Playboy Tarot Issue

Teheuti

I just got on ebay a Jan. 1972 issue of Playboy for it's article on Tarot and nine full-page Major Arcana cards (in the inimitable Playboy style) - hey, I admit to looking at the articles and the pictures! I was delighted to also find in this issue an interview with Germaine Greer, fiction by John Cheever, Robert Graves (he wrote The White Goddess and The Greek Myths), Ray Bradbury and Joyce Carol Oats, and a dialog between Arthur C. Clarke and Alan Watts. Wow! Definitely an issue worth checking out.

Mary
 

Little Hare

:D

Awww man i'd love that issue :heart:

sounds so cool!
 

firemaiden

January 1972! Wow, them thar were the days! Thanks for telling us about this Mary!
 

Rosanne

Now Mary- you don't fool me- everyone buys playboy for the articles :D Interesting- I wonder if they are available to read (ie Libraries) rather than buy?
I had no idea that playboy would have an issue like that. ~Rosanne
 

Debra

Yeah, that's why no one could ever begin to win a pornography suit against Playboy--the thing has always been chock-full of social, political, scientific and literary value, which saved it from being "just porn"--even more than the airbrushing.

Not to mention the cartoons.

I wonder if we could have scans of the article now...it's so old, it'd be for a legitimate reserach purpose, I'd think.

1972 is starting to look pretty good. I remember it.
 

jmd

I presume it is the USA-based issue of the Jan. 1972 Playboy, rather than the Australian, British, French and whichever else they had... or did they all have the same articles, only changing the (non-tarot) pictures?
 

Umbrae

Imagine someone buying it for the pictures.

Harumph...

I remember the interview with Gabrial Garcia Marquez oh so many years ago...great stuff that...

I remember the old 72 issue from...well...72...
 

piledrivefinger

I'd be curious to see the Playboy tarot cards. Teheuti, is there a legal way you can scan the pics and post them?

Oh, boy. This is horrible, but it certainly brings a different meaning when you say "doing a spread..."
 

Teheuti

Rosanne said:
Now Mary- you don't fool me- everyone buys playboy for the articles :D Interesting- I wonder if they are available to read (ie Libraries) rather than buy?
I had no idea that playboy would have an issue like that. ~Rosanne
Rosanne said:
Now Mary- you don't fool me- everyone buys playboy for the articles
I used to laugh at that line - but this issue convinced me that it could be true! But, of course I look at the pictures, too.

You might be able to find a library with a copy although it may not be easy. Try interlibrary loan. You can set ebay to automatically watch for certain keywords for you - "Playboy 1972" + Jan. or January.

The article, by Ray Russell, is pretty basic - the origins of Tarot are not known, etc. He mentions de Gebelin and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, while scoffing at the gypsy-origin theory. He quotes Grillot de Givry several times. Of course he had to make the article relevant to Playboy readers, and so:
"Unlike tea leaves, the crystal ball, common playing cards or other aids to prophecy, the tarot is steeped in, among other things, a certain fleshliness, a subtle, understated sexuality. Without being overtly erotic, naked male and female figures, their genitals unhidden, are pictured in many versions of the cards . . ."

Russell sums the article up with: "The rebirth it is currently enjoying among us all as part of a vast revival of interest in the occult must not be dismissed as a fad, for the tarot has survived the shifts of fashion, the scorn of skeptics, the persecution of church and state. Often content to remain in the background while the simooms of controversy or cynicism rage, it keeps its secrets safe, emerging again whenever men have most need of it."

Note: I had to look up "simooms": A strong, hot, sand-laden wind of the Sahara and Arabian deserts (from an Arabic root meaning poison).

Mary