Any thoughts or guidence on The Mary-El

I am very glad to be joining you in your Mary-El journey, Pickled Pixie! Thanks for giving me the ticket to ride with you, haha! Perhaps we can support each other throughout the exploration...

I'm very curious about that Hierophant card, anyone care to post a scan? The card samples posted on AT's decks section do not show it, same goes for the images at tarot garden.

To my eyes, it is a super revolting picture, Prudence. Taste in art is a personal thing..I just got my deck 10 minutes ago, and already I have removed the Hierophant and replaced it with an "extra" card, white background with a black oval and an old fashioned feather pen in the middle! (ETA the Schiffer logo)

Here is a Tarot Review link, with a picture of the Hierophant card included, Pru.

Hierophant pic is third down

Hey Pickled Pixie

Ok, here are my first impressions of the Mary El tarot kit: It comes in a large and beautiful rectangular black box, as big as a game box (like for a small board game, I mean) with a gorgeous red lion on the lid.

The cards are huge - my medium/large sized hands have trouble shuffling, they are very long.

The card stock is super glossy and plastic-y. Inivea had it right with the Teflon description!

The first impression of the cards on your eyes is *wow!* *pow!* *OMG!* Colour saturation, and this deck is *completely* different to anything I have ever seen before! It is certainly unique.

The artist, Marie White, is super talented; the images somehow remind me of the artist Klimt, but not, if that makes sense? :/

The accompanying book is hefty, and the artist includes a solid description of each card's artwork, along with a specific and personal take on the card.

The deck itself seems a mish-mash of all the tarots ever made...this is not a clone of anything, but a beautiful and - somehow threatening/dark - personal vision of the Otherworld...yet with gorgeous glimpses of pure innocence within it. It is like looking at every aspect of a human being; the nice, the sweet, the dangerous, the evil, the sad, the unavoidable, the natural, the animal, the sexual, the everything.

Well, that is my first take/impression! It is going to take me a while to really *grasp* the deck. I can see this taking a very long time...if you were bored, and wanted something completely different to study, this would be it!

I may have to trim the edges off just so that I can shuffle it properly.

Padma said:

To my eyes, it is a super revolting picture, Prudence. Taste in art is a personal thing..I just got my deck 10 minutes ago, and already I have removed the Hierophant and replaced it with an "extra" card, white background with a black oval and an old fashioned feather pen in the middle! (ETA the Schiffer logo)

Here is a Tarot Review link, with a picture of the Hierophant card included, Pru.

Hierophant pic is third down

Click to expand...

That gave me a giggle because I couldn't quite make out what was going on in the image at first, then I enlarged it (I'm on an iPad right now). Thank you for posting it.

Well, apparently she represents the Great Whore of Babylon, and her children are the harlot and the abomination...or the positive and negative aspects of yourself; or the light and the dark, the yin and yang. Now, I am distilling it to the very absolute minimum there - she wrote nearly three pages on the card and its meanings.

It also goes on to say that until we can see the stirring beauty inherent in the image of the Great Whore, (also a metaphor for that which is dark within ourselves) we cannot be enlightened.

As I find the image so appalling, it seems that I am doomed to trudge on in the dark, then!

Eeek!!! Thank you so much Padma for sharing your thoughts on it so quickly and thoroughly do you love it? Hate it? Or a bit of both?? Do you think the book will be of use in understanding this deck or is it very 'deep' ...I want mine now desperately!!!!

Marie White has a very authorial voice; that might have been what made me roll my eyes in the years (yes years, plural) it took me to warm up to this deck. I kind of like the repellent images tho, or that alot of them are things the conscious mind (my conscious mind) might at first like to censure, but the subconscious says, bring it on.

If I remember correctly, the sorts of things i found useful (just for myself) in her book were concrete stuff; like mentioning that the tens were connected to the 7 seals, and that the chariot card, which is a big deal card for her, is also connected to her 7 cups and 7 wands. I actually would have loved to hear her talk about her artistic process, how she ended up choosing what she did, vs. the heavy esoteric talk.

pickled pixie said:

Eeek!!! Thank you so much Padma for sharing your thoughts on it so quickly and thoroughly do you love it? Hate it? Or a bit of both?? Do you think the book will be of use in understanding this deck or is it very 'deep' ...I want mine now desperately!!!!

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A bit of both, I would say!

The book is indeed of use in understanding the images, though I find the end result meanings (as in divinatory meanings) to be blunt and limited. It seems you must have an indepth knowledge of Kabbala and the history of the Tarot (Thoth included) in order to truly use the deck to its best advantage. I clipped this bit from the Tarot Review take (which is excellent!)

Tarot Review said:

The Mary-El Tarot is not a beginner’s deck… and thank the Gods for that! But it is a deck that will continue to feed your soul for a lifetime, a deck that presents the mysteries of the Universe condensed down into 78 images, with a coherent and inspired system that not only utilizes the traditional Kabbalistic and numerological systems of symbolism but also presents a system unique to itself. It does require a bit of Tarot knowledge to use it, and I would definitely recommend studying the companion book and Kabbalah to make the best use of this deck.

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They also say:

Tarot Review said:

Some of the mysteries contained in the card images and symbols are revealed in the book, such as the inscriptions surrounding the gateway in the Eight of Swords, but there are many symbols and images that are not explained fully. This leaves you room to embark upon a journey of discovery yourself, as well as to intuitively come to an understanding of how the cards relate to your own Self and experience of the Universe. This isn’t a simple deck, though at first some images may look so (such as the Seven of Wands, which simply depicts the face of a white wolf with vivid green eyes, facing the reader), but instead reveals its many layers and probably some of your own with repeated visits.

The companion book, “Landscapes of the Abyss”, reads like a delicious heresy, mixing in ancient Sumerian influences, ancient Egyptian, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Christianity, angelic symbolism, later occult symbolism, alchemy, and more. Certain card descriptions may not sit well with those entrenched in traditional Christian religion, in particular the Hierophant, in which we find the Whore of Babylon. (Interesting note: the earlier Majors-only 2003 edition had the illustration now in the Star card as the Hierophant, with the Star an illustration that has been discarded from the finished deck entirely.) The book itself would be worth it alone – it is a wonderful exploration of the human soul and its various evolutions, challenges, opportunities and states, and Marie writes about the cards in a way that is breathtakingly beautiful and full of wisdom.

Click to expand...

But I have to go along somewhat with Dark Victory's take on the book...and one could wish she had fleshed out the actual divinatory meanings of each card...I rather got the impression that her fave thing to do is to talk endlessly about her visions, her art, and her dreams. The Tarot itself seems to have little to do with that.

Having said that, as it IS her project, and her deck, one has to expect (and perhaps really respect) her own views on it...

Anyways! The best thing about it, imo, is it is really different. However, I am not sure how much I will use it, or how I will use it...oracle seems to be best bet here. Like Dark Victory, I find something actually repels one from using the cards. Maybe I am just not evolved enough to get it :/

Dark Victory, I gather she drew many of the cards from images she had seen in her dreams...

She does have an Etsy shop, perhaps you could draw her via that link into a conversation...?