A couple of people have asked me how I defined “modern” in my post on the 1969 Tarot Renaissance. Stephen wrote in the comments: “In my humble opinion I would have put “modern tarot” renaissance as a part of the age of enlightenment… say late 1700’s onward to the 1920’s…(Etteilla, Gebelin, Levi, Crowley and Case) and building up to A E Waite’s pivotal anglo-american deck.” And Shawn said, “I’d love to know how you define/distinguish “modern” Tarot from it’s ancestry.”
I tend to think of modern as being within the last hundred years or so – within the memory of those who are still living. I’m aware there is one school of thought that puts anything since the “Middle Ages” into the modern category—but a 600-year span makes the term practically meaningless. I suppose a better term would have been “contemporary,” although we’re almost 40 years past that.
I could say that 1969 marks the 20th-to-early-21st century Tarot Renaissance. And, that it’s defined by a continuing growth and development of tarot involving the creativity of many people, deck sales in the millions, and broadly affecting the culture in many countries around the globe. To me a “renaissance” is a creative force in the culture as a whole—affecting a multitude of cultural forms.
Can anyone point to a single year prior to 1969 in which 18 to 20 new tarot decks and/or books were produced—or even half that? Or, how about a span of many years in which an average of a dozen or more tarot works came out every single year as they did from 1969 on?
Prior to the 1960s, the best we can find is one new tarot work every few years or even decades, with the exception of 1888-89 when there were three works in two years, and the mid-1940s when three or four works were produced over several years but with very few in the decade prior to or after that.
Certainly 1781 (the birth of the occult tarot), 1854, 1870, 1888/9, 1909 and 1945 are hugely significant dates and turning points in tarot history, but these are the works of individuals in single years, not mass-movements. They didn’t directly affect the creative output of a large segment of the culture until we come to the 60s and especially 1969, when there was a popular groundswell that has continued to grow and spread.
There were around twelve new works in 1970, fourteen in 1971, nine or ten each from 1972 to ’74, seventeen in 1975, and so on. The effects could be seen throughout the culture: in poetry, painting, collage, sculpture and art installations, movies, television, theatre, fiction, comics, psychology, and even fabric, clothing and jewelry design.
Something happened to tarot since the late 60s and 70s that is vastly different and more creative then anything that had happened before, and across a much wider range of human experience.
I may not have all my terms right, but I’m trying to get some understanding of what happened. Keep the comments coming.
Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me
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May 28, 2008 at 9:25 am
shuxter
Mary, first let me thank you for a wonderful blog.
Due primarily to lack of positive media and widespread anti-fortune telling laws, the tarot all but became extinct after WWII up into the mid sixties. Fortune tellers at the fairs were typically using a deck of regular playing cards if they dared use any kind of cards during those years.
Me babbling from a vague memory, two main catalysts changed things.
First, a boxed game set called (from unreferenced memory} The Amazing Kreskin’s ESP cards became a mid sixties pop hit. That game started the general public talking about “sixth sense” and “psychic powers” and got a lot of publicity from late night TV talk shows.
Following in the footsteps of the ESP phenom came a book called “Sun Signs” by Linda Goodman. Basically a silly guide to let mid sixties teeny boppers cross reference something called a zodiac sign to find out which Beatle would be her dream date. The book inexplicably became a runaway best seller that was a major cult fad for at least two or more years. Before that book, probably not one in a million Americans had a clue what a zodiac sign was but soon after, there was hardly anyone who doesn’t grow up knowing what “sign” they are.
Suddenly the “Age of Aquarius” was upon us and in it’s wake all the other “psychic sciences” started getting mucho positive publicity in both mainstream and anti-establishment media.
Tarot still suffered from a general lack of availability until the better distributed Swiss IJJ deck started showing up in department stores. When the Ryder deck was reissued in the early 70’s, the anti-establishment hippie aquarian generation took it as it’s own over the harder (for a stoned newbie) to read “traditional” cards and the rest as they say is history.
May 28, 2008 at 10:48 am
marygreer
I wasn’t familiar with Kreskin’s ESP cards (1967) but, of course the early PSI research and Rhine experiments were having an effect on public acceptance. I had a copy of Goodman’s “Sun Signs” – which came out in 1968. It was one of my resources when I began learning to calculate & read charts. Yes, the timing on these was perfect to give impetus to an interest in tarot.
February 20, 2010 at 4:49 pm
William Haigwood
Every age during its contemporary existence is the modern age. But to second what has been stated already, so much is happening right now with Tarot–and metaphysical studies generally–that some superlative is needed to describe what we’re living through. In 20th century terms it is something akin to the difference between beatniks and hippies: that is, the Beats lived–in the old Bohemian traditiion–somewhat hermetic lives clustered in coffee shops and garrets and sharing with a privileged few their art and explorations. Such might have been the case among the relatively small kabal (pun not intended) of Tarotists during the first half of the 20th century whose work was considered esoteric and unapproachable. Hippies, however, were at the vanguard of a mass movement whose anti-establishment ideas went “viral” during the Sixties and influenced millions of young people. So it is with Tarot, which has truly exploded–along with other symbolic systems and spiritual searches–to reach a much larger audience and influence many more people. Go into any large bookstore and compare the metaphysical section with those set aside for philosophy or psychology. Interest in the wider meaning of personal experience and the symbolic representation of personal or culture archetypes has grown exponentially in one generation. So, as Mary says, if this is only one “modern” age of Tarot, it can certainly be argued that it is by far the most impactful.