The Tarot of Origins Project

History

When I bought the Tarot of Origins at Pantheacon a few years ago I was expecting it to come with a book, something a little bit better than the pamphlet that came with it. While the basic conceit of the deck was made abundantly clear, the subtleties of the deck were left for me to discover for myself. At first I was inspired by the lack of real clear direction and the fact that I was left to fend for myself, the task of translating an entire reading soon became daunting. Doing an entire Celtic Cross was a pretty tedious process as I translated card by card. Soon, I put the deck aside.

I tried reading with the old standby Rider-Waite, but the cards seemed empty to me, lacking in real resonance. The literalism of the objects contained within each card and the staged feeling that each of the scenes had about them really seemed to drain the cards of the vitality that the Tarot of Origins had. So, I set the cards down. I kept them on the altar, I glanced at them guiltily from time to time, but for the most part, outside of the odd Feri ritual, I didn't bother with them at all.

Thanks in part to the study of Feri I've been wanting to increase my study of the occult without actually studying. The thought of actual focused study of any subject for any long period of time is an anathema to me. I have a hard time even reading these days. So traditional study was out of the question. Instead, I decided to renew my tarot practice. Unwrapping my cards from their Army Surplus olive colored bandana and laid one out.

But just studying the cards wasn't enough for me. I wanted a place of record to return to, an archive to return to in order to quickly and efficiently get the information that I wanted. It was also an excellent opportunity for me to apply my web skills. So over the course of three days I put together the core code for the StrangeJournal Tarot website. I chose not to use a content management system (CMS) since the content is limited. 72 of something is a manageable number.

The Deck

The Tarot of Origins is a dynamic and non-dualistic deck. My experience with most tarot decks is that there are positive cards and there are negative cards and there are a few neutral cards. While modern readers have always learned ways around directly giving bad news to querants who aren't ready to hear it, the fact that the cards have a distinctly negative meaning has always been to me a bit bothersome. This doesn't seem to be the case with any of the cards in the Tarot of Origins. None of the cards seems to imply any of the negativity that comes from more traditional decks. That and the poses that seem natural if perhaps a bit melodramatic, give the deck a positive, energetic vibe that I haven't found in many decks. The relationships between the cards in the Tarot of Origins and their counterparts in the traditional tarot are problematic. While the general sentiment of the cards is still in place, the illustrations by Italian artist Sergio Toppi often offer much less decisive outcomes for the querant. A comparison of card XVI from the Tarot of Origins and the traditional tarot I think is illustrative.

The traditional meaning of card XVI, the Tower, is disaster of one sort or another. It doesn't always have to be traumatic disaster, but that does seems to be its intent. The disaster itself comes from hubris, as symbolized in the idea that the tower in question is the Tower of Babel, that hubris has led, as it will, to a fall. Take in contrast, the Tarot of Origins card XVI, the Menhir. While the name of the card takes a superficial act of translation, the image is clearly far less judgmental than the illustration of the traditional major arcana. A man stands at the top of a menhir, a large standing stone, looking out into the distance. In the Tarot of Origins the figure in the illustration is in a dangerous position, but certainly he is benefiting from his position, and experiencing something amazing that he wouldn't have been able to experience without taking the risk of standing atop the height of the standing stone. So instead of the absolute rule equating hubris and downfall we have a more balanced view of risk assessment. Certainly there are dangers in taking risks, and card XVI makes no bones about that, a fall would certainly kill the figure in the card, but it represents the benefits of risk in a more balanced way, saying that there are certainly benefits to be had in taking those risks.

This subtle drawing back of judgment is ubiquitous, if subtle, throughout the Tarot of Origins. The traditional meanings assigned to cards remain, but altered a bit. They are taken back the half-step before the stumble, before the fall. The Tarot of Origins is big on observations and warnings and very short on moralizing. It draws no conclusions about the behaviors of any of its participants, nor does it make assumptions about the outcomes of its cards, where traditional tarot assigns more blatant or obvious values to the meanings of the cards and leaves it to the reader to reframe what might otherwise be regarded as a negative meaning.

That said, the deck diverts from more traditional meanings the most in the court cards. My little experience with the courts in both traditional tarot and the Tarot of Origins leads me to believe that Toppi really took these cards as an opportunity to change the meanings of what might otherwise a very committed deck. The court cards are active and emotional in a way that I haven't found in my other tarot work. Their visages, manners and attitudes really don't align with the traditional tarot definitions that I've encountered. While their motivations might be the same, their outcomes are wholly different. The most striking example to me is the Queen of Pentacles/Woman of Jewels comparison.

The Queen is a frugal perfectionist dedicated to getting things done right and done well. She is mothering, nurturing and likely wealthy, a bit like Martha Stewart wishes she was. But this description is meaningless in the face of the Woman of Jewels, save perhaps for the wealth, which almost doesn't apply given the primitive context of the deck. The Woman of Jewels is a brazen, bare-chested Amazon of a woman, full of chutzpah, and brimming with sexuality. Her aspect is at once fearsome and calculated, and her wealth is displayed, perhaps ostentatiously, in the jewelry she wears on her left arm. This is not the mother we see on display. The description we have of the Queen of Coins seems much more like a description of Origin's Woman of Nature, who holds a child in her lap, and whose hair is decorated with a complicated and delicate bone barrette.

 

 

Has there been a switch? A mix-up? Possibly. My familiarity with both schools of tarot is still to young to really understand the great divergence between traditional assignments of the court cards and their manifestations in the Tarot of Origins, but I don’t believe that Toppi and Lo Scarabeo made a mistake. Their work, in this case, is too exacting for that. There's too much detail and investment for this to have been merely a mistake. I think there is likely a reason, a rationale to be found in further exploration of each of the suits. It's possible that the tiny vibrations that I feel throughout the suits have multiplied wildly and by the time they reach the court cards no longer resemble their original inspirations.

All of these factors make the Tarot of Origins a difficult deck to work with for a newcomer. What the Tarot of Origins does is force the reader to do the more advanced effort of determining the meanings of the cards and their relationships to the other cards in the reading, the querant and the situation at hand. Because of its more "natural" renderings and its lack of easy or simple symbolic reference, the deck demands more of the reader. The task, however, is rewarding because Toppi's illustrations merit the study that is required of them. His layered and subtle drawings evoke a precise and nuanced interpretation in every situation. His simple, almost quick renderings belie an off-the-cuff reading and really require the kind of study from the get go that other decks might not. All of these things, I believe, contribute to a tarot reading experience that is both accurate, nuanced and enjoyable for both querant and reader alike.

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