Home Events Jane Writing Bio Op-Ed

The value of the Tarot in the 21st century is much the same as it has always been. Socially, politically, culturally, spiritually – the cards help us think. They offer both clarity and complexity, suggesting patterns, ideas and relationships that can wrench us out of tedious paths, stop squirrel-cage spinning, and cancel irritating re-runs in our minds. The cards act as a medium, their imagery serving as both a source and a reflection, providing the possibility of fresh interactions and perspectives. I suppose I needn’t say, but I’m going to, that the cards cannot tell us what to do or how to think. I like to cite Doris Lessing on this subject: in her great work The Four-Gated City, she created the character Rosa Mendip, a clairvoyante who says, by way of explanation: “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

I was introduced to the Tarot in Chicago in the fall of 1970, a time when I was undergoing radical change in virtually every aspect of my life. Prior to that time, if told or asked to take it seriously, I’m sure I would have laughed. That attitude changed instantly and permanently when a friend read the cards for me. I began to study, and practiced almost every day for many months. By 1974, I was reading for parties, for fund-raising events, and for people who booked appointments. By 1975 I had a new name; I was Judith Arcana, Reader and Advisor.

I began by studying Arthur Edward Waite and Aleister Crowley, but soon enough discovered with pleasure and relief some notable contemporary practitioners – critics and revisionists, women who’d been thinking and working as I was: Z Budapest, who was born to it, and newly active feminists like me, Sally Gearhart & Susan Rennie, and Vicki Noble & Karen Vogel.

At first I used Waite’s deck (often called the Rider deck, with images drawn by Pamela Colman Smith), and I still read from that one occasionally. But I switched to the Motherpeace deck, created by Noble & Vogel, because its political philosophy is closer to my own, with imagery from multiple spiritual traditions in the Old Religion. I have other decks, and am always glad to see beautifully drawn cards, new interpretations by practitioners, scholars and artists. Because I got the Motherpeace deck about two years before its accompanying book came out, I created my own forms. With any deck, naturally, what I'm offering is interpretation, sometimes using the designer’s book as a second opinion and sometimes disagreeing with it.

I use the I Ching with pleasure and satisfaction, and have a crystal ball. But the Tarot is the medium I use most often. I enjoy contributing this useful magic: brief readings at a street fair for Write Around Portland and for volunteers at the office of Oregon’s NARAL + full readings as auction items for Pro-Choice Oregon and Soapstone, the writing retreat for women in Oregon’s Coast Range.

As you might expect, the Tarot appears in my writing; here’s a poem that uses images from two cards in the Motherpeace deck.

This poem was first published at http://blossombones.com/winter08/arcana_w08.html.