The List (1.22.2023)
Old papers, a new deck, and . . . .
For good or otherwise (still deciding), I seem to have every piece of paper I ever wrote on--dating back to the day I replaced my toy typewriter with a portable Smith-Corona.
From a serendipity perspective, this paper snowball may have been gaining significance as it rolled down the decades. But from a reality perspective . . . paper not only takes up a lot of space, but also weighs a lot. And after years of moving this accidental archive from place to place, I’m ready to “review and release” as much as possible.
Of course these stacks, boxes, and drawers of pages don’t hold a proverbial candle to the 2,000-ish books I own. Books pose a different challenge, which I’ll write about another time. For now, I’ll just share some Tarot notes as I come across them.
They differ from the “Tarot Time Capsule” posts I’ve published occasionally over the past two years. Those focused on items I saved from various 1980-2000 Tarot events and publications, while these are notes I’ve made for my own use—mostly either random thoughts or odds and ends of information for future projects that didn’t get done (yet).
So, here’s today’s installment!
I discovered a legal pad with several handwritten pages, headed “Tarot to look for.”
At first I wondered why I hadn’t just looked for these items instead of making a list—but then I remembered that in days of yore, when I wrote these notes, you had to go somewhere to “look for” things. I live near several excellent university libraries, but tracking these items down would have been the work of days.
So the list has been preserved like a fly in amber til now. The first item is:
Adams, Richard. The Tyger Voyage. Knopf, 1976.
It turns out to be an illustrated juvenile book by Richard Adams, author of the best-selling classic Watership Down—and sure enough, there’s a delightful picture of Tarot-reading tigers, kindly shared in this tweet:
I also found the cover of a 1997 magazine from the iconic Bodhi Tree Bookstore, posted on Pinterest by Sherry Schmidt:
Bodhi Tree opened in 1975—and its closing in 2011 put an exclamation mark on the end of the “New Age.” But that’s another story.
The next note of interest:
Journal of American Folk-Lore, Boston 1896. H. C. Bolton, “Fortune Telling in America Today,” pp. 299-397.
As it turns out, the article—which you can see here—is subtitled “A Study of Advertisements.” It’s like a trip back in time, but Bolton’s Victorian reading of the intersection between popular culture and divination reveals (I think) some points in common with commercial Tarot today.
I was intrigued by his opening paragraph, which makes some rather pungent distinctions:
Worth noting—Bolton likely meant the “third class of persons” to include members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was then about ten years old. In fact, the group was at its height of influence in 1896, with a roster that included such notables as William Butler Yeats, Arthur Machen, Evelyn Underhill, and Aleister Crowley.
The next significant item on my list was “Arthur Corwin.” And that name led me in so many directions that I want to share a longer account in the next couple of days.
Meanwhile, though, I’ll end with a very recent discovery. While working on a previous EP post, I came across Rachel Torda’s truly lovely Flow Tarot.
Perhaps it’s my Pisces preponderance—but I’m captivated by the concept and execution of this deck. So I may have more to say . . . .
Soon! C