The Daily Note (10.14)

Sneaking up on "extreme Tarot" . . .

I’ve referred a few times to “lifestyle Tarot”—which is my way of describing an approach that does one or both of these two things:

• Focuses on some aspect of the “self” (self-care, self-awareness, self-development, and so on)

• Focuses on Tarot as an entertaining, improving, or inspiring activity (similar to yoga, meditation, journaling, and so on)

There’s nothing wrong with those approaches, but they represent a limited set of “Doors to Tarot.” The first is Therapeutic, the second is a combination of Social and Meditation. So I can imagine—somewhere inside the garden of Tarot—a “lifestyle” grotto where those three paths intersect.

Here’s an illustration. Cosmo just published a list of “36 Tarot Books That’ll Teach You to Read the Cards Like a Pro.” It’s much better than most Tarot listicles, since it includes titles by Mary K. Greer and Rachel Pollack, along with Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story, Taschen’s lavish picture book, and Angeles Arrien’s pathbreaking Tarot Handbook.

So it’s not just a menu of the latest/trendiest books—in fact, it offers some depth and balance. But a quick count does show plenty of lifestyle-type items, including three journals, and eight books with "self” in the title or description. The words “intuitive,” “manifest,” and “relationship” also appear more than once.

Examples . . .

I don’t want to take anything away from these uses of Tarot, or from writers and teachers who focus in this space. I do think, however, that the lifestyle emphasis is (at least in part) a way of making Tarot acceptable to mainstream audiences. By stripping out the “woo woo” and “weird” stuff, lifestyle Tarot becomes just another form of personal enrichment, like taking a yoga class, becoming vegan (or paleo), putting a mindfulness app on your phone . . . . et cetera.

With all that said—what’s my point?

I started wondering which doors might lead into a contrasting space, opposite the lifestyle grotto. And suddenly! I realized there’s something important missing from the ten doors model.

I’m going to call it “extreme” Tarot. And I’ll say more in tomorrow’s Daily Note.