Tarot Dreaming: Learning from the Deck Makers

Tarot Deck Makers Interview Series

Ever in pursuit of finding the next leaping off edge from which to enrich Tarot play, I am ecstatic to have launched my Tarot Deck Makers Interview Series this month. My goal is to glean insights from deck makers around the globe about their creative process and about the ways in which they personally were changed by engaging with the Tarot at that level of intensity. To commit to making an entire deck is to commit to symbol walking through the Tarot lineage that came before and to be willing to riff and play and enter one's own symbol-scape in search of symbols and patterns of benefit for those of us living here, now. Here are images from two different Tarot Decks and excerpts from my first two interviews.

Rachel Pollack, much revered Tarot scholar, author of 37 fiction and non-fiction books, and author of what is often referred to as the Tarot Bible, 78 Degrees of Wisdom, spoke about some of the results of creating the Shining Tribe deck:

There was a much greater intimacy with the cards, not just my own deck, but others.  I discovered that the Tarot can have a great sense of humor, and play with you through the cards it gives you.  The Shining Tribe deck also led to a major practice of mine I call Wisdom Readings, in which we ask the cards questions beyond personal issues.  The first Wisdom reading was "What is the soul?" I pulled just one card, the Ace of Birds, an owl in darkness staring intently at the reader.  Other people have adopted the practice of Wisdom readings, so creating my own deck has led to a contribution to the history of reading cards.  

Read Rachel Pollack’s full interview here.

Regarding the Poet Tarot Deck, makers Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy of Two Sylvias Press shared:

Our deck follows the traditional Tarot deck with a few variations. As we stated above, the major arcana is made up of poets—Edgar Allan Poe represents the Devil (XV) while Emily Dickinson is the Hermit (IX). E. E. Cummings is a great fit for the Fool (O) and William Butler Yeats, a good symbol of transformational Endings (XIII). The suit cards represent the stages of the creative process: Muses/Inspiration (Cups), Quills/Creation (Wands), Mentors/Revision (Swords), and Letterpresses/Completion (Coins). The guidebook accompanying the deck is 80 pages and includes card explanations, layouts, and ideas for using the cards for specific projects.

Read the full interview with Two Sylvias Press here.

While I have a dream list of Tarot deck makers to interview, please don’t hesitate to contact me with suggestions for future interviews.

Tarot Dreamers: Make Your Tarot Deck Course 2, The High Priestess and Her Gifts

I’m pleased to continue to offer Tarot Deck Making classes this fall. The process has been richer than imagined as we explored how to translate the larger ideas behind each card into personal vision cards reflecting our unique histories and future aspirations.

Here’s an example from our first class: my newly drafted Ace of Windmills (Ace for the Suit of Air). It corresponds to the idea that one can stand rooted in all forms of weather, transforming the powerful winds of adversity into alternate forms of energy such as inspiration to create art. Ever since I was a child I have loved standing out in the pre-storm rain and wind and have loved the way wind wakes up the edges of my body.

Want to step in and join us? Our process repeats in seven-week installments; we explore our relationship to the past, present, and future. We do this in a supportive brainstorming community in which we go through a series of writing exercises to help us begin drafting cards in our art form of choice. The assignment of cards--our focus of Major and corresponding minor cards--is what changes. The next seven-week online course starts on November 7 and ends on December 23. By completion of this course, we will have drafted a Major Arcanum vision card for the High Priestess and for her corresponding Minor Mentor cards:

•      Two of Cups (navigating exchanges of the heart between equals)
•      Two of Wands  (balancing our will before action)
•      Two of Disks (juggling projects and commitments to finance while staying spiritually aligned)
•      Two of Swords (working to maintain a peaceful and loving set of thoughts in relation to ourselves so we can thrive internally as well as externally).

Course Cost is $350(*after student feedback from our first course, I've added an additional week to the course to allow for card completion and closing activities). Course communication will take place over a combination of email, Zoom, and private online discussion forum. Prompts, feedback, forum, and Zoom provided; participants are responsible for materials for the art form they choose to practice for the duration of the course. To sign up, visit Wheel of Archetypal Selves Facebook Page page to message me there or email me through my contact page from this blog.

*I’m sure I will offer the full series more than once, so please don’t worry if you miss a particular seven-week course.

San Diego Writers, Ink: Theme, Set, Go Monthly Poetry Workshop

Join me for my first Tuesday of the month workshop in San Diego—drop-ins welcome. The Human Body is the focus for September. We will read aloud from body poems by a variety of poets including Alleyne, Forche, Komachi, Limon, Mandelshtam, Neruda, and more. Bring a friend and your favorite human body poem, tomorrow, Tuesday, December 1st, at 10 am. We meet at Liberty Station. December’s theme is Nature.

Sign up here:

1st Tuesday: Theme, Set, Go with Tania Pryputniewicz

Wheel of Archetypal Selves Newsletter:

Another way to stay in touch with me is through my newsletter which provides poetry and Tarot related news and tips:

Wheel of Archetypal Selves monthly newsletter

Mother of Three Escapes to AWP 2104, Returns with Poet Tarot Deck

Photo by Robyn Beattie

To say I needed to get away this month would be an understatement. My daughter lit her bookshelf on fire (via candle to tissue box, a four foot wall of flame rushing ceiling with help of a bottle of perfume). She timed it perfectly to coincide with her brother’s birthday sleepover party (built in audience of nine). How neither her shoulder length hair, surfer poster nor closet curtains caught still puzzles me. Less than an hour later, the toilet backed up in one bathroom and the fluorescent bulbs in the other winked out for good. By then, dusk beat us to night and my husband under-cooked the burgers for the kids in the dark so we pulled out the frying pan in the house, promising the kids we’d remember which bite mark went with which kid.

Other casualties of the month: the lower living room window (light-saber match between my youngest and the neighbor friend). The old-school window spoked out in a comic strip POW, triangles of glass littering the shrubbery. During the two weeks it took for the new shatter-proof window to arrive, the Husky punched her way through the remaining 4 triangles unscathed, heartbroken, in pursuit of my husband on his way to the ocean when he failed to walk her one morning.



Photo by Robyn Beattie

These outer details pale in comparison to the emotional spiral I'm walking as I being my initiation into parenting tweens and teens--thankfully in my orbit are writing mothers like Suzi Banks Baum, who continues to run guest posts that make my struggle bearable at Laundry Line Divine, most recently: What do Mothers Make: Connections. Her description of being shot out of the serenity of the center of the lotus blossom resonated with me. As did her astute suggestion to lower one's expectations in a gentle way during the often temporarily unbridgeable span of disconnections that can so quickly flare. No surprise, then, after the usual three pages of carpool notes and instructions, I left my husband at the helm to meet friends and bolster my inner life as a writer, boarding an airplane for Seattle.

This was my first time attending AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference). With graduate school a healthy number of years in my past, I surmised accurately I’d be coming at AWP from a very different perspective than a young prospective MFA student. A friend forwarded me a link to poet Kay Ryan’s 2005 witty review of her AWP experience: A Lifetime of Preferring Not To. I laughed my way through it but ultimately decided not to forego the conference (though I felt better equipped to scale my expectations to the venue). And with more than a dozen friends I planned to meet and support, I couldn’t wait to get away.

Two Sylvias Press Poet Tarot Deck

I packed tarot decks--just two--as last time, travelling to A Room of Her Own Foundation’s summer retreat, I brought all ten decks nestled securely in their silk bag which caused security to ask me to open my suitcase (oddity of the two round decks, Motherpeace and Daughters of the Moon, nestled amid various sized rectangular decks?!). I waited while they cleared the other suspicious traveler, a woman with gorgeous grey streaks in her white hair and a suitcase full of oranges and shoes. I had to repeat the word, “Tarot,” several times and unwrap several of the decks before they waved me through. “Aren’t we dangerous,” I joked to the woman repacking her oranges as I refolded the silk and cinched the drawstring tight.

While AWP’s itinerary of choices meant I never threw my own tarot cards, I came home with a fabulous new deck to add to my collection. Two Sylvias Press created a Poet Tarot Deck featuring poets on some of the cards; the subtitle of the guidebook reads, "A Deck of Creative Exploration" and includes exercises meant to help writers and artists with creative process. I couldn’t resist the urge to interview Annette and Kelli. For this deck, they chose to represent male and female poets equally, as well as to choose deceased poets of British and American descent. I asked them:

If you were to make a second, feral deck (without constraints of choosing deceased poets of British and American descent), whom else would you love to include (for a living poets’ deck)?

Annette Spaulding-Convy: I imagine in a living poets’ deck—Olena Kalytiak Davis as the Chariot, Cate Marvin as the Tower, Richard Siken as the Hierophant, and Marie Howe as the High Priestess. My imagination goes wild with this question as there are so many amazing contemporary poets whose work I truly admire. One more—I think Jane Hirshfield would be an awesome Temperance.

Kelli Russell Agodon: For a living deck, I’d love to include Denise Duhamel as the Wheel of Fortune, Kay Ryan as the Hermit, and Li-Young Lee as the Moon.  They are three of my favorite poets, each very different in style from each other and I’d love to highlight them so more people could learn about their work.  In another deck of dead poets, I would love to include Pablo Neruda for the Lovers card. He is a poet I’ve always connected with.

Here’s a link to the rest of the interview with their generous responses at Transformative Blogging this week: The Conjuring of a Poet Tarot Deck: An Interview with Two Sylvias Press. I am thrilled to add this deck to those I’ve already chosen to share with my writing students for my upcoming class, Exploring the Minor Mentors: A Tour Through the Suits (forming with a solid base already, and we'd love to have you join us--starts March 17) which combines writing and tarot.

Ruth Thompson and Lisa Rizzo at Saddle Road Press Table

I’ll write more later about the amazing readings I attended at AWP, but for now, want to close by thanking my editor Ruth Thompson of Saddle Road Press for the anchor of her beautiful table, a reason for coming, in support of authors Michelle Wing (debut poetry book, Body on the Wall) and Carol Houlihan Flynn, author of the memoir, The Animals. These women are my Saddle Road Press sisters, so I will blog up “writer-views” of their work in support of their books and offer the links here shortly. 

Related Posts:

Tarot Butterflies 2

March 21, 2014 addition:

Here's a fun link to a tarot synchronicity involving The Poet Tarot, Two Sylvias Press, and one of their poetry books, Dear Alzheimer's in a post written by Michelle Wing, poet and blogger at The Poem Whisperer

Related link, on flowers, catching fire:

Dyed Carnations, by Robyn Schiff