I’ve spent the last couple of months doing a deep dive into the history of the tarot – I’ve barely scratched the surface. It seems the more I learn the more there is to research. I’d always just thought that the Rider Waite cards were created off the back of a card deck that had been kicking around for a couple of centuries at most. I thought that one set of meanings had been broadly agreed and Rider/Waite had codified the meanings in the images to aid the reader.
I think I was wrong. I’ve got other posts in the pipeline about what I’ve learned so far, but I’m at a bit of a crossroads. Do I stop my research here? I feel like my original understanding was the outer layer, what I’ve learned since is another deeper layer but I can see that there are so many more. If I read Eliphaz Levi’s essays will that be enough? Will I then feel the need to start studying the Kabala? Thelema? It feels like some absolute truth is just out of reach.
In my piece on Aleister Crowley, I talk about apophemia (seeing deeper meanings in things which are actually just coincidences). Tonight, after I’d spent the day setting up social media for Lady Vic, I made potato stars for dinner – they had been substituted in my Tesco order. While I was dishing up, my daughter came and asked if I wanted to play a game called “The Tower” which she’d learned in school today. Cards 17 and 16 of the major arcana, mean giving everything to renewal and growth and sudden change as part of a bigger ineffable plan. Was it a warning? If I go down this path to deeper knowledge will I also suffer sudden, violent change? Am I seeing faces in the flames?
I’m stressed (my youngest has just started a new school and my eldest hates school so the start of the school year is always difficult, a close friend has just lost her mum and my sister planning to emigrate are just a few of my current stressors) and I’m a little sleep deprived (we’ve got a new puppy called Betty – pic below – and she likes to play at 3am). Mentally I’m primed to be looking for solace in something bigger than myself, to find some sort of order in the chaos around me. I’ve got another project that really needs my attention so I’m going to switch my focus to that for a few weeks and hopefully, I can then come back to looking at the tarot from the viewpoint of the sceptic that wants to believe.
