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Posts from the ‘Tarot’ Category

Oct 3

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Tarot Waiting to Happen

We know the Tarot de Marseilles is established in the English-speaking world when North Americans start doing send-ups of the deck. Andrew McGregor’s sly and witty Tarot Waiting to Happen shows us what the figures in the twenty-two trumps were doing just before they were frozen in time as tarot images.

I laughed the most at the sight of the Emperor in his bedroom putting on his robe and crown. Unfortunately, I identified the most with the Devil tethered between a tray of cocktails and a huge cake. The cake appeared again as bait in the Hanged Man’s snare. Then there’s the Lover, slumped on a bar stool, a mug of beer at his elbow.

The black and white line drawings are spontaneous and lively. Titles are in French with Justice and Strength switched back to their original TdM positions.

The cards are 2.5 x 4.0 inches, lightly laminated, and packaged in a sturdy cotton twill pouch. The cost is $40 including shipping in the US and Canada. There are only 200 copies, so this deck is going to be a collector’s item.

See the entire deck and get purchasing information at TheHermit’s Lamp

 

Aug 27

BATS Logo

BATS 2013 – The Bay Area Tarot Symposium

BATS 2013, in its new venue at the Doubletree Inn near the San Jose airport, was one of the biggest and best ever. With a choice of three workshops in each time slot (a total of 27 workshops over the weekend) decision-making could be agonizing. Rana George gave a two-part workshop on the basics of the Lenormand oracle. Rabbit, Pamela Steele, Arisa Victor, Martin Azevedo, and Nancy Antenucci, among others, presented techniques for going deeper into the cards and into one’s connection with the people we read for. 

Several deck creators were on hand to share their creative process. Bill Haigwood’s Counterculture Tarot gave this aging hippie a flashback to her lost youth in 1960s San Francisco. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for the Wildwood Tarot, the historic Oracle Belline, or Carrie Paris’s Magpie Oracle. For the historian, Major Tom Schick gave some background on the Minchiate deck with slides of trump cards from three different decks. Read more

Aug 26

The Kilted Rubber Chicken Tarot

As proof that Tarot de Marseilles readers are not always obsessed with historical correctness, I present my favorite purchase from the 2013 Bay Area Tarot Symposium (BATS): Beth Seilonen’s Kilted Rubber Chicken Tarot de Marseilles. Evidently, this deck started as a joke on the oh-so-naughty Daughters of Divination Facebook page, where someone posted the photo of a hunk in a kilt cradling a chicken. Thus was born one of the most delightful TdMs to cross the road in recent times.

Every card cleverly incorporates a yellow rubber chicken sporting a kilt. What’s more, the deck can double as a Lenormand oracle. Seilonen has incorporated traditional Lenormand symbols on the trump and court cards, like the boat and snake shown below. Just pull those cards out of the deck, et voila, you have a Lenormand. This deck was self-published in an edition of 35, so don’t procrastinate if you want one. The cards are 2.5 x 4.0 inches, laminated, sturdy, and very easy to shuffle. Read more

Jul 17

Knight of Wands from Tarot AC Visconti-Sforza deck

Tarot AC – A New Visconti-Sforza Deck

An exciting new Visconti-Sforza deck is on the scene — a faithful reproduction hand drawn by librarian and organic farmer Alice Cooper. Ms. Cooper created this deck out of pure love, as her own personal copy, with no thought of reproducing or selling it. The care and attention she lavished on this deck during the year-long creative process gives it a magical feel that photo-reproductions of historic decks don’t conjure up. Fortunately for us, her friends persuaded her to print the deck in a limited edition of 200 and sell it on Etsy. Read more

Apr 27

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A Personal Visit with the Visconti-Sforza Deck

Like most amateur tarot historians, I’ve often fantasized about entering the inner sanctum of a museum to see, and perhaps even handle, those magnificent gold-embossed cards from the 15th century. So you can imagine how magical and mind-blowing it was to find myself quite unexpectedly face-to-face with the Morgan Library’s portion of the Visconti-Sforza deck.

It happened in 2006 during a trip to New York City where I hoped to immerse myself in abstract art at the Guggenheim, the Whitney and MOMA. A musty old institution like the Morgan Library wasn’t even on my radar until a friend of my traveling companion offered to get us in for free. Off the main lobby, in a large, very dim room, I discovered a special exhibit of illuminated manuscripts. Quite by accident, I stumbled over two very long glass cases running the width of the room where the Visconti-Sforza cards from the Library’s collection emitted a heavenly glow in the room’s dim light. Read more

May 8

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The Early Tarot Research of Franco Pratesi

The Italian researcher Franco Pratesi spent decades combing through archives in Florence and Bologna, uncovering the earliest references to playing cards and trionfi decks. His research is available in a compendium of more than thirty-five articles posted on Trionfi.com. Having all of his research compiled in one place, in English, is an incredible resource for anyone interested in tarot’s fifteenth century origins.

(Note: the terms tarot and tarocchi were not used in the 15th century. The game was called Trionfi or Triunfi, and the deck “carte da trionfi”.)

Pratesi is best known for discovering a single sheet of paper dating from before 1750 that gives divinatory keywords for 35 cards from a Bolognese deck. This discovery shows that divination with tarot developed in Italy early and probably independently of the French tradition. In the article “Tarot in Bologna: Documents from the University Library”, Pratesi supplies background on Bologna’s ancient tarot tradition and its 62-card Tarocchini Bolognese. He cites other documents he found in the archives like a political sonnet that uses the names of the trump cards in order; and some examples of tarocchi appropriati where trump cards are assigned to people. Read more

Apr 23

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Building a Collection of Historic Tarot Decks

What does it take to put together a tarot deck collection that covers every important era in Tarot’s 600-year history? After making a list and distilling it to the essentials, I found you could cover all the bases quite nicely with fourteen decks. If you stick to just the main highway of tarot evolution and avoid going down interesting by-ways, you can create a basic  collection with just seven decks.

Here are my guidelines for a well-rounded collection comprised of decks that are affordable and readily available. The collection falls into five broad categories: Fifteenth century, Tarot de Marseilles, Occult, Rider-Waite-Smith, and contemporary decks. The basic collection has the oldest examples of each category. I’ve given suggestions for filling out the basic collection with additional essential decks; then I provide a shopping list at the end of the article. Read more

Apr 5

New Tarot de Marseilles Decks

A Tarot de Marseilles revival is in the air. After more than 350 years of continuous use for divination and game playing, the TdM is being rejuvenated with new editions that remain faithful to the 17th century prototypes. A handful of devoted scholars and artists from around the globe are sprucing up the standard Covers-based TdM with fresh colors and crisp lines, and issuing beautifully crafted limited editions.

The first stop on our tour of new productions is Japan and the Institute of Study on Initiation and Symbolism (ISIS).  Examples of founder Tadahiro Onuma’s deck are scattered throughout his class descriptions. There’s a link on the Home page to a shopping cart for purchasing either a majors only or a 78-card deck.         

Next, we’ll go half way around the globe to Israel where Yoav Ben-Dov has revitalized the 1760 Convers deck with a faithful-to-the-original update known as the CBD TdM.

Naturellement, France, the home of the TdM, offers the largest selection of decks. Read more

Mar 18

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Spring Equinox and Tarot

It’s Spring Equinox this week when the Sun enters Aries! This cardinal fire sign shares the spontaneous, passionate and freedom-loving energy of the Knight and Ace of Rods. These two cards conjure up the image of a hero galloping over the horizon brandishing a blazing torch.

In the Tarot de Marseilles, the image is gentler than in Waite-Smith-style decks. The Knight of Rods has stopped his horse so he can offer a leafy branch or a bouquet to someone standing just beyond the card’s border. In some decks his expression seems a bit flirtatious.

This year, the Knight gets a booster rocket of energy a few days after the Equinox when the New Moon is conjunct Uranus and Mercury, all in the first four degrees of Aries. In Tarot terms this means a pile-up of the Moon, Sun, Magician and Tower cards, presided over by the Knight of Rods and fueled by the Ace. Read more

Mar 17

Francesco Clemente’s Tarot

You know Tarot has made it in the mainstream art world when a contemporary deck is given its own exhibit at the venerable Uffizi Museum.

Art News magazine just gave the deck a one-page spread in its March 2012 issue to announce the book, Francesco Clemente: The Tarots, published by Hirmer and available on Amazon for $33.00.

Clemente is an Italian artist based in New York City who studied tarot history and learned to read the cards before creating his deck. He’s quoted in the New Yorker as saying “I never imagined how similar the activities of reading the tarots and painting a picture are. In both cases, there is the effort to be completely present, and at the same time, to remove completely oneself from the picture.” Read more

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