Tarot | Tarot Heritage

Apr 16

Three-Card Spreads: Reading with a Significator

Here’s a technique for getting a quick answer to a question. It’s especially useful if you want to know whether the universe, or Dame Fortune, supports your plans.

Designate a significator for the question. Keep it in mind, but don’t pull it out of the deck. Shuffle the deck while focusing on your question. Look through the deck for the significator and take it out along with the cards on either side of it. Line the cards up and look at how well the flanking cards support the significator. Read more

Apr 8

Paul Huson Mystical Origins of the Tarot book cover

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From My Bookshelf: Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson

The other day, when I needed to check something concerning 15^th-century suit symbols, I knew just where to go — Huson’s book on the history of tarot. The title is rather misleading, since there’s no mystical hokey-pokey; just solid, well-researched history.

The book is especially strong on the fifteenth century, which many authors skim over in their rush to the better-documented 19^th-century occultists. Huson also gives a thorough discussion of the origins of the suit symbols and possible symbolic attributions to the four suits — another subject most popular authors gloss over. Read more

Apr 4

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Tarot de Marseille Books in English: The Big Four

Recently, I’ve been rotating through the four TdM books listed below, reading about each trump card in turn. I’m struck by the individual voice and unique viewpoint in each book. It’s like holding a gem up to the light and turning it back and forth to appreciate each facet individually.

Ben-Dov supplies meat-and-potatoes card meanings and practical advice for readers. J-M David gives us a foundation in art history and 15th century iconography interspersed with practical exercises. Jodorowsky is an original who shares his deep understanding of the cards while presenting the deck as an organic structure. Elias invites us to look over her shoulder as she interprets spreads for her clients. Read more

Mar 10

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Giving Up on Yes/No Spreads

A few months ago, I endured several weeks where my life was out of control and my daily schedule at the mercy of other people’s decisions (also known as Jury Duty).

This seemed like a perfect time to test out some Yes-No spreads.

At the beginning of each day, I’d ask the cards things like: will the judge let us go home early today; will the prosecution wrap up its presentation; will the defendant go for a plea bargain and put us all out of our misery? I used four different yes/no techniques for each question employing just the forty pip cards. I recorded the responses and tallied how often each technique predicted events correctly. Read more

Mar 6

Moon and Three of Cups from Madenie Tarot de Marseille

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Tarot History Rant #4: The 22-Card Deck (and why I read the TdM with a full deck)

You may have heard people say the 22 trumps were grafted onto a pack of playing cards for gaming purposes. Actually, the 22 trump cards and the four suits were always a set. You need 78 cards to play the game of Trionfi/Tarocchi/Tarot. The 22 trump cards were never sold separately until occultists put them on a spiritual pedestal while scorning the suit cards (minor arcana) as a vulgar fortune-telling tool.

Many contemporary French and Italian tarot books discuss only the trump cards. If they deal with the minor arcana at all, it’s with a few lines for each card in the back of the book, as if the author were embarrassed to be caught talking about them. Read more

Feb 16

Pope Il Papa from Stefano Vergnano Tarot de Marseille

Tarot de Marseille for Modern Life: Five Webinars by Five Modern Teachers

This series of live webinars is one of the most exciting things to happen in my tarot life since I first learned to read with the TdM over a decade ago. Instead of registering for a conference and paying for transportation and hotel, I sat in my California living room with teachers from Chile, Denmark, Toronto, NYC and Tel Aviv, learning about their cutting-edge techniques for reading with the TdM.

Here are highlights from the five videos, which can be purchased from The Hermit’s Lamp (Link at bottom). Read more

Feb 13

Tarocco PIemontese by Il Meneghello World card

Tarocco Piemontese XIX Secolo by Il Meneghello

I’m totally enchanted by Osvaldo Menegazzi’s latest production, a handcrafted facsimile of a Piedmont-style deck from the late 19^th century. The deck was originally printed by Strambo in the town of Varallo on the Sesia River in eastern Piedmont.

The cards have a charming, folk art feel with deep, rich colors printed on smooth card stock that feels very nice to shuffle. At 2.5 x 4.5 inches (6.5 x 11.5 cm) they are a bit smaller than standard cards but not small enough to be called a mini deck.

The deck is housed in a very sturdy, handmade box covered with dark-brown marbled paper. A Fool card is pasted on the cover and finished with red sealing wax. Inside, there’s a folded paper with standard Il Meneghello divinatory meanings. In addition, there’s a very brief discussion of the Piemontese style in English and Italian, and a title card with a handwritten number. Read more

Nov 3

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Tarot in Culture edited by Emily E. Auger

This two-volume book considers tarot from every possible angle: popular culture, occult theory, academic history, literary analysis and artistic commentary. I hope my brief summary of the articles will inspire you to purchase this major contribution to tarot studies.

Volume I offers a good foundation in tarot history.

The late Sir Michael Dummett surveys tarot from its 15^th-century beginnings as a card game, to its appropriation by French occultists in the late 18^th century.

Robert Place delves deeply into the iconography of the earliest hand-painted decks and discusses the trump sequence as a neoplatonic ascent of the soul. He also describes the first set of trump cards we know of, by the Duke of Milan’s astrologer Marziano de Tortona, which Place is currently re-creating. (Examples can be seen on his facebook page.) Read more

Sep 19

Portrait of a Lady by Diane A. S. Stuckart cover

Portrait of a Lady – Tarot in a 15th-Century Murder Mystery

This book has everything a mystery-loving, tarot history nerd could desire: brisk pace, tight plot, illicit love, murder at the Sforza court, and those four missing cards from the Duke of Milan’s Visconti-Sforza deck.

Diane Stuckart has written three mysteries set at the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza in the early 1490s, when Milan was at the height of its splendor and economic power. As artist in residence, Leonardo da Vinci tinkers with his ingenious military machines in between designing costumes and scenery for pageants and masked balls. Whenever a dead body inconveniently appears in the garden or under a tower, Leonardo uses his astute powers of observation to discreetly solve the crime and save the Duke from embarrassment.

Leonardo’s sidekick in these sleuthing adventures is his young apprentice Dino. What Leonardo doesn’t know (or does he?) is that Dino is actually Delphina, a 16-year-old girl who ran away from home disguised as a boy to avoid an arranged marriage with a repulsive old man. Read more

Sep 5

Cover of All Love Goes Before me by Stewart S. Warren

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Two Tarot Poetry Books by Stewart S. Warren

Opening these evocative books of poetry based on the 15th-century Visconti Sforza and Sola Busca decks releases a gentle magic into the air. The tarot figures speak for themselves in these elegant, imagistic poems, opening up surprising revelations about each card. Energy hums between the poems and color photos of their cards on the facing page.

All Love Goes Before Me: Poems on the Sola Busca Tarot

Tarot historian Giordano Berti sets the mood in his preface by invoking the muses and a lineage of alchemist-poets, while telling us the poems are “access portals to another dimension.” In the introduction, Il Meneghello’s art director, Dr. Cristina Dorsini, conjures up the special magic of this deck. Read more

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