It has been great to read the great insights you are all sharing here. I am going to add a couple of things, without responding to any post in particular.
- I think is important to point out that, here, we are tapping into the anagogical level of these cards (By taking them as medieval documents), but there is also a literal, allegorical, and moral level that can be studied and explored. We aren't focusing on that here, but some people is doing great work at that, and therefore, getting familiar with their work can only make you, not better readers, but better persons.
- I am very grateful to all your kind comments on this exercises. They mean the world to me. Most important, I personally thank you for being here, and for not giving up on the Marseille. I have enormous problems with the 'illustrated' pips on the non-Marseille decks because I feel they put a leash on my possibilities for insight. This days, we live in a "visual culture for the visually impaired", in which our eyes are feed but we don't see. I opened this exercises relating a story from Oskar Kokoschka, the Austrian painter. Late on his life Kokoschka opened a school for artists, a summer school. He called it "The School of Sight". He taught people who wanted to become painters, not how to paint, but how to see. The Marseille has been my own school of sight. Not giving up on the initially abstract nature of the pips helped me understand that everything is a voice, everything can talk to us. The other day I took my two kids plus 4 friends to the movies. They were really pushing my nerves! Yet, when we pass by a building, two of the kids stopped to feel the air coming from a duct. The duct came from the building's laundry room, and the kids stopped to rejoice on the dry smell of laundry. Right there, that was a haiku! The duct was a voice calling these kids, just as a little vine on a card is a voice calling us.
- I already posted this two quotes from Anselm Kiefer before, but I will post them again because I think it is good to keep them "at our bedside" when we explore the world of symbol. Kiefer is an interesting example in that he is an skeptic, working through his art on his own spiritual development. The true work of any artist is to make his/her own soul. Since my background is in the arts too, I guess it is equally natural for me to grab a symbol to turn it around and see how it works, all that without feeling I am committing a sacrilege. All symbols are man made. As Kiefer have also said "all stories about heaven started on earth". At some point in history, an image-maker purposefully created each symbol we know. We have a peculiar relationship with symbols in that we tend to relate to them as if they were chains, chains that we create for ourselves.
Here are the quotes again:
"The most interesting fact about constellations is that they are completely arbitrary. When we look up to the heavens we are always in a position to see new and different pictures. We can invent them millions of times, over and over again. And this demonstrates once more the many different layers of the Mythical. And of arbitrariness in a positive sense, which allows us to invent constellations as we see it fit... This brings us back to the beginning, where we said that there is no generally valid overall meaning-nothing per se. We must all create our own meaning. An artist creates a meaning and it is possible to associate this with constellations, which are images arbitrarily drawn by human beings."
"Everything we say is fiction. "It is a nice day" is already a fiction. That is why we must avoid constructing dogma with language. The idea that plants are directly connected with the starts is very pretty. Its an explanation that works with me dasein. It's a consolation. Having said that, irony is indispensable. These are words pronounced by human beings, they can only be used ironically because they are always incomplete. What we say is always a bit ridiculous. People who use words without irony are fanatics, not full human beings. One should always be ready to laugh, because everything is ridiculous. I distrust belief, all dogma. They are nothing but ways of gaining power, of exciting chauvinism."
- Ritual is good, but only if we use it to set the tone of an experience. It becomes useless when it is used to instill in us the fear of being inadequate.
- I agree with the idea of the Marseille being a tarot for the common man. This is to say, these cards were cheap, and they were roughly made. I find peculiar the obsession some people has about finding the illusion of intention in each single detail of these cards: “Look! There is an extra finger in La Force’s foot. A certain allusion to the Druids’ recipe for chutney”. Have you ever being on a printing workshop? Then you will know that most of the guys working there are akin to plumbers, or mechanics: technicians and workmen who are dying to go home at the end of the day. Many obtuse details in the cards are simply that: mistakes who no one cared to fix because there cards were intended to be sold to the common man who, in turn, wanted to play with them. Our rejoice in that roughness is, in fact, a sign of what Ernst Gombrich defined as "The Preference for the Primitive", which has to do with the way art history, and taste, swings back and forth between a thirst for beauty and a longing for transcendence. Our quest for beauty always takes us to an extreme, an excess or mannerism, which is pretty much what we see this days with all these fantasy tarots. When we go too far on that path, this is, when our lust blind us and we get too many ‘tarot cup-cakes’ we feel the urge to regain our ground by embracing rougher, simpler, shapes. That "preference for the primitive" underlines a psychological principle that goes back to Plato: a simpler life is morally superior, therefore, simpler shapes are 'truer' shapes. Having this is mind is very useful when we choose a Tarot deck. Specially if we want to elicit powerful psychological phenomena in our guest's minds with them.
- Finally, I have a little secret to share: it is my intention to find better words to talk about the tarot, so I can give you better words to talk about the tarot. I have seen how, when a regular person approaches the tarot without weird preconceptions, the results are extraordinary and the tarot becomes truly useful. But so far, in our field, we have been happy with assuming we are weird, that only those who share our weirdness will come to us, and that this is OK. I don’t see the usefulness of that. That is why I want to borrow the words of poetry, painting, philosophy, psychology and art, to bring the tarot up to the level it deserves to be. Two nights ago we saw The Tiger in the Snow, by Roberto Benigni. The movie is ‘flaccid’ at best. But it has a couple of extraordinary moments. One of them is when Benigni, who plays the role of a poet in the film, explain to his daughter why he became a poet: "One day I was at the park and a bird perched itself on my shoulder for about an hour. I stood there, like a tree, until the bird left. It was so amazing that I ran excited to tell my mom, but she was busy and didn't pay attention to me". Begnini's daughters said "That was bad from Grandma!" and Benigni said: "No. It was me. I didn't told the story right. I didn't choose the right words to say what I was feeling. That is why, when I learned that there were poets, people who worked at finding the right words for everything, I became one".
All the time, I am looking for better words to talk about the tarot, something that most people takes for granted as the silly pastime of superstitious geeks.
Best,
EE
