Danielle Noel - The Book of Tarot: A Modern Guide to Reading the Tarot

CoNTENTS

ABOUT THE BOOK

Unlock the magic of the Tarot,set goals and intentions with clarityand learn how to handle your deckwith confidence as a tool forself-discovery.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danielle Noel is a visual artist, writer, and designer currently based in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author and artist of The Starchild Tarot decks and upcoming Moonchild Tarot, and has been reading and studying the Tarot for almost twenty years. Danielle works full time creating new decks, oracles and books for Tarot enthusiasts and modern mystics around the world.

INTRoDUCTIoN

Today, a deeper reawakening of ancient wisdom seems to be stirring within many of our hearts, and as we seek out new ways to help us make sense of this crazy-beautiful thing called life, tools such as the Tarot are becoming part of an ever-expanding arsenal of magic and self-help.

Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned reader, the Tarot has much to offer. Perhaps you are seeking out answers, are at a crossroads or want to reconnect with your dreams or greater aspirations? Maybe youve had a desire to try the Tarot out, but have heard mixed reviews about what it actually does and how it all works? My hope with this book is to bring a gentle awareness to the incredible value of the Tarot as a device for self-discovery and intuitive foresight for seeking the light you wish to share with the world, while also acting as a confidant, a teacher or a familiar friend who is always at hand.

A SENSE OF WONDER

What I love about the Tarot can be expressed in that same sense of wonder I often felt as a child. When I discovered my first deck, I knew I had a great mystery on my hands. The waxy veneer of the cards stuck together, the edges were frayed, and there was a faint familiar perfume lingering in the box. This encounter probably had the same effect on me as if Id just unearthed some lost ancient relic. Up until that point, Id always been the little girl who was constantly in search of that doorway to another world, whether in the form of the rabbit holes of my childhood garden or the dusty hardcover books in my local library (which to my youthful imagination must have contained obscure manuals for time travel).

Over the years, as I became more familiar with the Tarot, I gradually came to learn that somewhere, hidden within the pictures of the oddly positioned swords and overflowing cups, was the story of my own life reflected back that the cards were miniature entry points into an unseen world. Suddenly a missing doorway appeared, and I was able to peer into a new space of sensitive, intuitive nuances and glimpse an unspoken wisdom that stretched far beyond my dreams.

With time, I came to realize that the Tarot is so much more than a simple deck of cards, and after slowly putting the pieces of this venerable puzzle together, I found myself wanting to create a deck of my own. I knew there were various opinions about where and how the Tarot actually originated, but for the sake of storytelling, I decided to celebrate some of its more controversial, mysterious chapters. I saw it as representing an encoded language steeped in sacred myth, with hidden clues woven throughout an ancient narrative. I imagined it being carried in secret, travelling over miles of dust, sand and sea, found in caves and dwellings of alchemists, mystics, witches and wizards. I saw it show up in classical paintings, worldly sacred sites, mystical, Biblical and gnostic symbols, and so many other sources that it was actually mind-boggling.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

The Tarot is one of those mysterious items that has long been attributed with a rich and controversial history. For now, I am going to offer a very brief summary of this narrative, which barely begins to scratch the surface. This is a story that could take a lifetime to unearth if you were willing to dig deep enough which just makes it all the more interesting and alluring.

The very word Tarot suggests numerous possibilities as to the decks origins. There are those who associate it with the Hebrew word Torah, the Latin rota, meaning wheel, the Arabic Tarah or Turuq, which refers to four ways, as well as the Egyptian words Tar (path) and Ro (royal), which describe a Royal Path, perhaps translating into an allegorical journey similar to the oracle of the Tarot.

The strongest evidence connects the Tarot to the Italian Tarocchi or Tarocco, which refers to the original renditions of playing card games that appeared in Italy sometime during the fifteenth century. Not long after the cards spread from Italy into other parts of Europe, a new system of Tarot emerged in France, in Marseilles. This was the Tarot of Marseilles, which formed a new basis for many later decks. The Marseilles Tarot, rich with esoteric symbolism, reached a new wave of occultist practitioners.

Two key figures who redefined the Tarot as a tool of divination and cartomancy were French occultists Jean-Baptiste Alliette, known as Etteilla (17381791), and Antoine Court de Gbelin (17191784). Gbelin postulated the ancient Egyptian origins of the Tarot, seeing it as a vast language of esoteric wisdom transcribed by the Egyptian god Thoth, subsequently to be preserved by the priests of Alexandria. Later, groups such as the Order of the Golden Dawn in Great Britain developed this idea. Established in 1887, this magical society sourced its information from numerous spiritual teachings and philosophies such as the Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism and Hermeticism (and more). Among its members were Arthur Edward Waite, Pamela Colman Smith, the notorious Aleister Crowley, the poet W. B. Yeats, and writers Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (to name a few).

In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith was hired by Arthur Edward Waite to illustrate the deck we know best today the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot. Both Pamela and Arthur were avid practitioners of magic and Kabbalism, translating their refined wisdom into this revolutionary deck, which used colourful renditions of characters for the Minor Arcana as well as the Major and added a whole new mystical symbology. While most Tarot decks today follow the format of the Rider-Waite deck, many are the work of incredible artists and writers.

THE STARCHILD TAROT

The Starchild Tarot that you will see illustrated throughout this book is a modern take on the classic framework of the Rider-Waite and Tarot of Marseilles decks. It is traditional in the sense that it builds upon the skeleton of the major archetypes and meanings of the cards but beyond this, it wears a new exterior.