Author: innowen

Jaymi Elford lives a tarot inspired life. A deck is always close at hand. She believes tarot is a perfect companion to help explore the world we live in. The author of Tarot Inspired Life and Triple Goddess Tarot continues to study, write, and create tarot innovation from her home in Portland, OR. Find her works in Llewellyn, Lo Scarabeo, The Cartomancer, The Tarosophist, and Megalithica Books. She also co-hosts two podcasts: Tarot Visions with Rose Red Robinson and Cardslingers with Melissa Cynova and Hilary Parry Haggerty. Finally, she’s slightly addicted to teaching techniques at tarot conferences.
Blog, Journaling

Divine Inspiration

innowen

Originally published at D*I*Y Planner.

Quick tarot spread using the Hudes Deck

Candlelight flickers and dances across the walls of the room. Wispy, light sounds of Japanese pipes drift through the incense smoke into your ears. A tiny woman, her head wrapped in a bright red and gold turban sits at a intimate wrought-iron table covered with a purple, silk table cloth. A white candle, its flame flickering; a palm sized crystal ball; and a pack of cards, the top card displaying the picture of a giant wheel; lay carefully positioned on the table’s top. The woman beckons you to take a seat directly across from her. You take a seat as the woman waves her hand over the deck of cards and begins to shuffle them. As you stare at her, gauging her true intentions, the woman begins to position the cards onto the table in a careful layout. Then she begins to tell you your future as she describes how the cards and what each position relate to your life.

Tarot cards. One of the oldest means of exploring symbolism and your spot in the universe. A simple pack of 78 cards with a myriad assortment of images and cross-culture symbols painted on them, used as divination device by people all over the world. It contains a major arcana of 22 cards that seek to explain higher powers at work as well as a minor arcana composed of 4 suites corresponding to the 4 elements (wands, swords, cups and coins). Of course, there’s a lot of tarot history I’m glossing over here but I just wanted to give you a small background on the cards. If you’re curious about the tarot and want to learn more about its history, check out aeclectic.net and wikipedia’s tarot page for more information about the tarot and variety of decks out there.

So, how can a divination deck help us generate story ideas? There’s a wide variety of ways to use the tarot to trigger lots of creative ideas. First, you’ll need to get yourself a tarot deck. I recommend the Rider-Waite Tarot that comes with a little white book of meanings and information. Once you have your deck, open it up and start looking at the images. What do you see? Unlike a standard deck of playing cards, every card in this deck has a picture painted on them. Images of colorful Fools with dogs yapping at their heals, people partying, towers burning, lovers uniting and knights and Kings on horseback appear in the often strange scenes. Let your imagination guide you into the cards and place yourself in the imagery.

Which images strike a chord with you? Which ones repulse you? How many images out of the deck inspire you? Pull out a a card that you’re drawn to or repulsed by and write about the scene. If you aren’t sure what is going on in the picture, use your little white book to read about that card and what the meaning is and then write about that meaning. What are the swords doing to that person in the 9 of Swords card? How does The Lovers card make you feel? Stare into the card’s scene until a feeling or thought emerges, then pick up your pen and let your thoughts spill onto the paper. When you are working with the tarot, there’s no right or wrong way to interpret how the images on the cards are supposed to make you feel. The little white book is not the ultimate authority on the tarot, you are. You are free to interpret the cards however you want.

Another way to quickly generate ideas is to look through the deck of cards and pick a few out that seem to tell a story to you. Lay out as many cards as you want, in any order and then write the story that connects the cards? How does the scene in the first card get to the scene in the next card and so on. This works especially well as the 22 Major arcana cards do tell a story in most decks about how The Fool takes a journey from knowing nothing to being learned about The World he is apart of. Sometimes the little white book that comes with each deck tells the story of this change.

Of course, what would an article on tarot be without a few spreads? So, for those of you who are curious about divining some story ideas from the cards themselves, here’s a few small layouts that you can do with your cards. These three spreads should help you come up with some interesting inspiration for any story or creative endeavor. Reading with tarot isn’t as hard as you think. First, shuffle the cards and think about your story’s goal or what you want to write about. When you have that idea firmly in your mind, stop shuffling. Begin laying out the cards. After you’ve laid down the amount of cards for whichever spread you’re using, open your little white book to uncover the meanings of the cards and how they represent people or traits in your stories.

Short story Spread
1. Protagonist: this card represents your main character.
2. Antagonist: this card represents your antagonist.
3. Beginning: this card represents the beginning of your story.
4. Middle: this card represents the middle of your story.
5: End: this card represents the end of the story.
6: Theme: this card represents the theme of your story.

Story Idea Spread
1. The Protagonist: this card represents your main character.
2. Conflict: this card represents the conflict.
3. Background: this card represents the background behind the conflict or character.
4. Subconscious: this card represents the underlying motivation for the conflict.
5: Reaction: this card represents how your protagonist responds to the conflict.
6. Outcome: this card represents the outcome of the story.

Creative Advice Spread
1. Blocks: this card represents what’s blocking your creativity.
2. Brainstormer: this card represents what can help you get started.
3. Expression: this card represents the idea you want to express.
4. Stepping stone: this card represents the advice on your next step.

I’m constantly using my tarot deck for a source of guidance and inspiration in my creative life. When I started coming up with ideas for my NaNoWriMo novel October of 2006, I pulled out my cards and did a reading on a possible story. I used the Short-story Spread to come up with a few different ideas on what my novel could become. In the end, I chose to base my protagonist, Autumn Chase, off the Strength card. A woman with fiery red hair who’s inner strength helped her to overcome the evil that threatened to destroy the world and turn it into a living nightmare filled with daemons. In the end, it was the idea I ran with and she successfully carried me through the entire month of November to 50,408 words.

I hope you try some of the techniques I’ve discussed. Like The Hanged Man card, that depicts a man hanging upside down tied from one leg on a tree, hoping to gain a new perspective on the world, the tarot can help provide you with years of inspiration and introspection. You’d be amazed at the things you can discovery from working with the cards. I also recommend you check out the 4 amazon.com links listed after this essay. The first one is for the traditional Rider-Waite tarot deck. However, I know many people may not be receptive to using a tarot deck, so I’ve added two other popular creativity decks that I’ve used in the past to help unblock my creativity. No matter what deck of imagery you favor, remember that the tarot means whatever you think it means. It’s up to you to find out how to relate to the symbolism depicted on the cards. I love learning about tarot, discussing their meaning and imagery with others, and all the different ways a deck can used to deepen and enhance the meaning of our lives. So feel free to email or post comments on what you think.

Blog, Decks, Reviews

Review: Dante Tarot

innowen
Images from the Dante Tarot

Artwork by Andrea Serio
Written by Giordano Berti
Published by Lo Scarabeo, distributed by Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN 0-73870177-7

I love The Dante Tarot for its bright vivid colors and how they contrast to the dark symbolism many of the cards represent. I have always been a fan of Dante’s Inferno and when this deck got published, I immediately ordered a copy. The imagery does not disappoint me at all. This deck offers a rather interesting and unique perspective into tarot and its meanings. However, the design of the deck being radically nontraditional in suite and meanings, does tend to make me think that this tarot deck is better for collectors than for doing readings. It’s certainly not for the faint at heart.

The Dante Tarot is a non-traditional 78 card deck. Black backgrounds with the title (and/or number) of the card appear on top of every card. In typical Lo Scarabeo style, the names of the cards are printed in 4 other languages below the central artwork. The design of the card’s backing appears like a chess board, with a castle one one side with a person writing and a landscape with a knight riding a dark horse on the other.

Andrea Serio painted the artwork and it’s her unique style that makes this deck noteworthy. Done in watercolor and pencil, Serio’s images are rather dreamy and does a good job of representing Dante’s ideals. Even the box the cards are kept in contains original artwork. However, I found it hard to associate many of the images on the cards to their meanings (traditional or otherwise) as the arcana switch between ideas and people throughout the entire deck. The Dante Tarot also comes with 2 variations of the King of Fire (Swords). One depicting an beast-like character while the other is more scenic in nature. The pamphlet that comes with the deck does not give any explanations as to why they did this.

The deck deviates from a standard deck with its minor arcana names. It replaces Swords with Fire, Coins (pentacles) with Clouds, Wands with Bricks and the Cups with Lights. The deck comes with a LWB; according to it, the symbolism was changed to conform more to the standards Dante wrote about in his works, mainly The Divine Comedy. The second way the Dante Tarot deviates from standard decks is in it’s interpretations. It does not follow the Rider-Waite and Crowley interpretations of the cards. For example, the Fool, normally represented by most decks as new beginnings and adventures now becomes “Need. Eccentric behavior, recklessness, and material or psychological problems”.

The card stock used to print the cards on is thicker and glossier than other decks. At first I thought this was a good thing making the deck appear as if it would last longer. However, this made shuffling the cards harder to do without damaging the darker edges of the cards. The LWB seems to be designed as a reference guide only and it does not go into great depth on each card’s imagery and meaning. This was a bit disappointing since The Dante Tarot seems different from other decks. However, there are two different layouts inside the booklet.

Because of the dramatic changes in the meanings and the inability to quickly “connect” with the cards, they make the deck almost unapproachable for me as a reader to utilize quickly as a divination deck. It would take a great deal of studying this deck and practicing readings using the methods the LWB describes for one to adequately use the Dante Tarot for divination. I do, however, love the imagery and believe that it would make a great companion to those studying Dante and his Divine Comedy.

Blog, Decks, Reviews

Review: The Fey Tarot

innowen
The Fey Tarot box and sample cards from Llewellyn

Artwork by Mara Aghem
Written by Riccardo Minetti
Published by Lo Scarabeo, distributed by Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN 0-7387-0280-3

The Fey Tarot distills the best of both worlds in tarot and the art of Japanese anime and recombines them into something new and exciting. Written by Riccardo Minetti, featuring the artwork of Mara Aghem, this deck is wonderful for both the young at heart and in age. The tarot presented here is lighthearted and kind, “bringing no shadows.” However, this lightness does not eliminate the darkness of traditional tarot decks; instead, The Fey Tarot subdues and twists the negative card meanings inwards. In doing so, this set becomes easily accessible and understood by children.

“The Fey Tarot is a deck full of life,” writes Riccardo Minetti, the author of the enclosed book. There cannot be anything closer to the truth. The bold colors of the cards contrast with the simplicity of the design, creating a uniquely magical and deftly detailed series of story-cards. Each whole card is alive; from the attention paid to the expression in each creature’s eyes to the way the fey’s world blends into the card. Using a combination of unique and bold color palettes, Mara Aghem brings the center focus of each card straight into the emotions the images evoke. Every creature’s face, every part of their actions, contains realistic emotions. Each card becomes a theater for the mind?s eye; where the fey perform on center stage teaching their lessons and showing their perspectives and views of the world and the meaning of life. The cards beg to be played with and explored.

The book is also a masterpiece. At 156 pages long, it delves deeper into the concepts and ideas that made this deck possible. It begins with the core foundations and beliefs of the artwork, going straight into designer Aghem’s mind showing how she developed the cards’ sketches and emotions. Then it introduces the mysterious history of the tarot, and how the fey are a perfect match for this divination tool. Lastly, the cards themselves are described in detail, Minetti adding layer upon layer of insight and meaning into the simple but intricate artwork. The book ends by showing 4 unique spreads to use the cards with, from simple 3 cards on up to complex 8 card designs.

The Fey Tarot is a great addition to tarot enthusiasts’ collections. This is the product of the first collaboration between Minetti and Aghem (hopefully not the last). This deck marks a new perspective on deck design for the new millennium. It also moves away from traditional meanings of the cards giving them a fresh and playful twist. I would also recommend this deck as a great way to introduce young children to the modern world of the tarot, as it presents a very accessible and non-threatening view of the tarot and its concepts.