Gilchrist - Tarot triumphs: using the tarot trumps for divination and inspiration

There are dozens of books about the Tarot and not all of them tell us anything new. Cherry Gilchrist's Tarot Triumphs is among those few that open up uncharted areas and throw a revealing light on what we may think is all too familiar to us. It is a work of insight, passion, and practical engagement that can inform its readers' understanding as well as their lives. One doesn't need a fortune teller to predict that its future looks promising.

GARY LACHMAN, author of The Secret Teachers of the Western World

Tarot Triumphs is simply the best Tarot book I've ever read. Accessibly blending a lifetime's Tarot experience with historical knowledge, personal engagement, creative imagination, esoteric wisdom, and sound common sense, it's equally well-suited to introduce newcomers and to provide fresh stimulation for long-time Tarot users. It seems clearly destined to be a classic.

PROF. GREVEL LINDOP, poet and author of Charles Williams: The Third Inkling

Tarot Triumphs delightfully initiates us into the procession of the Tarot de Marseilles trumps, helping us to wisely read its reflections in the Fool's Mirror. How wonderful to be immersed in such mature and practical Tarot writing!

CAITLN MATTHEWS, author of The Complete Arthurian Tarot

Cherry Gilchrist's Tarot Triumphs is an excellent book for beginners who want to learn to use the Tarot of Marseilles for divination. Unlike most books for beginners, her book is firmly grounded in the actual history of the Tarot and the fact that the trump cards originated in Renaissance Italy as illustrations related to triumphal parades. She also provides valuable insights into the folk traditions that helped shape the cards and their use, based on her observations of traditions in Italy, China, and most of all Russia. Experienced readers will find something to learn here as well.

ROBERT M. PLACE, author of The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination and the creator of several Tarot decks

A fresh, bracing, and inspiring look into the Major Arcana. The Fool's Mirror in particular is the most sophisticated and profound Tarot layout that I have ever seen.

RICHARD SMOLEY, author of Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism

Although directed towards those starting their own Tarot journeys, Tarot Triumphs is an enjoyable and informative read for Tarot veterans as well.

THALASSA, founder, Daughters of Divination, producer, San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium (SF BATS)

A richly textured book that combines fascinating personal experiences with a lifetime's research and wisdoma must-read for the Tarot beginner or enthusiast.

LYN WEBSTER WILDE, author of Becoming the Enchanter

This edition first published in 2016 by Weiser Books, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2016 by Cherry Gilchrist

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-604-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gilchrist, Cherry, author.

Title: Tarot triumphs : using the tarot trumps for divination and inspiration / Cherry Gilchrist ; with illustrations by Robert Lee-Wade.

Description: Newburyport : Weiser Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016019923 | ISBN 9781578636044 (6 x 9 tp : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Tarot.

Classification: LCC BF1879.T2 G533 2016 | DDC 133.3/2424--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019923

Cover design by Jim Warner

Tarot illustrations by Robert Lee-Wade

Interior by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Typeset in Monotype Modern

Printed in Canada

MAR

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To all members of the Saros Foundation for the Perpetuation of Knowledgepast, present, and future. And in particular to those who have been my fellow travelers on the path.

The innocent Fool holds up his mirror to the heavens. In the patterns captured there, he can see the imprint of cosmic purpose and read the events that are coming to pass.

Advice on divination from a master of Tarot

T o set the scene for this book, I would like to reveal something of my own interest in divination as a background to my study of Tarot over the decades. Looking back, I see that divination has cast a kind of silvery, delicately woven net over my life since a very early age, connecting experiences and events in a way that I didn't always perceive at the time. Sometimes the connecting threads were fine as gossamer, while other times they became strong lifelines, giving me guidance and support at difficult moments. I see, too, that although in some ways this has been a journey into the unknown, to a land that lies beyond our everyday world, it has also been a discovery of what was waiting for me there already.

I have always been drawn to divination. As a child, I diligently counted my prune stones after school pudding to see whom I would marry, and I gleefully made folding paper fortune-tellers, in which you could scrawl all kinds of possible fates for your friends. In my teens, the desire surfaced to know more about astrology, dream interpretation, and fortune-telling. This was before the new wave of interest in magical subjects, so there was not much material readily available. On holiday with a friend and her family, in a rented cottage in Wales, age thirteen, I pored over a moldy volume of dream interpretations that I'd found in the bookcase there, my chief entertainment during a week of rain. I begged to be allowed to take it home. Quite reasonably, my friend's mother prevented me from doing so on the basis that the owner might be fond of the book herself. Later, I got my mother to buy me a fortune-telling teacup that we saw in a junk shopone where little card images are scattered on the china, to be interpreted through how the tea leaves fallthough I never did manage to work it out properly. As for astrology, at that time I could only find very superficial magazine columns to work out what sun signs my friends and I were born under. But I had a kind of instinctive feeling that this all made sense. I was less interested in knowing the future than in discovering how to penetrate this otherworld, the place from which these magical messages seemed to come.

I believe that I was predisposed to seek out such ways of divination. Somehow, I knew that there was an overall validity to divination, even if it could appear in such watered-down, faintly ridiculous forms. There was never a time when I didn't accept that such things could be true. I groped my way toward this world, little by little to start with, and then entered it with full force when I encountered Tarot for the first time, as I shall describe in the opening chapter of this book.