Association for Tarot Studies

Embodied Tarot

When Medieval Draftsmanship Mirrors Cognitive Science
I am a tarot reader. (Yes, I know. When I tell people I am a tarot reader I get the same reaction I would get by claiming to be a stripper, minus the erections). The thing is, I approach the cards from my background as a visual communicator who understands [...]

The Interdependent Language of Tarot

Barbara Klaser
www.mysterynovelist.com
Most Tarot readers would agree that Tarot speaks a symbolic language. Language is tricky, though. Meanings can be subtle and hidden, or they can turn around as circumstances change. The word "blue" can represent the sky on a sunny day, or it can indicate depression. A sunny day is cheerful in most contexts, while [...]

Notes on the Use of Indirect Suggestion in Tarot Readings

Enrique Enriquez
www.enriqueenriquez.net

Here I have copied and commented some selected quotes from a paper titled: "Indirect Forms of Suggestion", by Milton H. Erickson (www.erickson-foundation.org) and Ernest L. Rossi (www.ernestrossi.com/ernestrossi). Some of the techniques used by Erickson [...]

Tarot (dis)contents: past/present/future

Inna Semetsky www.innasense.org
Tarot and Carl Jung’s archetypal images
Psychologist Carl Jung’s biographer Laurens van der Post, in his introduction to Sallie Nichols’ book “Jung and Tarot: an Archetypal Journey” (Nichols 1980), notices the contribution to analytical psychology made by “Nichols, in her profound investigation of Tarot, and her illuminated exegesis of its pattern as an [...]

The I-Ching and the Pip Cards of the Tarot

Jean-Michel David
There are a number of ways one can approach pip cards: through using a key-word mnemonic; geometrical, musical and numerological reflection; connections to their equivalent number in the trump sequence; and correlations to other systems of thought. Herein I want to show one way in which an aspect of the 64 hexagrammes of the [...]

Whispering to the Eye
A Few Thoughts on the Marseille Tarot’s Optical Language.

by Enrique Enriquez
The unconscious responds to vibration and to shape. The meaning of a concept is its cage, and for that concept to reach the unconscious it must free itself. This, I would say, is the key to understanding the Marseille Tarot’s distinctive language. The Marseille Tarot speaks a language of signs which expresses itself [...]

Perceptions of Spirituality

by Lisa Larson
“To ride on a broomstick and fly: combine belladonna leaves, stramonium, munkshood, and celery seeds to make an ointment. Add one toad and boil until the skin falls off the bones. Strain and apply the ointment to the body.” This seventeenth century formula, as told by Jeanne Rose in her book “Herbs and [...]

The Boiardo Poem (15th century)

Tarotpedia translation
> www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Boiardo
Some time between circa 1460 – 1494, Count Matteo Maria Boiardo wrote a poem about cards, the structure of which either mimics or anticipates tarot: apart from the brief opening and closing sonets, the first four ‘chapters’ (of five) have fourteen parts, and the fifth twenty-two. This mirrors precisely tarot as we know [...]

Inquiries into Tarot
& on divination by means of tarot cards (Part 1)

by M. C. de M***
trans. by Jean-Michel David
For this translation, I was very much aided by the various (often provisional) translations of Mary Greer and Jack Meier, Jess Karlin, Donald Tyson and those who contributed to Tarotpedia’s entry (especially Stephen John Mangan / kwaw). Each different translation provided thoughts for different nuances, for which I [...]

The four elements and the suits of the tarot

by Jean-Michel David
As I was preparing this article for the Newsletter, not long after organising an entry under the same topic for Tarotpedia.com and updating my own webpage on the topic, I finally obtained a copy of Mary Greer’s 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card. I must admit that Mary is amongst the few [...]