Recovering

I'll be fine and back soon.

A Dream

I spent nearly ten hours yesterday (Sunday) reading and studying the Tarot to get ready for my writing project.  I slept poorly and dreamt that I was carrying somebody who was either very sick or dead.  I was in a dark place perhaps a house or castle: I remember an encounter but I can't remember much more or what was said.  Only that the images were clearly from the Deck.

Le Méthode

I was fascinated with the Tarot for many, many years.  When I was in my teens and early twenties I studied the Rider Deck and gave "readings" to folks I met on my travels across the country.  Later when I began to work in interactive media I designed an interactive deck to be used on the computer and later animated a beautiful deck on CD-ROM.  I collected several dozen decks but I never thought much about the Tarot as anything other than an interesting artifact from the past to be collected.

When I first came in contact with the restored Tarot de Marseille I was enchanted by the rich symbology of color, image and composition.  Now I am reading in English Jodorowsky's The Way of Tarot; this is renewing my interest and  this project which I hope will stimulate me into writing which has been long dorman is the result.  I have a long way to go before I am competent in reading the symbols of the Marseille deck; I carry a digital copy of the Major Arcana with me on my iPhone and review the images at every chance I get.  My reading of Jodorowsky is focused on his research and interpretations of the Major Arcana.

Soon I will begin the experiment of using one card each session as a writing aid:

• I propose to mix or shuffle the Major Arcana with all the cards in their correct up/down positions. 
• I'll then select and reflect on one card for each text and then improvise the text either at the keyboard or by dictation.  

The goal is to tell a story with as little editing as possible and within one sitting. As I complete each card it will be "retired" and the next card will be selected from the top of the deck at the next session.

I am not divining the deck or descrying my future, I don't believe that the future can be descried, rather I am looking at the symbology of the card and making up a story that is inspired by my focusing on the card in that session: the card itself is a tool.

The first text will be posted on 16-17 December 2009.

THE TAROT PROJECT

To be clear: I do not believe the Tarot to be a fortune-telling device nor can I see the past (it's gone anyway); rather the Tarot is symbol rich and can be used to tell stories that will change from day to day according to the "Reader's" temperament at the time. I want to use the Tarot of Marseille as a spring board for stories or narratives that come to mind as I improvise at my keyboard or as I dictate into my recorder.

I hope each of these improvisation will be about 1000 words more or less and I will start riffs on one card then move on to do the same with two or more cards and work through the Major Arcana each time. The restored deck by Philippe Camoin and Alejandro Jodorowsky is so beautiful that I've elected to focus on only that deck.

Let's see what happens...

Le Mat

A good sign that I am either going somewhere or mad. 

Whatever.