Reviewed by Arthur E. Rosengarten, Ph.D.
Arthur Rosengarten is a Clinical Psychologist in Encinitas, California. He is author of Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (2000), creator of Tarot of the Nine Paths: Advanced Tarot for the Spiritual Traveler (2009), and Owner/Moderator of the website/discussion forum Tarotpsych
Tarot in Culture is both original and extensive in its attempt to distinguish the complex streams of history, sociology, and metaphysics that have entwined Tarot ever since its first appearances in Northern Italy in the early fifteenth century. The fascinating narrative of this famous metaphysical deck of 78 cards is advanced significantly through fine scholarship from many perspectives. In an entertaining and thought-provoking collection of papers from contemporary scholars around the world, we discover the vast scope and variance of thought surrounding the deck itself, if only in the sheer range of analysis presented in this tome. Tarot, to varying degrees, has been cast by its purveyors as exalted, recreational, clandestine, archetypal, cliquish, magical, revered, and debunked. Hence its unique fascination.
Much of the discussion in Tarot in Culture is a kind of scholarly mystery tale that engages both sensibility and imagination, particularly given the disquieting fact that no agreed upon theory or evidence of the first designer(s) today exists. The vacuum left for heady and arcane speculation is filled here, however, with grounded research that allows a useful laying to rest of the popular fables. Essays regarding Tarot’s origin and original purpose make a strong case for something no more esoteric than a trump-bearing card game, stemming perhaps from the Middle East and akin to bridge, thus ruling-out the more common romantic notions of ancient Egyptian beginnings (which persists today, regardless, in some darkened corridors under the aegis of “popular misconceptions”). Likewise rendered moot is a very thorough accounting of Tarot’s mistaken saddlebag of associations with the gypsies, and the legacy of fortune-telling, which has been challenged convincingly by historians.
The Tarot lineage is traced skillfully up through the French school of Tarot de Marseille-- referring to a deck style originating in the sixteenth century in Italy and appearing in France in the mid-seventeenth century-- onto the milestones of Tarot’s occult beginnings including the Eteilla Tarot published in 1789, marking the first tarot designed with a divinatory aim, History of Magic by Eliphas Levi (1860) which strengthened Tarot’s developing associations with Masonry and Caballa, and leading to the grand finale of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London (founded in 1888), the hotbed of Tarot’s famed British incarnation, with such turn-of-the century notables as MacGregor Mathers, William Wynn Wescott, the poet William Butler Yeats, the often-acknowledged fathers (and mothers) of the modern movement, Arthur E. Waite (with Pamela Colman Smith) who authored of the Rider Tarot (1909), and Aleister Crowley (with Lady Freida Harris) who authored The Thoth Tarot (1944).
In Tarot and Culture, a web of socio-cultural forces and precedents inform this previously-documented linear history. One feels safely-educated here in the otherwise elusive journey through the deck’s evolution and its current relevance as a map of consciousness as ascribed by some Jungian scholars. The book showcases a slice of Tarot’s contemporary era, marked by a profusion of creativity, commercialism, artistic experimentation, human potentials, and cultural funkiness, as first splashed down onto the scene of the American 1960’s and has grown remarkably through its adolescent over ensuing decades. As a part of popular culture today, Tarot’s appearance in twentieth-century literature and film is discussed, including how it grapples with its counter-cultural costumery, and as well, its undressing in through the lens of postmodernist deconstruction. Tarot’s liminal stance at the threshold of social acceptability, its ambiguous relation to the law, as well as its coming of age initiatives, relative successes and failures with professionalizing and credentialing organizations are also laid out.
In one of Auger’s own entries a particularly fascinating distinction is made regarding the post-modernist notion of “heterotopia.” Referencing Michel Foucault’s (1926-1984) definition as “real locations where otherwise incompatible spaces intersect or events that are incompatible with social norms occur (Auger, p. 236),” Auger suggests Tarot itself is a “heterotopian radiating point,” one that has inspired the creation and use of a vast array of different Tarot and other meditational decks. I find this a credible elucidation of what occurs in psychotherapeutically-based readings with Tarot as well; an opening of the “real locations” in one’s subjective life occurs and intersects with the spiritually-laden symbolism of the cards in such a way as to deepen one’s understanding and visually capture the complex web of simultaneous forces operating in the moment.
Through it all, however, Tarot morphs in our imagination to an entity holding a special category unto itself, much as Auger and the contributors would bear out. Embedded in Tarot’s arcane layers of meaning and mythology as these pages so wittingly reveal are parallel layers of misnomer and mythologizing, or as author James Hillman might reframe, pathologizing. Through the wider eyes of cultural discernment this added shadow grants a complexity and compelling interest to the Tarot phenomenon in its entirety. The cumulative effect, perhaps, not unlike like guns, incense, or bibles, hinges less on the object’s intrinsic merit or virtue, and far more on the user’s motivation, interpretation, application, and experience. A good reading, therefore, is never the final word on a subject so much as a rich invitation for continued exploration.
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Reviewed by Elizabeth S. Sklar, Ph.D.
Dr. Elizabeth S. Sklar is Professor in the English Department at Wayne State University, Detroit
Tarot in Culture is an intriguing and thoughtfully-edited anthology of essays on the history and evolution of the Tarot deck and Tarot culture from the Italian Renaissance—where it originated as a set of common, if beautifully-illustrated, playing cards whose principal innovation was the introduction of trumps into Western European card-gaming—to the present. This is a substantial collection consisting of thirty chapters, the authors of which have been selected on the basis of professional expertise, regardless of status or field. In addition to a sizeable core of academic contributors—many of whom are amongst the most widely-recognized Tarot authorities, and who represent a variety of disciplines such as art history, English studies, folklore, history, psychology, religious studies, and philosophy—contributors include independent scholars, photojournalists, poets, artists, and professional esoterists. The result is a collection of essays sufficiently wide-ranging in topic and methodology to appeal to a broad-spectrum audience, including academic Tarot specialists, scholarly non-specialists interested in cultural studies and popular culture, social historians and psychologists, literary scholars, art historians, and current participants in Tarot culture. Although the majority of the essays are scholarly in nature, the collection as a whole is sufficiently engaging to attract any intellectually curious general reader.
Tarot in Culture is divided into four major sections. Part I, "History and Innovation," addresses "all of the principal phases of Tarot history to date" (Auger, Introduction xlvii). The essays in the first part of this section demonstrate that the popular association of Tarot with ancient Egyptian divinatory practices or medieval Judaic esoterism is completely a-historical, since these originary myths, along with the importation of the occult into Tarot play, are fanciful innovations first introduced by Western Europeans in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Following the purely historical studies, the remaining chapters in this section explore Tarot from a variety of generic and socio-cultural perspectives, and the section concludes with a very useful timeline of Tarot development. Part II, "Tarot in the Arts," is devoted to discussions of Tarot incorporation in twentieth-century literary texts by authors ranging from T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams to Delany, and J.K. Rowling. Part III, "The Art of Tarot," of particular but not exclusive interest to art historians, concerns Tarot symbology and iconography from the Renaissance to the present; collectively, the essays in this section speak to the extraordinary flexibility and adaptability of Tarot art and the art of Tarot that have enabled it to transcend six centuries of cultural flux. The final section in this collection, "Special Topics and Primary Sources," turns from history and the arts to post-1970's Tarot praxis, consisting in a series of first-person narratives from contemporary Tarot artists, practioners, and scholars studying the sociocultural ramifications of Tarot.
One of the principal virtues of this anthology is that while it collectively demystifies popular conceptions—or misconceptions—concerning Tarot, it unfailingly respects its central topic throughout. Tarot in Culture has other strengths as well. The scholarly essays that comprise approximately two-thirds of this collection are impressively researched and scrupuously documented. The book is also exceptionally well-edited. An outstanding feature of this collection is its rigorous organization, not only with respect to the larger structure, as represented by the sectional divisions described above, but with respect to interand intra-chapter organization as well. Each essay, regardless of topic or authorial area of expertise, has a uniform structure, beginning with a content abstract followed by a formal introductory section. Additionally, all chapters are generously subheaded throughout. Not only does this enhance readability, but it enables an individual reader to select at a glance chapters and sections of chapters of particular interest, or, alternatively, to get a sense of the richness and variety of the subject matter by simply reading the introductory portions of each contribution. Finally, it is a visual treat. In addition to two galleries of full-page color plates, it features 228 in-text illustrations. In short, this is a model anthology, a class act from start to finish, and a fascinating read. |
