Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog

UPDATE with corrected links: The deck is now available for immediate shipping. Contact Ed Buryn at edburynbooks@sbcglobal.net or use the new order form at http://www.blaketarot.com/ The book and additional information is available on-line here.

Announcing … the 2010 Revised Edition of

The William Blake Tarot of the Creative Imagination

Created by Ed Buryn

The WILLIAM BLAKE TAROT, first published in 1995 by HarperCollins and long out of print, is again available in a revised edition that offers better color rendition, improved details, and numerous stylistic changes – while retaining all the qualities that made this deck a breakthrough in Tarot for creative endeavors and personal divination.

This revised deck is exactly the same size (80 x 120 mm = 3.15 x 4.75 inches), but all the card images are larger due to smaller borders. The back design is now green instead of blue to differentiate the editions, and fine details are noticeably sharper and cleaner on all the cards. The basic designs are the same, but close inspection will reveal hundreds of small changes that enhance its overall appearance and utility. In effect, this unique and beautiful Tarot deck is better than ever.

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Owners and users of the original deck will appreciate being able to replace their old or worn decks at a reasonable price, without having to buy another expensive book-and-deck set. For new owners, the deck comes with a booklet of card spreads and meanings. In any case, the entire original book will soon be available online for free download.

This boxed set of 80 cards and 32-page booklet will not be sold in bookstores. To order your copy now, please mail cash, check, or money order to TAROT, PO Box 720, Nevada City CA 95959; or pay online with your credit card at www.paypal.com payable to edburynbooks@sbcglobal.net. All orders will be filled beginning October 2010. [Take advantage of the special “Advance Order” price.]

The price of this new deck will be $32 plus $5 shipping, for a total cost of $37 each. For California orders, add $2.85 sales tax, for a total cost of $39.85 each. Orders to Canada and Mexico are $32 plus $7 shipping, for a total cost of $39 each. Orders to other overseas countries are $32 plus $10 shipping, for a total cost of $42 each.

To view these cards now and to do readings with them, go online to www.myDivination.com where you can also view each of the cards. The online readings at www.facade.com currently still use the original deck but will be updated to the new deck soon. In addition, online readings and more information will be available soon at a Blake Tarot site presently under construction.

This deck, by my ex-husband, Ed Buryn, originally involved copious input and suggestions by me and now the graphic expertise of his current wife, Joanna Buryn. Nevertheless, it is primarily a joint creative collaboration between Ed and William Blake.

Creating the William Blake Tarot

One of my students at New College of California, in the early ’80s, submitted a paper with a selection of Blake images that he found similar to the tarot Major Arcana. Ed, inspired by this, urged me to create a whole deck based on Blake whom I had studied in college. Fifteen years later he was still nagging me about doing it before somebody else did—while I was in the midst of a book deadline, no less! I snapped at him, “If it’s so important, you do it!” In that instant, we both looked at each other and knew it was absolutely what he had to do!

Ed created and self-published The William Blake Triumphs and presented them at San Francisco BATS, where a representative of HarperCollins saw them. We got a call early one morning from Harper/Thorson’s in London who wanted to see examples of a Minor Arcana right away. By the end of that day we had conceptualized the suits around Blake’s four “eternal arts” based on the Zoas (or “divine energies”) and came up with the four court figures of Man, Woman, Child and Angel. It all seemed so obvious that the process was truly effortless, and accompanied by an ecstatic high.

While I had a lot of input, every final decision, all the art work, and the book (except for editing and some ideas from me for the card interpretations) was Ed’s. For instance, being somewhat of a tarot purist, I argued long and hard against a 79th card that Ed insisted was necessary to complete the vision. However, I now love the Eternity Card and can’t imagine the deck without it!

At the time, museums still claimed copyright to works they owned (since then such claims have been invalidated), so Ed worked from black and white photocopies of multiple versions of Blake’s prints and hand-colored them. He read every work by and on Blake that he could get his hands on, and I helped him with traditional card meanings and theories on the creative process. Since Ed had used tarot before I met him, advocating taking cards on the road in his book, Vagabonding in the U.S.A., and had edited all my tarot books, his own knowledge was pretty extensive anyway.

I urge you to check out this extraordinary deck, made even better in the new edition.