What's New at the Exploration Project? #2
Cycle 1 is officially underway. Plus--
First . . . if you haven’t had a chance to open Newsletter 1.1, I hope you will. Or if the email version got lost in your Inbox, read 1.1 online.
I had a lot of fun writing it, and hope you’ll enjoy reading it.
Second . . .
Last week I found some posts written years ago (2005!), for a blog I started, but didn’t continue. I had planned to pick a favorite deck every week—but only got as far as Kat Black’s ravishing Golden Tarot, sampled above.
Most of what I wrote then doesn’t bear revisiting, but this short reflection still seems worth sharing:
The Trouble with Tarot
The trouble is . . . Tarot morphs into whatever someone wants it to be. It’s a unique repository of archetypal imagery, a remarkable tool for intuitive awareness, a coded book of secret knowledge, a cheap trick used by the unscrupulous to exploit the unsophisticated — and more!
The Tarot can’t be captured. There’s no explanation except what we make up, and since everyone makes up their own, it’s a wonder we can carry on a discussion at all. Even the “traditions” that people align with today are simply ideas that were invented by people in previous eras, based on nothing at all but imagination.
The Tarot, like the Bible, is peculiarly powerful and entirely ambiguous. In fact, in both cases the power derives to a large extent from the ambiguity. Very little can be proved about the origins or meaning of either the Tarot or the Bible, but you also can’t disprove very much.
And since both are essentially collections of universal human experiences — expressed in the Bible through stories and in the Tarot through visual images — any individual can relate to their contents.
What mirrors us fascinates us. And it’s easy to think that because something seems to fit our personal needs so perfectly, it must be an expression of truth. Or that because we can identify with something, we therefore understand it.
The trouble is . . . Tarot, like the Bible, can inspire fundamentalism among those who are uncomfortable with ambiguity. And it can be used selectively or simplistically to manipulate other people, by those who seek power and/or profit.
That said — I wish I knew how to end this post, but it appears I don’t. Any suggestions?
I still have the same thoughts in 2020. And I’m still inviting suggestions!
Finally:
In Newsletter 1.1, I made two promises.
One—day-by-day notes on the 22 articles in the anthology Wheel of Tarot: A New Revolution. That did get started, and I’m bringing it up to date this weekend.
Two—more about the works of Guido and Dirk Gillabel.
So here’s the second fulfillment:
These exceptional brothers continue to expand and evolve the possibilities of Tarot. I don’t have room to chronicle all their creative accomplishments, but here are two you should definitely know about.
Dirk has shared his extraordinary Singing Bowl soundscape in a YouTube presentation, accompanied Carol Herzer’s lovely “fractal visuals.” It’s a wonderful experience—and will inspire you to learn about Dirk’s unique Vision Tarot.
Guido has created the Tarot Museum Belgium, an amazing collection of more than 2500 “contemporary and antique tarot decks, fortune-telling games, old etchings, funny tarot gadgets, etc.” Be sure to browse the well-organized website—and take the YouTube video tour—for an enhanced appreciation of Tarot and its cultural contexts.
Thanks so much for reading.
And thanks to everyone who is out there somewhere working (right this minute) to further our collective understanding of Tarot.
Warmest regards, Cynthia