Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin are today delighted to announce that Abiding in the Sanctuary: The Waite-Trinick Tarot, a Christian Mystical Tarot (1917 – 1923) is published and available here.

They write:

The book is hardback, with dustcover, 186pp in colour, 8”x10”. It is published in a limited edition of 250 copies. There is a preview on the site.

We are honoured to have a preface in the book by Mary K. Greer, who kindly supplied an introduction to Waite’s lifetime work and also discovered a “prophecy” that Waite had made about the revelation of hidden symbols after a century! Whilst not wishing to make too much of that, it is somewhat uncanny, and accords with some of the visionary experiences that came with the production of the work, which we tell in our own introductions.

The book also includes a double-page spread of the Tree of Life and Waite’s hidden system of correspondences, correspondence tables and a commentary against each image. With over 80 full page colour and b&w images, original biographical research and photographs and even rare Frieda Harris images of Masonic Tracing Boards, we trust this book will be a treasure for a long time to come. We gained permissions to use stained glass images, archive photographs and much more which we include in the book – at the last minute discovering and gaining permission to use a photograph of the Lanston Monotype Company shop floor, around the time of this story, where we suspect the plates were created for the b&w images of the Great Symbols. Whilst research is always incomplete, this book represents everything we know to date on the Great Symbols and it is a joy to share.

If you are seriously interested you should order a copy right away as they expect to sell out within the month.

Geraldine writes: “We did many readings that night for the White House staff and some military families, but the Obamas did not get a Tarot reading and the event was not paid for with your tax dollars.  It was a donation from the Disney Corporation and the Hershey Corporation.  The Obamas were lovely, warm and gracious and made us feel right at home.  It was an incredible experience to meet them and I was honored to be there.”

Geraldine runs the Washington D.C. Tarot Society, teaches Tarot at the Jungian Society and does other classes and consultations in the area (see link at top). She was also co-author of Tarot Celebrations: Honoring the Inner Voice.

Who else has done memorable tarot readings or events? Tell us about them in the comments.

Tarot Art and History Tour of Northern Italy
September 23rd – October 6th 2012
14 Day Tour of Northern Italy

We had such a great time on our first organized Tarot Art & History Tour of Italy this fall, that Arnell and Michael are doing it again and it is going to be fabulous! Highlights are posted on this webpage . More details will be sent to you upon request. Hope you can come as it is an unbelievable opportunity! Please book early as space is limited for this extraordinary adventure.

Above is my photo of the room of Good and Bad Government in the Civic Palace of Siena. I really got that these frescoed rooms were designed to have a powerful impact on all who entered the space—to magically imbue people with the ideals and principles governing them. Town councilors entered the room from the now-sealed door that is directly under the allegorical images of Wisdom and Justice—a very deliberate choice. The Rider-Waite Empress was taken from the central image representing PAX (Peace). To the right is the well-governed town. To the left is the Devil with all the terrible consequences that his reign could have upon on the area. Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, creator of The Tarot of the Crone, Tarot Paperdolls and the forthcoming Minoan Tarot is in the foreground.

I can’t emphasize enough, that if you want to have any idea of the world from which the Tarot emerged, you have to experience it for yourself! Your days will be filled with the consciousness and beauty of the 14th and 15th centuries that created the base for the later Renaissance. You’ll begin to understand in the constant mix of Pagan and Christian imagery, how their “Christian” mind-set was an amalgam of all the wisdom that had come before and very different from how we think today. You’ll get an appreciation of the incomparable beauty of Italy and the sophisticated allegorical thinking that had to go into the creation of the Tarot. Your tour guide, Morena Poltronieri of the Museo dei Tarocchi, will introduce you to the secrets of the masons who built the churches and will reveal the influences of the real alchemists, Templars, artists and philosophers who left their easily discerned marks on the buildings she knows so well. Here is one corner of the Museo dei Tarocchi.

Check out this animoto video by Tero Hynynen of photos from the last trip.

The Tarot of the Holy Light

Christine espouses the theory that there is a fairly consistent set of Astro-Alpha-Numeric (AAN) correspondences that exist among all of the aforementioned people as part of an unbroken lineage of Western occult philosophy. That is, a correspondence exists among Astrology, the Hebrew (and possibly Greek) Alphabets, and Numbers that at some point in the 18th century came to be related to Tarot cards by French Martinists and Freemasons. To this can be added swaths of angels and archangels. All this was known to Etteilla and Eliphas Lévi but, by the time we get to the late 19th century, it was beginning to get confused. It went totally off track when the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn knowingly led their initiates astray with a set of competing correspondences that was meant to hide the true lineage.

I have to admit that I am a follower of the Golden Dawn system and, although I have tried to understand the works mentioned above and Christine’s system, I find the material too abstract for my tastes. Christine’s earlier book: The Underground Stream: Esoteric Tarot Revealed is an excellent source for an overview of her theory, and those who are interested also need to read the articles in her Arkletters at Tarot University in order to see how her ideas have continued to develop.

It should be mentioned that, while it appears likely that Tarot was known to some French Freemasons before Antoine Court de Gébelin’s public revelation, tarot doesn’t seem to have been known by any of the earlier philosophers (mentioned above) despite such claims by the magician Eliphas Lévi and Papus. Secret societies have a history of making claims to great antiquity and illustrious predecessors, little of which can be substantiated by historical facts. However, most secret societies are based on an admiration and incorporation of earlier works, often with an accompanying belief in a golden age in which intelligent men and women were guided and lived by these lofty principles. This may be expressed as a founding myth-described-as-history.

This deck is structured according to Christine’s theories, using art derived from 17th century alchemists, collaged and colored by comic book artist, Michael Dowers. Despite some of my comments below, several of the Minor Arcana feature an almost humorous nod to illustrations in the Waite and Thoth deck that many will find comfortingly familiar. [The box features art by Patrick Dowers, which is in such a different, though delightful, style to that of the deck such that there is a disconnect every time the box is opened.] The LWB (little white book) contains only brief, Etteilla-based interpretations and spread suggestions that elucidate each number from one to twelve.

I’ve tried approaching this deck from several viewpoints. First, I tried to simply work with the images, but the cards are so filled with illusive alchemical references that I felt like I needed an alchemical symbol dictionary to understand them. My usual method of “describing the card” fell apart in the face of these—

“The card depicts a crowned and winged lion and eagle facing each other (an alchemical marriage?). Above is an eye-in-a-triangle with another one in the lower half of the card and a sun and a moon in triangles facing opposite the eyes. There are eleven colored balls in the background and two red flowers whose stems frame the picture. Around each eye and and in front of the colored balls are circles (one above and one below) with numbers like a clock (1-12) and the letters of the alphabet. The sky above is lighter than the sky below so perhaps the circles are the hours of the day and the hours of the night.”

The only phrases I came up with were – “a meeting of contraries” and “keeping the balls in the air.” Neither of which made much sense.

Next, I tried working with the correspondences on each card. This is the 6 of Wands. It is is 1-10° Leo ruled by the Sun—the first decan (ten degrees) of Leo. So I turned to my Agrippa who declares that the first decan of Leo shows a man riding on a Lion; it signifies boldness, violence, cruelty, wickedness, lust and labors to be sustained. Okay, I can go along with ‘Boldness with a touch of cruelty.’ But, why is the first decan of Leo the 6 while the 2nd decan of Leo is the 4 of Wands and the 3rd decan the 5 of Wands (card order = 2nd, 3rd, 1st decans)? This is especially confusing because in the 1, 2 and 3 cards of each suit the decans are in order. I’m told Christine’s forthcoming book will answer this question.

Then, I followed the recommendation in the little white book to lay out the cards to illustrate my birth chart. I love doing this with decks! The following illustration shows my chart (laid out on a rug that had a convenient circle of just the right size). The circle itself consists of the 36 Minor Arcana cards that depict the decans (10° segments) of the 360° of the circle. Along the outside I’ve laid the Major Arcana cards that show the signs of the Zodiac (touching the three decans to which they correspond). Inside I’ve laid the cards for the seven classical planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were unknown in this older system). At the center I’ve woven together the four Pages to mark the angles of my chart as they represent the four seasons: Spring/Ascendant, Summer/IC, Fall/Descendent, Winter/MC. My Scorpio Ascendant is on the left with three planets in it (Venus, Mercury, Jupiter). My Sun and Moon are in Libra (12th House), and Mars and Saturn are in Leo in the 9th House at the top.

This can be pretty confusing, so let’s examine one planet placement: Mars in the 1st decan of Leo -

The first card is Mars, which corresponds to the Trump card of Strength. It’s great that it has a Lion on it (but if my Mars were in Pisces I’d find this confusing). The woman is lactating (which I don’t get—feeding the passions?), but the volcano in the background is appropriately Mars-like and fiery. We’ve already examined the second card, which is the 1st decan of Leo; it describes my Mars-drive as ‘bold with a touch of cruelty.’ The third card, the Hermit, corresponds to Leo. The Hermit is holding a large sun in his right hand (Sun rules Leo), and the eye-in-the-sky matches the eyes on the Leo decan card, and I suppose the dragon around his feet could stand in for Leo’s lion. But, really, the introspective Hermit does not seem at all like the proud, socially-oriented Leo, despite his red robe. Furthermore, a great number of cards in the deck have the alchemical Sun, Moon and Eyes on them—so they aren’t particular to these cards, at all.

So, all in all, I’d say this deck is colorfully beautiful and incredibly complex. Clues to the card’s meaning are not obvious, in many cases, from the illustrations. To truly understand what the cards are supposed to mean, you’ll have to wait for Christine’s explanatory book. That book is bound to take you on a journey into the 16th and 17th century metaphysical mind of the giants of occult philosophy, and introduce you to a system of correspondences that might take a bit of study if you wish to incorporate it into your practice. It will definitely expand your horizons.

¶ Artist Hugo Baur recently painted this watercolor portrait of Waite and Smith that he calls “The High Priestess and the Magician.”

Baur explains:

As the Waite-Smith tarot was the result of a collaboration I only thought it natural to make a double portrait. Nevertheless I don’t hold much sympathy for Waite as he didn’t pay Pamela the money and respect she deserved. Still, without him this deck would never have existed, and his influence on the major arcana was considerable. But no explanation is needed for the fact that I placed Pamela in the centre and on the foreground, as it is her artwork and unbelievable spiritual insight that made the Waite Smith deck so special. I hope that fellow admirers of Pamela will consider this painting to be a truthfull homage to an artist that never got the respect she deserved.

¶ Just read a novel from 1987 with a good sprinkling of tarot in it: Second Sight by Mary Tannen. It recounts the intertwined lives of at least four families in a small, New Jersey industrial town. The plot revolves around a single working mother (a tarot and palm reader) finding “The One” she is destined to be with, and a young historian uncovering the complex interrelationships that lie at the base of the continually evolving town. While an essentially light and easy read, this book explores deeper themes and more complex literary symbolism than one would expect from the simple story line:—mysticism versus greed, old families versus new immigrants, nature versus industry. It deserves a good read and is readily available second-hand.

¶ I have a limited number of DVDs available from the two webinars I did for Global Spiritual Studies (include PowerPt presentations):

• “An Analysis of the Role of Cartomancers through Western Art” – 2 DVDs – $32 (includes mailing in the US)
• “Who Are You in the Tarot?” – 1 DVD – $20 (includes mailing in the US)

Payable through PayPal – contact me here if you are interested.

me in front of the Sforza Castle, Milan

I’m working on an overview of the Italy Tarot Tour, but with nearly 2,000 photos and an unbelievable number of wonderful experiences, it’s hard to know what to select. I want to mention a few things that have come up in the meantime and I’m trying out the BlogPress app on my iPad (all mistakes are due to this).

Check out Destined: A Novel of the Tarot, a book-in-progress by Gail Cleare at authonomy.com. The story is built around the 22 Major Arcana of the Payen Tarot (an early Marseilles-style deck) and her encounter with an esoteric scholar who owns an old curio shop. It can be read directly online for free, and you can offer suggestions to the author, so get in your helpful criticisms before the book is finished.

I’ve come across several novels recently that include some tarot in them.

First is the 4th and 5th books of Sara Donati’s Wilderness series:
Fire Along the Sky and Queen of Swords. These books are epic, romantic melodramas that may or may not be to your taste. The use of tarot is a little anachronistic, even given that it is post-de Gébelin, but I’m not really complaining – it’s lite fiction.

Mystery writer Martha Grimes includes a little tarot in two books in her Emma Graham series:
Belle Ruin and its follow-up Fadeaway Girl. Both contain a fortune-teller who reads tarot cards. In the second book, the 5 of Pentacles is described as “Orphans in the Snow” and the Hanged Man shows up as a ‘good’ card, reflecting the twists and turns of the plot and the main character’s indirect way of questioning people, or, perhaps, one of the book’s themes – about the difference between fiction and reality. I enjoyed the “fadeaway” motif.

I understand that the new book, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, has a little tarot in it.

In an earlier post I talked about the Daily Tarot Journal, pointing out Quirkeries – a Personal Tarot Book of Days as one model for using a blog to record your readings. While you can set a blog to private, you may not feel comfortable with an internet format. A much more private option is available FREE for the iPhone, iPad and Android. It is Moment Diary, also known simply as MD. Simplicity is its theme. It provides a handy format for keeping daily records and allows you to include a photo or video of your cards. The video is really great if you’d rather speak instead of typing your card observations. I recommend starting out with a consistent system for naming your daily tarot card(s) so you can search on all appearances of any card. I believe you can use hashtags as a quick way of listing them. The only real failings are limited design/font options and not being able to send the entries to your social media – but Moment Diary is designed to be private and elegantly simple within a calendrical format.

Statue of Columbia Pacific Cemetery

Finally, you might want to look into what’s going on with DC 40 and the 51 Days of Reformation Intercession organized by the New Apostolic Reformation movement, a group that presidential hopeful, Rick Perry, has claimed as an inspiration. They believe that God’s word should be the legal and governmental authority in the United States, and that Christians should acknowledge no other. Compromise is ungodly and any form of feminine Goddess is demonic. This includes, if course, Columbia (patron Goddess of the United States, i.e., District of Columbia) and Lady Liberty. Read about their prayer initiative at PNC-Minnesota Bureau and The Wild Hunt. They may sound like a fringe group, but with people like Rick Perry taking them seriously, we need to be aware of their influence. Personally, I am erecting an altar to Goddess Columbia to send her my share of positive juice. Perhaps she needs a tarot deck dedicated to her . . .

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad. Follow-up note: BlogPress crashed when I was trying to save, but I was able to recover most of my material in the iTunes backup.

x

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: If we were to meet for the first time ever, without me knowing anything about who you are, how would you describe what you do, and how would you describe this new book? [This interview was originally posted at tarology (beta).]

MARY K. GREER: Hi, I’m Mary Greer, I am a teacher, writer and tarot reader. I use tarot cards as a tool for personal insight and creativity, and I do tarot readings with others to assist them in accessing their own wisdom around their personal issues. My latest book is Who Are You in the Tarot? It is a revised and expanded version of my earlier book, Tarot Constellations that teaches you how to find Tarot cards that are personal to you, your family, friends and clients based on birth date, name and the current year, along with court card significators. It also includes descriptions of each of these and methods for working with your cards to learn more about them, yourself and others.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: There is a moment before we know, and then there is The Moment we know. There may be a fraction of a second apart, and even so, they define two completely different realities. When did you know this was the book you needed to write and why?

MARY K. GREER: I have to remember back to the mid-1980s when I wrote my first book on this topic. I learned the Birth Card technique from Angeles Arrien in 1977 and have been using it ever since. When it didn’t look like her own tarot book would be coming out soon, I asked permission to write my work using her technique, for which Angie graciously gave me permission. Firstly, it was a great technique about which I was excited and wanted to share with as many people as possible. And, secondly, I found myself saying the same basic things over and over in classes and readings about the card combinations. I thought it would be much more expeditious to just write down what I found worked best for people. I always create class handouts, so the materials kept evolving and my students wanted more. Unfortunately, my first publisher died and Tarot Constellations went out-of-print. I thought about revising it for years, so, when an editor at RedWheel/Weiser contacted me about doing a new book on the subject, I just said, “Yes, now’s the time.”

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: What can you tell me about your process? How do you write your books?

MARY K. GREER: Each book is different. After writing my first three books I taught a lot of classes on how to write a non-fiction New Age book (which seemed to fit the broadest category I could speak to).  Now I realize how different each book can be. Essentially I find that if I write about whatever excites me most, eventually everything becomes exciting at some point, even if only because, once I finish that piece, the section will be done. Mostly I write at the computer and, if I feel stuck, I tell myself to start anywhere—even in mid-thought. I also allow myself to use crutch words or phrases, like “it’s very, very important to remember that,” because, if I try to censor them, I’ll freeze up. They are so easy to take out later. I rewrite a lot.

My ex-husband, travel-writer, Ed Buryn, edited all my earlier books and essentially taught me how to write, which my M.A. in English hadn’t succeeded in doing. I use all kinds of tricks, like writing a difficult passage as a letter to someone or bitching about my pet peeves so that I can eventually discover what I really do like and believe in—often handwriting these and then just incorporating the good parts.

I’ve found the book proposal process that most publishers demand to be a great help in the early stages of figuring out what I need to know (who my audience is, how my book is similar and different to others, etc.), organizing and outlining the book, and much more. I suggest downloading publisher book proposal instructions and filling them out in the early stages of your book writing process.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: You have been writing and publishing, for a couple of decades now. Perhaps you started at a time when the  boundaries between authors and reader was more clear. Now everybody’s thoughts can be read. Everybody has a workshop to teach, a ‘method’ to share and some ‘expertise’ to cash on. We are all Facebook experts. Do you feel in any particular way about that? Does this makes your work easier, more difficult, or different in any way?

MARY K. GREER: Generally speaking I think it’s great. We all get to share what we know. Hearing from others keeps breaking open my unconscious assumptions and helps me to see things in new and different ways. Perhaps the only thing that is disconcerting is that anyone back in the 1980s who was well-read regarding tarot books knew who had initiated fresh perspectives. Now material gets passed around endlessly and old material gets presented as new proprietary ideas with no regard to what came before. On one hand there is a mad grab for “ownership” and on the other hand there is total disregard for acknowledgement of the hard work done by others. It is true that people will continually re-invent certain classic ideas, or may have heard something briefly from which they spun their own take. On the whole, though, I think we benefit greatly from an international community who are often very generous with their work. I must say, though, that to keep up is becoming more and more difficult and time-consuming. Eeek!

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Do the readers create a (need for) a book, or is it the book the one that creates its readers?

MARY K. GREER: Both. A lot of times I’ve discovered through experiments in classes that there are things that people need that they don’t even know about or may have rejected as a possibility out of misguided assumptions. Before the 1980s almost all books on the tarot said you shouldn’t read the cards for yourself, yet everybody I knew did (guiltly). I was also teaching classes at a college on personal journal techniques and on learning skills (that used step-by-step workbooks). They seemed a perfect fit to me and precipitated one of those “moments” you mentioned earlier. I could see how to use these skills and methods to turn problems with reading for yourself into benefits. In fact, a major theme in all my writing has been how do we safely turn taboos into insights by going deeper into something than we would if we avoided it out of a little understood fear?

I also looked through a lot of books to find a “voice” that seemed natural to me and sounded as if the author were speaking directly to me as a friend. My idea was to share with other people the things that turned me on the most. I wanted to push as many boundaries as I could in myself. I also wanted people to experience these things for themselves—not just read about them. I accepted then, as I do now, that not everyone is going to like this approach.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Are “year cards” and “Birth Cards” similar to a “Significator” card?

MARY K. GREER: Certainly, any card that a person identifies with can be used to signify that person in a reading. In spreads, where the significator is left in the pack and so can turn up anywhere in a spread (or not), then its placement is usually important and may indicate a dividing line between past and present or it can indicate that cards nearest it are most important. I talk a little about significators in my book but it is not a major emphasis. Any time someone sees a card they relate to personally in a spread they tend to pay extra attention to what it’s doing. I make a lot of suggestions in my book for how you can use special cards on their own for contemplation as well as how you can make use of them in readings.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Does a Birth Card show us our destiny, or is it showing us a destination? Is there a difference?

MARY K. GREER: No, I don’t believe a Birth Card shows a particular destination. I describe the Soul Card as pointing to something we need in order to feel a sense of fulfillment. Fate, fortune and destiny are often used interchangeably and each has been defined differently through the ages. As I see it, fate is marked by where we’ve come from. It’s all the habits, personality characteristics, emotional and chemical reactions that are part of our history, body, psychology and DNA. Knowing the past, we can pretty much predict what a person is likely to do, like if I say, “I was fated to end up in California.” Fortune is what we encounter along the way. Destiny is an urge or longing that tends to pull us toward things, but there is no guarantee that we’ll get there (wherever ‘there’ is). In fact, I don’t think there is a single destiny/destination (for most of us, anyway). When fate and destiny collude/collide there’s usually a sense of having found either your purpose or destruction (as in ‘destined’ for a bad end). It’s not so much a destination as a fulfillment, to some degree, of potential. This is something I think about a lot but don’t fully understand—it’s still a mystery to me.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Why do you think so much about it? What is important about this? 

MARY K. GREER: I tend to think about tarot philosophically and any deep consideration of tarot is going to lead to an examination of chance and probability and get into questions of fate and free will. In fact, this summer’s Omega Tarot Conference that I organized with Rachel Pollack had the theme of “Fate and Free Will.” I am intrigued by the whole idea of fate, fortune/chance, free will, and destiny and where these ideas can take us. I even created a spread to examine how these four are operating in one’s life. It was inspired by a line from Dante’s Inferno: Se voler fu o destino o fortuna, non so (“if it was will or fate or chance, I do not know”—Canto 32). Well, I want to know. I like words and appreciate definitions; I think that the differences being designated can be important in understanding what we make of our lives. I get pleasure out of an elegant analysis, and sometimes I get pleasure out of letting go and not having to analyze anything.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: I am interested in what you are saying because it seems to me that most of the knowledge produced in the tarot world circulates in the form of ‘recipes’. An idea seems to be of value only if you can go and “do it at home”. The ‘tarot author’ seems forced to channel Martha Stewart! People seem to want to know about methods, spreads, keys and things like that. How important is it to think about tarot philosophically? Is this something that comes down to each reader’s way to come to terms to the big Whys of what he or she is doing? How is that different from ‘belief’?

MARY K. GREER: I try to keep my philosophical tarot mutterings to a minimum, because I find, personally, that unless philosophy is really eloquently and beautifully said and deeply profound, which I’m usually not, it’s not really worth the expression. One person’s philosophy is another person’s ramblings. Each reader and each client has their own perspective.

Generally, I like philosophy to inform us of something relevant and useful, and therefore I like to ground a concept in some application to our daily lives. A spread is a good test of the principles I’m exploring and my ability to understand them. I often turn spiritual and philosophical statements from great teachers into spreads like the Dante one. Basically, I create a spread position for each significant word or phrase in a quote. It either becomes a spread that anyone can use for deep insight, or I discover it can only be understood with a lot of explanation (in which case I might not share it with others). Rarely, it will not work at all.

This is different from ‘belief,’ in that I am ‘trying out’ the philosophy or ideas to see how my life looks from that perspective. I want to know if it leads to deep insights, greater well-being, compassionate understanding of myself and others, better choices and enhanced goals, etc. This also makes me a much more active reader. I tend to carry on conversations in my head with authors who inspire me, and tarot helps me do that.

I should mention that, when doing a reading, I try to operate within the client’s own world view, unless I feel absolutely compelled to mention a particular conceptual framework because the cards keep screaming it at me. Of course, we are never totally free from our own philosophy, but I really question whether a client needs to hear about mine (occasionally they do).

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: I like to think of tarot readings as synthetic dreams. Sometimes in a dream we see ourselves as someone-something else. We know it is us, but at the same time it isn’t. There is a whole field of meaning between what we are and the way we see ourselves as “something else”. Do Birth Cards, or year cards, work like that?

MARY K. GREER: Definitely they can. They give us a chance to try out a variety of perspectives. I may be a Hermit/Moon, but in a Wheel of Fortune year I get to ‘try on’ sensations of moving quickly, being more social or in the public eye, and may find that my words spread further afield. But all of these are only Personas that I put on in order to see what I look like in that garb, and this includes my Hermit/Moon self. It’s analogous to an element/figure that turns up in a great many dreams, to the extent that it’s well-known and comfortable, but I might not notice it as much as I do the new dream persona that alerts me with disturbing or unusual characteristics (like a Hermit being in a Wheel or Chariot Year).

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Something that comes to mind is the zodiac-sign notion, where a specific symbol is “given” to us by the happenstance of our birth date. Somehow zodiac-signs allow us to explain ourselves away as a certain set of fixed personality traits. How do you see that dialogue between a tarot deck that is always in flow, always ready to give us a chance encounter with an image, and a birth-card, something that stays with us, something that is set for us by the biographical milestone of our own birth.

MARY K. GREER: We respond to chance encounters in the moment of a reading. The card is viewed in relation to the immediate question and to other cards in the reading. With Birth Cards, we can continue to explore how they relate to us for our whole lives and can watch our special relationship to them evolve over time.

Any system used for defining people can be limiting. That’s why I like looking at a multitude of systems—to get a fuller picture. They also help us articulate things we might not have been able to see or understand otherwise. Personality systems allow us to look at ourselves through a bunch of different colored glasses or different shaped mirrors. Each highlights something the others don’t see. One of the greatest benefits is to learn compassion for others through recognizing that others have ways of being and acting that are essentially different than our own. Seeing this in them helps us see such things in ourselves.

For instance, I used to get furious when my Lovers Soul Card husband would make plans for “us” without asking me first. I came to realize that he was a “we-thinker,” whereas I, with my Hermit Soul Card, am an “I” thinker who decides on my own path and then may ask others if they want to join me. I assumed others should think and act the same way I did. But, my spouse was not being thoughtless or rude. He had different unconscious assumptions about relationships than I did. I also came to understand this part of my own automatic way of approaching things. Our Soul Cards gave us a way of recognizing, talking about, and respecting this dynamic.

By the way, sun-sign astrology is terribly limiting and possibly the least interesting of all the information found in an astrology chart. Each element in each personality system reflects a specific aspect of self. Experience teaches you to recognize what these are. Furthermore, as a person becomes more conscious and aware, the kinds of things reflected tend to change because they can reflect a new level of meaning. For instance in a reading, Pentacles, for some people, represent shelter, food and money, while other people are secure in these and, therefore, respond at an more abstract level of security, worth and value.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: I agree with you about zodiac-signs being fairly uninteresting, yet the idea seems simple enough to appeal to the vastest amount of people. The idea of a Birth Card also seems to fit in our long-to-belong. Do you find that people respond better to the images when they are framed as birth/year/soul cards than when they aren’t?

MARY K. GREER: Actually I meant Sun Signs. Zodiac signs, in tropical astrology are simply symbolic divisions of the solar year mapping the location of planets in an astrological chart. I find the study of astrology and of one’s chart to be very rewarding.

As to responding better to the tarot images as Birth Cards—some do and some don’t. I certainly don’t think everyone has to use this system! It’s only an option. I have noticed, however, that in beginner classes, it’s a wonderful way to get people quickly involved with the cards—first with their own personal cards and then expanding to those near and dear to them. Before you know it, they have a personal relationship with all the trump cards—they have seen them in action, so to speak.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: How does the idea of Birth/Soul Card relate to Jung’s archetypes?

MARY K. GREER: As is frequently pointed out, each of the Major Arcana relate to primordial ideas that Jung called archetypes. With Birth Cards, we get to see how the related archetypes align with our life direction and how that archetype symbolizes core patterns of growth and change. If it works for you, great! If it doesn’t, then find concepts that serve you better.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Is the ‘chance operation’ of picking a random card out of a deck the same kind of chance of picking a card based on our date of birth?

MARY K. GREER: Not at all. “Chance” (if there is such a thing as chance) exists in the moment and day we are born, not in the card. There’s no chance in the way the numbers add up, and I don’t think chance is involved in which cards correspond with which numbers. Think of it this way: each of us is born into a particular culture, defined in part by the way we look at time and the calendar we use. In theory, our Birth Cards reflect our relationship to that. There’s no way to prove whether or not there is intent behind this, but I find that when I act “as if” there were, “as if” I were drawn to experience this life through a particular season, day, minute, then I find I can experience my life in much more meaningful and exciting ways. It enhances my life and relationships with other people.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: I like your “as if” proposition. I find it very healthy to apply it every time I look at the tarot, but I also think it is useful when we consider all the intellectual beacons of our culture, like Marxism, Freudian theory, or any religion in general. Now, how can we put the “as if” in our readings, when so many clients look for certainties in the tarot?

MARY K. GREER: Of course, I’m always acting “as if” the tarot can offer worth while insights to me, and as if they were magic and magic were real, because then they tend to work that way for me. The biggest “as if” for me, when reading for others, is that I act “as if” my clients have all the wisdom they need inside themselves. The question then becomes, how do I conduct a reading in a way that will actualize their own knowledge and so that they make their own well-considered choices.

I sometimes suggest that clients “try on” a suggestion or perspective “for size”—and offer them more than one perspective. Then I ask how each “fits.” I want the client to always be evaluating things for themselves. I also sometimes say things I deliberately know are wrong so a client can “correct” me. It can be a way to help them realize they already know something or have made a judgment or choice inside that they hadn’t yet recognized consciously. Perhaps I over-emphasize the conditional, but I try to always remember that my own invasive judgments and proclivities may not be appropriate for another person, so I keep giving clients choices until they seem to have ended up at some kind of destination, and then I ask them if this is where they really want to be. Thus, a tarot reading can be a “dry run” or rehearsal for the future—a trying on of attitudes and approaches.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Your idea of “acting ‘as if’ clients have all the wisdom they need inside themselves” is absolutely beautiful! I think it is very healthy for a reader to assume that all clients are more or less imaginary. I know that I find it very sobering to think that, as a tarot reader, I am imaginary. So, thinking that I am an imaginary tarot reader who speaks to an imaginary client, and we, along with the trumps, are all part of a strange dream, is a delightful thing. That probably is not what you meant, but still, Thanks! 

MARY K. GREER: If our whole life is about acting “as if,” then we definitely have moved into acting as if life were a dream, and that’s a pretty mystical/magical and wondrous place to be. By the way, I also teach classes in “Life as a Dream,” in which we look at life events using dream techniques. After a while a person begins to function naturally within a special kind of being-in-the-world that is often mentioned by poets and mystics. Not everyone feels comfortable doing this.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Now, I suppose that a Birth Card or a Soul Card could help clients to re-imagine themselves, or even to imagine a way out of themselves. Is that right?

MARY K. GREER: Definitely. And that’s where a focusing on the highest and deepest aspects of a card become important. Ultimately, I think we transcend any of these labels, but ‘going through’ them can, paradoxically, help us to do so.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Is there anything in your book for those who don’t believe in Fate nor Destiny?

MARY K. GREER: Sure they can try out the mechanics and see if the results serve them in some way. I tried to leave the underlying principles open-ended enough that each person who finds the system intriguing can make of it what they will.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Do you remember, and would share, a memory of a reading you did that made you proud?

MARY K. GREER: This one is from fairly early in my tarot reading career. I was visiting my younger brother and his wife and offered to do a reading for her (my brother wasn’t interested at all). I remember that I had always thought of my sister-in-law as a rather colorless, please-everyone kind of person. I don’t remember any details of the cards, but it quickly became apparent that she thought and felt deeply about things at a level I would never have guessed. When I said this, she started crying and said, “No one has ever seen that in me before.” For the first time she felt that someone else had looked beyond the surface and recognized something in her that had never been acknowledged. My whole attitude toward her shifted, and through the years she’s proven to be amazingly deep, wise and strong. I don’t often read for family and close friends, but I feel that every one of those readings has been powerful and has drawn us closer—perhaps because they’ve always taken us deep into previously uncharted waters of knowing each other.

I’d also like to mention doing brief readings for several of my mother’s ninety-plus year-old friends at her retirement community. Difficulties showed up for each of them, but we faced them squarely, head-on (at that age can you do anything different?) and found a certain attitude or strength of spirit that could serve them. I felt so honored to be able to share a moment with each person that seemed to touch on the core of their being. It was like looking past the veneer that they so graciously kept up, to see them as much richer and braver beings than I had before. Old people often feel like they are not seen anymore.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: I find it very hard to read for older people, because I am more interested in what they have to say than in whatever I could tell them. I always want to derail the reading and ask them things. Is there any type of client you feel uncomfortable reading for?

MARY K. GREER: I don’t do at all well with people who are rigidly lying to themselves—who have created a habit of such deep denial that they daren’t let anything else through. I don’t feel I should challenge such deeply held defense postures, even when the cards show me what’s going on. If I continue the session, I find myself forced into a straightforward reading of the cards based on traditional meanings, which such clients usually reject anyway. When I realize it is not my job to ‘fix’ them, then I can move into a kind of compassion that just lets them be.

Occasionally someone is so fascinating that I want to just sit and talk with them. Then I have to discipline myself to keep the focus. After all, they are paying me to help them look at a particular concern.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: You are talking about “compassion,” which is certainly a good word to use, although I personally prefer “indifference”. A street sign doesn’t care if we turn left or right. The job of the sign is to signal, not to make us take the turn. Even so, I have to say that I don’t read for enlightened beings looking for the next stepping stone in the development of their inner self, but for women who obsess over their love life, and people in fear of what they cannot control. Half of the time these clients behave as if they have a toothache, and they go to the dentist, and the dentist takes an X-ray and says: “yes, you have a rotten tooth”, and they ask the dentist to please take another X-Ray, and then another one, and another one. They keep asking the dentist to do it “one more time” hoping that at some point he will look at one of these X-rays and say: “Look! You are perfectly fine!” 

This fascinates me because it links the act of the reading to gambling. Asking the same questions over and over, either in the same reading or over a period of weeks, has the same compulsory feeling of putting coins in a slot-machine. There is an entrancing irrationality in the whole process, and I tend to treat such irrationality as I would treat a soap bubble. I do my best at letting it float, without attempting to pop it out. I think that irrationality is the ‘Prima Materia’ of tarot readings and any other kind of divination. What do you think?

MARY K. GREER: Some people, although they may not know it, are looking for a definitive sign that says, “now is the time to move on,” but they don’t know what that is, and they refuse all the ‘logical’ signs. I try to focus readings more on learning than on advice or prediction. So, although a situation may not a good one, the person may not yet have learned all the lessons necessary, or the timing isn’t right for a new direction. Of course, some people are just plain stubborn or stuck. My inner mantra is, “I don’t have to fix it.” I don’t try to solve their problems. However, indifference is a little beyond me in that I am very empathic. This is why I created “The Breakthrough Process” (discussed in most of my books), with which I conclude most readings. Basically, at the end, the client choses cards from the spread that show: 1) their major problem, block or obstacle, 2) a way to break through that problem, 3) what they most want to develop in themselves, and 4) an action that is in alignment with #3. I become a scribe writing down what they say, so it is clear the choice is in their hands. This leads to what I see as an ideal purpose for tarot: to help us meet whatever comes in the best possible way.

ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ: Finally, if this were our first meeting ever, after having this conversation, what would be the last thing you would want me to hear from you?

MARY K. GREER: I’d want you to know how much I enjoy our back-and-forth conversations, even if this was more one-sided than the previous one. You notice the little things that others would overlook—observations that open me up to areas I rarely get to touch on and that challenge me to think about what is most important. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about my favorite subject.

As promised, here is the information on the IndiGoGo fundraising campaign for the Waite-Trinick Tarot Book. You can help publish A.E. Waite’s Second Tarot

Tali Goodwin has started a series on her discovery of the images and the continuing saga involving her research into John Trinick. Read all about it at The Tarot Speakeasy.

I just happened on a “Tarot Book of Days” called Quirkeries by Sharyn Mallow Woerz. It’s practically perfect in its elegant simplicity.

Often there are no more than a half dozen sentences. Entries begin with a title, the deck and the card. These are followed with three brief paragraphs: 1) first thoughts on card image, 2) personal associations regarding card meaning, 3) an inspirational quote on a related topic. The card is pictured in a space to the right. Sharyn switches to a new deck every Sunday and usually adds a brief deck overview at that time.

I’m so glad I found this blog. I wrote Sharyn asking her some questions about the blog, which she kindly answered in the comments. I recommend reading what she has to say. I find her whole process inspiring. She’s given me permission to post this sample clip from her blog (click here to get a readable size). Imagine doing one of these every day!

Feel free to add your own experiences with keeping a daily tarot journal, and tell us what medium you use.

The following announcement by Tali Goodwin and Marcus Katz has stirred quite a controversy. At the end of this announcement you’ll find a link to an article by Tabatha Cicero that adds much to an understanding of issues involved in the publication of these images.

Tali Goodwin of Tarot Professionals and the blog Tarot Speakeasy, through extensive research, has discovered the ORIGINAL Waite-Trinick images that comprised a tarot deck conceptualized by A.E. Waite for the private use of members of his Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Tali tracked the family of stained glass artist, J. B. Trinick, who had lived in Kendal, England, and found the original color paintings!

Late last year Marcus Katz stumbled across an ebay sale for a set of worn and damaged images that he immediately recognized as part of a mysterious second Waite deck. It had been brought to the attention of tarotists in Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett’s book A History of the Occult Tarot. The illustrations here are from that book. The new discovery was part of a series of several major synchronicities in the story of this rare deck that have taken place over the last two years.

Tali and Marcus were able to view and photograph the beautiful and enigmatic original paintings and have agreed with the owners to bring out a book (in color and b&w) of the major twenty-two images with full commentary prior to Christmas 2011.

The commentary will be based on Waite’s unpublished and extensive commentary on the images, which has led to a complete mapping of Waite’s “secret” correspondences to the Tree of Life. Marcus says that this set of correspondences is so blindingly obvious and “makes sense,” such that he believes we will be astounded. It will be interesting to see if the mapping corresponds with the revised Tree of Life described in Decker and Dummett’s book. Also, this clears up a long-running controversy about whether the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was designed with Golden Dawn Tree of Life Associations in mind. My feeling is that it was, as Waite clearly uses these associations in some of his Order papers, but it’s also clear that he wasn’t really satisfied with them.

Tarot Professionals are hosting a funding drive—live on Indigogo (now available) to ask for assistance towards publication. As they want to make these remarkable images—and the biggest discovery in Tarot this century—available to everyone. I’ll post the information as soon as I get it.

For additional information and another perspective, read Tabatha Cicero on “The Great Symbols of the Paths” at The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn blog.

About John Trinick

About John Trinick

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Several years ago, Cerulean, on Aeclectic’s tarot forum, posted this information about Trinick:

John Trinick was born in Melbourne, Australia, on 17 August 1890, sailing to England with his parents in 1893 before returning to Australia in 1907. He studied in the art school of the National Gallery of Victoria between 1910 and 1915 and then returned to England in 1919 to continue his studies at the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole school of Art.

Trinick began to specialise in glass in 1921 when he joined the studios of William Morris Merton and ten years later he opened his own studio in Upper Norwood, London. He rapidly became famous for the quality of his work, exhibiting widely at The Royal Academy, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and in Vitoria, Spain, in addition to providing stained glass windows for several churches, including a complete set of chapel windows for St. Michael’s in 1951. Among his other work was a panel, Opus Sectile, depicting Our Lady of Walsingham in Westminster Cathedral; 11 windows for St. Pius X, London and the entire chapel scheme for Salmerston Grange, Margate.

He was also an accomplished illustrator in watercolour, pencil, pastel and crayon, a collection of Trinick’s watercolour copies of European stained glass windows ws purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it forms part of the V and A archives.

Although the majority of Trinick’s work involved ecclesiastical commissions, he did not limit his exploration of spirituality to Christianity. He actively explored many modes of thinking throughout his life, including Rosicruianism and Freemasonry. He had a strong interest in alchemy and other forms of ancient spirituality. In 1922 he published a book of poetry entitled Dead Sanctuary and, in 1967, at the age of 84, he published a philosophical volume, The Fire Tried Stone, an appraisal of the work of Carl Jung.

John Trinick died in 1974, many of his designs returning to Australia.

This color design for five stained glass windows is in the University of Melbourne Art Collection.

Here’s his St. Theresa Window from Our Lady of Dolours, Hendon.