Three Things
"Team Tarocchi" + difficult times + EP updates . . .
Welcome newcomers. Exploration Project has been in evolution mode for the past couple of months, and a few changes are still taking place. I’ll get to more of that below.
But first I want to explain why I’m sending this newsletter, on this day.
Difficult Times
In early summer, as many readers will recall, I struck on the idea of sending the EP newsletter on days 1, 11, and 22 of each month. I realized that having a meaningful rhythm would make writing easier for me, and would give readers a better experience.
Somewhat surprisingly—I’ve kept to the plan!
And I’d laid out the content for today’s post (the 11th), which was going to start with an essay on “Tarot and the Genre Wheel.”
Never mind what that means, since much of the essay will be devoted to an explanation. But while it’s definitely not a frivolous topic, it didn’t seem to meet the needs of this time.
I don’t think anyone has been able yet to fully process the events that occurred in Israel over the past weekend. And there is no respite that will come soon. Yet we have structures we can turn to for thinking about the complex circumstances the world now faces. These structures can’t lessen grief and shock, but over time, they help us to gain perspective.
One of them is Tarot.
By which I mean that the images and organization of the Tarot deck offer us useful ways to think about any topic—from the mundane to the profound.
So I started writing a different essay, thinking about the age-old symbolic dimensions of warfare, and wondering what Tarot has to tell us about the patterns of conflict that have shaped human history.
It needs more thinking and writing, so I’ll have to take more time. But something came along this morning that wants sharing right away . . .
Go Team!
The Yale Library has revealed a collaboration that’s been going on for five years, involving art historians and conservation scientists from the Morgan Library & Museum, the Network Initiative for Conservation Science (NICS) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Centro per la Conservazione ed il Restauro dei Beni Culturali “La Venaria Reale” in Turin.
The project has grown into a 13-person, multidisciplinary partnership, intended “to determine the cards’ history, material construction, and relationship to each other.”
Taking the name “Team Tarocchi,” these experts have already produced some intriguing results—soon to be shared in a formal paper. In the meantime, the Yale Library has published a preliminary account, explaining the scope of the project, along with a high-level technical overview.
But here’s the even more exciting news:
Team Tarocchi held a virtual study day recently—and the whole thing is available to watch online.
There are four sessions, in which the team members present a wide range of papers, including “A Nimble Introduction to the Game of Tarocchi,” “Costume in the Cards: Tarocchi Fashion,” “Organic Pigments in 15th-Century Italy,” and “Visconti-Sforza Tarocchi Cards in United States and Italian Collections: a Multi-Analytical Study of Materials and Techniques.”
I’m planning to watch the whole thing over the next few days, and will share the highlights in a post on Sunday. From my perspective, the history and mysteries of Tarot are inextricably intertwined—so I expect to be fascinated by this unprecedented focus on the earliest known decks.
EP Update
When I decided to add a paid option for EP subscribers, I went through a series of different ideas about how that might work. I finally settled on one, but it still doesn’t seem quite right.
Therefore, I’ve tweaked a bit more, and now the options look like this:
Those who’ve been following along at home will notice one new item: a “Tarot Workshop” email. Most EP posts either explore ideas or share information—rarely talking about matters of practice. So I thought it would be interesting to add a monthly email focused on various aspects of working with Tarot.
If that sounds interesting, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Starting to write about Tarot and war, I realized something that might offer new insight into the origins of Tarot. Still working out the idea, but look forward to sharing soon.
Meanwhile, as always . . . thanks for reading. C