workshop choices in each time slot, it was agony deciding which to forgo and which to attend. Two presentations stand out in my mind. Read more

Aug 21

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Graphic Structure and Card Meaning

I’ve just discovered a technique that helps me see the cards in a new light. It’s from a book written in 1973 by Fred Gettings that I just reviewed for the American Tarot Association’s Quarterly Journal. Gettings was way ahead of his time in his approach to tarot history and the Tarot de Marseilles, and is one of the first English-speaking authors to focus on this deck. I couldn’t find any biographical information on Gettings online. If anyone knows about him or if he’s even alive today, I’d love to hear about it.

Gettings’ method is all about analyzing the underlying structure of each card. When you reduce an image to its basic geometric shapes you can see how the parts relate to the whole and read astrological or alchemical symbols into the image, adding layers of meaning. Read more

Aug 11

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Selecting an Historic Deck for Readings

Do you want to start reading with the Tarot de Marseilles (TdM) or some other historic deck, but you aren’t sure how to pick the right one for you? In the Cartomancy section I gave a run-down of decks by category and style, but I didn’t talk much about the actual selection process. Here’s how I go about evaluating a deck as a possible reading companion. Read more

Aug 8

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Comparative Tarot and the Tarot de Marseilles

A comparative tarot reading starts as a short spread using two to five cards from a deck you’re familiar with. Once the spread is laid out, you add the same cards from one or more different decks to get an alternate view of the reading. Read more

Aug 5

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Il Castello dei Tarocchi

An absolutely gorgeous book arrived in my mailbox the other day from Italy – Il Castello dei Tarocchi, a collection of nineteen essays by an international roster of tarot authors. Many of the contributors are familiar to those of us who lurk around the tarot history forums: Lothar Teikemeier, Alain Bougearel, Ross Sinclair Caldwell, Thierry Depaulis, and many others. Read more

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