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Posts from the ‘Tarot’ Category

Aug 3

Astrology, Magic and Alchemy in Art by Battistini

Tarot History Mangled in a Getty Publication

I was going to give this book a glowing review (Astrology, Magic, and Alchemy in Art by Matilde Battistini). It’s chock full of gorgeous art on glossy paper (mostly medieval and Renaissance, but ranging from the Greeks to Surrealists) covering dozens of topics from Athanor to Zodiac. But when I got to the tarot section, my spirits sank to my toenails. I was going to revile the Getty Research Center for sloppy scholarship, but on closer inspection I see that the J. Paul Getty Museum merely printed an English translation of an Italian book originally published in Milan in 2004. It’s even more disheartening to realize that this material, coming from tarot’s birthplace, completely ignores the deck’s Italian origins in favor of half-baked French occultism passed off as historical fact. Read more

Jun 10

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Tarot History Rant #2: Renaissance Tarot

I frequently come across references to “Tarot’s origins in the Renaissance.” At least it’s not Ancient Egypt! It’s true, the Renaissance was getting underway in Florence at the time tarot was invented; but northern Italy lagged behind. Besides, Renaissance Humanism in the first half of the fifteenth century was basically a literary affair, with scholars collecting and translating Latin texts for aristocratic libraries.

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May 9

Hermit: Golden tarot of the renaissance
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Tarot History Rant #1: The Mists of Time

Unfortunately, authors still write nonsense like: “No one knows where Tarot came from……Ancient Egypt……heretics…….China……..mists of time”.

Actually, we’ve known for decades exactly where, when and why Tarot was invented. Read more

May 4

Reading the Marseille Tarot by Jean-Michel David
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Reading the Marseille Tarot by Jean-Michel David

If you want to learn how to read with the Tarot de Marseille while immersing yourself in tarot’s early history, this is the book for you. The heart of the book is an in-depth examination of each trump card accompanied by a web of historic associations illustrated with numerous examples of medieval and renaissance art. The book features the 1650 Noblet deck restored by Jean-Claude Flornoy, but each chapter offers illustrations of numerous decks for comparison; so the book works easily with any TdM. Read more

Mar 12

Heron Tarot de marseille booklet
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The Wacky World of the Heron LWB

The other day, I read the booklet that comes with the Tarot de Marseille published in France by Heron hoping to find some traditional card interpretations. Instead, I found myself in a topsy-turvy world where the Star card means death, the Death card indicates marriage, and Temperance can predict disasters of a sexual or marital nature. (Temperance with the Ace of Batons means an illegitimate child, and reversed Temperance means a man will kidnap a married woman.)

The card meanings are evidently derived from a traditional cartomancy system where fortune tellers aren’t squeamish about predicting death (Star and Ace of Cups). According to the LWB, if the Five of Swords with reversed Emperor turns up in your spread, a relative will drown. The Star next to the Ace of Batons means the death of a child, and the Star and World together predict the death of a beloved pet. Read more

Mar 5

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Franco Pratesi’s Collected Articles

Tarocchi, trionfi and carte, oh, my! Playing card historian Franco Pratesi has put up a chronological list of links to all 313 of his articles on tarot and playing card history. The only other way to get access to these articles, written between 1986 and 2013, is to subscribe to several rather obscure journals.

Of special interest to my fellow tarot history nerds: Read more

Nov 7

Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand
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Agnes Varda on how to freak out a tarot client

Cleo from 5 to 7, The French New Wave film directed by Agnes Varda in 1962, begins with a lengthy card reading scene that’s a lesson in what not to do when you see bad news in the cards.

The film follows a woman as she wanders around Paris for two hours trying to distract herself while waiting for the results of a biopsy. Cleo starts her sojourn by visiting a middle-aged woman to get her cards read. The reader spreads out nine cards from Le Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand, three each for past, present and future. It’s nothing but happy news until she gets to the last few cards. As the message gets darker, the reader gets more flustered and distressed and is obviously not saying everything she sees; which, of course, makes Cleo suspect the worst. Read more

Oct 13

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Reading a Trump-Suit Combo with the Tarot de Marseilles

My favorite card-of-the-day draw involves shuffling the trumps and suit cards separately, then pulling a card at random from each stack. I like to flip the two cards over simultaneously so they hit my retina at the same time, setting up resonance between them.

Suit cards describe the details and address specifics. The trumps are like a color filter or a pinch of herbs – they bring out certain qualities of the suit card without altering its core meaning. Here’s an example from my tarot journal of several entries for one suit card in combination with different trumps. Read more

Oct 10

Card of the Day Practice

The best way to develop a personal relationship with a deck is to give yourself a short reading every day and record it in a tarot journal.

I like to do my reading first thing in the morning using two or three cards. I jot down a few notes in my journal about the cards’ meaning and how it relates to my life. Then in the evening, I review the spread to see how it actually played out during my day. Sometimes I’m surprised at how well the cards described an incident that happened.

A while back I pulled the 7 of Swords on the day of a dental appointment. I couldn’t help but see the vertical sword as a drill! Read more

Oct 10

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Setting up a Tarot Journal

My journal is a three-ring binder with a page for each card. Sometimes I wish I’d started my journal on a computer so I could do searches, but my mind works better when I’m holding a pen; and after more than a decade, I’m stuck with my current system. The advantage to organizing your journal by cards rather than chronologically is being able to see clusters of associations around each card. Sometimes a card will give you surprising insights, and sometimes the patterns that emerge over time will validate what you thought the card meant all along. Read more

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