January 6, 2016 • 47 mins
The history of tarot cards is as tantalizing as the mystical insights they promise to reveal. Cristen and Caroline deal out how tarot evolved from a game into a divination tool and why two women living worlds apart are to thank for tarot's popularity today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House toupports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and I'm going to start off this
podcast by admitting something about myself, which is that when
I was younger and I found myself no longer believing
(00:28):
in the Christian faith that I had grown up with. UM,
I started pursuing, as do many young people and people
who feel that big religion or no religion, they still
want to feel a connection to something bigger than themselves.
I got into tarot cards. Oh tell me more, Caroline. Yeah,
so I got one of those like cheesy, slit glossy,
terribly illustrated packs from who knows where, probably hot topic
(00:52):
or something. Um, I don't know, it's hot topics still around.
I think they are right, probably, UM, I wonder if
they're still as weird it as they were when I
was in high school. Tweens need to be TACKI somehow
mall goths. Yeah. Uh so I got into it and
I found that it was a really great, sort of
satisfying way to feel like I was connecting with some
(01:16):
spiritual force that I was part of, some magical mystical,
uh fantasy land that gave me some bit of control
and insight into the world around me. And I just
sort of summed up why people do tarot? Well, did you?
I'm curious? So did you? How often did you do it? Um?
(01:39):
Maybe like once or maybe once a week, maybe like
on the weekend or something. And would it be used
to help you figure out what to do with your
life or sort of reflect on things? I think both
A lot of it had to do with, like, um,
liking boys and wanting to do tarot about love. Um,
(02:03):
But I did the whole nine yards, Kristen. I would
like turn out the lights and light candles and like
get in the zone and like breathe deeply and get
real quiet internally and focus on my question, which was
probably like two so and so like me? Is so
and so gonna like me, which is like the bulk
(02:23):
of a lot of charot questions in the modern era.
And I'd lay out the cards in the Celtic cross formation.
There's a bunch of different formations that you can do
in tarot, and and read the cards and figure out
what was negative and what was positive and if they
were inverted or right side up. What that meant. And yeah,
(02:43):
I literally can't remember any insight that it ever actually
gave me or I thought that it gave me, But
it was kind of a really fun way to pass
the time. I was also big into runs at the time,
which was the same deal. You put them in a
sack and like you it's like scrabble tie and you
put your hands in there and you draw out some
runs and you figure out what your future supposed to be,
(03:05):
or you figure out the answer to a question. I'm
surprised I never got into runs. That sounds right up
my alley. Well. I even had I remember distinctly wearing
my rune necklace to music midtown here in Atlanta in
nineteen seven, seventh grade for me um with the nineties. Yeah,
I think it was ninety seven. Uh, And I definitely
(03:27):
like thought it was so eff and cool because it
was like a choker necklace. It was on. It was
on like one of those black cords, So nineties. You know,
I probably very hip today, little rune necklace, And uh,
I can't remember what it meant. It was something like
very you know, very like middle school self centered, like independent,
or like something, I'm a cool person. Run I don't
(03:50):
even care about the curfew. After college, my roommates than
I went through a Tarot phase, but it was more
a thing, parlor game when we would all hang out.
People would come over, have some beers and like, let's
do taro. Oh my god, was it me? Yeah, yeah,
we're drunk. Yeah, yes, that is what it meant for
(04:14):
people hundreds and hundreds of years ago too. You and
your friends were far more connected to the true roots
of tarot than seventh grade Caroline was. I assure you, yeah,
Because here's the thing about the history of tarot. It's
a little bit of a letdown because it really just
(04:35):
started out as a game and we've been making up
the rules for tarot ever since. Yeah oh yeah, oh,
and so it's so um. I don't know what word
to use here, but I just I put my hands
to my face and real worried when I read like
first person accounts of tarot card readers, and like, how
(04:58):
seriously so many people take it. It's like a huge
part of some people's lives, and I don't want to
dismiss that part of your life, fair listeners, but there's
there's literally no mystical meaning behind tarot. Um like. Like
Kristen said it, it's meaning has changed over the centuries.
It really did originate in the Islamic and Arabic world
(05:20):
as just as just cards. The fabulous people in the
Middle East invented playing cards, and they were beautiful. They
were hand painted. They were something that the wealthy had
to pass the time, and so they were painted with
all sorts of things that would be familiar to these
people in their everyday lives. So there'd be architectural elements
(05:41):
painted on their Later there would be people or or
items represented on the cards. But they were all meant
to just play games. And so uh. These cards, of course,
through trade through military invasions, made their way to Europe.
They've been used everything from games, like they said, to
literary prompt for writers to the way we think of
(06:02):
them now as tools for divination. Although I do like
and not to get ahead of ourselves, but I do
like how long we have been using tarot, even pre
divination phase, to help us predict whether someone will like
us back or not. Yes, there was one Spanish deck
that was meant to figure out the object of your
(06:23):
affection in each suit. So like the cups or the wands,
or whatever. Each suit of the debt corresponded to a
different type of woman, either maidens, wives, widows, or nuns.
Always get the nuns, always a nun, never a made.
But taro as we think of it today, really got
its start in Italy, I believe, around the fifteenth century.
(06:46):
But again it was nothing but a game at that time.
And from Italy it was exported to France and Germany,
and and taro had no history as a game in
English speaking areas. It was introduced instead by occultists. So
that's interesting, right, that little tidbit about how people in Italy, France,
and Germany we're thinking of it as a game. Even
(07:07):
if it was, even if it did have a divination bent,
it was still sort of a playful thing versus in England,
where they didn't get it until some kind of shady occultists,
as we'll get into in greater detail much later in
the podcast, they introduced it as an actual mystical, magical thing.
So to give a brief rundown of Tero decks today,
(07:30):
they've got seventy eight cards. Fifty six are the minor
arcana or the suit cards, So like the you know,
seven of Wand's uh and twenty two make up the
major arcana or trump cards. You've got four suits, swords, batons, cups,
and coins, each of which has an ace through a
tin in addition to the jack through king. The major
cards also have a fool, which is traditionally labeled as zero.
(07:53):
And today, of course people read all sorts of meanings
into tarot cards. So for me, a growing up in
a very conservative home, tarot cards were seen as a
tool of the devil, as they can. But then of
course there are people who use tarot to predict the
future they see. Some see it as a gateway to
mystical beings or otherworldly knowledge, and then others use it
(08:18):
more as a meditative device just to reflect and get
more insight on yourself and also relationships. And tarot was
something that came up in your conversation Caroline a few
months back in with author Jessic Crispin, who wrote The
Dead Ladies Project. Yeah, showed the Dead Ladies Project. She
also founded the website book Splot, and she's got a
(08:40):
pretty cool tarot side business. She herself got into it
a sort of a backup job while she was between
gigs and now reads tarot for people, not as a
way to like predict the future, but it's almost sort
of a literary inspirational device to help you sort of
figure out your narrative or figure out what your own
(09:02):
strengths are. Um. But let's let's dive in now and
take a closer look at Terra's origins and evolution. And
a lot of this is coming from a great article
over at Collectors Weekly which has some beautiful images of
all of those cards from the Islamic world. So we
mentioned the fifteenth century, and it was between the fourteenth
(09:24):
and fifteenth centuries that people started using cards for games
and playful divination, emphasis on playful and it was something
called mam look game cards that were brought to Western
Europe from the Middle East and in the Islamic world,
as Caroline mentioned, card playing was really something for the
(09:46):
high born, and these cards were just maniature pieces of art.
They were often hand painted and they would be scrawled
with calligraphy, whereas in Europe they lost a little bit
of their claud us because you have printing technology, which
did mean though that it became something that wasn't only
(10:06):
exclusive to the wealthiest. More people could get their hands
literally on these cards and paper products, but they probably
weren't hand painted. But if you look at the Arabic calligraphy,
they would often contain aphorisms or sort of many fortunes,
such as as for the present that rejoices thy heart
will soon open up a little fingers crossed, or how
(10:30):
about this just takes a little darker turn with a
sword of happiness, I shall redeem a beloved who will
afterwards take my life. Whoa buy or beware? Boy? Oh,
it doesn't sound like a good relationship. That sort of
happiness will get you every time. Yeah. So by the
fifteen hundreds in Europe you've got these beautiful cards being
used for literary exercises, so not too different from what
(10:52):
Jessica Crispin is using it for herself. Uh, and games
that are similar to modern day bridge and you get
some more playful to a nation. So Italian aristocrats were
playing this game tarokey appropriety. Basically you'd be dealt random
cards and have to write poetic verses about other players
based on the content and the imagery of those cards.
(11:14):
And I love The Collector's Weekly compares it to an
early version of mash like I'm going to live in
a mansion with the hunvy and have Bobby as my husband.
I wanted Bobby. But this really evolved into a literary phenomenon.
I mean, people were writing lots of stories and poetry
based on the cards that they were drawing. It also
(11:38):
reminds me of what's it called exquisite corpse where you
start a story and then you fold a piece of
paper until only the last sentence is revealed, and you
pass it around the person and picks up the story
and then and then it flows from there. But it's
not a card game, although it should be. Um, but
back to Tarot pre Tarot decks start to w would
(12:00):
develop as you have wealthy Italian families commissioning their own
hand painted cards of triumph. How boss is that to
be like, I'm so rich, I mean to have some
cards of triumph made just for myself. And they had
the same suits as those Arabic mam look cards of cups, swords, coins,
and photo sticks which would eventually become your wands or batons. Yeah,
(12:27):
and of course they had the courts of kings and
male underlings. We didn't have queens yet, so just that. Yeah,
go figure um and in the seventeenth century we see
the Tarot de Marsilles originating. This is one of the
most common types of Tero decks ever produced. It was
usually printed with woodblocks and colored in by hand with
basic stencils. And it's worth noting that this is not
(12:49):
one specific deck, but rather a style that's seen in
France that would be copied a whole lot. Of course,
you know, once it's out of the hands or it's
trickled down, I guess I should say, from the rich
Italians all the way to France and Germany, that's when
you start seeing decks like the Tarot de Marcilles. But
there was some controversy, right, there was a bit of controversy,
(13:12):
so there was a papist card and papists. If that
does sound to you like papal, you're right, a lady
pope though, heck no so. But of course, since we
could not have a lady pope, she morphed into depending
on your dick, either to you know, the high priestess
(13:32):
or the Spanish captain. But in the case of the
high priestess, the high priest counterpart would be the pope. Yeah,
like I'm back, well, I mean so throughout these cards history,
your imagery just depended on your worldview. I mean, there
were tarts, so from the very beginning, Tarot imagery was
morphing to accommodate common beliefs at the time. But I
(13:53):
love it. In the Taro de Marcilles, there are some
pretty cool lady imagery. Strength is a woman subduing a lion.
The Empress was a pretty badass shield. You've got the
star who's the neked lady pouring water, and I'm sure
that they're tarraficionadas out there going like, oh, that's not
what it is or it's not what it means, but
(14:13):
I still love it. And then the woman on the
world card in this particular Terra deck, honestly, to me,
looks like she's standing inside of vagina. The description says
otherwise the most as if she's birthing herself. Yeah, yeah,
to me, that's That's what I'm going with, and no
one can tell me otherwise. So then in the eighteenth
(14:33):
century we have the rise of mystical Taro, but for
surprising reasons. Yeah, so, uh, you know, this goes back
to a lot of the ideas we talked about Kristen
Fair Listeners in our episode on witchcraft, because in that
episode we talked a lot about how it was men
(14:58):
elite mail them ers of society who were members of
secret Masonic societies and groups who got together and sort
of in order to give their own organizations in themselves
authenticity and credibility, they tried to link they're made up
(15:18):
organizational mythology with existing mythology about Egyptians and Greeks and Romans,
and that gave rise to a lot of our modern
day ideas about witchcraft. And the same is true for Taro.
So you've got to get a little context. In the
eighteenth century, power structures across Europe were shifting from feudalism
(15:40):
to capitalism, and you've got these mysterious, well on purpose mysterious.
They made themselves mysterious, and male hierarchy driven freemasonry, these
groups and their interests in the occult is on the rise,
and as Mike's Asteric and a Sociology of Terror points out,
those secret society hierarchies reproduced and reaffirmed the patriarchy, unequal
(16:05):
power relations, and male hedgemony. In other words, they were
filling this power vacuum as positions of power shifted from
being inherited, so rich people to get more rich people
who are all in the powerful positions. Not that that
doesn't exist, but you know what I mean to being
earned powerful positions being earned through that Protestant work ethic
(16:26):
and knowing the right people. And these secret societies were
all about knowing the right people. Well, and it's ironic
that you just mentioned the Protestant work ethic, because part
of the pathway to knowing the right people and getting
in with these societies and getting a leg up there
for you know, in your station in life, had to
do with getting a grasp of this occult terra that
(16:48):
they kind of made up. They developed as part of
their mythology, this connection between tarot cards and Egypt, because
intellectuals commonly believed ancient Egyptian writing and religion held insights
into human existence, and so they took their tarot cards
(17:10):
and linked that to ancient Egypt as a way of
gaining credibility and authority. Rather than being like, here's this
game we play and we kind of made up what
it means. Who wants to join us? It's so fun. Yeah,
it was just another way of being like, hey, we
are the holders of the mystical, magical truth. You've got
to go through us to get to the truth. And
(17:33):
also what was so appealing about these cards for these
rich white guys was that they were links to a
way of life that was enjoyed by those rich, wealthy,
high born Italian families of the fifteenth century. Mean, the
imagery itself is related to royalty and the elite. You've
got those kings and queens and popes. And then the
(17:55):
great thing about Tarot and great may or may not
be in quotes, is that the imagery is so easy
to manipulate. The meaning behind the imagery is so easy
to manipulate, and so easy to tell other people that
it means something um And you know, like we talked
about in our Psychics episode, Kristin, it's just human nature
(18:19):
to want to believe in this stuff, and I get it.
But it's worth discussing how a lot of this magical
belief system came out of a bunch of guys who
were just trying to use these cards and imbue them
with their own meaning in order to cement their fancy status.
Well and to the point that they even created Tarot
(18:42):
decks with Egyptian imagery to only reinforce this made up
connection between the two. Um and you have, though, two
big names who are responsible for really cementing this mystical
development of Tarot, but of whom are French. You first
(19:02):
have Antoine Courts de Jeblin, who was a French writer,
pastor and freemason. Real jack of all trades are here.
And then you have even more famous teacher and publisher
Jean Baptiste Aliette, who went by a pseudonym which was
just his last name Aliotte backwards. Yeah, so it's it's
(19:23):
a Tela, Talia, Natella, Nazela. Yeah, he went by Natla Venta, Ntela.
Natella and Jebelin were the first to align the tarot
with these mystical and divinatory properties. So in one in
his nine volume History of the World, which was quite impressive,
he didn't have Wikipedia or anything, uh Djevelin said that
(19:45):
Tarot was based on a holy book written by Egyptian
priests and bought brought to Europe by gypsies from Africa.
So I'm like, I'm so impressed that in your History
of the World you managed to make so much of
it up. Um. Aliette meanwhile wrote his own book on
the tarot and claimed that he learned divination with playing
cards first, but added his special Italian card, the telecard, which,
(20:12):
as in modern tarot, was meant to basically stand in
for the person having his or her fortune read. Eventually,
he switches over to using a quote unquote true tarot
deck and publishes his own, which is one of the
very first design specifically for divination, not just for game playing,
claiming again people that it had secret wisdom passed down
(20:33):
from ancient Egypt. I mean people stop making stuff up well,
or just stop being so gullible. Yeah, oh yeah, that's
that that too. Um. But so, of course, because this
is something of the elite, it makes sense that it
would eventually trickle down and be considered real cool, real cool.
It's like, I don't know, what's hoverboards are real cool.
(20:54):
Maybe they're trickling down. What's trickling down now? I don't know,
Beverly hoverboard definitely have definitely. It's so taro trickles down
to the rank and file, and so by we get
our first celebrity card reader what what and she is
a lady, hence the pronoun she is a lady. It's
Mademoiselle le Normand or Marie Anne Adelaide Len Norman, who
(21:15):
shows up in Paris claiming that she learned card reading
again from gypsies. And here's the context. Because I know
people are not a fan of the term gypsy. It's
not a great term to use. There was this idea
at the time that Gypsies were people who were roaming
around Europe from Egypt, hence the name. And so there
(21:35):
again is our Egyptian connection. Uh to give herself legitimacy,
she even read cards for Empress Josephine using Elliott's deck
that he designed. Yeah, there's that famous painting. I think
it might be called the Fortune Teller, which is essentially
depicting Uh le Normand reading in front of Josephine and
(21:57):
you have Napoleon um to the side, and was also
a depiction of her actually reading Napoleon's cards, but as
Tarot expert Mary Greer notes, as highly unlikely that she
actually did that for Napoleon, but she definitely read for Josephine.
And as Greer also notes, it is thanks to this
woman that the world really found out about Tara, that
(22:19):
it became this big thing. And after she died, oracle
decks were published with her name on them, sort of
like a celebrity endorsement. I mean, she was dead, but
trading on her name. It's like celebrity perfumes today. But
dead lady tarot cards. Yeah, totally the same thing. I'm
sure they smelled like something. I tell you what. Though,
(22:40):
when she was alive, descriptions of her were none too kind.
No no. In eighteen fifteen, a visitor described her as
a monstrous toad, bloated and venomous. She had one walleye,
but the other was a piercer, which I really enjoyed you,
or a fur cap upon her head from beneath which
(23:02):
she glared out upon her horrified visitors. Yeah, I love it.
I love it. So you know, we've got the origins
of tarot, mystic tarot, and tarot card reading among these
elite men, right, And as it trickles down, we start
to see fortune tellers and card readers being depicted like
(23:23):
we talked about in our last episode, as as women
and as in this case toad like monstrous women. But
I have to give you a little historical side note tidbit.
In there's this book on fortune telling, right, and it's
expanded to include chapters on card tossing and also coffee
ground reading and its title and this does tie into
(23:44):
the whole gender thing. Was every lady's own fortune teller
or an infallible guide to the hidden decrees of fate
being a new and regular system for fortune telling future
events to which has added a new method of fortune
telling by the dregs of coffee. So, ladies, you need
to pick yourself up a book, yeah, I mean, And
that was something that Mary Greer noted in her very
(24:06):
comprehensive history of taro. Once you get to the nineteenth century,
it really was a lady's pastime. It was something associated
with old women, soldiers, wives and ladies playing these parlor games.
And there's all sorts of artwork depicting this of women
huddled together reading their own cards. There is an excerpt
(24:29):
from Casa Nova's Diaries of talking about this horribly underaged
girl and she was like thirteen, where he was like,
I mean, I was into it, but she was always
obsessed with reading her tarot cards, you know, to find
out if I was realavanting or not. Well. I thought
the description was actually hysterical because he's like she's so jealous.
All she does is put the cards down and point
(24:50):
out to me all the ways in which I was
like in bed with someone at this place at this time,
and I just I just pictured like this jealous girlfriend.
It does ruined the hilarity of the story that she
was so young. But but but by this time, I mean,
it's pretty well established that tarot is a female pastime
(25:11):
in a lot of ways, that that men would kind
of snicker because it was a ladies pastime. Yeah, that
it was scorned by men. And she does point out
at her really really fantastic and fascinating blog that you
get this underground at the time of mostly older women
who made a good, if precarious, she says, living out
(25:32):
of various forms of divination. So we start to see
women who perhaps don't have any other way to make
money outside of the house, and here they are able
and basically sort of an intimate, not too public setting
making money off of the sort of emotional and psychological
desires of other people, which completely relates to our previous
(25:54):
episode on women in psychics. But we need to move
forward in our little time line to the turn of
the century. But first, you guessed it, we gotta take
a quick break. So as we moved into the nineteenth
(26:18):
and twenty centuries, those secret and occult societies that we
talked about earlier are still pretty much dominated by dudes.
But you do have groups emerging like the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, which were
co ed And I think it's interesting that the Theosophical Society,
for instance, even had women among its founders and leaders.
(26:38):
But people in these groups were super fixated on uncovering
the quote unquote true terror and the cards true meanings,
which is like, guys, um, like a hundred years ago,
you invented this. Uh. I don't know if you realize
that it was just a card game in the Arabic
world and in Italy, and then you guys were the
(27:00):
ones who made it magical That they didn't have podcast
back then, Caroline, how would they know what they know?
But they were so intent on on buying into this
whole thing of like tarot has a true meaning, uh,
and we're and we're going to find it and we're
the holders of this truth. So so we're going to
be a part of delivering the true Tarot to the people.
(27:20):
But what I mean that just opens up a whole
occultist playground for you to kind of get to, you know,
do what you want and make up whatever connections you
want to, just like a man or a woman. These
were co ed, they were some of them. There was
one very fascinating woman who's been well, not anymore so much,
(27:41):
but at the time was left out of tarot history. Yeah,
this is the thing. If you own a deck of
Tarot cards, there is a very good chance that you
have seen the artwork of Pamela Pixie Coleman Smith. Because
the most famous deck in tarot history is the Writer
(28:02):
Waight deck, which was printed in nineteen nine and named
for publisher William Writer in popular mystic A E. Wait.
And you might be like, wait, why isn't it the
Wait Huh, Why isn't it the Writer Wait Coleman Smith deck. Huh? Well,
because she was a lady person and an artist and
Wait was a jerk and and pretty much purposely left
(28:24):
her name out. But so the Writer Weight deck is
so famous. It's the first mass market tarot deck, which
also helped boost terrorist popularity. And again its intention was divination,
not playing those Italian mind games. Uh. And it even
came with a book explaining the meaning behind Coleman Smith's imagery.
(28:45):
And imagine what a huge job this is because Coleman
Smith has to illustrate seventy eight cards and about six months,
and her illustrations are notable because her pip cards told stories,
and the PIP cards are those lesser cards, not the
ones that are you know, the fancy, like this is
(29:05):
the Son, this is the Hermit, et cetera. So all
the cards together tell a story, which again is a
great way if you're trying to get people to connect
with imagery or connect with the philosophy, this is a
great way to do it because your pictures till a
thousand words, and so to place all of these amazing
(29:25):
illustrations on each card and then to do a Tarot formation,
it's so easy to tell a story and be able
to interpret this image is kind of however you or
the card reader wants well. Since I was raised in
a household where tarot cards were tools of the devil.
After college, when my roommates got some Tarot cards, was
(29:49):
the first time I'd ever seen tarot cards up close
and held them, and I was enamored with the illustrations,
and I love thinking about how, oh I was so
blown a way by this unsung lady artists work, because
I mean they really are gorgeous. Yeah, and she has
a fascinating story. So she's born in eighteen seventy eight
(30:10):
in London to American parents, and they lived all over,
including in Jamaica. And she's such a cutie if you
see pictures of her. But people at the time very
like euphemistically and quietly questioned her true parenting. Basically, they
were like, you know, she's awfully dark and queer looking.
(30:30):
Perhaps her actual parents are Jamaican and her parents themselves
were very artistic and under their influence, she ends up
joining a touring theater group as an actor, costume maker,
and set designer. She's super artistic. She ends up studying
art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She became an
illustrator for Yates, bram Stoker and others, and a lot
(30:52):
of her personal art, interestingly enough, was a reflection of
her synesthesia. So she would listen to these symphonies and
then eat. So it results in this swooping, sweeping imagery
that's so beautiful and also another tidbit of how like
really cool this lady is. As a member of the
group Suffrage Atallier, she puts her art to use for
(31:14):
Suffrage posters and cartoons, and her talent didn't stop there.
She was also a writer, publishing several plays and books,
including a collection of Jamaican folklore, which she would just
go out and recite at events, which kind of blows
my mind because hello, stage fright. Um, but I love
this excerpt from Brooklyn Life magazine from seven which some
(31:39):
hipster should really revive a sap. They described her as
a gentlewoman presenting an odd type of thoroughly unconventional femininity,
and therein lies her greatest charm, which I think is
an old school way of saying she's not like other girls. Yeah,
she's like the cool girl, but we're kind of suspicious ever,
because she wears all this billowy garments. She even started
(32:00):
her a magazine called The Green Chief, which certainly did
have other contributors, but it was mainly a way for
her to publish her writing. Oh magazine like a little
right girl, Yes she is, uh so. Her introduction to
tarot and creating the Cards comes in nineteen o one,
when she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Down,
which is where she met A. E. Waite, as well
(32:22):
as Yates and Alistair Crowley, that scoundrel who you'll remember
from our Witchcraft episode helped this guy, Gerald Gardner write
a quote unquote manual for Witchcraft rituals. And Crowley was
also the future creator of the equally famous soilth Taro. Yeah,
the filth Tarot cards are intense. So Coleman Smith's cards
(32:42):
are printed with pretty not not that great fanfair and
nobody's really into it because at this point in England
people are still like, what what is this French thing?
I'm not into this, But it's so great when you
read stuff about Coleman Smith, because she was very clear
about having her own idea is about how you should
prepare to read the cards. The whole thing that seventh
grade Caroline went through like quiet the mind, think about
(33:06):
your question, picture your question, and then flip the cards over.
And in terms of her illustrations, the deck itself is
clearly inspired by this fifteenth century Italian deck called the
Solo Busca, but they, in turn her illustrations in turn
inspired their own future imitators. And I love this fact,
so she used her own cat for one of the illustrations,
(33:30):
so I think was named Snuffles. Snuffles, of course it
was so Snuffles inspired future artists and card readers she
interpreted as a million different symbols and meetings, which ultimately
it's just Snuffles. Yeah, it's just her cat. She also
used her buddy slash potentially lover our companion, Eatie Craig,
(33:50):
as a model for some of the women on the cards.
And so isn't that fascinating to know that here's this
person who was like under the gun to create all
these beautiful illustrations and six months for very little pay,
using her own characters from her own life to create
these mystical tarot figures, and people today are still interpreting
them and reinterpreting them as these magical mystical beings. I
(34:11):
just love it. But even though her work was so
significant and she put so much thought into it, and
people have in turn put so much thought into her cards,
she was completely left out. She received no mention by
name in the book that accompanied the Deck and Wait
referred to her only as a quote young woman artist
(34:33):
who had illustrated the cards based on his instructions. She
received very little payment and no royalties, and in one
letter to her agent she even said, I just did
a huge project for very little pay, just basically saying like,
I know, you know, I'm just just hustling here. And
(34:53):
in case you were wondering about the true nature of
Waite's character, he and indeed was a journy. He wrote,
the practice of painting among women has been clumsily cultivated.
It remains a bad imitation of nature, whereas it might
be a great art. And I'm like, dude, if you
are so like anti woman and anti woman artist, why
did you even hire this woman? Oh? Could it be
(35:15):
because she's actually really talented and you just don't want
to give her any credit and may be easier to
discredit her. But for Coleman Smith's part, she converted to
Catholicism and ran a priest's retreat in Cornwall, but then
died panelists in one even though if she had gotten
royalties on that deck, she would have been sitting pretty yeah,
total millionaire. Yeah, the deck ends up falling out of
(35:38):
use until about the seventies, when you've got American playing
card manufacturer US Games. I believe it is who reprinted them,
and it was the US Games guy who was saying
that Coleman Smith could have been a millionaire today. Well,
she's not the only tarot illustrator of note. In the
late nineteen thirties, Marguerite Frieda Harris, a k A. Lady
(36:00):
FRIEDA Harris met Alisair Crowley at sixty years old and
painted the images for his foth tarot dick over and
over again across five years. I mean, think about that.
Coleman Smith did hers in six months. Yeah, yeah, And
so FRIEDA. Harris is a pretty interesting character. She herself
(36:21):
was very wealthy, as indicated by the title lady, like
she was doing all right. She didn't need a bunch
of money. She also didn't need a bunch of notoriety.
I just wasn't a nickname. She was like, call me lady. Well,
I mean, you've got people like uh Mademoiselle lenormand you know,
like people who not that Mademoiselle is not just a
normal French uh courtesy title. But you've got people who
(36:43):
are really playing up there, like mystical associations. And but
she really was a lady. But yeah, she and Alistair
Crowley had this fascinating correspondence, and they were total buds
and BFFs uh. In one letter she told him to
basically shut up. She's tired of being his bank. And listen, Crowley,
your notes for these illustrations are terrible. You're so stupid.
(37:05):
But if you go through their letters and read them,
they're very close. They're both in this mystical secret society
and they talk so much about issues of these secret
societies and knowledge and truth and religion and all of
this great stuff, and they were very, very close. But yeah,
like Kristen said, it's crazy to think that she was
(37:26):
doing these paintings over five whole years, where Coleman Smith
had to smush it into six months. And listeners, you
have to google image the Fouth Deck if you haven't
seen it already, because the art is wild. Harris used
projected synthetic geometry to create these almost like Salvador Dolly
(37:49):
esque paintings or illustrations, I should say. And then he
really do look like something out of a sci fi book. Yeah,
they really do look like Because I was looking at
the cards and I was like, why do they look
familiar to me? Because they look exactly like contemporary sci
fi illustrations, like that early sci fi stuff you see
on book covers. I think though, if I had, if
(38:10):
I ever tried to use the Fowth deck, I would
just get really confused and tired because the illustrations are
so abstract. Yeah yes, yeah. And whereas um Coleman Smith's
illustrations were sort of grounded in that fifteenth century Italian deck,
uh FREDA. Harris's illustrations were just I mean, they were
(38:33):
definitely a joint project between her and Crowley, like he
gave her plenty of feedback. It almost reads like a
graphic designer client email thread going back and forth. But
her illustrations were off the chart, I mean, they were
something totally different. So obviously, taro today still plays a
huge role in divination, in connections with the occult, but
(38:56):
also just in people's day to day lives seeking meaning
or maybe seeking some some insight into the world around them.
But sociologist Mike's Hysteric, who we mentioned earlier, has nothing
nice to say. He's not into that at all. He's
really concerned about how easily people today have taken up
tarot ideology that has roots in those Masonic societies, which
(39:20):
he said are so problematic because those groups are based
in classist, racist, and sexist traditions. He says that those
groups not only barred people's participation, women, people of color,
people of lower classes, but they also borrow heavily and
appropriate from histories and traditions that aren't there. So are
Tarot cards an example of cultural appropriation according to the sociologist, Yeah, wow, well,
(39:45):
and he also admits that not only Tarot, but religion
in general persists to fulfill that basic human need of
explained the world around you and kind of relieving our anxieties.
So I mean there is a method to our madness. Yeah,
and it's why things like the Goddess movement that we
talked about in our Witchcraft episode can be so powerful.
(40:06):
They fill a vacuum that need for spiritual fulfillment and
they reframed the normal patriarchal structure to one focusing on women.
I mean, similarly, you have Tarot decks from the eighties,
I believe, like theist Tara which was created by Ruth West,
and that's exclusively feminine focused and non traditional with exclusively
(40:27):
women on the card, some of which are renamed. And
then you've got the more recent she is sitting in
The Night Tarot Book, which is a more recent feminist
lesbian tarot book. So you've got stuff that's grounded in
patriarchal Masonic traditions but being reclaimed. I don't know if
I can say reclaimed, but being claimed by women in
(40:48):
the twenty first century who are pointing it in a
totally different direction. Yeah. I mean, I think it's safe
to say that a lot of millennial feminists are totally
into tarot. There was even we even have a trend
piece to back up our observations. There's a whole thing
in Newsweek about it, and they related to how organized
(41:09):
religion has declined. Our participation has declined among the millennial generation,
especially according to a Pew study. Um and the millennials
that Newsweek interviewed said that astrology and tarot are their
favorite super natural tools for combating essentially existential angst. I mean,
(41:33):
that's what I was doing in the seventh grade. I
guess there's some theories. Susan Miller, who's an astrologer, tells
Newsweek that astrology, for instance, has a very firm structure,
and a couple of the people that Newsweek talked to
young women specifically were like, yeah, you know what, it
helps me clarify feelings, my feelings about my uncertain future.
(41:53):
It helps me reduce a little bit of that recession anxiety.
Not to mention, they talked to one woman who not
only used it to alleviate her recession anxiety, but because
she was out of a job, she used tarot to
make money, similar to Jessica Crispin. So lots of stuff
wrapped up in that capitalistic tradition that's passed down from
the Freemasons. Yeah, and and yet the thing that I
(42:14):
haven't seen an uptick in is elite dudes or just
dudes in general picking up the tarot deck casually. Now,
I think it's another thing that's been feminized in people's minds,
that that's some silly magic stuff that old crones do. Well.
I'm very curious now to hear from listeners with knowledge
(42:36):
of a tarot or any kind of interaction. If we
have any tarot readers listening, we want to hear from you.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. I have
(42:59):
a let her here from Isabella. She starts it off
by saying, in the voice of the worm from Labyrinth,
Hello ladies, Hello Isabella, She says, I haven't even finished
your podcasts on adult acne, but I had to get
in touch to encourage other listeners to get their hormones
checked if they suddenly develop acne in their twenties and thirties.
(43:20):
As a clear skinned teen growing up, I was immensely
relieved that I didn't have to deal with chronic acne
like some of my friends. Don't get me wrong, I
got the odd spot, but it was never anything worth
complaining about, and so I traversed my teenage years worrying
about periods, boys, extra hair, and all those other lovely
symptoms of puberty bar acne, for which I was very grateful.
(43:41):
Fast forward a few years to the age of twenty two,
working in London alone and a stressful job with a
terrible boss, and suddenly spots spots everywhere. At first I
put this down to stress and some kind of karmit
come up in but as the months passed and endless
topical treatments failed, I went into a really, really dark place,
something I can only see with him. Side After quitting
my job in a blaze of glory, I took my
(44:03):
mom's advice and went to an indo chronologist who diagnosed
me with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is fairly common one
in ten and results in a higher androgen level in
the blood than normal, which, as you said in your podcast,
causes the devil dots. I was put on Yasmin straight away,
and six months later my skin had cleared up. I'm
twenty seven now. Side note, I switched from Yasmin to
(44:24):
another birth control brand due to questions regarding Yasmin's safety,
and I'm still grateful when I look in the mirror
and don't see spots. As you always say, hormones control
everything in your body, and no amount of face washing
and topical ointments will change what is going on inside
of you, even if for peace of mind, get your
hormones checked out if you developed severe adult acne. If
it is pcos, it's amazingly easy to treat, and it's
(44:47):
made a huge difference to my self image. You both
do a great job, and my boyfriend and I look
forward to listening to more of your podcasts while I
deal with some of his occasional spots. Yet, Kristen, other
couples do that as well, So it's thank you Isabella. Well,
I've got a letter here from our about our anal
sex episode. She writes, I was so delighted to listen
(45:09):
to your podcast on the topic of anal sex. I've
had a variety of first and experiences, both positive and negative.
As a teenager, I had an underwhelming first experience with
a high school boyfriend, and shortly afterward experienced an older
lover pressuring me to try again. It was when I
was in my early twenties and in a long term
relationship with someone that I was comfortable enough to be
(45:30):
with two sexually explore that I became one of those
who not only has anal often, but absolutely loves it. Well,
of course, it isn't for everyone. I found it so
enjoyable and intimate, and I've certainly found it improving my
ability to orgasm. I was recently talking about this with
my best friend, and we've discussed how we each feel
confident and like we have full agency over our sexuality
(45:50):
when we performed this act. It was so great to
be able to listen to a whole podcast about this
activity that we both love, and it would be a
wonderful thing if everyone who wants to try could do
so in a comfortable and enjoyable way. As you said,
the statistics on just how many teenagers have such negative
experiences is a strong testament to how vital comprehensive sex
(46:10):
education is. This is something I have found over and
over again in the UK. When I was pressured to
comply as a teenager, I had never been told that
I had agency to say no, and I remember over
hearing girls at school discussing stories much like the ones
related in the podcast. I'm about to start working with
therapists within my old high school to improve the sex
education and I've definitely got a huge amount of information
(46:32):
from Sminthy. Thank you guys so much for all the
amazing work you do. Listening to you always makes me smile,
so thanks so much, our and thanks everybody who's written
into us. Moms Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with links to our sources. So you
(46:54):
can learn more about tarot cards, head on over to
stuff Mom Never told you dot com or more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House toupports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and I'm going to start off this
podcast by admitting something about myself, which is that when
I was younger and I found myself no longer believing
(00:28):
in the Christian faith that I had grown up with. UM,
I started pursuing, as do many young people and people
who feel that big religion or no religion, they still
want to feel a connection to something bigger than themselves.
I got into tarot cards. Oh tell me more, Caroline. Yeah,
so I got one of those like cheesy, slit glossy,
terribly illustrated packs from who knows where, probably hot topic
(00:52):
or something. Um, I don't know, it's hot topics still around.
I think they are right, probably, UM, I wonder if
they're still as weird it as they were when I
was in high school. Tweens need to be TACKI somehow
mall goths. Yeah. Uh so I got into it and
I found that it was a really great, sort of
satisfying way to feel like I was connecting with some
(01:16):
spiritual force that I was part of, some magical mystical,
uh fantasy land that gave me some bit of control
and insight into the world around me. And I just
sort of summed up why people do tarot? Well, did you?
I'm curious? So did you? How often did you do it? Um?
(01:39):
Maybe like once or maybe once a week, maybe like
on the weekend or something. And would it be used
to help you figure out what to do with your
life or sort of reflect on things? I think both
A lot of it had to do with, like, um,
liking boys and wanting to do tarot about love. Um,
(02:03):
But I did the whole nine yards, Kristen. I would
like turn out the lights and light candles and like
get in the zone and like breathe deeply and get
real quiet internally and focus on my question, which was
probably like two so and so like me? Is so
and so gonna like me, which is like the bulk
(02:23):
of a lot of charot questions in the modern era.
And I'd lay out the cards in the Celtic cross formation.
There's a bunch of different formations that you can do
in tarot, and and read the cards and figure out
what was negative and what was positive and if they
were inverted or right side up. What that meant. And yeah,
(02:43):
I literally can't remember any insight that it ever actually
gave me or I thought that it gave me, But
it was kind of a really fun way to pass
the time. I was also big into runs at the time,
which was the same deal. You put them in a
sack and like you it's like scrabble tie and you
put your hands in there and you draw out some
runs and you figure out what your future supposed to be,
(03:05):
or you figure out the answer to a question. I'm
surprised I never got into runs. That sounds right up
my alley. Well. I even had I remember distinctly wearing
my rune necklace to music midtown here in Atlanta in
nineteen seven, seventh grade for me um with the nineties. Yeah,
I think it was ninety seven. Uh, And I definitely
(03:27):
like thought it was so eff and cool because it
was like a choker necklace. It was on. It was
on like one of those black cords, So nineties. You know,
I probably very hip today, little rune necklace, And uh,
I can't remember what it meant. It was something like
very you know, very like middle school self centered, like independent,
or like something, I'm a cool person. Run I don't
(03:50):
even care about the curfew. After college, my roommates than
I went through a Tarot phase, but it was more
a thing, parlor game when we would all hang out.
People would come over, have some beers and like, let's
do taro. Oh my god, was it me? Yeah, yeah,
we're drunk. Yeah, yes, that is what it meant for
(04:14):
people hundreds and hundreds of years ago too. You and
your friends were far more connected to the true roots
of tarot than seventh grade Caroline was. I assure you, yeah,
Because here's the thing about the history of tarot. It's
a little bit of a letdown because it really just
(04:35):
started out as a game and we've been making up
the rules for tarot ever since. Yeah oh yeah, oh,
and so it's so um. I don't know what word
to use here, but I just I put my hands
to my face and real worried when I read like
first person accounts of tarot card readers, and like, how
(04:58):
seriously so many people take it. It's like a huge
part of some people's lives, and I don't want to
dismiss that part of your life, fair listeners, but there's
there's literally no mystical meaning behind tarot. Um like. Like
Kristen said it, it's meaning has changed over the centuries.
It really did originate in the Islamic and Arabic world
(05:20):
as just as just cards. The fabulous people in the
Middle East invented playing cards, and they were beautiful. They
were hand painted. They were something that the wealthy had
to pass the time, and so they were painted with
all sorts of things that would be familiar to these
people in their everyday lives. So there'd be architectural elements
(05:41):
painted on their Later there would be people or or
items represented on the cards. But they were all meant
to just play games. And so uh. These cards, of course,
through trade through military invasions, made their way to Europe.
They've been used everything from games, like they said, to
literary prompt for writers to the way we think of
(06:02):
them now as tools for divination. Although I do like
and not to get ahead of ourselves, but I do
like how long we have been using tarot, even pre
divination phase, to help us predict whether someone will like
us back or not. Yes, there was one Spanish deck
that was meant to figure out the object of your
(06:23):
affection in each suit. So like the cups or the wands,
or whatever. Each suit of the debt corresponded to a
different type of woman, either maidens, wives, widows, or nuns.
Always get the nuns, always a nun, never a made.
But taro as we think of it today, really got
its start in Italy, I believe, around the fifteenth century.
(06:46):
But again it was nothing but a game at that time.
And from Italy it was exported to France and Germany,
and and taro had no history as a game in
English speaking areas. It was introduced instead by occultists. So
that's interesting, right, that little tidbit about how people in Italy, France,
and Germany we're thinking of it as a game. Even
(07:07):
if it was, even if it did have a divination bent,
it was still sort of a playful thing versus in England,
where they didn't get it until some kind of shady occultists,
as we'll get into in greater detail much later in
the podcast, they introduced it as an actual mystical, magical thing.
So to give a brief rundown of Tero decks today,
(07:30):
they've got seventy eight cards. Fifty six are the minor
arcana or the suit cards, So like the you know,
seven of Wand's uh and twenty two make up the
major arcana or trump cards. You've got four suits, swords, batons, cups,
and coins, each of which has an ace through a
tin in addition to the jack through king. The major
cards also have a fool, which is traditionally labeled as zero.
(07:53):
And today, of course people read all sorts of meanings
into tarot cards. So for me, a growing up in
a very conservative home, tarot cards were seen as a
tool of the devil, as they can. But then of
course there are people who use tarot to predict the
future they see. Some see it as a gateway to
mystical beings or otherworldly knowledge, and then others use it
(08:18):
more as a meditative device just to reflect and get
more insight on yourself and also relationships. And tarot was
something that came up in your conversation Caroline a few
months back in with author Jessic Crispin, who wrote The
Dead Ladies Project. Yeah, showed the Dead Ladies Project. She
also founded the website book Splot, and she's got a
(08:40):
pretty cool tarot side business. She herself got into it
a sort of a backup job while she was between
gigs and now reads tarot for people, not as a
way to like predict the future, but it's almost sort
of a literary inspirational device to help you sort of
figure out your narrative or figure out what your own
(09:02):
strengths are. Um. But let's let's dive in now and
take a closer look at Terra's origins and evolution. And
a lot of this is coming from a great article
over at Collectors Weekly which has some beautiful images of
all of those cards from the Islamic world. So we
mentioned the fifteenth century, and it was between the fourteenth
(09:24):
and fifteenth centuries that people started using cards for games
and playful divination, emphasis on playful and it was something
called mam look game cards that were brought to Western
Europe from the Middle East and in the Islamic world,
as Caroline mentioned, card playing was really something for the
(09:46):
high born, and these cards were just maniature pieces of art.
They were often hand painted and they would be scrawled
with calligraphy, whereas in Europe they lost a little bit
of their claud us because you have printing technology, which
did mean though that it became something that wasn't only
(10:06):
exclusive to the wealthiest. More people could get their hands
literally on these cards and paper products, but they probably
weren't hand painted. But if you look at the Arabic calligraphy,
they would often contain aphorisms or sort of many fortunes,
such as as for the present that rejoices thy heart
will soon open up a little fingers crossed, or how
(10:30):
about this just takes a little darker turn with a
sword of happiness, I shall redeem a beloved who will
afterwards take my life. Whoa buy or beware? Boy? Oh,
it doesn't sound like a good relationship. That sort of
happiness will get you every time. Yeah. So by the
fifteen hundreds in Europe you've got these beautiful cards being
used for literary exercises, so not too different from what
(10:52):
Jessica Crispin is using it for herself. Uh, and games
that are similar to modern day bridge and you get
some more playful to a nation. So Italian aristocrats were
playing this game tarokey appropriety. Basically you'd be dealt random
cards and have to write poetic verses about other players
based on the content and the imagery of those cards.
(11:14):
And I love The Collector's Weekly compares it to an
early version of mash like I'm going to live in
a mansion with the hunvy and have Bobby as my husband.
I wanted Bobby. But this really evolved into a literary phenomenon.
I mean, people were writing lots of stories and poetry
based on the cards that they were drawing. It also
(11:38):
reminds me of what's it called exquisite corpse where you
start a story and then you fold a piece of
paper until only the last sentence is revealed, and you
pass it around the person and picks up the story
and then and then it flows from there. But it's
not a card game, although it should be. Um, but
back to Tarot pre Tarot decks start to w would
(12:00):
develop as you have wealthy Italian families commissioning their own
hand painted cards of triumph. How boss is that to
be like, I'm so rich, I mean to have some
cards of triumph made just for myself. And they had
the same suits as those Arabic mam look cards of cups, swords, coins,
and photo sticks which would eventually become your wands or batons. Yeah,
(12:27):
and of course they had the courts of kings and
male underlings. We didn't have queens yet, so just that. Yeah,
go figure um and in the seventeenth century we see
the Tarot de Marsilles originating. This is one of the
most common types of Tero decks ever produced. It was
usually printed with woodblocks and colored in by hand with
basic stencils. And it's worth noting that this is not
(12:49):
one specific deck, but rather a style that's seen in
France that would be copied a whole lot. Of course,
you know, once it's out of the hands or it's
trickled down, I guess I should say, from the rich
Italians all the way to France and Germany, that's when
you start seeing decks like the Tarot de Marcilles. But
there was some controversy, right, there was a bit of controversy,
(13:12):
so there was a papist card and papists. If that
does sound to you like papal, you're right, a lady
pope though, heck no so. But of course, since we
could not have a lady pope, she morphed into depending
on your dick, either to you know, the high priestess
(13:32):
or the Spanish captain. But in the case of the
high priestess, the high priest counterpart would be the pope. Yeah,
like I'm back, well, I mean so throughout these cards history,
your imagery just depended on your worldview. I mean, there
were tarts, so from the very beginning, Tarot imagery was
morphing to accommodate common beliefs at the time. But I
(13:53):
love it. In the Taro de Marcilles, there are some
pretty cool lady imagery. Strength is a woman subduing a lion.
The Empress was a pretty badass shield. You've got the
star who's the neked lady pouring water, and I'm sure
that they're tarraficionadas out there going like, oh, that's not
what it is or it's not what it means, but
(14:13):
I still love it. And then the woman on the
world card in this particular Terra deck, honestly, to me,
looks like she's standing inside of vagina. The description says
otherwise the most as if she's birthing herself. Yeah, yeah,
to me, that's That's what I'm going with, and no
one can tell me otherwise. So then in the eighteenth
(14:33):
century we have the rise of mystical Taro, but for
surprising reasons. Yeah, so, uh, you know, this goes back
to a lot of the ideas we talked about Kristen
Fair Listeners in our episode on witchcraft, because in that
episode we talked a lot about how it was men
(14:58):
elite mail them ers of society who were members of
secret Masonic societies and groups who got together and sort
of in order to give their own organizations in themselves
authenticity and credibility, they tried to link they're made up
(15:18):
organizational mythology with existing mythology about Egyptians and Greeks and Romans,
and that gave rise to a lot of our modern
day ideas about witchcraft. And the same is true for Taro.
So you've got to get a little context. In the
eighteenth century, power structures across Europe were shifting from feudalism
(15:40):
to capitalism, and you've got these mysterious, well on purpose mysterious.
They made themselves mysterious, and male hierarchy driven freemasonry, these
groups and their interests in the occult is on the rise,
and as Mike's Asteric and a Sociology of Terror points out,
those secret society hierarchies reproduced and reaffirmed the patriarchy, unequal
(16:05):
power relations, and male hedgemony. In other words, they were
filling this power vacuum as positions of power shifted from
being inherited, so rich people to get more rich people
who are all in the powerful positions. Not that that
doesn't exist, but you know what I mean to being
earned powerful positions being earned through that Protestant work ethic
(16:26):
and knowing the right people. And these secret societies were
all about knowing the right people. Well, and it's ironic
that you just mentioned the Protestant work ethic, because part
of the pathway to knowing the right people and getting
in with these societies and getting a leg up there
for you know, in your station in life, had to
do with getting a grasp of this occult terra that
(16:48):
they kind of made up. They developed as part of
their mythology, this connection between tarot cards and Egypt, because
intellectuals commonly believed ancient Egyptian writing and religion held insights
into human existence, and so they took their tarot cards
(17:10):
and linked that to ancient Egypt as a way of
gaining credibility and authority. Rather than being like, here's this
game we play and we kind of made up what
it means. Who wants to join us? It's so fun. Yeah,
it was just another way of being like, hey, we
are the holders of the mystical, magical truth. You've got
to go through us to get to the truth. And
(17:33):
also what was so appealing about these cards for these
rich white guys was that they were links to a
way of life that was enjoyed by those rich, wealthy,
high born Italian families of the fifteenth century. Mean, the
imagery itself is related to royalty and the elite. You've
got those kings and queens and popes. And then the
(17:55):
great thing about Tarot and great may or may not
be in quotes, is that the imagery is so easy
to manipulate. The meaning behind the imagery is so easy
to manipulate, and so easy to tell other people that
it means something um And you know, like we talked
about in our Psychics episode, Kristin, it's just human nature
(18:19):
to want to believe in this stuff, and I get it.
But it's worth discussing how a lot of this magical
belief system came out of a bunch of guys who
were just trying to use these cards and imbue them
with their own meaning in order to cement their fancy status.
Well and to the point that they even created Tarot
(18:42):
decks with Egyptian imagery to only reinforce this made up
connection between the two. Um and you have, though, two
big names who are responsible for really cementing this mystical
development of Tarot, but of whom are French. You first
(19:02):
have Antoine Courts de Jeblin, who was a French writer,
pastor and freemason. Real jack of all trades are here.
And then you have even more famous teacher and publisher
Jean Baptiste Aliette, who went by a pseudonym which was
just his last name Aliotte backwards. Yeah, so it's it's
(19:23):
a Tela, Talia, Natella, Nazela. Yeah, he went by Natla Venta, Ntela.
Natella and Jebelin were the first to align the tarot
with these mystical and divinatory properties. So in one in
his nine volume History of the World, which was quite impressive,
he didn't have Wikipedia or anything, uh Djevelin said that
(19:45):
Tarot was based on a holy book written by Egyptian
priests and bought brought to Europe by gypsies from Africa.
So I'm like, I'm so impressed that in your History
of the World you managed to make so much of
it up. Um. Aliette meanwhile wrote his own book on
the tarot and claimed that he learned divination with playing
cards first, but added his special Italian card, the telecard, which,
(20:12):
as in modern tarot, was meant to basically stand in
for the person having his or her fortune read. Eventually,
he switches over to using a quote unquote true tarot
deck and publishes his own, which is one of the
very first design specifically for divination, not just for game playing,
claiming again people that it had secret wisdom passed down
(20:33):
from ancient Egypt. I mean people stop making stuff up well,
or just stop being so gullible. Yeah, oh yeah, that's
that that too. Um. But so, of course, because this
is something of the elite, it makes sense that it
would eventually trickle down and be considered real cool, real cool.
It's like, I don't know, what's hoverboards are real cool.
(20:54):
Maybe they're trickling down. What's trickling down now? I don't know,
Beverly hoverboard definitely have definitely. It's so taro trickles down
to the rank and file, and so by we get
our first celebrity card reader what what and she is
a lady, hence the pronoun she is a lady. It's
Mademoiselle le Normand or Marie Anne Adelaide Len Norman, who
(21:15):
shows up in Paris claiming that she learned card reading
again from gypsies. And here's the context. Because I know
people are not a fan of the term gypsy. It's
not a great term to use. There was this idea
at the time that Gypsies were people who were roaming
around Europe from Egypt, hence the name. And so there
(21:35):
again is our Egyptian connection. Uh to give herself legitimacy,
she even read cards for Empress Josephine using Elliott's deck
that he designed. Yeah, there's that famous painting. I think
it might be called the Fortune Teller, which is essentially
depicting Uh le Normand reading in front of Josephine and
(21:57):
you have Napoleon um to the side, and was also
a depiction of her actually reading Napoleon's cards, but as
Tarot expert Mary Greer notes, as highly unlikely that she
actually did that for Napoleon, but she definitely read for Josephine.
And as Greer also notes, it is thanks to this
woman that the world really found out about Tara, that
(22:19):
it became this big thing. And after she died, oracle
decks were published with her name on them, sort of
like a celebrity endorsement. I mean, she was dead, but
trading on her name. It's like celebrity perfumes today. But
dead lady tarot cards. Yeah, totally the same thing. I'm
sure they smelled like something. I tell you what. Though,
(22:40):
when she was alive, descriptions of her were none too kind.
No no. In eighteen fifteen, a visitor described her as
a monstrous toad, bloated and venomous. She had one walleye,
but the other was a piercer, which I really enjoyed you,
or a fur cap upon her head from beneath which
(23:02):
she glared out upon her horrified visitors. Yeah, I love it.
I love it. So you know, we've got the origins
of tarot, mystic tarot, and tarot card reading among these
elite men, right, And as it trickles down, we start
to see fortune tellers and card readers being depicted like
(23:23):
we talked about in our last episode, as as women
and as in this case toad like monstrous women. But
I have to give you a little historical side note tidbit.
In there's this book on fortune telling, right, and it's
expanded to include chapters on card tossing and also coffee
ground reading and its title and this does tie into
(23:44):
the whole gender thing. Was every lady's own fortune teller
or an infallible guide to the hidden decrees of fate
being a new and regular system for fortune telling future
events to which has added a new method of fortune
telling by the dregs of coffee. So, ladies, you need
to pick yourself up a book, yeah, I mean, And
that was something that Mary Greer noted in her very
(24:06):
comprehensive history of taro. Once you get to the nineteenth century,
it really was a lady's pastime. It was something associated
with old women, soldiers, wives and ladies playing these parlor games.
And there's all sorts of artwork depicting this of women
huddled together reading their own cards. There is an excerpt
(24:29):
from Casa Nova's Diaries of talking about this horribly underaged
girl and she was like thirteen, where he was like,
I mean, I was into it, but she was always
obsessed with reading her tarot cards, you know, to find
out if I was realavanting or not. Well. I thought
the description was actually hysterical because he's like she's so jealous.
All she does is put the cards down and point
(24:50):
out to me all the ways in which I was
like in bed with someone at this place at this time,
and I just I just pictured like this jealous girlfriend.
It does ruined the hilarity of the story that she
was so young. But but but by this time, I mean,
it's pretty well established that tarot is a female pastime
(25:11):
in a lot of ways, that that men would kind
of snicker because it was a ladies pastime. Yeah, that
it was scorned by men. And she does point out
at her really really fantastic and fascinating blog that you
get this underground at the time of mostly older women
who made a good, if precarious, she says, living out
(25:32):
of various forms of divination. So we start to see
women who perhaps don't have any other way to make
money outside of the house, and here they are able
and basically sort of an intimate, not too public setting
making money off of the sort of emotional and psychological
desires of other people, which completely relates to our previous
(25:54):
episode on women in psychics. But we need to move
forward in our little time line to the turn of
the century. But first, you guessed it, we gotta take
a quick break. So as we moved into the nineteenth
(26:18):
and twenty centuries, those secret and occult societies that we
talked about earlier are still pretty much dominated by dudes.
But you do have groups emerging like the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, which were
co ed And I think it's interesting that the Theosophical Society,
for instance, even had women among its founders and leaders.
(26:38):
But people in these groups were super fixated on uncovering
the quote unquote true terror and the cards true meanings,
which is like, guys, um, like a hundred years ago,
you invented this. Uh. I don't know if you realize
that it was just a card game in the Arabic
world and in Italy, and then you guys were the
(27:00):
ones who made it magical That they didn't have podcast
back then, Caroline, how would they know what they know?
But they were so intent on on buying into this
whole thing of like tarot has a true meaning, uh,
and we're and we're going to find it and we're
the holders of this truth. So so we're going to
be a part of delivering the true Tarot to the people.
(27:20):
But what I mean that just opens up a whole
occultist playground for you to kind of get to, you know,
do what you want and make up whatever connections you
want to, just like a man or a woman. These
were co ed, they were some of them. There was
one very fascinating woman who's been well, not anymore so much,
(27:41):
but at the time was left out of tarot history. Yeah,
this is the thing. If you own a deck of
Tarot cards, there is a very good chance that you
have seen the artwork of Pamela Pixie Coleman Smith. Because
the most famous deck in tarot history is the Writer
(28:02):
Waight deck, which was printed in nineteen nine and named
for publisher William Writer in popular mystic A E. Wait.
And you might be like, wait, why isn't it the
Wait Huh, Why isn't it the Writer Wait Coleman Smith deck. Huh? Well,
because she was a lady person and an artist and
Wait was a jerk and and pretty much purposely left
(28:24):
her name out. But so the Writer Weight deck is
so famous. It's the first mass market tarot deck, which
also helped boost terrorist popularity. And again its intention was divination,
not playing those Italian mind games. Uh. And it even
came with a book explaining the meaning behind Coleman Smith's imagery.
(28:45):
And imagine what a huge job this is because Coleman
Smith has to illustrate seventy eight cards and about six months,
and her illustrations are notable because her pip cards told stories,
and the PIP cards are those lesser cards, not the
ones that are you know, the fancy, like this is
(29:05):
the Son, this is the Hermit, et cetera. So all
the cards together tell a story, which again is a
great way if you're trying to get people to connect
with imagery or connect with the philosophy, this is a
great way to do it because your pictures till a
thousand words, and so to place all of these amazing
(29:25):
illustrations on each card and then to do a Tarot formation,
it's so easy to tell a story and be able
to interpret this image is kind of however you or
the card reader wants well. Since I was raised in
a household where tarot cards were tools of the devil.
After college, when my roommates got some Tarot cards, was
(29:49):
the first time I'd ever seen tarot cards up close
and held them, and I was enamored with the illustrations,
and I love thinking about how, oh I was so
blown a way by this unsung lady artists work, because
I mean they really are gorgeous. Yeah, and she has
a fascinating story. So she's born in eighteen seventy eight
(30:10):
in London to American parents, and they lived all over,
including in Jamaica. And she's such a cutie if you
see pictures of her. But people at the time very
like euphemistically and quietly questioned her true parenting. Basically, they
were like, you know, she's awfully dark and queer looking.
(30:30):
Perhaps her actual parents are Jamaican and her parents themselves
were very artistic and under their influence, she ends up
joining a touring theater group as an actor, costume maker,
and set designer. She's super artistic. She ends up studying
art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She became an
illustrator for Yates, bram Stoker and others, and a lot
(30:52):
of her personal art, interestingly enough, was a reflection of
her synesthesia. So she would listen to these symphonies and
then eat. So it results in this swooping, sweeping imagery
that's so beautiful and also another tidbit of how like
really cool this lady is. As a member of the
group Suffrage Atallier, she puts her art to use for
(31:14):
Suffrage posters and cartoons, and her talent didn't stop there.
She was also a writer, publishing several plays and books,
including a collection of Jamaican folklore, which she would just
go out and recite at events, which kind of blows
my mind because hello, stage fright. Um, but I love
this excerpt from Brooklyn Life magazine from seven which some
(31:39):
hipster should really revive a sap. They described her as
a gentlewoman presenting an odd type of thoroughly unconventional femininity,
and therein lies her greatest charm, which I think is
an old school way of saying she's not like other girls. Yeah,
she's like the cool girl, but we're kind of suspicious ever,
because she wears all this billowy garments. She even started
(32:00):
her a magazine called The Green Chief, which certainly did
have other contributors, but it was mainly a way for
her to publish her writing. Oh magazine like a little
right girl, Yes she is, uh so. Her introduction to
tarot and creating the Cards comes in nineteen o one,
when she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Down,
which is where she met A. E. Waite, as well
(32:22):
as Yates and Alistair Crowley, that scoundrel who you'll remember
from our Witchcraft episode helped this guy, Gerald Gardner write
a quote unquote manual for Witchcraft rituals. And Crowley was
also the future creator of the equally famous soilth Taro. Yeah,
the filth Tarot cards are intense. So Coleman Smith's cards
(32:42):
are printed with pretty not not that great fanfair and
nobody's really into it because at this point in England
people are still like, what what is this French thing?
I'm not into this, But it's so great when you
read stuff about Coleman Smith, because she was very clear
about having her own idea is about how you should
prepare to read the cards. The whole thing that seventh
grade Caroline went through like quiet the mind, think about
(33:06):
your question, picture your question, and then flip the cards over.
And in terms of her illustrations, the deck itself is
clearly inspired by this fifteenth century Italian deck called the
Solo Busca, but they, in turn her illustrations in turn
inspired their own future imitators. And I love this fact,
so she used her own cat for one of the illustrations,
(33:30):
so I think was named Snuffles. Snuffles, of course it
was so Snuffles inspired future artists and card readers she
interpreted as a million different symbols and meetings, which ultimately
it's just Snuffles. Yeah, it's just her cat. She also
used her buddy slash potentially lover our companion, Eatie Craig,
(33:50):
as a model for some of the women on the cards.
And so isn't that fascinating to know that here's this
person who was like under the gun to create all
these beautiful illustrations and six months for very little pay,
using her own characters from her own life to create
these mystical tarot figures, and people today are still interpreting
them and reinterpreting them as these magical mystical beings. I
(34:11):
just love it. But even though her work was so
significant and she put so much thought into it, and
people have in turn put so much thought into her cards,
she was completely left out. She received no mention by
name in the book that accompanied the Deck and Wait
referred to her only as a quote young woman artist
(34:33):
who had illustrated the cards based on his instructions. She
received very little payment and no royalties, and in one
letter to her agent she even said, I just did
a huge project for very little pay, just basically saying like,
I know, you know, I'm just just hustling here. And
(34:53):
in case you were wondering about the true nature of
Waite's character, he and indeed was a journy. He wrote,
the practice of painting among women has been clumsily cultivated.
It remains a bad imitation of nature, whereas it might
be a great art. And I'm like, dude, if you
are so like anti woman and anti woman artist, why
did you even hire this woman? Oh? Could it be
(35:15):
because she's actually really talented and you just don't want
to give her any credit and may be easier to
discredit her. But for Coleman Smith's part, she converted to
Catholicism and ran a priest's retreat in Cornwall, but then
died panelists in one even though if she had gotten
royalties on that deck, she would have been sitting pretty yeah,
total millionaire. Yeah, the deck ends up falling out of
(35:38):
use until about the seventies, when you've got American playing
card manufacturer US Games. I believe it is who reprinted them,
and it was the US Games guy who was saying
that Coleman Smith could have been a millionaire today. Well,
she's not the only tarot illustrator of note. In the
late nineteen thirties, Marguerite Frieda Harris, a k A. Lady
(36:00):
FRIEDA Harris met Alisair Crowley at sixty years old and
painted the images for his foth tarot dick over and
over again across five years. I mean, think about that.
Coleman Smith did hers in six months. Yeah, yeah, And
so FRIEDA. Harris is a pretty interesting character. She herself
(36:21):
was very wealthy, as indicated by the title lady, like
she was doing all right. She didn't need a bunch
of money. She also didn't need a bunch of notoriety.
I just wasn't a nickname. She was like, call me lady. Well,
I mean, you've got people like uh Mademoiselle lenormand you know,
like people who not that Mademoiselle is not just a
normal French uh courtesy title. But you've got people who
(36:43):
are really playing up there, like mystical associations. And but
she really was a lady. But yeah, she and Alistair
Crowley had this fascinating correspondence, and they were total buds
and BFFs uh. In one letter she told him to
basically shut up. She's tired of being his bank. And listen, Crowley,
your notes for these illustrations are terrible. You're so stupid.
(37:05):
But if you go through their letters and read them,
they're very close. They're both in this mystical secret society
and they talk so much about issues of these secret
societies and knowledge and truth and religion and all of
this great stuff, and they were very, very close. But yeah,
like Kristen said, it's crazy to think that she was
(37:26):
doing these paintings over five whole years, where Coleman Smith
had to smush it into six months. And listeners, you
have to google image the Fouth Deck if you haven't
seen it already, because the art is wild. Harris used
projected synthetic geometry to create these almost like Salvador Dolly
(37:49):
esque paintings or illustrations, I should say. And then he
really do look like something out of a sci fi book. Yeah,
they really do look like Because I was looking at
the cards and I was like, why do they look
familiar to me? Because they look exactly like contemporary sci
fi illustrations, like that early sci fi stuff you see
on book covers. I think though, if I had, if
(38:10):
I ever tried to use the Fowth deck, I would
just get really confused and tired because the illustrations are
so abstract. Yeah yes, yeah. And whereas um Coleman Smith's
illustrations were sort of grounded in that fifteenth century Italian deck,
uh FREDA. Harris's illustrations were just I mean, they were
(38:33):
definitely a joint project between her and Crowley, like he
gave her plenty of feedback. It almost reads like a
graphic designer client email thread going back and forth. But
her illustrations were off the chart, I mean, they were
something totally different. So obviously, taro today still plays a
huge role in divination, in connections with the occult, but
(38:56):
also just in people's day to day lives seeking meaning
or maybe seeking some some insight into the world around them.
But sociologist Mike's Hysteric, who we mentioned earlier, has nothing
nice to say. He's not into that at all. He's
really concerned about how easily people today have taken up
tarot ideology that has roots in those Masonic societies, which
(39:20):
he said are so problematic because those groups are based
in classist, racist, and sexist traditions. He says that those
groups not only barred people's participation, women, people of color,
people of lower classes, but they also borrow heavily and
appropriate from histories and traditions that aren't there. So are
Tarot cards an example of cultural appropriation according to the sociologist, Yeah, wow, well,
(39:45):
and he also admits that not only Tarot, but religion
in general persists to fulfill that basic human need of
explained the world around you and kind of relieving our anxieties.
So I mean there is a method to our madness. Yeah,
and it's why things like the Goddess movement that we
talked about in our Witchcraft episode can be so powerful.
(40:06):
They fill a vacuum that need for spiritual fulfillment and
they reframed the normal patriarchal structure to one focusing on women.
I mean, similarly, you have Tarot decks from the eighties,
I believe, like theist Tara which was created by Ruth West,
and that's exclusively feminine focused and non traditional with exclusively
(40:27):
women on the card, some of which are renamed. And
then you've got the more recent she is sitting in
The Night Tarot Book, which is a more recent feminist
lesbian tarot book. So you've got stuff that's grounded in
patriarchal Masonic traditions but being reclaimed. I don't know if
I can say reclaimed, but being claimed by women in
(40:48):
the twenty first century who are pointing it in a
totally different direction. Yeah. I mean, I think it's safe
to say that a lot of millennial feminists are totally
into tarot. There was even we even have a trend
piece to back up our observations. There's a whole thing
in Newsweek about it, and they related to how organized
(41:09):
religion has declined. Our participation has declined among the millennial generation,
especially according to a Pew study. Um and the millennials
that Newsweek interviewed said that astrology and tarot are their
favorite super natural tools for combating essentially existential angst. I mean,
(41:33):
that's what I was doing in the seventh grade. I
guess there's some theories. Susan Miller, who's an astrologer, tells
Newsweek that astrology, for instance, has a very firm structure,
and a couple of the people that Newsweek talked to
young women specifically were like, yeah, you know what, it
helps me clarify feelings, my feelings about my uncertain future.
(41:53):
It helps me reduce a little bit of that recession anxiety.
Not to mention, they talked to one woman who not
only used it to alleviate her recession anxiety, but because
she was out of a job, she used tarot to
make money, similar to Jessica Crispin. So lots of stuff
wrapped up in that capitalistic tradition that's passed down from
the Freemasons. Yeah, and and yet the thing that I
(42:14):
haven't seen an uptick in is elite dudes or just
dudes in general picking up the tarot deck casually. Now,
I think it's another thing that's been feminized in people's minds,
that that's some silly magic stuff that old crones do. Well.
I'm very curious now to hear from listeners with knowledge
(42:36):
of a tarot or any kind of interaction. If we
have any tarot readers listening, we want to hear from you.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. I have
(42:59):
a let her here from Isabella. She starts it off
by saying, in the voice of the worm from Labyrinth,
Hello ladies, Hello Isabella, She says, I haven't even finished
your podcasts on adult acne, but I had to get
in touch to encourage other listeners to get their hormones
checked if they suddenly develop acne in their twenties and thirties.
(43:20):
As a clear skinned teen growing up, I was immensely
relieved that I didn't have to deal with chronic acne
like some of my friends. Don't get me wrong, I
got the odd spot, but it was never anything worth
complaining about, and so I traversed my teenage years worrying
about periods, boys, extra hair, and all those other lovely
symptoms of puberty bar acne, for which I was very grateful.
(43:41):
Fast forward a few years to the age of twenty two,
working in London alone and a stressful job with a
terrible boss, and suddenly spots spots everywhere. At first I
put this down to stress and some kind of karmit
come up in but as the months passed and endless
topical treatments failed, I went into a really, really dark place,
something I can only see with him. Side After quitting
my job in a blaze of glory, I took my
(44:03):
mom's advice and went to an indo chronologist who diagnosed
me with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is fairly common one
in ten and results in a higher androgen level in
the blood than normal, which, as you said in your podcast,
causes the devil dots. I was put on Yasmin straight away,
and six months later my skin had cleared up. I'm
twenty seven now. Side note, I switched from Yasmin to
(44:24):
another birth control brand due to questions regarding Yasmin's safety,
and I'm still grateful when I look in the mirror
and don't see spots. As you always say, hormones control
everything in your body, and no amount of face washing
and topical ointments will change what is going on inside
of you, even if for peace of mind, get your
hormones checked out if you developed severe adult acne. If
it is pcos, it's amazingly easy to treat, and it's
(44:47):
made a huge difference to my self image. You both
do a great job, and my boyfriend and I look
forward to listening to more of your podcasts while I
deal with some of his occasional spots. Yet, Kristen, other
couples do that as well, So it's thank you Isabella. Well,
I've got a letter here from our about our anal
sex episode. She writes, I was so delighted to listen
(45:09):
to your podcast on the topic of anal sex. I've
had a variety of first and experiences, both positive and negative.
As a teenager, I had an underwhelming first experience with
a high school boyfriend, and shortly afterward experienced an older
lover pressuring me to try again. It was when I
was in my early twenties and in a long term
relationship with someone that I was comfortable enough to be
(45:30):
with two sexually explore that I became one of those
who not only has anal often, but absolutely loves it. Well,
of course, it isn't for everyone. I found it so
enjoyable and intimate, and I've certainly found it improving my
ability to orgasm. I was recently talking about this with
my best friend, and we've discussed how we each feel
confident and like we have full agency over our sexuality
(45:50):
when we performed this act. It was so great to
be able to listen to a whole podcast about this
activity that we both love, and it would be a
wonderful thing if everyone who wants to try could do
so in a comfortable and enjoyable way. As you said,
the statistics on just how many teenagers have such negative
experiences is a strong testament to how vital comprehensive sex
(46:10):
education is. This is something I have found over and
over again in the UK. When I was pressured to
comply as a teenager, I had never been told that
I had agency to say no, and I remember over
hearing girls at school discussing stories much like the ones
related in the podcast. I'm about to start working with
therapists within my old high school to improve the sex
education and I've definitely got a huge amount of information
(46:32):
from Sminthy. Thank you guys so much for all the
amazing work you do. Listening to you always makes me smile,
so thanks so much, our and thanks everybody who's written
into us. Moms Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with links to our sources. So you
(46:54):
can learn more about tarot cards, head on over to
stuff Mom Never told you dot com or more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
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Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.