After Issue 1, a friend of mine asked what would I have to write about in the next one – January is a quiet month. I must admit; things looked pretty thin, but then something magical happened. There is loads going on! For a start, there is the move of Butterfly Tarot from a stall into a ‘baby’ unit in Camden Market, then Alison Cross, ex-Chair of TABI contacted me with new ideas for Supertarot. Then there is the strange case of mistaken identity on Brighton Pier. The New Year is a good time to brush up on your tarot reading skills, and I have news of courses in Birmingham UK, and Chicago, but you have to get yours skates on for them. I have made some significant additions to the tarot gallery, but you may well be interested in a fascinating exhibition at Tate Liverpool, where art, black magic and the devil are on show. I also do fashion, don’t you know, with news that Prada has had a go at designing a tarot deck.
To top it all, there is news of a Golden Dawn conference right here in London, organised by Atlantis Bookshop, so you know its going to be good.
I find readings in January particularly interesting, as I have noticed over the years that my reading style changes. I never know how, or in what way it does. I certainly do not do any New Year Resolutions, so it is not as if I planned it either. So, I am sitting there, talking to a client, and the magic happens. The way I address the reading, or tackle a particular problem or situation is different. Us tarot readers are lucky – we can make changes, which bring new clients, energies and insights, and we never get bored. I was going to include a longish article on the Tower card, and how I found radically new interpretations for it, but so much has happened this month that I have not had the time.
However, that is what usually happens. This year, January has been very busy with fast-changing events.
New Faces
Nobody can ever be everything to everyone, particularly in tarot. There are so many things I want to do with Supertarot, but I do not always have the time or inspiration. So, when Alison Cross emailed me little bells began to ring. Until recently, Alison was Chairman of TABI, as well as editor of the TABI magazine, and other myriad duties, and now she is kicking her heels. So, we got chatting, and very quickly Alison came up with a number of ideas to improve the site. Expect Alison’s byline to start appearing very soon. Alison is great at ferreting out stories, so credit to her for giving me loads to write about this month.
Butterfly Tarot gets a Unit
Top story in January was about Beryl and Butterfly Tarot, but I had to delete a few critical lines in case the prediction never happened. Beryl has been a stallholder in Camden Market for nearly three years, and out of the blue just before Christmas, the management asked if she was interested in a starter unit beginning New Years Day. We girded our loins in preparation, but things did not go to plan. Deadlines came and went until the dying days of January, when we finally got into the unit, heralded by the traditional son et lumiere opening ceremony in Camden – the management cutting the padlocks with an angle grinder.
We had not been able to inspect what we were getting because the previous tenant had fallen out with the management big time, and none of us had the courage to walk in and ask for a quick once over. We soon found the scale of the problem. As the doors opened, we discovered that the jewellery shop (for that is what it was) had not been cleaned in years. We also found the keys to the padlocks thoughtfully placed by the previous tenant behind the counter. The management expected us to do apply a quick lick of paint and open two days later, just as every tenant had done previously. This would have been the case, but fortuitously we found ourselves moving with into adjacent units with our neighbour Steve, who also happens to be a jeweller. In a bizarre twist of fate, we did not know he was interested in a unit until he made a comment to Beryl the previous week. Confusingly, he did not want the unit that was a jewellers, which is why we have all the trash to move out. This is when we discovered that he was a builder in a previous incarnation. So that is how I spent most of the last week of January as a builder’s mate, fetching and carrying while Steve did the work. With Steve on the case we raised our ambitions, and gutted the unit. This week we have to put in a level floor over the cobbles, paint, decorate, do electrics, etc, etc. With any luck, the unit will be open next week, so come down and visit.
Paul on the Pier?
Here is a great example of how journalists get things wrong, but in a weird way they get things right. This reporter (never spoke to him) managed to conflate two people – the tarot reader on the pier, and myself. The photo is misleading – if you looked at the side of the gypsy caravan, you would see his name. I am of course under the pier. The links go to supertarot, which is great. The funny thing is that I intend to do readings for business – is this reporter psychic?
Course News
Even if you did not make any resolutions, now is the time to brush up on your tarot skills.
Mick Frankel
Mick is running a weekend course on 9th/10th February 2008 at New Aeon Books, Oldham Street, Manchester.
It’s an Introduction To Tarot course that’s ideal for beginners or for people who want to deepen their knowledge of the Tarot cards and practise face-to-face reading.
Here are some of things that people have said about the course:
“The course was a perfect introduction to reading the Tarot”
“Great atmosphere, relaxed, easy to absorb the information”
“Excellent teaching input with plenty of opportunity to share ideas”
“An excellent course for beginners”
“Exactly what I hoped”
We’ll be going through the Majors on Saturday and the Minors on Sunday. The course is very interactive and everyone will be encouraged to participate as much as possible. You just need to bring along a 78-card Tarot deck.
The course costs £65 which includes lunch on both days.
To book a place, please ring New Aeon on 0161 839 9293.
I have met Mick on a number of times, and he is very knowledgeable on the Tarot.
One Hundred and Twenty Years of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn established the Tarot as an esoteric and magical tool, so it is always worth finding out what this mysterious organisation is really about. Clearly there are plenty of questions and conundrums, and who better to help illuminate us than the Golden Dawn Conference organised by Atlantis Bookshop? Chic and Tabitha Cicero head the list of speakers along with R.A. Gilbert. In the evening there will be a re-enactment of the Rite of Isis.
I am sure tickets will sell like hot cakes, so if want to know more about the event at the Swedenborg Hall, Bloomsbury, London on March 1st 2008 contact the Atlantis bookshop
Lon Milo DuQuette
Also on the same weekend, but in Chicago, Lon Milo DuQuette is running a seminar on Oracles, Kabbalism and Thoth Tarot. I met Lon several times at Atlantis Bookshop when he was over here several years ago. He is very engaging and funny.
Tarot, Black Magic and Art
If you can get to Liverpool Tate, this looks to be fascinating. At last, tarot art is being taken seriously.
In the 1970s, after seeing Gaudí’s Park Güell in Barcelona, she dreamed up a sculpture garden based on the tarot pack. An Italian patron offered her land, and she completed her Tarot Garden in Garavicchio, Tuscany, four years before her death. The drawings for it at Tate Liverpool made me want to see this weird place, to sit at the table that represents the card called The Empress, to stand at the foot of her tottering Tower.
The garden works because the tarot pack is one of Europe’s most seductive arcana. The oldest surviving tarot cards were made for the 15th-century Dukes of Milan: they are hand-painted Renaissance masterpieces. Yet De Saint Phalle based her garden on the coarser, more popular French deck: unlike the medieval packs, which had their most ill-omened images superstitiously removed, it features the ultimate arcanum, the wildest card of all: Le Diable.
De Saint Phalle’s Devil stands in Tate Liverpool in lurid triumph, nude and winged and nearly lifesize (in the Tarot Garden itself he is colossal). He is flanked by two servile demons, in a sculpture that precisely re-creates the design of the Devil card from the 18th-century Marseilles pack.
Full story at the Guardian
Prada Bags the Tarot
This is a first for me, fashion victim that I am. Famous Italian designer
