You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2011.
Paul Nagy interviews Enrique Enriquez about how and why he reads the tarot the way he does, beginning with some direct examples of how Enrique approaches reading the Marseille tarot.
Enrique resides in Manhattan and is well known for his appreciation of historic tarot decks. His fresh and disciplined approach to the interpretation of this antique imagery bears only a superficial resemblance to the more synthetic ways tarot is usually read. Because of this distinctive approach to tarot reading, Paul thought an investigative interview designed to explain Enrique’s suppositions would make clear to the tarot reading community what he is does when he reads.
Read the interview at TAROLOYEAST (BETA).
Check out Paul Nagy’s on-going and free teleconference class “The Way to Tarot Wisdom” based on the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Marianne Costa and Rachel Pollack.
People regularly write me about where to take a class, so I want to remind everyone of exciting events taking place over the next couple of months. Going to a conference or workshop can be a turning point. As well as gaining new ideas and skills, some have made major life changes as a result of insights from readings and exercises, and many people become life-long friends. Since some people come back year after year, it’s a chance to reconnect and share your journey. More details are available on the EVENTS page.
Start off at the end of July with the Omega Tarot Conference, “Tarot: Fate & Free Will” (see the interviews with presenters on this blog).
Immediately following, at the beginning of August, Rachel Pollack and I will be teaching our annual five-day Workshop at Omega. This year the topic picked by Omega is The Art of Becoming a Great Tarot Reader. As always, this is the workshop for those who want to go deeply into the tarot reading process and push through to the next level. It’s all about opening to your true potential. You get lots of time to ask questions and just hang out. We combine accessing your intuition with learning secrets about the cards themselves.
August ends with the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium (BATS) at the Golden Gateway Holiday Inn (just around the corner from Fields Bookstore!). This year there will be two days of fabulous talks, great vendors, readings and lots of fun! Ed Buryn is bringing copies of his new edition of the William Blake Tarot of the Creative Imagination and I will be premiering my new book, Who Are You in the Tarot?.
At the end of September, the Association for Tarot Studies is having its TAROT CONVENTION “History & the Esoteric” at a castle in St. Suzanne, France, which is sure to be one of the most exciting tarot events of the year. While greatly saddened by the untimely death of deck creator and co-organizer, Jean-Claude Flornoy, the event will honor his memory and celebrate his tremendous achievements in resurrecting many of the earliest Marseilles-style decks. Many of the participants will be going on to Italy for the Tarot Tour (sorry, all booked up).
If you can’t travel, it’s no real problem. Take a look at the offerings at Global Spiritual Studies who are hosting a whole series of Courses and Webinars on Tarot and related subjects. I highly recommend Evelynne Joffe’s practical approach to the Kabbalah with “Living the Tree of Life” as well as webinars by both me and Rachel Pollack and many others.
Read Jason Pitzi-Waters’ report on “A Summer of Psychics” at The Wild Hunt. He begins with this CNN puff piece on psychic predictions about the economy and then examines why the media does these pieces when it’s obvious that other news commentators are going to sneer at their doing so. What’s interesting to us is that there were two tarot readers interviewed, one using a well-worn 1JJ deck and the other The Voyager Tarot.
You can view it here.
This is an interview with me by Rachel Pollack, as part of our series on the presenters at the Omega Institute Tarot Conference happening July 29-31st. You can read plenty about me right here on my blog, so let’s get on with it.
Rachel: Your work has featured endless ways people can develop their own style and ways of reading. And yet, you are also steeped in Tarot knowledge and tradition. How do you integrate these two sides in your teaching?
Mary: I am a life-long learner; I feel history can enhance anyone’s life, and that natural skills can be refined and augmented by study. I don’t fully integrate history and technique in my teaching, although I try to do so in my practice. Carl Jung advised that one should learn everything possible about symbols and then, when working with a dream, to forget it all. It’s a paradox involving an intelligent ‘forgetting’ that allows one to be fully present in the moment with a person’s own material. In actuality, all the learning forms a backdrop, which helps me recognize patterns that may elucidate the whole situation.
When it comes to reading tarot, you don’t need to know tarot history, just basic card interpretations and a few spreads. Some people are intuitive readers and don’t need book meanings to help people via the cards. I really try to honor this potential, so most of my class exercises are designed to develop a person’s natural abilities and insights—to help students discover how much they already know and what their own reading style is. But that’s really only a starting point.
Skill development and history are very useful when faced with crises, blocks and difficult situations. I believe it was George Santayana who said that those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it. We get stuck in old patterns of thinking and behaving, but models and techniques are available that can help us break out of these. Tarot is a kind of story-telling, and history consists of stories from the past. But, a study of history also teaches us how to evaluate these, for all stories are not equally relevant or helpful. In my longer, on-going classes I bring in quite a bit of history. I’m trying to find ways to make history more relevant to a workshop environment, because dry facts can be deadly when students are wanting and needing to experience tarot directly. It’s one of my current challenges.
Rachel: In recent years you have devoted yourself to the history of Tarot and fortune telling. How does new knowledge of the past affect what we do with Tarot today?
Mary: History is accumulated, collective knowledge. It helps us meet challenges and opportunities that we may not have yet encountered on our own. Here’s a couple of examples.
The history of oracles and cartomancers gives me a sense of belonging to one of humanity’s oldest professions, present in every time and every culture. As an older woman I can see that this is a skill, that while practiced by men and women of all ages, has been a speciality of elder females, for which they have been revered, ignored, sought out, villanized and even killed. Caitlin Matthews expressed it eloquently at the last Readers Studio when she said, “We live on the edge for a reason, so that when people are on edge, they run towards us!” History makes us aware of just what that edge looks like, how others have met the challenges, and conditions under which an ‘edge’ existence becomes honored or dangerous. Knowing this, and seeing how other professions have improved their status, suggests possibilities for elevating this profession for myself and for those who come after.
A second example involves the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, where I have discovered that the Minor Arcana suits illustrate stories chosen by A.E. Waite. For example, Cups tells the story of one of the first Grail myths, and Swords is the foundation myth of the Freemasons. They lend a certain archetypal, psychic power to this deck that has been intuited by many who have copied the artwork, but not previously understood. More importantly, perhaps, is that when we recognize that we are living out elements of a great myth through getting cards in these suits, it gives a greater meaning to the experience and helps us to recognize possible outcomes and make clearer choices.
Rachel: You’ve worked with astrology and Tarot “birth constellations.” Considering our theme of “Fate and Free Will,” do such structures suggest a more fixed fate than readings where we just shuffle the cards and see what happens?
Mary: There’s an old astrological axiom: “The stars impel, they do not compel.” Impel suggests an urging while compel is about being forced. I sometimes feel that life is like floating down a great river carried by a particular current made up of current events and our own character (or karma). I can go with the flow, enhance it, or fight it. I don’t think that Lifetime Cards tell us who we will become, or that Year Cards tell us what events will happen that year. I find that they have more to do with sensing the existing flow and then discerning the meaning those events can have for us. They reflect qualities that bring a sense of fulfillment—no matter what happens. Were we fated to be born on a certain day? I really don’t know, but I like to think that my Higher Self chose circumstances that would best facilitate my soul’s journey. When I live life as if that were true, then everything seems more vital, exciting and purposeful then when I don’t. Meaningful synchronicities abound, leading to ‘probability enhancement’—one of my favorite definitions of magic. In readings, I like mixing free will with considerations of chance, fate and destiny, which I hope we will do in my conference session.
See interviews with other presenters:
Marcus Katz is one of the fabulous presenters at this year’s Omega Institute Tarot Conference, July 29-31st. He lives in England’s beautiful Lake District, made famous by so many romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge. Truly it is a place to inspire the soul. In addition to founding Tarot Professionals and Tarot Town, Marcus is the author of two books, Tarosophy and Tarot Flip, and a doctoral candidate in Western esotericism at the University of Exeter, where he earned his master’s degree. (Picture: Marcus at Rosslyn Chapel.)
Mary: How did you get into tarot and what motivated you to found the largest tarot organization in the world?
Marcus: When I was very young I asked what seemed to be unusual questions. When I turned 12, I was sure I had missed some important lesson at school, or teaching from my parents, that everyone else other than me seemed to have received. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing and what the world was about. Otherwise how did they know what to do, what was important, and why they should do anything? So when Tarot was taught in one of our rather spectacularly alternative lessons at the experimental school I was lucky enough to have joined at that age, I saw what Tali Goodwin, my co-author, calls a “Blank Bible”. A pictorial system in which I could make sense of the world, uniquely to my own experience. So within a weekend I had created my own deck (22 Majors only, pasted onto cardboard) and learnt enough to do readings for my friends at school. Since that time I estimate I’ve done easily over 10,000 face-to-face readings over 30 years – and am still learning.
I founded Tarot Professionals to bring full-time professionalism and consideration to the craft of Tarot study, reading and teaching. We aim to marry commercial common-sense with spiritual sensibility and now after two years are able to support other Tarot projects, such as Moti Zemelman’s Dancers Tarot and Chris Deleo’s tarot documentary, featuring Enrique Enriquez, as well as consulting on the ShindigTarot.com online video reading system. Our main ambition is to restore the spiritual dignity of Tarot. Our work to support World Tarot Day brought some 2,600+ people to the site on the day itself this year, up from 600 last year. As such we were also able to donate to two important charities, and create a positive vibe for Tarot to a wider audience. The Facebook group has gone up 840% because we invest our money back into advertising such events. For those who want to encounter Tarot in a supportive environment, we offer Tarot Town, currently approaching 6,000 members. All of these offer my own research and unique, often unpublished materials, including a rarely seen Crowley sketch from his original notebooks as one little part of the full 78-lesson course!
Mary: Your main focus seems to be on tarot education and professional support and development. What do you think a tarot reader most needs to learn in order to get the most from the cards for themselves? (Picture: me, Marcus and the Fool’s dog.)
Marcus: My main focus is indeed on education. Our Hekademia Tarot program is two-years long and now has two cohorts, totaling 50 students, on what aims to be the most comprehensive Tarot course in the world. The work that the students is producing is already astonishing us! We have a showcase of the first term’s work on the main site, where students produced “Wonder Cabinets” of Tarot, entire photographic decks and essays on the oracular tradition, all within the first two months of the course! We originally planned to have one cohort of 20 students per year, we are currently looking to fill a third enrolment in September of three such enrolments this first year!
To me, a Tarot reader needs to see the cards as a language. A language which can then express insight to them which could not otherwise be communicated. I see many students on my beginner courses who have “been reading 20 years” and yet don’t seem to have progressed beyond quite linear and mechanic readings, or “intuition”. I hope they leave my beginners course with a new excitement as to *why* they have been learning that language for so long without visiting the country in which that language is spoken, and what it can express and to what it can lead. It is not the learning of French that is useful, it is when you use the language to order a delicious meal in Paris, or get directions to a one-off music event in Geneva – that is what is useful about the language. I believe Tarot is a tool to engage life, not escape it. So every time your Tarot reading takes you to a new encounter, a meeting with a new person, an event you might not otherwise have attended, a place you might not otherwise have gone, this is Tarot teaching.
Mary: You are a trainer in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and other communication and business techniques, what does tarot offer individuals that none of these others does as well?
Marcus: I work with clients using NLP on a weekly basis, ranging from such issues as insomnia, addictions, weight-issues, compulsive disorders, phobias, etc. I also coach clients in performance skills such as presentations, interviews, exams, etc. This is a wide spectrum of work and what strikes me is that many of my clients lose sight of their own unfolding story when afflicted with such issues. Whilst my work with them may help us undo their curse or weave a better spell, it does not fully open out into the mundus imaginalis, the world of wonder beyond that which is presented to us. The tarot enables this world to be accessed in so many different ways.
So I see the Tarot as a reflective tool, one arising and stabilizing in the same perceptual world we find ourselves in—and we find ourselves in Tarot as the blank bible which in turn is the truth of our encounter with what arises. Tarot is the picture of the Soul’s dance inside itself, the divine dance of the Fool. It transcends all material and transient nature in which business, communication and counseling all take place, each to their own world – important in their place, however only part of the full deck of possibilities.
If you look deeply into the Eye painted on the Tower card of the Thoth deck, and turn it on its side, you will see the 0 or black nothingness of the Fool in the centre. The outside of the eye now resembles the vesica piscis of the Universe/World card. And between them, vibrating in perfect harmony between the Nothing and the All, are 22 radiating lines of gold … our Tarot.
See interviews with other presenters:
“With the Great Solstice Turning of the Seasons, we honor the spirit of the Tarot and all those, past, present and future, who unselfishly support its gifts of illumination, healing, and inspiration for all.”
Wherever you are, at High Noon (or whenever is convenient) tomorrow—June 21st—we ask you to take a moment to send these thoughts out into the world. See the Tarot and all who love it and all who love them, bathed in the light of the Sun. If you can’t do it on the 21st, then join us on the 22nd.
In Love and Luck and Light, may the Sun’s illumination awaken all to your best expression of Self,
Mary
For everyone interested in the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck, there is an important article at Tero Hynynen’s blog Tarotpuu. He reproduces a 1942 lecture by Lady Harris at the Sesame Club in which she speaks in some detail about the artistic choices made in certain cards. The Sesame was one of the few fashionable clubs open to both men and women and had welcomed American poet Edith Sitwell only a few years earlier. According to Harris, Death “has to suggest the idea of reincarnation, as opposed to putrefaction, he is weaving with his scythe a geometrical web of new forms.” She explains that while Water and Cups “typifies compassionate, receptive soothing ideas, its plenty is an over-copious endowment which destroys effort and it leads to a luxuriousness in which creative self-consciousness is lost.” Finally, the Fool is supposed to be the Pierrot of the Commedia dell-Arte.
I mention these only to whet your appetite, for Tero’s post contains much much more, as well as a larger version of this rare portrait of Lady Harris. You can also find a short account of her 1945 lecture at the Tomorrow Club here.
One of the geniuses of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck is the story-telling qualities of the Minor Arcana. Each card can tell a story, but a sometimes overlooked factor is that the suits tell stories as you move from card to card. In classes I encourage students to write a tale based on each suit so that they can get a personalized feel for how one image changes into the next. Pamela Colman Smith was a trained book illustrator and story-teller, so she may have told her own stories, although I believe Waite gave her specific tales to illustrate (see here and here).
Whatever the original stories, this “tarot flow” perspective can be used in your own readings. Rather than looking at the Minor Arcana cards as static scenes, try seeing them as a moment that is only one step in a progression. Something happened just before this moment and it’s about to change into something else. It’s like individual tai chi gestures that should really only be part of a living, flowing, connected movement.
Many modern spreads, rather than focusing on a sequential development, favor single cards interpreted according to an individualized position: What helps you? What blocks you? How does your partner feel about you? I can guarantee that your partner doesn’t have only one feeling regarding you! If you see the cards in terms of a sequence, then you get more of the sense that on the way from one feeling to the next one, your partner, in regards to your question, is only temporarily dominated by the feeling shown by the card.
Let’s say you got the 5 of Pentacles. Your partner may be feeling emotionally cold and thinking that sticking with you, right now, is a hardship to be endured. That can be pretty depressing. But if you consider both the 4 and 6 of Pentacles, then you could consider whether your partner might have made a firm commitment to holding on to the relationship (4 of Pentacles) and is aware of a possible pay-off later (6 of Pentacles). It’s just that right now he or she is feeling hurt or going through a cold spell that might be only temporary. Do you see other possibilities for this sequence?
This kind of approach works very well with one of the reversed card techniques. This optional way to read a reversal says that an upside down card is an energy that is attempting to manifest, but there is still something to deal with in regards to the preceding card. That is, you need to revisit the prior card in the suit before you can fully take on or manifest the present one. In this example, if the 5 of Pentacles was reversed, then you might want to consider what needs to be held on to in times of scarcity, by reminding yourself what you both found so valuable (4 of Pentacles). Consider what your partner has always clung to. Is there some way you can be supportive of or honor that in order to be a true companion in difficult times?
In The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, I opened most Minor Arcana card interpretations with a possible scenario of how the figures depicted on one card might have arrived there from the preceding one, seeking to link all the cards in a chain of actions and consequences. It’s worth taking a second to consider this perspective when doing a reading.
If you would like, in the Comments, also tell us your “tarot flow” story for the cards pictured below. How does the 8 of Cups card follow from the 7 and lead to the 9 of Cups? If the 8 of Cups is reversed, then how might you be better able to handle it by first revisiting the 7 of Cups?
These cards are from what’s been called the “Edith Waite” deck, that illustrates and accompanies El Tarot Universal de Waite.
Rachel Pollack is one of the organizers and featured presenters at the Omega Institute Tarot Conference on July 29-31st. Rachel is best known in the Tarot world for her landmark book, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, which has been followed up by more than a dozen tarot works including a tarot deck and the recent book, Tarot Wisdom. She is also a well regarded fiction writer, having received many honors and awards, among them the famed Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction and the World Fantasy Award. Currently, she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Goddard College. Among comic book aficionados she is best known for her run of issues 64-87 on the comic book Doom Patrol, on DC Comics‘ Vertigo imprint. Rachel is a member of the American Tarot Association, the International Tarot Society, and the Tarot Guild of Australia and presents Tarot workshops around the world.
Following the Conference, Rachel and I will be teaching a Five-Day Workshop on The Art of Becoming a Great Tarot Reader, July 31 to August 5th. Watch a video of Rachel discussing teaching tarot at Omega here.
The picture on the right shows Rachel wearing a mask created by Marlene Boaz (go, girl!). It’s The Speaker of Birds from Rachel’s Shining Tribe Tarot.
Mary: As a novelist, comic book and short story writer, and poet you are very involved with story. How does story relate to the tarot and how do you think tarot readers can benefit from knowing something about story?
Rachel: There is a famous Chasidic proverb that says “God created humans because God loves stories.” Story allows us to enter the cards and become part of them in a way unlike anything else, not study, not meditation. Story seems to me the basis of readings, with the querent the hero, the question the springboard of the plot, and the cards in their places the action. It can often help Tarot readers to ask the querent story questions, such as the attitude of the figure in the picture, where he or she might be going, why a figure is weeping, and so on. And we begin to go deeply into the cards, in a very personal way, when we see great stories of mythology or literature in the Tarot. I’m sure the original designers never thought of Rapunzel when they created the Tower and other cards, and yet it works perfectly, and gives the cards more meaning.
Mary: You’ve been doing tarot for over 40 years. What keeps it alive and fresh for you after all this time?
Rachel: I have never walled Tarot off into its own corner. To me, Tarot is the world, so as I learn more about anything I think of how it can apply to Tarot. For instance, just yesterday I read an intriguing idea about the story in Genesis that God took a rib from Adam and made Eve. At first glance, this seems very sexist, and has been used to describe women as inferior. But the writer I was reading looked at the fact that chimpanzees have 13 ribs and humans have 12. Thus the creation of woman was the evolutionary change from ape to human. Women can be said to introduce human consciousness. How does this affect Tarot? Well, for one thing we find Adam and Eve in the Rider version of the Lovers, so now we can consider new and interesting points about that card. But it also opens up the relationship between the male and female cards, such as the Magician and the High Priestess, or the Empress and the Emperor. The Tarot and has led me to spiritual wisdom, inspired stories and poems, and brought truly wonderful people into my life. I’m currently writing my 33rd book (not all about Tarot, but probably half of them), inspired in part by the classic works of Eden Gray, who introduced so many of us to Tarot in the late 60s and early 70s. In the introduction I say this about Tarot: “The only thing I can tell you for sure is that you will never come to the end of it.”
Mary: You created the Shining Tribe Tarot deck. Do you feel fated to have done so? What were the biggest lessons you learned, and is there something a tarot reader can gain by creating a deck that they won’t get any other way?
Rachel: All my work with Tarot seems fated in a way. In that same introduction I write that people ask me how I discovered Tarot, but it feels more like Tarot discovered me. I began to create my own deck while writing The New Tarot, which looked at some seventy-five decks created in the 70s and 80s. It felt like the right thing to do. I was also reading about early human spirituality, and traveling to prehistoric caves and stone circles, and ancient temples for my book “The Body of the Goddess,” on the origins of religion in nature and the human body. So creating a deck grounded in nature and tribal and prehistoric art happened naturally. Fate, you could say. Getting permission to go into Lascaux cave was one of the great experiences of my life, and deeply affected my relationship to images in general and the Tarot in particular.
When you create your own deck you bond with the cards in a very deep way. They become an extension of you, and you of them, a living relationship. At the same time, my whole way of teaching and experiencing Tarot runs against any idea that I own the meanings of the cards. I love it when people show me new meanings. I did a Shining Tribe workshop this past year, and a woman came who loved the cards, never used any others, but had never had my book about them. She made up all her own meanings, and they were completely different than mine. I think she was nervous I would be angry, but I loved it. I could see the truth of everything she said. Maybe everyone should find a deck they know nothing about but like, work with the cards, do readings, draw or tell stories with them until we really know them, and then publish a book about them, all without ever reading the creator’s interpretations.
See interviews with other presenters:
I bet you never knew that the High Priestess could sing. Watch her musical debut HERE. Click on the play button. The song is “Life is Like a Boat”by the amazing Rei fu, a Japanese singer/songwriter/artist (thank you, Bill D.).
I couldn’t resist doing the Empress, too: HERE. Her song is “One I Love” by Meav who appears on the Celtic Women album.
And some great advice from the Devil: HERE. The first line of this piece is attributed to Heather Pryor. I can’t find the original recording.
These talking pictures are made from the sample clips and web app available at PQ Talking Photo. I’ll be posting more of them.
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
Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog 
Recent Comments