Tarot Cards

I was fascinated by the chapter titled “Reading the Cards – the tarot” in A History of Magic, Witchcraft, & the Occult. It was only recently that I learned about the existence of tarot cards at all, and I was immediately interested in the practice. I visited a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve a couple years ago, and his sister had just received an order of a new deck of tarot cards. She explained to me (as described on page 219) how the common practice was to draw 3 cards, which represented past, present, and future (from left to right). In addition, she explained how if a card is drawn upside down, then the cards meaning / implication is reversed. However, I was especially intrigued by the open-endedness of the interpretation. I practiced reading someone’s fortune and my friend’s sister encouraged me to simply speak anything that came to mind in relation to the cards. So, it was cool how with absolutely zero knowledge, there is an element of human connection that allows anyone to attempt to connect with higher powers and interpret someone’s state of life via the tarot cards and belief.

On that note, I had no idea that the tarot cards were originally used for playing games like a regular 52 card deck. Only a century after ordinary playing cards were introduced to Europe, people felt the need use their own creativity and imagination to make their own form of playing decks. This makes sense because TBH normal decks of playing cards are pretty boring (numbers, some royalty, and a few different symbols). Regardless, people would even use the limiting decks of ordinary cards to facilitate interpretations as well, which I would not have guessed. I suppose if this standard card set was the only one accessible to certain people, maybe before the printing press was invented, then it makes sense to use the ordinary deck for fortune telling.

Obviously, tarot cards are still used by many people today, often as a tool for self-reflection more so than divination, but I performed some research online to learn further applications / references to tarot cards within the past few years in modern society. Apparently, there has been a recent trend in the world of fashion to incorporate themes from tarot cards into apparel and photography. In 2016, Maria Grazia Chiuri introduced a tarot-themed collection of apparel at the house of Dior. It is rumored that Christian Dior himself performs tarot readings before all of his shows. Chiuri’s collection would inspire Christian Dior to create a line of clothing dedicated to a specific deck of tarot cards – the “Motherpeace” feminist tarot deck created by Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble in the late 70s. Most recently, Dior included 45 different tarot-based looks in his 2021 collection, whereby pictures were taken of the models to resemble specific cards in a tarot deck.

Not only have tarot cards been referenced in the world of fashion, but they have also been incorporated into the world of modern art as well. In the Italian village of Capalbio (in Tuscany) is the “Tarot Garden” (constructed in the late 20^th century), which is considered to be the life masterpiece of Niki de Saint Phalle, a French American sculptor. Throughout this garden are 22 colorful, massive sculptures based on the major arcana in tarot culture. I think it would be cool to don a blindfold and then be led throughout the garden. One would say “stop” three times, and each time decide which tarot sculpture is closest. Using this data, one could perform a tarot reading based on these three stops to represent past, present, and future.

https://www.vogue.com/article/tarot-as-a-tool-for-our-times

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/niki-de-saint-phalles-tarot-garden