In honor of World Tarot Day, I’d like to share this post I first published on my Mystery of a Shrinking Violet blog back in 2009, with a few updates, to honor some of the people of Tarot, including writers and artists that I think are rather special.
By the way, I understand that today is also World Towel Day for Arthur Dent fans (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
Tarot Writers and Artists
First, I want to mention some people who’ve contributed a great deal to the study of Tarot, for me personally and for a lot of others. Mary K. Greer is the author of Tarot For Your Self and The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, along with many other insightful books on Tarot. Rachel Pollack was an award-winning novelist as well as author of numerous books on Tarot and the Kabbalah, including Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, The Forest of Souls, and a pair of detailed companion books for the Haindl Tarot created by Hermann Haindl. Ms. Pollack also created the Shining Tribe Tarot.
In addition to those who write books about Tarot are a number of people who write articles, publish newsletters, review Tarot decks and books, and operate online forums. Then there are the deck creators who continue to color the lives of Tarot lovers with new and fascinating decks, beautiful images, and deep symbolism. James Wanless, Ph.D., is the creator of the Voyager Tarot, which is the first Tarot I owned and learned with, back in the late 1980s. It’s a photo collage deck, and it still resonates for me in its beauty and usefulness.
Some of the most innovative modern Tarot decks include Mark McElroy’s Bright Idea Deck, and Emily Carding’s Transparent Tarot. While my preference is for a more traditional look and feel to Tarot, it’s decks like these that bring Tarot to people who never considered it before, and have helped carry it into the 21st century.
Sometimes an established artist decides to create a Tarot deck. Hermann Haindl is a great example of an artist who is also knowledgeable about Tarot, and I find his Haindl Tarot to be phenomenal. Artist decks are sometimes disappointments, either because the artists haven’t studied Tarot in depth, don’t have the right feeling for it, or because some aspect we expect of Tarot is missing. It’s not enough for a Tarot to just have pretty pictures or a novel theme. The best art-based decks are fabulous for reading, as is Elisabetta Trevisan’s deck, the Crystal Tarots.
History and Structure
Tarot is a centuries old phenomenon, the earliest European decks having appeared by the 15th century. No one really knows its origin, or its original purpose, but we know that it’s been used both as a deck of playing cards and as a system of divination for hundreds of years.
A Tarot deck is defined primarily by its structure. The deck typically contains 78 cards and includes two parts, a Major Arcana and a Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana contains 22 archetypal images, or Trumps, and the Minor Arcana is more like a deck of ordinary playing cards, with four suits of numbered and Court cards. Whereas a deck of playing cards includes only three face cards in each suit, a Tarot deck has four Courts, traditionally titled Page or Knave (the Jack in a playing card deck), Knight, Queen, and King. The Joker in modern playing cards is derived from the Fool archetype in the Tarot’s Major Arcana.
Three styles of Tarot decks have developed in modern times. Some use only pip cards, with non-scenic illustrations of the given number of suit elements for the numbered Minor Arcana. Others contain scenic illustrations in the Minors, which many people find richer in symbolism and easier to use in readings.
But enough of the technical details and history. I’m positive that if you’re interested in learning more, you’ll find plenty to intrigue you with a simple online search. For more about Tarot history, check out Trionfi.com or Tarotpedia. You can also learn about the history of specific decks at Wikipedia, such as the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot and the much more ancient Tarot de Marseille.
The Art of Tarot
The draw for many people who love Tarot is the artwork. Some collectors don’t read with the cards at all. I won’t post any images here, for reasons of copyright. But I’ll provide a link or two to get you started at sites where samples of both ancient and modern decks can be viewed.
Golden Tarot by Kat Black (Use links at left to view the Majors, Coins, Cups, Swords, Wands.)
Tarot of Transformation by Jasmin Cori and Willow Arlenea is “an innovative deck by two psychotherapists offering an integrated and embodied spirituality.”
If you want to spend about two full days browsing samples of Tarot decks, you might want to try Aeclectic Tarot. This site also links to the now inactive but archived Aeclectic Tarot Forum, formerly one of the biggest and best places on the Internet to discuss Tarot, and still a good learning resource.
Uses of Tarot
Tarot is most useful for gaining valuable insight into our lives, which is something that can’t be measured except through the experiences of those who use it or benefit from it. I don’t typically set out to use Tarot to predict the future, though there are times when it does that anyway, a mystery I won’t go into here in any depth, because frankly I can’t explain it. If someone is interested in how Tarot might do that, or how any kind of psychic ability or extra-sensory perception works, there are many theories, ranging from spiritual beliefs to quantum physics, and there are scientific studies going on all the time. Carl Jung experienced events that he classified as ESP, and as a scientist he thought the subject deserved further study. He also coined the term Synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidence,” which is what a lot of students of Tarot, including me, tend to think is at least partially behind how Tarot works.
If you’re interested in following some of the latest research into psychic and other related phenomena, you might want to check out these links:
Institute of Noetic Sciences
American Society for Psychical Research
Consciousness Research Laboratory
I find that my personal use of Tarot helps me most with insight, helping me to understand what’s going on in my life — especially inside my own psyche. It sometimes helps me make decisions by pointing out options or perspectives that I hadn’t thought of on my own, and it helps me by pointing out where I have either deluded myself about something or I have a lot of unconscious stuff going on that I need to be more aware of. I’ve also at times used it as a tool for meditation. Some psychologists and therapists use Tarot in their practices to help clients understand their projections, archetypes at work in their lives, and other unconscious issues. Sometimes an image is much better than words at bringing unconscious material into the open or into greater clarity. Tarot could be compared to dreams in its symbolism, and to literature in how it provides a metaphor for typical situations and processes that all humans experience.
I’ve used Tarot to spark my creativity, either to inspire the topic of an essay or to help me work out plotting puzzles in my fiction. The solution to the mystery in my currently unpublished mystery novel, Snow Angels came almost entirely from a series of Tarot readings. I’ve read of other Tarot users who also find Tarot helpful in their creative work.
Additionally, Tarot is used, mostly in Europe, to play a card game known as Tarock, Trionfi, or Tarocchi (find instructions here). I’ve never played this game, and the instructions look complex to me. (I grew up playing Canasta and Cribbage.) My understanding is that it’s something like Bridge.
I discovered my love of Tarot more than 30 years ago, and to this day it remains a favorite mystery.
Happy World Tarot Day!