Tarot Renaissance

frelkins said:

He replied that at Yale a lot of people became interested in John Cage's music, which relied upon the concept of "the aleatory," or the random.

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Yes - while at college I stage-managed a poetry-with-music performance that used John Cage's music. The experiment was for me about trying to take in meaning on a whole other level - about communicating energetically. The words affect you at one level while the music creates a dissonance on the visceral that sometimes harmonizes and other times conflicts with the supposed sense of the verbal.

It was around the same time that the theatre dept did Albee's Tiny Alice, which was the first time something screamed "archetypes" at me - to the extent that I made appointments with at least two professors to talk/exclaim about what I "saw" in the play. When I saw the tarot I realized I was seeing something that functioned in the same way.

I had forgotten the intensity of thinking and experience that I was going through. I suppose it still happens for college kids but I don't know what the triggers are today, nor where they are leading.

using symbols they were familiar with from studying art history

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Exactly!

Plus Pixie's arts & crafts style was undergoing a revival at the time

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Ah, another piece of the puzzle. Is that when stuff started coming out that used the William Morris prints? Yes, it's when people started paying attention again to the Pre-Raphaelites.

Bernice said:

Backtracking to Mac,
Quote: Ouija boards, crystal balls, Tarot cards, séances, New Thought, Theosophy etc... Oooo... It happen thru two elderly "Aunts" who happened to be Spiritualists.

Yes, this was the scene before tarot took off as an 'independant' thing.... And Jazz!

Bee

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It was a strange and interesting time. It wasn't exactly hidden BUT you were careful with whom you discussed metaphysical things.

Mac22

Hi Mac,

It wasn't exactly hidden BUT you were careful with whom you discussed metaphysical things.

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That's very true! But luckily I had a circle of friends who were like-minded. (Very lucky as it happens...)

Bee

Bernice said:

Hi Mac,
That's very true! But luckily I had a circle of friends who were like-minded. (Very lucky as it happens...)

Bee

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That was part of the mystery & the "thrill."

Mac22

Please tell me more about the "Pixie" deck.

Is that when stuff started coming out that used the William Morris prints? Yes, it's when people started paying attention again to the Pre-Raphaelites.

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Yes. I remember copying some of the Art Nouveau posters I found in art books and buying Mucha posters in the early 70's, and they'd been around for a while then.

karenquilter said:

Please tell me more about the "Pixie" deck.

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Since no one has responded: I assume it means the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck. Pixie was Pamela Colman Smith's nickname.

Teheuti said:

Since no one has responded: I assume it means the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck. Pixie was Pamela Colman Smith's nickname.

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Exactly. Pixie drew it, it's her deck. Just as Lady Frieda drew hers. Forgive me for this moment of tarot feminism, but women actually do the work on the deck while the guy takes the credit. As a work of art, it is morally Pixie's and should be called Pixie's deck. Her name should come first. And imho, Thoth should be called the Harris deck.

Tarot as we know it is today is primarily due to the labor of our foremothers, including Mary here herself. It's herstory.

frelkins said:

Exactly. Pixie drew it, it's her deck. . . . As a work of art, it is morally Pixie's and should be called Pixie's deck. Her name should come first.

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Having been a professional graphic designer I tend not to see it this way. There are works done for hire, collaborations and co-creations, and all kinds of variations. As a graphic designer I would create designs for which I could claim no further ownership.

I've never heard anyone call the Voyager Tarot the Ken Knutson deck; Jim Wanless tends to get all the credit.

People regularly ask me when I'm going to create my own deck. I don't have any desire to do so, but it would require me to hire or work with an artist. If it was truly my own "vision" I might want the artist to precisely carry out my ideas for the deck. Or I might choose to work in a more co-creative way.

Alternatively, I could be hired to write a book to accompany an artist's deck as Rachel Pollack has done several times in the past like with the Haindl and Salvador Dali decks. In that case it would be clear that I had nothing to do with the creation of the deck itself (although Rachel did influence some of Hermann Haindl's design decisions).

Certainly I feel that Smith and Harris should be recognized for their work, but I'm not sure how I'd feel if I had a vision for a tarot deck, hired an artist to execute my concepts and then had the artist or someone else claim that it was solely the work of the artist and had nothing to do with me. I also recognize that artists put a lot of themselves into their work and aren't separate from it.

So, why should the RWS and Thoth decks be one or the other and not recognized as the obvious co-creations they really are?

ADDED: from the U.S. Copyright Office:
"If a work is a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the author and should be named as the author in Space 2 of the application for copyright registration."

Yeah, but saying "Pixie's deck" just sounds so darn cute!



M.