Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog

Playing Cards in Jails Helping to Solve Cold Cases

March 14, 2009 in Tarot News & Events | by Mary K. Greer | 3 comments

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).

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Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Tarot Set

March 2, 2009 in Pamela Colman Smith, RWS Tarot, Tarot Deck Reports | by Mary K. Greer | 9 comments

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 Artwork and Times of Pamela Colman Smith, by Stuart R. Kaplan, with over one hundred examples of her non-tarot art.
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite, in a new format.

arttimes_smith

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.

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Yes or No Tarot at Tarot.com

February 12, 2009 in Tarot Spreads | by Mary K. Greer | 32 comments

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.

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A Universal Science

February 1, 2009 in zPolls | by Mary K. Greer | 15 comments

“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 »

Cold Readings Podcast

January 29, 2009 in Tarot & Psychology, Video & Audio Tarot | by Mary K. Greer | 1 comment

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 on MySpace

January 26, 2009 in Pamela Colman Smith, RWS Tarot | by Mary K. Greer | 5 comments

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.)

He Who Found the Fool

January 25, 2009 in Book/Story/Poetry Reports | by Mary K. Greer | 1 comment

“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 »

Cold Reading and Tarot, Part 2

December 4, 2008 in Professional Tarot, Tarot & Psychology, Tarot History & Research, Tarot Tips & Techniques | by Mary K. Greer | 26 comments

Part 2: Hijacking What It Means to Be Human

(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 »

Cold Reading and Tarot, Part 1

December 1, 2008 in Professional Tarot, Tarot & Psychology, Tarot History & Research, Tarot Tips & Techniques | Tags: Barnum Effect, cold reading, mentalism, mentalist, psychic reading, skeptic, tarot, tarot reading | by Mary K. Greer | 27 comments

Part I: Skeptics, Mentalists and Tarot Readers

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 »

Practical Tree of Life Spread

November 25, 2008 in Tarot Spreads | by Mary K. Greer | 8 comments

Rachel Mann of Washington D.C. has given me permission to post her “Practical Tree of Life Spread” that she first presented on Aeclectic Tarot’s tarotforum. She found most versions to be too abstract or attempting to cover too much, so she simplified it, resulting in a easy, accessible bare bones approach. Having tried dozens of Tree of Life spreads in the past, this one has quickly become my favorite.

Like the Celtic Cross you say the card position keywords as you lay cards down using the words in the illustration. The numbers represent the order in which you lay out the cards and read them. (They are not the numbers associated with the sephiroth.)

Here’s more about the positions:

Positions 1 & 2 – Force and Form represent “The Issue.” You can see Force as a generative, active energy behind the issue and Form as the form or structure the issue takes. (They can also represent two alternatives or choices.)

Positions 3 & 4 – People or things going for or against you. (They can also express what’s expanding and contracting, or what’s coming in and going out.)

Positions 5 & 6 – Your feelings and thoughts.

Position 7 – World. Your body, possessions, physical manifestations.

Position 8 – Persona. Your everyday self and how you present yourself.

Position 9 – Advice. Your heart’s advice. The best you can do.

Position 10 – Spirit. Morality or personal growth related to the issue.

Da’at (optional card) – If you choose you can also lay out an additional card between cards 9 and 10. The Da’at (meaning ‘Knowledge’) Position can represent a shadow or hidden knowledge: something unknown or a possible future. It can bring insight, especially as to how to integrate the cards on the right and left pillars.

You work your way down the tree with cards in positions 1 through 6 on the left and right pillars. Then, work your way up the middle pillar from position 7 at the bottom to 10 at the top. Rachel adds: “I really feel the grouping and order are important to get the right flow for the reading, especially ending by going up the middle pillar. A good way to sum up a reading is to consider how the middle pillar cards (7 and 8 ) align with the upper ones (9 and 10).”

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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.

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