In Divine Intervention, staff writer Maria Blyth introduces different forms of divination. She kicks off this column with one of the most popular forms of all: tarot.
Image © Kaitlynn Copithorne
If you’ve ever explored the tarot’s origin stories then you’ve probably found them to be confusing and contradictory at best. From tarot as a covert communication vehicle of ancient Egyptian secrets, to the deck as an occult book of mysteries disguised as a frivolous card game - it quickly becomes difficult to discern fact from fiction.
Perhaps Italo Calvino, member of the Oulipo group of writers, puts it best when he describes tarot as “a machine for constructing stories”. This is certainly in keeping with the cards’ incarnation as Tarocchi Appropriati, an inventive literary and linguistic game first described by Girolamo Bargagli in 1572. The game involved assigning trump cards (those of the ‘major arcana’) to one’s opponents to match their personality traits, in a witty, creative (and hopefully tactful) manner.
Tarot was revived by 19th Century occultists, and became a key divination tool admired and used by practitioners such as Aleister Crowley, founder of Thelema, and Theosophists such as Helena Blavatsky. Indeed, Pamela Colman Smith of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn illustrated the seminal Rider Waite Smith deck which continues to be favoured by millions of tarot readers across the globe. This was, notably, the first deck to illustrate the minor arcana since Italy’s 15th Century Sola Busca tarot.
From the 1970s onwards, tarot began to take on a new hue - that of a psychological tool for self-knowledge, as opposed to having more divinatory uses. In a sense, contemporary ‘character reading’ practices have come to fall surprisingly in line with the Tarocchi Appropriati of old.
Interested in learning the tarot for yourself? The beauty of starting any new practice is in getting intimate with how it relates to you as an individual, as well as working out how you might go about integrating new rituals and habits into your life. Working with the tarot is no exception. As with all journeys, each individual’s roadmap will be different, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from those who have come before us. I spoke to three prominent tarot readers to find out about how they learned their craft - perhaps their stories will encourage you to follow your own distinct trajectory.
Aly Kravetz (tarot reader, witch, proprietress of Bronxwitch Bodega)
“I learned to read tarot the hard way. I bought my first tarot deck (yes, I bought it. Relax.) when I was about 15 years old and back then I didn't know jack sh*t. Rider Waite, who? I saw a deck and guidebook set in the new age section of the Barnes & Noble I frequented and I just had to have it. The problem, I realised later, was that the minor arcana cards didn't have images. The 4 of Cups, for example, just had four cups on them. This is a very difficult type of deck to learn from as a new reader, because often, the imagery gives you useful clues into the card's deeper meanings. It bothered me that I had to rely so heavily on the guidebook. So I took a purple composition notebook, copied the entire contents of the guidebook into my notebook in my own words and used the rest of the notebook to journal about every reading. This was my self-created tarot textbook. And slowly, very slowly, I progressed.”
Celeste Mott (tarot reader, witch)
“I used to dress up as a 'fortune teller' as a kid and conduct little psychic readings in my living room tent fort. When I was about 10 my neighbour was throwing out a bunch of esoteric books and other household things he no longer needed, and included in all of that was a deck of tarot cards. It was one of those big, pre-packaged, Barnes & Noble style Tarot Sets, with a deck and also a hardbound book with more detailed explanations, suggested spreads and so on. I took it home and started working with it, much to the horror of my very Catholic mom! Sadly for her, it turned out not to be a phase, and here I am 24 years later, a full-time witch and tarot reader.”
Michelle Tea (author of Modern Tarot)
“I learned tarot when I was a goth 15-year old in New England in the 80s. A friend with an afternoon job at Barnes and Noble stole for me my first deck, a Rider Waite, and I learned by reading for myself, my friends and my family. My best friend had acquired the Thoth deck, and he read my cards on that a lot, so I became familiar with it and eventually bought it from a witch shop in Boston. When I was fresh out of high school I had an office job where I often didn't have any real work to do (score!) and I would spend a lot of my down time throwing spreads for no one, just to practice and learn how the cards fit together into a story.