I was playing poker with friends and acquaintances. A new style I had not seen before, so I was alternatively horrid and excellent at it. The dealer was patiently teaching me the sometimes conflicting rules.
I spied a pattern and muttered if we were playing poker or playing tarrochi. The other players quickly spoke over me to bury my mumbled words. It seems one does not speak of tarrochi among them.
The dealer ended the hand, passed off the game to another player and pulled me aside. He opened a notebook of card protectors. Each slot held a tarot card. Each card was the representative of an individual deck.
He points to one. The image is a cut-away side view of a Giza pyramid. Three brass discs were arranged above it. The background was supposed to look like papyrus and there was a border comprised of hieroglyphs. “What is this card, and what do you think of the deck?”
“That’s the 3 of Discs, the Master of the Craft card. And I think poorly of the deck. It plays to those that still think the tarot to be Ancient Egyptian Wisdom and shit. The Kemetic gods are hammered into Western wishing. This is a deck I can’t use.”
He smiles. I feel I was just interviewed, and passed. He points to another card. Two swords are crossed in mid-air, while a white woman stands below them holding two combatants apart. Her hood is over her face, obscuring her from the viewer. Her hands are bloody as they push against the chest of the two disheveled men. In the background the ocean is visible. The waning crescent moon is barely clear of the trees. There are symbols in the corner of the card, and a gilded border of two ribbons twisting around each other. The scene is very detailed, like a large painting. I wonder if the original is hanging in a mansion in Europe. “And this one?”
“The Two of Swords. Compromise. Not peace or balance. The woman can only hold back the fighters for so long. Haven’t seen this card with this scene before. Usually it is the blindfolded woman, seated while holding two crossed swords with the sea behind her. The symbols are hard to see because of the sleeve. I would have to see more of this deck before I can say if I could use it or not.”
He closes the book and ushers me into a side room while humming happily to himself. There are five others seated at a table. Around twenty five tarot decks are open before them. The same card has been pulled out of each. They are discussing not only the meaning of the card, but also how each deck designer has portrayed the card, the symbolism used in the card, and which symbols have been dropped over the years.
He tells me to jump into the study. He has a few things to attend to, then he will return to lead the group.
The study group was great, at first. There were honest critiques of the sexism in the decks following Waite’s meanings. (The Empress, for example.) Some argued Crowley’s Thoth did not have such blatant sexism and his Lust card was an example of that. Until the question was raised why many of the majors that dealt with erasure of the self were women, and those that dealt with the building of the self were male.
But when looking over the decks on the table, I realized I had another issue with tarot that was directly interfering with my skills. From Golden Dawn based, to Marseille, to neo-Wicca, to fairies, to modern, to holiday niche, to gender bender, to “ethnic”, all these decks have one core feature.
They are White. Some use the trappings of other cultures to cloak themselves, but no matter the name of the card, no matter the imagery, the tarot is a white man’s tool.
I finally realize why I am discontent with all of the decks I look over. It’s not just the same symbols being used over and over, reinforcing the misogynist mindset of 19th and 20th century western occultism. It’s the undercurrent of colonial violence. The muting of other voices unless listened to through the filter of tarot. The insistence the deck mirrors the way of the world when it is only one view of many.
I look up from my musing to find the others have left. The dealer has returned and is idly thumbing through a deck. The table has been cleared of all other decks.
“Where did they go?”
“They did not like the answers others were giving them. So, they left.”
“Didn’t like the answers? But by now shouldn’t every tarot reader know the answers?”
“Every one has a favorite deck. And you know how territorial people can be about their favorites.” He chuckles darkly. “All it takes is for one person to say ‘I don’t like…’, and feelings are hurt. The number of people that identify with their tools worry me.” He stares at me, fixing me to my chair. “Like you.”
“I don’t!” I didn’t realize I was yelling until I heard the echo of my voice. He continued thumbing through the deck in his hands. He said nothing, but only smirked at me. “I don’t. I see. … The symbolism is problematic. The gender roles are as well. But that’s what tarot is, and if fixed, it’s not tarot anymore.” I slumped in my chair. “I had tried to find an oracle deck, but the rigid gender roles and all around sexism is even worse! Not to mention the horrid assumption that Neo-Wicca is the whole of paganism, so you only have the Horned God and the Goddess as divinities, and pentacles are everywhere, and the only witchy women are size 0 with swollen breasts and red hair, and… well… no.”
“But you read tarot, and read it quite well, despite your identity with it.”
I returned his stare. “What identity with tarot do you think I have?”
He stopped playing with the deck in his hands. “Unwilling victim.”
“Where the fuck did you get that idea!”
“Listen to you. Listen to how you relate to the cards. Yes, the system has problems. Every man-made system does. You do not approach the cards as a tool to be used. You approach the cards as a tyrant to knock down. The cards do not owe you anything. At best they are sloppily colored slips of paper. At worst they are magic tools for you to usurp if used against you. Yet even in the language you use to describe them, you are assigning them a place of power over you they do not have.”
He resumes playing with the deck in his hands. “Or in other words… why are you keeping Whitey over you? What war are you waging that demands you must always grab the blade and never the hilt?”
“I’m… not… ” Yea. I was. Nursing a perpetual rage against a system that I have proven to have mastered many times. At the base of the rage wasn’t the memory of a wound. It was fear. I’m an American, a descendent of many cultures and inhabitant of none. No matter what I tip my toe into, it will be as an outsider. Everything I have grasped, it has been with conquering hands. I am afraid I will be just as devouring as those that have devoured my lineages.
Along with the fear, is guilt. I am a good reader. At least, I think I am. And many folks I’ve read for have said the same. But the problems at the core of Tarot makes me uncomfortable. How can I be so adept with something so problematic?
The dealer remained silent during my introspection. He smiled softly to himself and kept fussing with the deck in his hands. After my nervous fidgeting eased, he searched his deck for one card in particular. Once he had my attention again, he slid the card in front of me.
A dark colored card, with ten globes arranged in the top third of the image. Below it, was a forest covered in decay. Crumbling stumps, and slime mold on the forest floor. A few bones could be seen, in obvious states of deterioration. In the middle of the putrid scene, a bright green shoot of a sapling has grown a few inches above the muck and mire. The card is labeled: “Transformation”. We talk a bit on the topic of transformation, and on the dangers of forcing a transformation too soon, or in a creature that should not be capable of such. We also talk of the damage done when a transformation is forced to halt, or prevented from occurring. I ask if the conversation was symbolic or literal. “Yes.”
He points out the globes are indeed, spheres, not discs. I ask if spheres was just a renaming of discs. He tells me both suits are in this particular deck. “Would you like to see the next suit in the deck’s progression?” Why, yes, I would. He searches the deck and finds a proper card. He lays it next to the Ten of Spheres.
In the top third of the red hued card are ten things. They look like wands, but are not wands. They look like swords, but are not swords. They look very familiar, but I can’t place them. He asks if I know what they are. I do not.
“What deck is this?”
“Your deck.”
“Huh?”
He laughs. “This is your personal deck. You just haven’t experienced enough to fill in all the suits yet. And I assure you, it will not have the problems you have identified in mainstream tarot. However, it will never be accepted by mainstream readers. This is your Working deck.” He places the two pulled cards back in the deck, shuffles three times, and lays the deck on the table between us. “But until you are able to get past the problems you have with tarot, this deck will remain incomplete.”
I reach and pull the topmost card. The Ten of Spheres again.
With quiet finality he says, “Finish the lesson.”.
The room is suddenly swallowed up in darkness and I find myself awake in my bed.
Finish the lesson? Lemme write it down so I don’t forget the lesson.
And I did.
Good morning.