Fall 2008 Tarot Events

September 13, 2008 in Tarot News & Events | by | Leave a comment

You have two chances coming up on the West Coast to take part in tarot workshops; meet people; hear about and see decks in the creation phase; find a teacher; buy new,  unusual and hard-to-get tarot paraphernalia, and have an all’round great time.

Saturday, September 27, 2008, 8:30 am to 6:30 pm. The Los Angeles Tarot Symposium (LATS)

The Los Angeles Tarot Symposium (LATS) was started by Barbara Rapp-Geerling of The Crystal Cave, with the help of Thalassa (BATS). It gives a chance for Southern California tarotists to meet on their home turf, although people come fom all over the country. This year it’s happening in Irvine (Orange County).

Correction: October 4-5, 2008. The Bay Area Tarot Symposium (BATS)

The San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium (BATS) took over where an earlier tarot conference series, begun in 1979, left off and as an off-shoot of the infamous Tarot Network News. Thalassa and Daughters of Divination* have done a great job of keeping it going when all else failed, carrying on a venue where tarotists from all over the US have been gathering for almost 30 years. It’s through connections made at BATS that numerous decks and books have been sold to publishers, and people have formed important support and friendship networks. The symposium is one-day but for those who choose to stick around there is a more informal Tarot Salon on Sunday at the hotel just around the corner.

Do yourself a favor by attending a symposium at one or both of these venues to experience cutting-edge tarot at its best and in the making. They are scheduled only a week apart so that travelers can attend one in LA, take a week to drive up the fabulous coast road, and then attend the second in SF. You’ll find more information on the EVENTS page. Photo: Thalassa speaking at LATS.

[* Even guys can be a Daughter of Divination.]

Tarot Bags and more at Corrine Kenner’s blog

September 11, 2008 in Knitted Tarot Bags | by | 2 comments

I’ve found those see-through organza bags to be perfect for displaying decks that come in huge boxes. I put the box in storage and the deck in my bookcase where I can identify it easily without having to take it out of its bag. Corrine Kenner has a link to a site with great prices on packages of 30 single color bags – or get together with a couple of friends and buy several colors to mix-and-match. While at Corrine’s blog, check out the latest on her upcoming book Tarot for Writers, which is sure to be a hit.

Bright Idea: I bought “Smokey Blue” organza bags. I’ll bring them to LATS and BATS to trade colors with those who bought other colors. I’ll also have my knitted tarot cases for sale.

Added: I’ve been told these bags are available very inexpensively at Dollar & gift stores. My local stores don’t sell the right size, but I’ve been told others do. Anyway—I have a shelf full of Llewellyn books and decks and found it was the best way to keep the decks so I could find them easily.

Best Cities for Singles

September 10, 2008 in Tarot Readings | by | 37 comments

What does it say that I’ve lived in five of the top 12 “Best Cities for Singles” (according to Forbes Magazine), and I have visited another five (of the top 11) in the past seven years (all tarot related trips) yet haven’t dated since my divorce?

I was struck by the oddity of this coincidence (since among the other 28 cities I’ve only lived in one and visited three). [I admit D.C. was a bit of a cheat since we lived in Falls Church though we were there because my father worked in D.C.]

I drew three cards (no spread positions) to answer my question and got (in the order I drew them):

The King of Wands, Five of Pentacles and King of Swords.

I suppose the cities could be pure coincidence, but it doesn’t feel like it, and the spread seems very odd—like something I don’t really want to know. Since, there are times when we all need someone else’s opinion I’d like to ask for help in understanding this. Please comment. Feel free to be wild with your thoughts—don’t hold back. I should mention—I lived in three of these cities as an army brat (King of Swords?). I’ve always loved the travel and no hardship was involved, so it’s hard to see the Five of Pentacles as referring to anything external.

I see this as an example of how the silliest of seeming coincidences can be a catalyst that takes us deep into the hidden realms of ourselves if we bother to look. The question at the top was what popped into my head spontaneously as I looked at the list. I decided to take the question seriously and see what came up.

ADDED: The comments have taken me on an incredible journey of insight that has reached so many levels. However, the most immediately significant thing for me is that my father (identified above as possibly the King of Swords) died on Thursday (9/11-Patriot Day) at a military nursing home. He had worn an electronic buzzer (see bell around cripple’s neck) that would go off whenever he tried to get out of his wheel chair. This seems like a foreshadowing similar to that mentioned in my post on Prediction or Insight. After all, my inquiry arose in the first place because I couldn’t understand why that silly list wouldn’t let me go. I phrased the question in the only way that made sense to me at that time. [BTW, I originally posted this on 9/9 (my time zone was incorrect).]

County gov’t officials discriminate against Tarot card reader

September 8, 2008 in Tarot News & Events | by | 4 comments

On September 3, 2008, the Seattle Weekly printed a story regarding a county agency discriminating against a Tarot card reader who wished to offer her services for a charity event.

The American Tarot Association (ATA) has issued a response in the form of a letter to King County Executive Ron Sims, along with a Press Release regarding the discriminatory actions of the King County Solid Waste Division.

You’ll find more information and lots of links at aeclectic’s tarotforum – here.

Inna Semetsky on Knowing Thyself

September 7, 2008 in Book/Story/Poetry Reports, Tarot & Psychology, Tarot History & Research | by | 2 comments

Scholarly-oriented readers will appreciate a paper on Tarot by Inna Semetsky called “Simplifying Complexity: Know Thyself…and Others” in Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 2008, Vol. 5, No. 1 (click on the title and it will download as a pdf). Dr. Semetsky is a Research Academic with the Institute of Advanced Study for Humanity, University of Newcastle, Australia who has been writing scholarly papers on tarot for many years. Drawing on semiotics, systems theory, and ideas about meaning and synchronicity (among others), she posits that Tarot “can be considered an education tool contributing to our learning and, respectively, the evolution of the human mind situation in the larger, both cultural and natural, context.”

In relation to my earlier post on Arcana in the Adytum, I found Semetsky’s description of arcanum to be especially interesting:

Arcanum (or arcana, plural) . . . is the ever present potential catalyst . . . that, when actualized and brought to consciousness, elicits transformations at the levels of thoughts, affects, and actions so that an individual becomes fruitful and creative in his/her possible endeavours. If and when discovered – that is, made manifest at the level of conscious awareness – it becomes a powerful motivational force to facilitate a change for the better at the emotional, cognitive, and/or behavioral levels and thus to accomplish important educational and ethical objectives.

Semetsky also talks about reading tarot as pattern-recognition and the identifying of probabilities of what is likely to happen rather than making fixed predictions. You can read her academic profile here, find more of her publications here and listen to her talk about tarot on La Trobe Philosophy Radio show here.

The discerning reader will want to compare this paper with a response by James Anthony Whitson (same link above) who appeals to Wittgenstein to determine whether it is even seemly to be “effing . . . the ineffable.” (Love that technical jargon!)

Thanks to Jean-Michel David and the latest issue of the Association for Tarot Studies (ATS) Journal for drawing attention this article.

The Unknowable

September 6, 2008 in zQuotables | by | 2 comments

“The unknowable lives in a pack of cards after it has been fairly shuffled but before it has been dealt, when all the possibilities are open, and when each possibility matters.”

—from Freedom & Necessity by Steven Brust and Emma Bull (NY: Tor, 1997), p. 60. [Note: really good novel but read reviews first to see if it is your cup of tea.]

René Schwaller de Lubicz Tarot Deck

September 5, 2008 in Major Arcana, Tarot Deck Reports | by | 18 comments

Some of you may know of the twenty-year long study of the Temple of Luxor by the Egyptologist René Schwaller de Lubicz (see bio). Before that Schwaller was a Theosophist, esotericist and alchemist who worked for many years with Fulcanelli. In the 1920s, René and his wife Isha moved to Switzerland and established Suhalia, a center for research into scientific and alchemical studies. While there he developed a motor that ran on vegetable oil.

According to the above internet biography by Gary Lachman:

“In 1936, on a visit to the tomb of Rameses IX in Alexandria, Schwaller had a kind of revelation. A picture represented the pharaoh as a right-angle triangle with the proportions 3:4:5, his upraised arm adding another unit. Schwaller thought it demonstrated the Pythagorean theorem, centuries before Pythagoras was born. From the picture it was clear to him that the knowledge of the medieval masons had its roots in ancient Egypt. For the next fifteen years, until 1951, Schwaller de Lubicz remained in Egypt, investigating the evidence for what he believed was an ancient system of psychological, cosmological, and spiritual knowledge.”

Although I’ve read several books by Schwaller I never knew that he had created his own tarot deck until sent these cards by Christian Dumolard (who documented the Château des Avenières Tarot mosaics of Assan Dina). Information on Schwaller’s tarot interests can be found in Schwaller de Lubicz by H. Dossier and Emmanuel Dufour-Kowalski. You may want to compare the Schwaller de Lubicz Tarot with that of Falconnier and Wegener (see History of Egyptian Tarot Decks). He was obviously considering some notable differences. Enjoy.

It’s in the Cards

September 1, 2008 in Video & Audio Tarot | by | 9 comments

“In the Cards” is a 24 minute TV short story from the series Tales from the Darkside (January 27, 1985). The official description is, “A tarot reader who attracts business by giving out only good predictions finds herself stuck with a new deck of cards—one which makes terrible predictions come true.” Warning: it’s hoaky and may not be how we like to envision the cards—pandering to too many fears, superstitions and stereotypes, but it’s rare to see a story centered this thoroughly on Tarot. This “horror” story is in three segments. Watch Part 1 below. Click here for Part 2 and Part 3. Thanks to Kalessin for telling me about it.

Prediction or Insight?

September 1, 2008 in Tarot & Psychology, Tarot Readings, Tarot Spreads, Tarot Tips & Techniques | by | 25 comments

Is prediction what tarot reading is all about? What if it is not to learn that a particular thing is going to happen but, rather, to explore later what those cards can teach us about what does happen? What if the reading is simply to make us spiritually or psychologically aware of what’s really important and significant in life events—to wake us up to how the outer and the inner reflect each other in a meaningful way?

As an example, I’ll describe a very powerful experience a group of us had in one of my classes (permission granted to tell this story). I had proposed an experiment in prediction. Each member of the class was to draw a Major Arcana card to signify the most significant archetype that would be functioning over the following week. They were then to draw two Minor Arcana cards that would describe the situation that archetype would function within—giving us the particular circumstances and literal details. As a group we made predictions that would be evaluated the following week. (Without reading any further you may want to look at the three cards below and think what prediction you would make.)

The cards Heidi drew from the RWS deck were Judgment, Three of Swords, and Knight of Pentacles. Knowing that Heidi’s father had recently died, we predicted that her feelings of grief for her father would be strongly triggered but would result in some kind of awakening or acceptance of her loss. She told us she would be going to his home three hours away to tie up his financial affairs and we warned that going through his papers would probably be very difficult.

When we gathered the following week Heidi told us that the reading had referred to a very specific dangerous and traumatic event. Given that the assignment was prediction, she wondered (as did we all) why no one had been able to warn her so she could have avoided it.

She had gone to the bank to close her father’s accounts when a man with a gun came in to rob the bank. As the robber waved his gun around, Heidi dropped to the floor in fear for her life. The robber even stepped on her shoulder when he took money from that cashier’s window. To add to it all, he had taken a bank deposit box withdrawal slip containing the address of her father’s house.

When a customer stupidly ran after the robber, Heidi had held and comforted his young daughter, assuring her that her father would be all right (although she couldn’t know that) and that the robber wouldn’t return.

She felt that Judgment referred to her fear for her life. Heidi had faced the thought that she might be meeting her maker. The Three of Swords was her terror and anguish, and the Knight of Pentacles was the robber (jumping in a getaway car with the money), as well as herself (traveling to the bank to deal with money issues). He might even have been the “hero” who tried to stop the robber from getting away. And, of course, it was her father leaving her.

The archetypal images in the Judgment card include a guardian angel, a “wake up call,” emergence from some kind of “boxed” thinking, and a child and parents. Something about being a child to a parent appeared to be breaking into consciousness. Having just lost her father, plenty of early childhood issues were being triggered in Heidi. She was able to be both guardian angel to a terrified child and the child herself.

Heidi also noted that, like in the movie Roshamon, everyone’s judgment varied. Each person at the scene described the robber differently (the three swords crossing each other). And, while most people turned in only a few lines of written description to the police, she had written at least a page and a half, even while realizing that her own judgments might be coloring what she said. Judgment would never mean the same thing to her again!

The strangest thing Heidi found was that she was left with a tremendous fear of revolving glass doors leading outside, and she remembers having had this fear when she was younger—although we didn’t have time in class to explore that. The revolving metal holding the glass was like the metal of the three crossed swords. Of course, death itself is a painful doorway—especially to those left behind on the other side. In essence, Heidi had been robbed of her father, but she ended up assuring a little girl (as well as the child within herself) that both her father and she would be all right. Would it have served her as well to have avoided the situation all together?

Everyone in class agreed that they could never have predicted a bank robbery from the cards Heidi had drawn. However, looking back on the incident, we saw how perfectly they describe the robbery. Much more importantly, they indicate how Heidi was affected and point to unconscious complexes that were triggered by the events. An experience she’ll never forget also became a rich vein of personal alchemical gold that Heidi will be able to mine for years, using the cards in the reading as guides to layers of healing.

So, is tarot best at prediction (since it is too often a hit-or-miss proposition), or is it more ideal for reliably exploring the deeper significance of whatever does happen?

The Whispering Tarot

August 13, 2008 in Tarot Deck Reports | by | 18 comments

Thought you all would want a look at one of the newest self-published decks, The Whispering Tarot by Elizabeth [Liz] Hazel, author of the excellent Tarot Decoded: Undertanding and Using Dignities and Correspondences. I love the deck name as I was strongly impressed by a fantasy novel (The Destiny Dice by David Bischoff) in which rune stones decided among themselves who would answer the reader’s question. When the reader reached into the runebag, the chosen rune would leap into the reader’s hand. The rune then would whisper it’s message to the reader, even arguing with him. The particular rune’s personality and style of communication was a significant part of the message. This deck reminds me very much of that story.

This is a bright, sunny, playful and very usable deck with a pagan/nature spirit slant. Printed by Playing Cards R Us, it is poker-size with black borders, shuffling nicely and perfect for small hands. Though some of the pictures are quite detailed, the use of a fine point pen for drawing makes the images distinct. The pen and ink drawings were then colored with prismacolor markers. It comes in a two-part custom box (nice touch!).

While the Golden Dawn and Rider-Waite-Smith deck were among Liz’s major influences (especially the astrological attributions), this is no clone, but a fresh, original deck. Magical creatures abound: Zephers (wind-spirits), dragons, mermaids, water faeries, harpies and more. Additionally, there are regular animals like snakes, dolphins, birds, horses, cats and even an elephant. Birch trees characterize the Wands suit. Pentacles utilize geometry and people in their environment to get the message across. The card backs have an unusual art nouveau/celtic knot design (based on a color palette from 1895).

I emailed Liz with a few questions and comments that I’d like to share with you.

ME: I’ve had the most amazing experience—in reading after reading I received all four suits and a Major Arcana card among the seven cards in the spread! This is incredibly rare but seems to say that the deck is looking at things from every angle. There’s also a sense of blessing and unity about it.

LIZ: As far as I know, this is the only tarot deck that’s ever come with a blessing charm on it (it’s on the sign & number card). The charm refers to the North Node (Dragon’s Head). The whole project was a Goddess offering, so I’m glad to hear that it conveys a blessing/unity. Am glad I changed the name to Whispering Tarot – it was an inspired choice, and I was amazed/thrilled no one else had ever used that name for a deck.

ME: What was the initial inspiration for this deck?

LIZ: My stubborn, determined & picky Taurus rising! I wanted a deck with everything I find pleasing in tarot, and with nothing I find displeasing. I wanted Kings and Queens to look in love with each other, not angry or constipated looking, or on the verge of divorce. I wanted pip designs that clearly conveyed the divinatory meanings. I also wanted specific production features like the custom two-part box. Looks nicer, lasts longer. I wanted no numbers or specific attributions on the Major Arcana, so the reader could choose. Basically, the deck was a big Venus-driven “gimme.”

ME: I can see Rider-Waite-Smith/Golden Dawn elements but so much more—what are your other major influences? Can you give me an example of one or two cards that diverge greatly from the RWS/GD and why?

LIZ: Here’s some brief summaries for changes: Magician: No table, no clothes. He has the raw elements in play around him. The dragon rises along his arm in 3.5 curls – the unfolding of kundalini. Yummy no-frills symbolism. The Magician reappears in the Judgment card. Hierophant: The guru levitates half-way between heaven and earth, and is surrounded by animal totems, a more Buddhist and shamanic image. Less paternalistic, intolerant & dogma-bound; more spiritual intermediary, gentle advisor or spiritual counselor. More astrology related, too. Eclipse: Switched the title/image to distinguish between The Moon card and the moon-attributed High Priestess. An early DM [divinatory meaning] for The Moon is eclipses. Frankly, eclipses are WAY weirder & scarier than a plain old moon. An eclipse is much more distinctive symbolism, and a lot more in tune with the DM’s. 4 Swords: The guy is in the meditation asana, and levitating over a maze. His calm demeanor suggests he’s in a good frame of mind to see the big picture and figure out puzzles. Of course, it could also indicate a dead person’s soul rising from a house. I like the gentle ambivalence, and the card is peaceful in spite of the clashing green-orange colors. I’m tweaking Waite’s nose here.

ME: Anything else you’d like my readers to know?

LIZ: I considered depth and distance perspective a lot when designing these cards. Distant vistas, like in the 2 of Wands, suggest that more is out there, or that the meaning involves the greater world. Cards with close or compact perspective take the reader into what might be a more intense, narrow, or claustrophobic situation. In a few cases, I deliberately changed the historic (RWS) perspective. For example, in the 7 of Pentacles, the guy sitting at the chair looks pretty miserable or tired of waiting; but the door is open, and the pentacles lead out into the world. The old man & bush image is a dead bore.

I didn’t hesitate to chuck RWS symbolism, Masonic, and Christian symbolism and other authority figures out of my third floor window, and that was rather the point as well as my greatest delight. My greatest influence as an artist comes from the Golden Age of Illustration artists: Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, the Robinson brothers, Beardsley, Harry Crane, William Morris, and Charles Rennie Macintosh, to name a few.

The deck is pan-spiritual, and is divested of cryptic symbolism tied to Waite’s blinds. In the act of pleasing myself (and believe me, it’s a monster ego stroke to do readings with my own deck) I hope I’ve created a deck that will please other readers.

This is a deck created by a long-time student and experienced practitioner of both tarot and astrology. It shows in the book where traditional meanings are modified by an awareness of the modern concerns that come up in psychic fairs and other public venues. Liz’s original spreads will help you address the practical needs of most querents.

Copies of The Whispering Tarot and Liz’s book about the deck will be available from Jeanette Roth (TarotGarden) at LATS and BATs and Archon. Liz Hazel says she hopes to have enough sales to merit a second printing but, “not signed & numbered, never again!!!” Collectors will want to jump on this first edition, which can be ordered directly from Liz here.

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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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