I met the Devil and this happened
The famed Pam-A deck in my private collection, first edition, 1910
There’s a new fad in town: card combinations with the Rider Waite/Smith Tarot. All fine, if the practice actually went somewhere. But it doesn’t. We’re being hit over our heads with kindergarten approaches to what amounts to silly games. If I objected that his has zero to do with divination, I’d be told to stop being difficult and accept the fact that people are just practicing. For fun. The new hit consists of composing sentences with two cards, similar to what we do in classical fortunetelling when we employ the rules of simple grammar. Here’s the rule:
You met (Card) and you got (Card).
Honest to God, I’d play, but I can already see how the game would turn out if I responded quite sincerely in this way to the meme, if I got these cards:
The equally coveted Pam-B edition, 1931
You met (the Devil) and you got (fucked).
Some would go, haha, holding their bellies. I would, too. Others would shake their heads, disapproving my lack of seriousness, as if, indeed, this was actually the most serious thing we can all engage with now, so that we might become the better diviners.
No thanks.
The Marseille Tarot and the Lenormand oracle have been enjoying a renaissance for a few years now, and people have started to appreciate the simple grammar that goes into classical fortunetelling. I’m all for it. But last I’ve checked, enthusiasm without direction is a waste of time. Also, creating reductive grammar rules adds what exactly to the practice of divination?
What we’ve done so far with the most popular decks, such as the Rider Waite/Smith tarot and the Thoth tarot was to create correspondences across the board by situating predetermined meanings in card positions that have their own pre-determined meanings. Spreads have been all the rage at least since the beginning of the last century, and there’s simply no end to the entertainment that’s called reading cards for your own good self in relation, à la the Celtic Cross rant: this is you, this is your enemy, this is your goal, this is your treasure, this is your trauma, this is your identity, this is your fear, this is your desire, this is your achievement, this is your failure, this is… well, everything you can think of.
To bash or not
It’s been quite a while since I’ve stopped being interested at all in what others are doing with their cards, let alone correct the general idiocy, and I would’ve almost missed seeing the new fad in action, if it hadn’t been for preparing for my newest course in reading 6 different decks like the Devil in a comparative context. As I was sitting with my own, quite cherished Rider Waite/Smith cards, simply because they’re first edition, I was astonished to see how the enthusiasts are now ditching symbolic esotericism in order to embrace grammar. But what kind of grammar? The irrelevant kind.
Now the genius claim is that these popular cards can also be read ‘like a language,’ or ‘like Lenormand,’ as if ‘language’ was not what we were doing to begin with. As the shallow thinkers strike again, I’m thinking about my own approach to divination. While I’m pretty sure that I know exactly how to situate the Waite Smith tarot in context alongside with the Marseille cards, the Lenormand Oracle, playing cards, the Etteilla cards, and the Thoth tarot, this I’m also sure that I will not do:
show people how clever my card combinations are, and
get them to learn my newly acquired cleverness by heart, and
assure everyone that as long as we stick to easy contrasts and the 2-card sentences, we’ll be fine.
If you want more from your (card) than a spelling out of your own (card), then you’ll try my (card).
Anyone dares to fill in the blanks? Come on. We’re just practicing… and having fun.
And when you’re done with your cards, you may move on to your astrological sign. They’re doing grammar in astrology, too.
The course in reading 6 divination decks like the Devil starts this Saturday, October 19.
Hop on board.
*
The sublime take
Short but mighty, a reader said of my little pocket book that references the three most successful decks, the Marseille tarot, Waite/Smith, and Thoth tarot
