"Tarot helps you meet whatever comes in the best possible way."
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins (1994) is about the transformative quest of materialist commodities broker, Gwen Mati, in the days immediately following a stock market crash. It is literally a Fool’s Journey—told in the second person present tense as if it were a tarot spread explained by a reader. Indeed, one of the characters in the book is Gwen’s tarot reader.
In this excerpt the Fool appears in Robbins’ inimitable style: Read the rest of this entry »
Playing cards, used by inmates in jails for card games, are now being used to get help on cold cases. Each of the 52 playing cards contains information about a murder, a missing person or another unsolved crime. While this topic is not about card divination, I find it fascinating that cards are being used to generate information that would not otherwise be known. Read about it here. The article also shows that the rules concerning use of tarot and other cards in prison cells is not consistent across the prison system (see this post on the use of tarot cards as a religious item in a prison).
♥
Exciting News! U.S. Games has announced a new tarot deck set celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Rider-Waite Deck, and honoring the artistry of Pamela Colman Smith. Read my review here.
The deluxe set will include the Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot Deck (reproduced from the original 1909 deck – hey, it’s about time, thank you very much!) and two books:
The set also includes two prints of Pamela Colman Smith, one photo and one self-portrait, both 5” X 7” suitable for framing; six color postcards of artwork by Pamela Colman Smith; and Spread Sheet Guide. Everything is attractively packaged in a deluxe keepsake case. Price: $35.00
I believe it is expected for May 2009 unless there are delays. See the U.S. Games promotional information here.
♥
Do you want a quick ‘yes, no, or maybe’ answer to your advice questions? I’m very excited that Tarot.com is featuring the classic Yes/No Advice Oracle in a much beefed-up version created by me. You will find it featured here for Valentine’s Day. It now has commentaries based on the number of cards you receive in several groupings plus for each Ace and the Major Arcana. It’s designed to provide succinct and to the point advice and direction. Be aware this is a commercial site.
If you try it, let me know what you think, including editorial comments. Some of my text has been changed (understandably to fit their clientele), so I’d like to know what works and what doesn’t work for you.
UPDATE 5/23/2011: There is now a Yes/No Tarot app for the iPad. Unfortunately, they eliminated most of the interpretation data and simplified it down to practically nothing. Still, the opening art sequence is one of the best I’ve seen.
♥
“A prisoner devoid of books, had he only a Tarot of which he knew how to make use, could, in a few years, acquire a universal science, and converse with an unequaled doctrine and inexhaustible eloquence.” –Eliphas Lévi
I just was sent a ruling by a United States District Court regarding the possession of a tarot deck in a prison. The court found that: Read the rest of this entry »
Check out this podcast interview with me and Leisa Refalo at The Tarot Connection – Episode #93.
Here’s an excellent program: BBC – History of Magic – Mentalism.
and continued here (with additional links to the rest of the program).
Mentalism is great and astonishing entertainment except when used to defraud. The bigger problem arises from the assumption that all tarot and psychic experiences are nothing more than similar trickery. The program explains that magicians have “pirated” much of their effects from the spiritual, but then claims that mentalism goes back to the Delphic Oracle, suggesting that the Oracle was simply a scam. Admittedly, techniques associated with mentalism and stage magic have traditionally held a place in shamanism and tribal healing arts. What I am advocating is becoming aware of what we are doing as tarot readers and doing it in the most ethical way possible.
While there are lots of ways to read the cards, I believe that, consciously or not, most face-to-face tarot readers use at least a few skills that have been deemed ‘cold reading,’ in that many of these are simply normal human modes of communication that can hardly be avoided. If you want to totally avoid any such issue then readings by (e)mail should suffice.
Pamela Colman Smith (Pixie to her friends) has her own MySpace page, complete with reproductions of drawings she did to music—while that music plays in the background. You can see it and become her friend here.
(Thanks to Malcolm Muckle who told me about this page.)
“A gypsy told me once I was a fool. The fool who sought the fool.” So says, Ethan Gage, hero of a pair of fast-moving historical adventure novels filled with the kinds of things we tarotists find intriguing: occult manuscripts, ciphers, Freemasons, Kabbala, Templars, hidden rooms beneath the Great Pyramid and Solomon’s Temple, gypsies, tarot, an evil magician and a priestess of Isis and, of course, the Book of Thoth. It’s a heady mix, especially when you set a fast-talking American fool with a tomahawk down in an Egypt and Levant besieged by Napoleon Bonaparte, and then add historic battle scenes, man-eating crocodiles and impossible escapes. Ah, the things you didn’t know about history! Read the rest of this entry »
(Read Part 1 to learn about mentalists, skeptics and cold reading.)
Imagine my surprise when I discovered there are at least a half-dozen extremely expensive books marketed by mentalists on tarot, of which I’d never heard in my forty-plus years collecting tarot books. And, they were written by and for professional tarot readers that I didn’t even know existed as a self-identified group. Of course, I was aware there are fraudulent tarot readers who deliberately used cold reading techniques to con their marks. Naively, I had assumed, though, that cold reading was used mostly by fake mediums and clairvoyants (as in the 19th century) and by mentalist entertainers. I had no idea that tarot was regularly taught as a scam except among some phone psychics and those storefront psychics who used it to extort money for removing curses, etc.—a whole different, albeit related, enterprise. [Note: some mentalists are also ethical tarot readers, and not all mentalists deny the paranormal. I am also not referring, in most of what follows, to ethical mentalists who are honest about using mental tricks.] Read the rest of this entry »
For purposes of this article let us assume that there is no paranormal or spiritual aspect to tarot readings. Let’s pretend, for the moment, that all tarot readings have a rational basis in easily explained normal human skills.
Skeptics and mentalists reduce tarot reading to just this level. Mentalists utilize skills to make money in public performances, while skeptics denounce any tarot or psychic readings that don’t acknowledge they are merely mental tricks. They claim “pseudo-psychics” exploit human weaknesses and take advantage of the desire to easily gain benefit from something. Pseudo-psychic readings are seen as “too-good-to-be-true” and as giving false hope just to make money. Skeptics claim that psychic and tarot readings can be explained by techniques gathered under the terms Cold and Hot Readings. We will ignore hot readings (that fraudulently use information obtained ahead of time) as our purpose is to examine readings where nothing prior is known about the client. Read the rest of this entry »
≈◊≈◊≈◊≈◊≈
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 HERE.
© Mary K. Greer All material on this site is copyrighted. If you use anything, be sure to include my name and a link back to this site. Thank you.
Donate any amount to keep this ad-free blog growing.
Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog 
Recent Comments