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A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. May's Theme: "Being Present"
Volume 7 Issue 4 ISSN# 1708-3265

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 		Cards & Curios
with Dan Pelletier

I turned the Death Card over.

Ever notice we don't say, "The Eight Of Swords card" or, "The Emperor Card" or, even "The Devil Card". Death Card.

We string those two words together like they're a couple that's belonged together since birth. We've invented a linguistic archetypal image with those two words; then we attached them to the image of the thing we assume it means, and intend for it to describe and then have a fear resonance about all of it.

Death Card.

Adjective and noun. Tied.

Death starts out strong, a thing of fear; and ends up as an adjectival noun playing second fiddle to the now real noun, the word card. Scary word "card".

Death Card.

We know what the sitter thinks. My sitter gave an involuntary shudder.

Just last week I'd been chatting about this with Eli down at Cards & Curios.

"Heard you met my partner."

"...Hellova cook. We talked about Oracle decks. "You know I'm always lookin' for decks that don't scare the bejeezus outta everyone. Tarot should be a pleasure and not a dread if you catch my drift."

"I'm groovin'. So what are you thinkin' today?" Eli refilled my coffee.

I pulled a deck out of my messenger bag. 'The Grail Tarot: A Templar Vision' by John Matthews, and Giovanni Caselli. "Frankly I think this is overlooked by a huge section of the market. Folks say they don't want another 'Rider Waite clone' Tarot, and when a well thought out original deck hits the market it is shunned. Even if it's new and has tremendous possibilities for various approaches, and is unapologetic about being challenging." TAROT GARDEN

Eli reached under the counter and pulled out a deck and dropped it on the counter. "Now Morgan's Tarot is not Tarot. Not structured like Tarot, don't got no Tarot cards in it. It's a collection, a switch or a series of switches to universal consciousness. I hope this one doesn't get passed up too much. It was originally published in 1970, and again in 1983, and US Games has just chosen to publish it again. Some may simply see it as an artifact from the sixties."

"I loved that deck back in the eighties! I think its withstood the test of time."

"…and it's gentle. No devils or towers, just simple line drawings like 'There Are No Others' and 'What's Happening'.

"It's the only deck I know that has a card, 'Be Careful, Going Around Curves".

"Timeless" Eli said.

I pulled the Touchstone Tarot out of my messenger bag.

"Oh! I don't think I've seen one of these! Kat Black the artist?"

I nodded to the affirmative.

"Well now this is completely different after Morgan's, this is lush. This is beautiful. She's posed people to express concepts! She's posed them in a completely new way. I suppose some of it could be equated with Waite and Colman-Smith but not really. So many of the illustrations seem like someone you actually know, it gives the deck a non-threatening, approachable feel. This is very lovely!"

He handed me another deck from under the counter.

I picked it up. "Tarot of the Sweet Twilight" I said opening the box. "I suppose it does deserve a second chance. I think I once in error called it 'Goth lite'."

"Then you totally missed the point. You should take another look."

The Tarot of the Sweet Twilight is surreal. It is about the moment between fantasy and reality, between dark and light, real and unreal. Are the dreams coming awake or going to sleep? Is this a deck for monsters terrified of humans or the other way around? It's really cute. It's really thought provoking, it's really disturbing - yet comforting and not innocent at all.

I furtively pulled out the last deck I'd brought in for our weekly session discussing the cards. 'The Tarot and the Mysteries of Love and Sex'. Eli began going through the cards, slowing at some, "Oh I need to keep these till next time, do you mind? Jerusha will love these. Now these here is adult cards. I assume that nobody under the age of eighteen would be allowed to…my oh my…Oh no…These are not for everybody…"

My sitter looked up at me, "Death doesn't mean death." She stated. No question, just a statement. Everybody these days knows that death doesn't mean death.

Except that is historically untrue. Le Mort was a card of death until the mid-twentieth century when folks decided to soften the deck for varied reasons.

I looked at the rest of the spread and wondered which explanation I could use, to show her the truth of the message, "Well for starters, this does not refer to your actual physical death…"


Dan Pelletier is the author of 'The Process - The Way of the Tarot Reader', articles appearing in the Tarot for Life website newsletter "Seeker's Journey", TarotSchool.com, and Tarot Passages; Dan has also published interviews with deck creators on the tarotgarden.com website library.

Dan has been reading Tarot for himself and others for close to four decades; is also co-owner of The Tarot Garden, a highly respected resource for tarot decks and related information on the Internet.

He lives north of Seattle Washington with his wife of 24 years Jan, his two cats Spook and Pookha, and 32 rosebushes.

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