Tarot cards, those mysterious tools of ancient magicians and storefront fortune tellers that resurfaced in the heady ’60s and ’70s, are back again and bigger than ever.
They’ve gone mainstream. No longer confined to emporiums of the occult and mail-order catalogs, tarot cards are now prominently displayed in major chain bookstores. There also are 15,000 tarot-related sites on the Internet.
“For us, sales of tarot cards increase every year, but this year and last year, there’s been a resurgence of interest in tarot from a wider range of people,” says Janet Bennett, vice president of sales and marketing for U.S. Games Systems Inc., the largest distributor of tarot decks.
“It’s no longer a niche market like it was in the ’60s,” agrees Maynard Friesz, a spokesman for Llewellyn Publications in St. Paul, long-time publishers of tarot cards. “Tarot readers are the people next door.”
Guy Spiro, editor and publisher of The Monthly Aspectarian, which is billed as Chicago’s New Age magazine, observes, “We’re in a period much like the ’60s now, except that this time it involves more spirituality and consciousness rather than the political and sexual. It’s seeping into the grassroots. People who previously were not interested or even hostile are now interested in these things.”
This time around, tarot also has a utilitarian gloss.
“People are looking for wisdom and not necessarily from the traditional places,” says Luke Michaels, who reads tarot cards at Healing Earth Resources, a Lincoln Park New Age shop.
“A lot of people feel organized religions (have) a certain irrelevancy, and they aren’t necessarily interested in religion as much as they are in spirituality. Tarot is a way of pursuing your own spirituality and becoming more in tune with your own guidance.”
Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., calls tarot the “shrink in a box” and predicts it will become increasingly popular.
Institutionalized sources, such as religion, families and psychotherapists, traditionally relied upon for guidance, have either lost their appeal or become less accessible or too expensive, he says.
“People can’t afford shrinks. The HMOs have cut back on it and many people don’t have that kind of health coverage or any at all,” Celente says. “Teenagers and young adults are into this whole new age tarot experience full force.
“It’s separate from the psychics, which is not to say that the popularity of tarot card readers won’t escalate, but that’s not going to escalate as fast as the individuals who are using tarot as a form of spiritual solitaire.”
Chicagoan Jennifer Kopp, 28, who works as a nanny, began reading tarot cards for herself and others seven months ago. “I use them for guidance,” she says. “It’s not fortune telling to me.
“When I read other people’s cards I tell them: `This is a guide. It shows you what path you’re taking at this moment. You can always change your life if you want to take a different path.’ Reading cards helps me in trusting my instincts and intuition.”
Musical connection
Lillian Celic, a Chicago tarot reader and teacher, says that some of those under 30 are drawn to tarot through rock music.
“They have seen a lot of imagery similar to tarot imagery displayed by rock groups,” Celic says, “and they’ve probably heard rumors about some kind of relationship between rock and black magic and this is intriguing to them, not that they have intentions of participating in anything creepy. They’re a whole lot more intrigued in looking at the whole tarot.”
Explaining the deck
Tarot decks contain 78 cards, divided into two parts. The major arcana, or trumps, include 22 cards with archetypal images bearing names including the fool, the high priestess, the hanged man and the moon. The second part of the tarot deck, called the minor arcana, has 56 cards divided into four suits: cups, wands, swords and pentacles. Each suit contains 14 cards, including four court cards (king, queen, knight, page) and 10 number cards.
The major arcana generally are considered to be more powerful and more universal, but the minor arcana are also important, representing the day-to-day events and concerns of human life.
The cards are dealt in various spreads and are interpreted in relation to each other.
The history of tarot cards is murky, and as a result theories abound. They surfaced in Europe in the 15th Century, but their imagery seems to be derived from an earlier period. They have been related to almost anything from the Kabbalah (a Jewish philosophy based on mysticism) and Jungian psychology to astrology and numerology.
The name may have originated from Italian decks, called tarocchi, via 16th Century Paris, where the guild of cardmakers referred to themselves as tarotiers.
Tarot cards have long inspired artists (Salvador Dali designed a deck), and today there are more kinds of tarot decks than ever before. Some contemporary versions feature such themes as angels, American Indian spirituality, Zen, feminism and Arthurian legends.
Janet Berres of Morton Grove, president of the International Tarot Society, defines tarot as “78 cards with pictures that encompass the whole of human existence and the human condition.
“There’s a whole story that can be created by the cards,” she says. “I believe the subconscious mind works easier with pictures. It’s all symbolic.”
Debate over use
Berres says that longtime tarot readers debate whether the cards should be used for predictions or psychological help.
“There is a big movement (toward) psychological tarot, that the cards help you define what you want to do,” she says. “I agree with that to a large extent, but I also believe that the cards can show you events that probably will happen. And they can be a help that way, so that you can get information to help you make choices or get a boost of confidence to continue what you’re doing.
“People often get a tarot reading to find out what is going to happen to them. In doing the cards, if I see they’re in a destructive relationship and they want to know, `When are we going to get married?’ I say to them, `Why would you want to marry this person?’
” A good tarot reading is therapeutic. I’m not putting down therapists, but for a lot of people tarot is a faster way to get to issues in their lives.”
Ken James, an analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute in Evanston who is writing a book about using tarot as a tool for personal insight, often uses tarot cards with analysands at their request.
“Instead of sharing a dream (at the start of a session), they’ll shuffle the cards and throw some out and we’ll use that. It’s just as good a resource as a dream,” James says.
“Tarot cards depict states of the human soul that everyone knows. For example, you look at the 5 of pentacles in the traditional Rider-Waite tarot deck and it’s a church window with what looks like two beggars walking outside in the snow. Now, you look at that and immediately that aspect of human experience is present for you.”
Hillel Schwartz, a California-based cultural historian and author of “Century’s End,” says that in addition to the New Age movement and romanticized satanism in some genres of rock music, multiculturalism, which led to reinterpretations of tarot to reflect non-European cultural visions, and an increasing interest in astrology also have contributed to the resurgence of tarot.
“And there is also a fifth strand which is part of our end-of-the-century experience,” Schwartz says, “and this is that no matter what kind of tarot deck you use, the tarot images and the reading promise implicitly that there is a hidden source of energy by which one can renew one’s life.
“This energy is vaguely spiritual, or more specifically related to the forces of nature, the universe. This is part of a desperate desire at century’s end to find a new source of energy. You’ve come to the end. You don’t know whether you’ve devastated the Earth, depleted the resources, but whatever it is that you’re feeling this angst about, the tarot cards promise that there is a source of energy that will give you the continuity and vitality that will enable you to cross the millennial divide.”
Yousuf Bagban, whose family owns Planet Earth, a New Age and metaphysical store in Evanston that stocks nearly 100 different tarot decks and has many teenage customers, has a simpler explanation: “No matter what their age, people realize it’s possible to tap into the unknown, and even though it’s not scientific and can’t be proved, they want to dabble in it.”
NO FOOLIN’
The tarot deck contains 78 cards and is divided into two parts: 22 major arcana, generally considered to be the more powerful and universal cards, and 56 minor arcana in four suits, representing the day-to-day events and concerns of human life.
The major arcana cards have multiple levels of meanings and are subject to varying interpretations. One of these cards, The Fool, is usually associated with the spirit, a quest or journey, innocence, chaos and heedlessness. It depicts an individual poised on a precipice, on the verge of a new experience. He is accompanied by an exuberant dog with a playful nature. The card can tell a person to follow his heart and take a plunge or it can signify a need for caution.
