Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House toupports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
Speaker 1: and I'm Kristen, and I'm going to start off this
Speaker 1: podcast by admitting something about myself, which is that when
Speaker 1: I was younger and I found myself no longer believing
Speaker 1: in the Christian faith that I had grown up with. UM,
Speaker 1: I started pursuing, as do many young people and people
Speaker 1: who feel that big religion or no religion, they still
Speaker 1: want to feel a connection to something bigger than themselves.
Speaker 1: I got into tarot cards. Oh tell me more, Caroline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I got one of those like cheesy, slit glossy,
Speaker 1: terribly illustrated packs from who knows where, probably hot topic
Speaker 1: or something. Um, I don't know, it's hot topics still around.
Speaker 1: I think they are right, probably, UM, I wonder if
Speaker 1: they're still as weird it as they were when I
Speaker 1: was in high school. Tweens need to be TACKI somehow
Speaker 1: mall goths. Yeah. Uh so I got into it and
Speaker 1: I found that it was a really great, sort of
Speaker 1: satisfying way to feel like I was connecting with some
Speaker 1: spiritual force that I was part of, some magical mystical,
Speaker 1: uh fantasy land that gave me some bit of control
Speaker 1: and insight into the world around me. And I just
Speaker 1: sort of summed up why people do tarot? Well, did you?
Speaker 1: I'm curious? So did you? How often did you do it? Um?
Speaker 1: Maybe like once or maybe once a week, maybe like
Speaker 1: on the weekend or something. And would it be used
Speaker 1: to help you figure out what to do with your
Speaker 1: life or sort of reflect on things? I think both
Speaker 1: A lot of it had to do with, like, um,
Speaker 1: liking boys and wanting to do tarot about love. Um,
Speaker 1: But I did the whole nine yards, Kristen. I would
Speaker 1: like turn out the lights and light candles and like
Speaker 1: get in the zone and like breathe deeply and get
Speaker 1: real quiet internally and focus on my question, which was
Speaker 1: probably like two so and so like me? Is so
Speaker 1: and so gonna like me, which is like the bulk
Speaker 1: of a lot of charot questions in the modern era.
Speaker 1: And I'd lay out the cards in the Celtic cross formation.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different formations that you can do
Speaker 1: in tarot, and and read the cards and figure out
Speaker 1: what was negative and what was positive and if they
Speaker 1: were inverted or right side up. What that meant. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I literally can't remember any insight that it ever actually
Speaker 1: gave me or I thought that it gave me, But
Speaker 1: it was kind of a really fun way to pass
Speaker 1: the time. I was also big into runs at the time,
Speaker 1: which was the same deal. You put them in a
Speaker 1: sack and like you it's like scrabble tie and you
Speaker 1: put your hands in there and you draw out some
Speaker 1: runs and you figure out what your future supposed to be,
Speaker 1: or you figure out the answer to a question. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised I never got into runs. That sounds right up
Speaker 1: my alley. Well. I even had I remember distinctly wearing
Speaker 1: my rune necklace to music midtown here in Atlanta in
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, seventh grade for me um with the nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was ninety seven. Uh, And I definitely
Speaker 1: like thought it was so eff and cool because it
Speaker 1: was like a choker necklace. It was on. It was
Speaker 1: on like one of those black cords, So nineties. You know,
Speaker 1: I probably very hip today, little rune necklace, And uh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it meant. It was something like
Speaker 1: very you know, very like middle school self centered, like independent,
Speaker 1: or like something, I'm a cool person. Run I don't
Speaker 1: even care about the curfew. After college, my roommates than
Speaker 1: I went through a Tarot phase, but it was more
Speaker 1: a thing, parlor game when we would all hang out.
Speaker 1: People would come over, have some beers and like, let's
Speaker 1: do taro. Oh my god, was it me? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're drunk. Yeah, yes, that is what it meant for
Speaker 1: people hundreds and hundreds of years ago too. You and
Speaker 1: your friends were far more connected to the true roots
Speaker 1: of tarot than seventh grade Caroline was. I assure you, yeah,
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing about the history of tarot. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a letdown because it really just
Speaker 1: started out as a game and we've been making up
Speaker 1: the rules for tarot ever since. Yeah oh yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: and so it's so um. I don't know what word
Speaker 1: to use here, but I just I put my hands
Speaker 1: to my face and real worried when I read like
Speaker 1: first person accounts of tarot card readers, and like, how
Speaker 1: seriously so many people take it. It's like a huge
Speaker 1: part of some people's lives, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: dismiss that part of your life, fair listeners, but there's
Speaker 1: there's literally no mystical meaning behind tarot. Um like. Like
Speaker 1: Kristen said it, it's meaning has changed over the centuries.
Speaker 1: It really did originate in the Islamic and Arabic world
Speaker 1: as just as just cards. The fabulous people in the
Speaker 1: Middle East invented playing cards, and they were beautiful. They
Speaker 1: were hand painted. They were something that the wealthy had
Speaker 1: to pass the time, and so they were painted with
Speaker 1: all sorts of things that would be familiar to these
Speaker 1: people in their everyday lives. So there'd be architectural elements
Speaker 1: painted on their Later there would be people or or
Speaker 1: items represented on the cards. But they were all meant
Speaker 1: to just play games. And so uh. These cards, of course,
Speaker 1: through trade through military invasions, made their way to Europe.
Speaker 1: They've been used everything from games, like they said, to
Speaker 1: literary prompt for writers to the way we think of
Speaker 1: them now as tools for divination. Although I do like
Speaker 1: and not to get ahead of ourselves, but I do
Speaker 1: like how long we have been using tarot, even pre
Speaker 1: divination phase, to help us predict whether someone will like
Speaker 1: us back or not. Yes, there was one Spanish deck
Speaker 1: that was meant to figure out the object of your
Speaker 1: affection in each suit. So like the cups or the wands,
Speaker 1: or whatever. Each suit of the debt corresponded to a
Speaker 1: different type of woman, either maidens, wives, widows, or nuns.
Speaker 1: Always get the nuns, always a nun, never a made.
Speaker 1: But taro as we think of it today, really got
Speaker 1: its start in Italy, I believe, around the fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: But again it was nothing but a game at that time.
Speaker 1: And from Italy it was exported to France and Germany,
Speaker 1: and and taro had no history as a game in
Speaker 1: English speaking areas. It was introduced instead by occultists. So
Speaker 1: that's interesting, right, that little tidbit about how people in Italy, France,
Speaker 1: and Germany we're thinking of it as a game. Even
Speaker 1: if it was, even if it did have a divination bent,
Speaker 1: it was still sort of a playful thing versus in England,
Speaker 1: where they didn't get it until some kind of shady occultists,
Speaker 1: as we'll get into in greater detail much later in
Speaker 1: the podcast, they introduced it as an actual mystical, magical thing.
Speaker 1: So to give a brief rundown of Tero decks today,
Speaker 1: they've got seventy eight cards. Fifty six are the minor
Speaker 1: arcana or the suit cards, So like the you know,
Speaker 1: seven of Wand's uh and twenty two make up the
Speaker 1: major arcana or trump cards. You've got four suits, swords, batons, cups,
Speaker 1: and coins, each of which has an ace through a
Speaker 1: tin in addition to the jack through king. The major
Speaker 1: cards also have a fool, which is traditionally labeled as zero.
Speaker 1: And today, of course people read all sorts of meanings
Speaker 1: into tarot cards. So for me, a growing up in
Speaker 1: a very conservative home, tarot cards were seen as a
Speaker 1: tool of the devil, as they can. But then of
Speaker 1: course there are people who use tarot to predict the
Speaker 1: future they see. Some see it as a gateway to
Speaker 1: mystical beings or otherworldly knowledge, and then others use it
Speaker 1: more as a meditative device just to reflect and get
Speaker 1: more insight on yourself and also relationships. And tarot was
Speaker 1: something that came up in your conversation Caroline a few
Speaker 1: months back in with author Jessic Crispin, who wrote The
Speaker 1: Dead Ladies Project. Yeah, showed the Dead Ladies Project. She
Speaker 1: also founded the website book Splot, and she's got a
Speaker 1: pretty cool tarot side business. She herself got into it
Speaker 1: a sort of a backup job while she was between
Speaker 1: gigs and now reads tarot for people, not as a
Speaker 1: way to like predict the future, but it's almost sort
Speaker 1: of a literary inspirational device to help you sort of
Speaker 1: figure out your narrative or figure out what your own
Speaker 1: strengths are. Um. But let's let's dive in now and
Speaker 1: take a closer look at Terra's origins and evolution. And
Speaker 1: a lot of this is coming from a great article
Speaker 1: over at Collectors Weekly which has some beautiful images of
Speaker 1: all of those cards from the Islamic world. So we
Speaker 1: mentioned the fifteenth century, and it was between the fourteenth
Speaker 1: and fifteenth centuries that people started using cards for games
Speaker 1: and playful divination, emphasis on playful and it was something
Speaker 1: called mam look game cards that were brought to Western
Speaker 1: Europe from the Middle East and in the Islamic world,
Speaker 1: as Caroline mentioned, card playing was really something for the
Speaker 1: high born, and these cards were just maniature pieces of art.
Speaker 1: They were often hand painted and they would be scrawled
Speaker 1: with calligraphy, whereas in Europe they lost a little bit
Speaker 1: of their claud us because you have printing technology, which
Speaker 1: did mean though that it became something that wasn't only
Speaker 1: exclusive to the wealthiest. More people could get their hands
Speaker 1: literally on these cards and paper products, but they probably
Speaker 1: weren't hand painted. But if you look at the Arabic calligraphy,
Speaker 1: they would often contain aphorisms or sort of many fortunes,
Speaker 1: such as as for the present that rejoices thy heart
Speaker 1: will soon open up a little fingers crossed, or how
Speaker 1: about this just takes a little darker turn with a
Speaker 1: sword of happiness, I shall redeem a beloved who will
Speaker 1: afterwards take my life. Whoa buy or beware? Boy? Oh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a good relationship. That sort of
Speaker 1: happiness will get you every time. Yeah. So by the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds in Europe you've got these beautiful cards being
Speaker 1: used for literary exercises, so not too different from what
Speaker 1: Jessica Crispin is using it for herself. Uh, and games
Speaker 1: that are similar to modern day bridge and you get
Speaker 1: some more playful to a nation. So Italian aristocrats were
Speaker 1: playing this game tarokey appropriety. Basically you'd be dealt random
Speaker 1: cards and have to write poetic verses about other players
Speaker 1: based on the content and the imagery of those cards.
Speaker 1: And I love The Collector's Weekly compares it to an
Speaker 1: early version of mash like I'm going to live in
Speaker 1: a mansion with the hunvy and have Bobby as my husband.
Speaker 1: I wanted Bobby. But this really evolved into a literary phenomenon.
Speaker 1: I mean, people were writing lots of stories and poetry
Speaker 1: based on the cards that they were drawing. It also
Speaker 1: reminds me of what's it called exquisite corpse where you
Speaker 1: start a story and then you fold a piece of
Speaker 1: paper until only the last sentence is revealed, and you
Speaker 1: pass it around the person and picks up the story
Speaker 1: and then and then it flows from there. But it's
Speaker 1: not a card game, although it should be. Um, but
Speaker 1: back to Tarot pre Tarot decks start to w would
Speaker 1: develop as you have wealthy Italian families commissioning their own
Speaker 1: hand painted cards of triumph. How boss is that to
Speaker 1: be like, I'm so rich, I mean to have some
Speaker 1: cards of triumph made just for myself. And they had
Speaker 1: the same suits as those Arabic mam look cards of cups, swords, coins,
Speaker 1: and photo sticks which would eventually become your wands or batons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course they had the courts of kings and
Speaker 1: male underlings. We didn't have queens yet, so just that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go figure um and in the seventeenth century we see
Speaker 1: the Tarot de Marsilles originating. This is one of the
Speaker 1: most common types of Tero decks ever produced. It was
Speaker 1: usually printed with woodblocks and colored in by hand with
Speaker 1: basic stencils. And it's worth noting that this is not
Speaker 1: one specific deck, but rather a style that's seen in
Speaker 1: France that would be copied a whole lot. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, once it's out of the hands or it's
Speaker 1: trickled down, I guess I should say, from the rich
Speaker 1: Italians all the way to France and Germany, that's when
Speaker 1: you start seeing decks like the Tarot de Marcilles. But
Speaker 1: there was some controversy, right, there was a bit of controversy,
Speaker 1: so there was a papist card and papists. If that
Speaker 1: does sound to you like papal, you're right, a lady
Speaker 1: pope though, heck no so. But of course, since we
Speaker 1: could not have a lady pope, she morphed into depending
Speaker 1: on your dick, either to you know, the high priestess
Speaker 1: or the Spanish captain. But in the case of the
Speaker 1: high priestess, the high priest counterpart would be the pope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm back, well, I mean so throughout these cards history,
Speaker 1: your imagery just depended on your worldview. I mean, there
Speaker 1: were tarts, so from the very beginning, Tarot imagery was
Speaker 1: morphing to accommodate common beliefs at the time. But I
Speaker 1: love it. In the Taro de Marcilles, there are some
Speaker 1: pretty cool lady imagery. Strength is a woman subduing a lion.
Speaker 1: The Empress was a pretty badass shield. You've got the
Speaker 1: star who's the neked lady pouring water, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they're tarraficionadas out there going like, oh, that's not
Speaker 1: what it is or it's not what it means, but
Speaker 1: I still love it. And then the woman on the
Speaker 1: world card in this particular Terra deck, honestly, to me,
Speaker 1: looks like she's standing inside of vagina. The description says
Speaker 1: otherwise the most as if she's birthing herself. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to me, that's That's what I'm going with, and no
Speaker 1: one can tell me otherwise. So then in the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century we have the rise of mystical Taro, but for
Speaker 1: surprising reasons. Yeah, so, uh, you know, this goes back
Speaker 1: to a lot of the ideas we talked about Kristen
Speaker 1: Fair Listeners in our episode on witchcraft, because in that
Speaker 1: episode we talked a lot about how it was men
Speaker 1: elite mail them ers of society who were members of
Speaker 1: secret Masonic societies and groups who got together and sort
Speaker 1: of in order to give their own organizations in themselves
Speaker 1: authenticity and credibility, they tried to link they're made up
Speaker 1: organizational mythology with existing mythology about Egyptians and Greeks and Romans,
Speaker 1: and that gave rise to a lot of our modern
Speaker 1: day ideas about witchcraft. And the same is true for Taro.
Speaker 1: So you've got to get a little context. In the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, power structures across Europe were shifting from feudalism
Speaker 1: to capitalism, and you've got these mysterious, well on purpose mysterious.
Speaker 1: They made themselves mysterious, and male hierarchy driven freemasonry, these
Speaker 1: groups and their interests in the occult is on the rise,
Speaker 1: and as Mike's Asteric and a Sociology of Terror points out,
Speaker 1: those secret society hierarchies reproduced and reaffirmed the patriarchy, unequal
Speaker 1: power relations, and male hedgemony. In other words, they were
Speaker 1: filling this power vacuum as positions of power shifted from
Speaker 1: being inherited, so rich people to get more rich people
Speaker 1: who are all in the powerful positions. Not that that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, but you know what I mean to being
Speaker 1: earned powerful positions being earned through that Protestant work ethic
Speaker 1: and knowing the right people. And these secret societies were
Speaker 1: all about knowing the right people. Well, and it's ironic
Speaker 1: that you just mentioned the Protestant work ethic, because part
Speaker 1: of the pathway to knowing the right people and getting
Speaker 1: in with these societies and getting a leg up there
Speaker 1: for you know, in your station in life, had to
Speaker 1: do with getting a grasp of this occult terra that
Speaker 1: they kind of made up. They developed as part of
Speaker 1: their mythology, this connection between tarot cards and Egypt, because
Speaker 1: intellectuals commonly believed ancient Egyptian writing and religion held insights
Speaker 1: into human existence, and so they took their tarot cards
Speaker 1: and linked that to ancient Egypt as a way of
Speaker 1: gaining credibility and authority. Rather than being like, here's this
Speaker 1: game we play and we kind of made up what
Speaker 1: it means. Who wants to join us? It's so fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just another way of being like, hey, we
Speaker 1: are the holders of the mystical, magical truth. You've got
Speaker 1: to go through us to get to the truth. And
Speaker 1: also what was so appealing about these cards for these
Speaker 1: rich white guys was that they were links to a
Speaker 1: way of life that was enjoyed by those rich, wealthy,
Speaker 1: high born Italian families of the fifteenth century. Mean, the
Speaker 1: imagery itself is related to royalty and the elite. You've
Speaker 1: got those kings and queens and popes. And then the
Speaker 1: great thing about Tarot and great may or may not
Speaker 1: be in quotes, is that the imagery is so easy
Speaker 1: to manipulate. The meaning behind the imagery is so easy
Speaker 1: to manipulate, and so easy to tell other people that
Speaker 1: it means something um And you know, like we talked
Speaker 1: about in our Psychics episode, Kristin, it's just human nature
Speaker 1: to want to believe in this stuff, and I get it.
Speaker 1: But it's worth discussing how a lot of this magical
Speaker 1: belief system came out of a bunch of guys who
Speaker 1: were just trying to use these cards and imbue them
Speaker 1: with their own meaning in order to cement their fancy status.
Speaker 1: Well and to the point that they even created Tarot
Speaker 1: decks with Egyptian imagery to only reinforce this made up
Speaker 1: connection between the two. Um and you have, though, two
Speaker 1: big names who are responsible for really cementing this mystical
Speaker 1: development of Tarot, but of whom are French. You first
Speaker 1: have Antoine Courts de Jeblin, who was a French writer,
Speaker 1: pastor and freemason. Real jack of all trades are here.
Speaker 1: And then you have even more famous teacher and publisher
Speaker 1: Jean Baptiste Aliette, who went by a pseudonym which was
Speaker 1: just his last name Aliotte backwards. Yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 1: a Tela, Talia, Natella, Nazela. Yeah, he went by Natla Venta, Ntela.
Speaker 1: Natella and Jebelin were the first to align the tarot
Speaker 1: with these mystical and divinatory properties. So in one in
Speaker 1: his nine volume History of the World, which was quite impressive,
Speaker 1: he didn't have Wikipedia or anything, uh Djevelin said that
Speaker 1: Tarot was based on a holy book written by Egyptian
Speaker 1: priests and bought brought to Europe by gypsies from Africa.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, I'm so impressed that in your History
Speaker 1: of the World you managed to make so much of
Speaker 1: it up. Um. Aliette meanwhile wrote his own book on
Speaker 1: the tarot and claimed that he learned divination with playing
Speaker 1: cards first, but added his special Italian card, the telecard, which,
Speaker 1: as in modern tarot, was meant to basically stand in
Speaker 1: for the person having his or her fortune read. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he switches over to using a quote unquote true tarot
Speaker 1: deck and publishes his own, which is one of the
Speaker 1: very first design specifically for divination, not just for game playing,
Speaker 1: claiming again people that it had secret wisdom passed down
Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt. I mean people stop making stuff up well,
Speaker 1: or just stop being so gullible. Yeah, oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that that too. Um. But so, of course, because this
Speaker 1: is something of the elite, it makes sense that it
Speaker 1: would eventually trickle down and be considered real cool, real cool.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know, what's hoverboards are real cool.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're trickling down. What's trickling down now? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Beverly hoverboard definitely have definitely. It's so taro trickles down
Speaker 1: to the rank and file, and so by we get
Speaker 1: our first celebrity card reader what what and she is
Speaker 1: a lady, hence the pronoun she is a lady. It's
Speaker 1: Mademoiselle le Normand or Marie Anne Adelaide Len Norman, who
Speaker 1: shows up in Paris claiming that she learned card reading
Speaker 1: again from gypsies. And here's the context. Because I know
Speaker 1: people are not a fan of the term gypsy. It's
Speaker 1: not a great term to use. There was this idea
Speaker 1: at the time that Gypsies were people who were roaming
Speaker 1: around Europe from Egypt, hence the name. And so there
Speaker 1: again is our Egyptian connection. Uh to give herself legitimacy,
Speaker 1: she even read cards for Empress Josephine using Elliott's deck
Speaker 1: that he designed. Yeah, there's that famous painting. I think
Speaker 1: it might be called the Fortune Teller, which is essentially
Speaker 1: depicting Uh le Normand reading in front of Josephine and
Speaker 1: you have Napoleon um to the side, and was also
Speaker 1: a depiction of her actually reading Napoleon's cards, but as
Speaker 1: Tarot expert Mary Greer notes, as highly unlikely that she
Speaker 1: actually did that for Napoleon, but she definitely read for Josephine.
Speaker 1: And as Greer also notes, it is thanks to this
Speaker 1: woman that the world really found out about Tara, that
Speaker 1: it became this big thing. And after she died, oracle
Speaker 1: decks were published with her name on them, sort of
Speaker 1: like a celebrity endorsement. I mean, she was dead, but
Speaker 1: trading on her name. It's like celebrity perfumes today. But
Speaker 1: dead lady tarot cards. Yeah, totally the same thing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they smelled like something. I tell you what. Though,
Speaker 1: when she was alive, descriptions of her were none too kind.
Speaker 1: No no. In eighteen fifteen, a visitor described her as
Speaker 1: a monstrous toad, bloated and venomous. She had one walleye,
Speaker 1: but the other was a piercer, which I really enjoyed you,
Speaker 1: or a fur cap upon her head from beneath which
Speaker 1: she glared out upon her horrified visitors. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. So you know, we've got the origins
Speaker 1: of tarot, mystic tarot, and tarot card reading among these
Speaker 1: elite men, right, And as it trickles down, we start
Speaker 1: to see fortune tellers and card readers being depicted like
Speaker 1: we talked about in our last episode, as as women
Speaker 1: and as in this case toad like monstrous women. But
Speaker 1: I have to give you a little historical side note tidbit.
Speaker 1: In there's this book on fortune telling, right, and it's
Speaker 1: expanded to include chapters on card tossing and also coffee
Speaker 1: ground reading and its title and this does tie into
Speaker 1: the whole gender thing. Was every lady's own fortune teller
Speaker 1: or an infallible guide to the hidden decrees of fate
Speaker 1: being a new and regular system for fortune telling future
Speaker 1: events to which has added a new method of fortune
Speaker 1: telling by the dregs of coffee. So, ladies, you need
Speaker 1: to pick yourself up a book, yeah, I mean, And
Speaker 1: that was something that Mary Greer noted in her very
Speaker 1: comprehensive history of taro. Once you get to the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: it really was a lady's pastime. It was something associated
Speaker 1: with old women, soldiers, wives and ladies playing these parlor games.
Speaker 1: And there's all sorts of artwork depicting this of women
Speaker 1: huddled together reading their own cards. There is an excerpt
Speaker 1: from Casa Nova's Diaries of talking about this horribly underaged
Speaker 1: girl and she was like thirteen, where he was like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was into it, but she was always
Speaker 1: obsessed with reading her tarot cards, you know, to find
Speaker 1: out if I was realavanting or not. Well. I thought
Speaker 1: the description was actually hysterical because he's like she's so jealous.
Speaker 1: All she does is put the cards down and point
Speaker 1: out to me all the ways in which I was
Speaker 1: like in bed with someone at this place at this time,
Speaker 1: and I just I just pictured like this jealous girlfriend.
Speaker 1: It does ruined the hilarity of the story that she
Speaker 1: was so young. But but but by this time, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's pretty well established that tarot is a female pastime
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, that that men would kind
Speaker 1: of snicker because it was a ladies pastime. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: it was scorned by men. And she does point out
Speaker 1: at her really really fantastic and fascinating blog that you
Speaker 1: get this underground at the time of mostly older women
Speaker 1: who made a good, if precarious, she says, living out
Speaker 1: of various forms of divination. So we start to see
Speaker 1: women who perhaps don't have any other way to make
Speaker 1: money outside of the house, and here they are able
Speaker 1: and basically sort of an intimate, not too public setting
Speaker 1: making money off of the sort of emotional and psychological
Speaker 1: desires of other people, which completely relates to our previous
Speaker 1: episode on women in psychics. But we need to move
Speaker 1: forward in our little time line to the turn of
Speaker 1: the century. But first, you guessed it, we gotta take
Speaker 1: a quick break. So as we moved into the nineteenth
Speaker 1: and twenty centuries, those secret and occult societies that we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier are still pretty much dominated by dudes.
Speaker 1: But you do have groups emerging like the Hermetic Order
Speaker 1: of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, which were
Speaker 1: co ed And I think it's interesting that the Theosophical Society,
Speaker 1: for instance, even had women among its founders and leaders.
Speaker 1: But people in these groups were super fixated on uncovering
Speaker 1: the quote unquote true terror and the cards true meanings,
Speaker 1: which is like, guys, um, like a hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: you invented this. Uh. I don't know if you realize
Speaker 1: that it was just a card game in the Arabic
Speaker 1: world and in Italy, and then you guys were the
Speaker 1: ones who made it magical That they didn't have podcast
Speaker 1: back then, Caroline, how would they know what they know?
Speaker 1: But they were so intent on on buying into this
Speaker 1: whole thing of like tarot has a true meaning, uh,
Speaker 1: and we're and we're going to find it and we're
Speaker 1: the holders of this truth. So so we're going to
Speaker 1: be a part of delivering the true Tarot to the people.
Speaker 1: But what I mean that just opens up a whole
Speaker 1: occultist playground for you to kind of get to, you know,
Speaker 1: do what you want and make up whatever connections you
Speaker 1: want to, just like a man or a woman. These
Speaker 1: were co ed, they were some of them. There was
Speaker 1: one very fascinating woman who's been well, not anymore so much,
Speaker 1: but at the time was left out of tarot history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the thing. If you own a deck of
Speaker 1: Tarot cards, there is a very good chance that you
Speaker 1: have seen the artwork of Pamela Pixie Coleman Smith. Because
Speaker 1: the most famous deck in tarot history is the Writer
Speaker 1: Waight deck, which was printed in nineteen nine and named
Speaker 1: for publisher William Writer in popular mystic A E. Wait.
Speaker 1: And you might be like, wait, why isn't it the
Speaker 1: Wait Huh, Why isn't it the Writer Wait Coleman Smith deck. Huh? Well,
Speaker 1: because she was a lady person and an artist and
Speaker 1: Wait was a jerk and and pretty much purposely left
Speaker 1: her name out. But so the Writer Weight deck is
Speaker 1: so famous. It's the first mass market tarot deck, which
Speaker 1: also helped boost terrorist popularity. And again its intention was divination,
Speaker 1: not playing those Italian mind games. Uh. And it even
Speaker 1: came with a book explaining the meaning behind Coleman Smith's imagery.
Speaker 1: And imagine what a huge job this is because Coleman
Speaker 1: Smith has to illustrate seventy eight cards and about six months,
Speaker 1: and her illustrations are notable because her pip cards told stories,
Speaker 1: and the PIP cards are those lesser cards, not the
Speaker 1: ones that are you know, the fancy, like this is
Speaker 1: the Son, this is the Hermit, et cetera. So all
Speaker 1: the cards together tell a story, which again is a
Speaker 1: great way if you're trying to get people to connect
Speaker 1: with imagery or connect with the philosophy, this is a
Speaker 1: great way to do it because your pictures till a
Speaker 1: thousand words, and so to place all of these amazing
Speaker 1: illustrations on each card and then to do a Tarot formation,
Speaker 1: it's so easy to tell a story and be able
Speaker 1: to interpret this image is kind of however you or
Speaker 1: the card reader wants well. Since I was raised in
Speaker 1: a household where tarot cards were tools of the devil.
Speaker 1: After college, when my roommates got some Tarot cards, was
Speaker 1: the first time I'd ever seen tarot cards up close
Speaker 1: and held them, and I was enamored with the illustrations,
Speaker 1: and I love thinking about how, oh I was so
Speaker 1: blown a way by this unsung lady artists work, because
Speaker 1: I mean they really are gorgeous. Yeah, and she has
Speaker 1: a fascinating story. So she's born in eighteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: in London to American parents, and they lived all over,
Speaker 1: including in Jamaica. And she's such a cutie if you
Speaker 1: see pictures of her. But people at the time very
Speaker 1: like euphemistically and quietly questioned her true parenting. Basically, they
Speaker 1: were like, you know, she's awfully dark and queer looking.
Speaker 1: Perhaps her actual parents are Jamaican and her parents themselves
Speaker 1: were very artistic and under their influence, she ends up
Speaker 1: joining a touring theater group as an actor, costume maker,
Speaker 1: and set designer. She's super artistic. She ends up studying
Speaker 1: art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She became an
Speaker 1: illustrator for Yates, bram Stoker and others, and a lot
Speaker 1: of her personal art, interestingly enough, was a reflection of
Speaker 1: her synesthesia. So she would listen to these symphonies and
Speaker 1: then eat. So it results in this swooping, sweeping imagery
Speaker 1: that's so beautiful and also another tidbit of how like
Speaker 1: really cool this lady is. As a member of the
Speaker 1: group Suffrage Atallier, she puts her art to use for
Speaker 1: Suffrage posters and cartoons, and her talent didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: She was also a writer, publishing several plays and books,
Speaker 1: including a collection of Jamaican folklore, which she would just
Speaker 1: go out and recite at events, which kind of blows
Speaker 1: my mind because hello, stage fright. Um, but I love
Speaker 1: this excerpt from Brooklyn Life magazine from seven which some
Speaker 1: hipster should really revive a sap. They described her as
Speaker 1: a gentlewoman presenting an odd type of thoroughly unconventional femininity,
Speaker 1: and therein lies her greatest charm, which I think is
Speaker 1: an old school way of saying she's not like other girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like the cool girl, but we're kind of suspicious ever,
Speaker 1: because she wears all this billowy garments. She even started
Speaker 1: her a magazine called The Green Chief, which certainly did
Speaker 1: have other contributors, but it was mainly a way for
Speaker 1: her to publish her writing. Oh magazine like a little
Speaker 1: right girl, Yes she is, uh so. Her introduction to
Speaker 1: tarot and creating the Cards comes in nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: when she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Down,
Speaker 1: which is where she met A. E. Waite, as well
Speaker 1: as Yates and Alistair Crowley, that scoundrel who you'll remember
Speaker 1: from our Witchcraft episode helped this guy, Gerald Gardner write
Speaker 1: a quote unquote manual for Witchcraft rituals. And Crowley was
Speaker 1: also the future creator of the equally famous soilth Taro. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the filth Tarot cards are intense. So Coleman Smith's cards
Speaker 1: are printed with pretty not not that great fanfair and
Speaker 1: nobody's really into it because at this point in England
Speaker 1: people are still like, what what is this French thing?
Speaker 1: I'm not into this, But it's so great when you
Speaker 1: read stuff about Coleman Smith, because she was very clear
Speaker 1: about having her own idea is about how you should
Speaker 1: prepare to read the cards. The whole thing that seventh
Speaker 1: grade Caroline went through like quiet the mind, think about
Speaker 1: your question, picture your question, and then flip the cards over.
Speaker 1: And in terms of her illustrations, the deck itself is
Speaker 1: clearly inspired by this fifteenth century Italian deck called the
Speaker 1: Solo Busca, but they, in turn her illustrations in turn
Speaker 1: inspired their own future imitators. And I love this fact,
Speaker 1: so she used her own cat for one of the illustrations,
Speaker 1: so I think was named Snuffles. Snuffles, of course it
Speaker 1: was so Snuffles inspired future artists and card readers she
Speaker 1: interpreted as a million different symbols and meetings, which ultimately
Speaker 1: it's just Snuffles. Yeah, it's just her cat. She also
Speaker 1: used her buddy slash potentially lover our companion, Eatie Craig,
Speaker 1: as a model for some of the women on the cards.
Speaker 1: And so isn't that fascinating to know that here's this
Speaker 1: person who was like under the gun to create all
Speaker 1: these beautiful illustrations and six months for very little pay,
Speaker 1: using her own characters from her own life to create
Speaker 1: these mystical tarot figures, and people today are still interpreting
Speaker 1: them and reinterpreting them as these magical mystical beings. I
Speaker 1: just love it. But even though her work was so
Speaker 1: significant and she put so much thought into it, and
Speaker 1: people have in turn put so much thought into her cards,
Speaker 1: she was completely left out. She received no mention by
Speaker 1: name in the book that accompanied the Deck and Wait
Speaker 1: referred to her only as a quote young woman artist
Speaker 1: who had illustrated the cards based on his instructions. She
Speaker 1: received very little payment and no royalties, and in one
Speaker 1: letter to her agent she even said, I just did
Speaker 1: a huge project for very little pay, just basically saying like,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, I'm just just hustling here. And
Speaker 1: in case you were wondering about the true nature of
Speaker 1: Waite's character, he and indeed was a journy. He wrote,
Speaker 1: the practice of painting among women has been clumsily cultivated.
Speaker 1: It remains a bad imitation of nature, whereas it might
Speaker 1: be a great art. And I'm like, dude, if you
Speaker 1: are so like anti woman and anti woman artist, why
Speaker 1: did you even hire this woman? Oh? Could it be
Speaker 1: because she's actually really talented and you just don't want
Speaker 1: to give her any credit and may be easier to
Speaker 1: discredit her. But for Coleman Smith's part, she converted to
Speaker 1: Catholicism and ran a priest's retreat in Cornwall, but then
Speaker 1: died panelists in one even though if she had gotten
Speaker 1: royalties on that deck, she would have been sitting pretty yeah,
Speaker 1: total millionaire. Yeah, the deck ends up falling out of
Speaker 1: use until about the seventies, when you've got American playing
Speaker 1: card manufacturer US Games. I believe it is who reprinted them,
Speaker 1: and it was the US Games guy who was saying
Speaker 1: that Coleman Smith could have been a millionaire today. Well,
Speaker 1: she's not the only tarot illustrator of note. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties, Marguerite Frieda Harris, a k A. Lady
Speaker 1: FRIEDA Harris met Alisair Crowley at sixty years old and
Speaker 1: painted the images for his foth tarot dick over and
Speaker 1: over again across five years. I mean, think about that.
Speaker 1: Coleman Smith did hers in six months. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: so FRIEDA. Harris is a pretty interesting character. She herself
Speaker 1: was very wealthy, as indicated by the title lady, like
Speaker 1: she was doing all right. She didn't need a bunch
Speaker 1: of money. She also didn't need a bunch of notoriety.
Speaker 1: I just wasn't a nickname. She was like, call me lady. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got people like uh Mademoiselle lenormand you know,
Speaker 1: like people who not that Mademoiselle is not just a
Speaker 1: normal French uh courtesy title. But you've got people who
Speaker 1: are really playing up there, like mystical associations. And but
Speaker 1: she really was a lady. But yeah, she and Alistair
Speaker 1: Crowley had this fascinating correspondence, and they were total buds
Speaker 1: and BFFs uh. In one letter she told him to
Speaker 1: basically shut up. She's tired of being his bank. And listen, Crowley,
Speaker 1: your notes for these illustrations are terrible. You're so stupid.
Speaker 1: But if you go through their letters and read them,
Speaker 1: they're very close. They're both in this mystical secret society
Speaker 1: and they talk so much about issues of these secret
Speaker 1: societies and knowledge and truth and religion and all of
Speaker 1: this great stuff, and they were very, very close. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like Kristen said, it's crazy to think that she was
Speaker 1: doing these paintings over five whole years, where Coleman Smith
Speaker 1: had to smush it into six months. And listeners, you
Speaker 1: have to google image the Fouth Deck if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it already, because the art is wild. Harris used
Speaker 1: projected synthetic geometry to create these almost like Salvador Dolly
Speaker 1: esque paintings or illustrations, I should say. And then he
Speaker 1: really do look like something out of a sci fi book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they really do look like Because I was looking at
Speaker 1: the cards and I was like, why do they look
Speaker 1: familiar to me? Because they look exactly like contemporary sci
Speaker 1: fi illustrations, like that early sci fi stuff you see
Speaker 1: on book covers. I think though, if I had, if
Speaker 1: I ever tried to use the Fowth deck, I would
Speaker 1: just get really confused and tired because the illustrations are
Speaker 1: so abstract. Yeah yes, yeah. And whereas um Coleman Smith's
Speaker 1: illustrations were sort of grounded in that fifteenth century Italian deck,
Speaker 1: uh FREDA. Harris's illustrations were just I mean, they were
Speaker 1: definitely a joint project between her and Crowley, like he
Speaker 1: gave her plenty of feedback. It almost reads like a
Speaker 1: graphic designer client email thread going back and forth. But
Speaker 1: her illustrations were off the chart, I mean, they were
Speaker 1: something totally different. So obviously, taro today still plays a
Speaker 1: huge role in divination, in connections with the occult, but
Speaker 1: also just in people's day to day lives seeking meaning
Speaker 1: or maybe seeking some some insight into the world around them.
Speaker 1: But sociologist Mike's Hysteric, who we mentioned earlier, has nothing
Speaker 1: nice to say. He's not into that at all. He's
Speaker 1: really concerned about how easily people today have taken up
Speaker 1: tarot ideology that has roots in those Masonic societies, which
Speaker 1: he said are so problematic because those groups are based
Speaker 1: in classist, racist, and sexist traditions. He says that those
Speaker 1: groups not only barred people's participation, women, people of color,
Speaker 1: people of lower classes, but they also borrow heavily and
Speaker 1: appropriate from histories and traditions that aren't there. So are
Speaker 1: Tarot cards an example of cultural appropriation according to the sociologist, Yeah, wow, well,
Speaker 1: and he also admits that not only Tarot, but religion
Speaker 1: in general persists to fulfill that basic human need of
Speaker 1: explained the world around you and kind of relieving our anxieties.
Speaker 1: So I mean there is a method to our madness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's why things like the Goddess movement that we
Speaker 1: talked about in our Witchcraft episode can be so powerful.
Speaker 1: They fill a vacuum that need for spiritual fulfillment and
Speaker 1: they reframed the normal patriarchal structure to one focusing on women.
Speaker 1: I mean, similarly, you have Tarot decks from the eighties,
Speaker 1: I believe, like theist Tara which was created by Ruth West,
Speaker 1: and that's exclusively feminine focused and non traditional with exclusively
Speaker 1: women on the card, some of which are renamed. And
Speaker 1: then you've got the more recent she is sitting in
Speaker 1: The Night Tarot Book, which is a more recent feminist
Speaker 1: lesbian tarot book. So you've got stuff that's grounded in
Speaker 1: patriarchal Masonic traditions but being reclaimed. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I can say reclaimed, but being claimed by women in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century who are pointing it in a
Speaker 1: totally different direction. Yeah. I mean, I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to say that a lot of millennial feminists are totally
Speaker 1: into tarot. There was even we even have a trend
Speaker 1: piece to back up our observations. There's a whole thing
Speaker 1: in Newsweek about it, and they related to how organized
Speaker 1: religion has declined. Our participation has declined among the millennial generation,
Speaker 1: especially according to a Pew study. Um and the millennials
Speaker 1: that Newsweek interviewed said that astrology and tarot are their
Speaker 1: favorite super natural tools for combating essentially existential angst. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what I was doing in the seventh grade. I
Speaker 1: guess there's some theories. Susan Miller, who's an astrologer, tells
Speaker 1: Newsweek that astrology, for instance, has a very firm structure,
Speaker 1: and a couple of the people that Newsweek talked to
Speaker 1: young women specifically were like, yeah, you know what, it
Speaker 1: helps me clarify feelings, my feelings about my uncertain future.
Speaker 1: It helps me reduce a little bit of that recession anxiety.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, they talked to one woman who not
Speaker 1: only used it to alleviate her recession anxiety, but because
Speaker 1: she was out of a job, she used tarot to
Speaker 1: make money, similar to Jessica Crispin. So lots of stuff
Speaker 1: wrapped up in that capitalistic tradition that's passed down from
Speaker 1: the Freemasons. Yeah, and and yet the thing that I
Speaker 1: haven't seen an uptick in is elite dudes or just
Speaker 1: dudes in general picking up the tarot deck casually. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's another thing that's been feminized in people's minds,
Speaker 1: that that's some silly magic stuff that old crones do. Well.
Speaker 1: I'm very curious now to hear from listeners with knowledge
Speaker 1: of a tarot or any kind of interaction. If we
Speaker 1: have any tarot readers listening, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
Speaker 1: email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple
Speaker 1: of messages to share with you right now. I have
Speaker 1: a let her here from Isabella. She starts it off
Speaker 1: by saying, in the voice of the worm from Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: Hello ladies, Hello Isabella, She says, I haven't even finished
Speaker 1: your podcasts on adult acne, but I had to get
Speaker 1: in touch to encourage other listeners to get their hormones
Speaker 1: checked if they suddenly develop acne in their twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: As a clear skinned teen growing up, I was immensely
Speaker 1: relieved that I didn't have to deal with chronic acne
Speaker 1: like some of my friends. Don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: got the odd spot, but it was never anything worth
Speaker 1: complaining about, and so I traversed my teenage years worrying
Speaker 1: about periods, boys, extra hair, and all those other lovely
Speaker 1: symptoms of puberty bar acne, for which I was very grateful.
Speaker 1: Fast forward a few years to the age of twenty two,
Speaker 1: working in London alone and a stressful job with a
Speaker 1: terrible boss, and suddenly spots spots everywhere. At first I
Speaker 1: put this down to stress and some kind of karmit
Speaker 1: come up in but as the months passed and endless
Speaker 1: topical treatments failed, I went into a really, really dark place,
Speaker 1: something I can only see with him. Side After quitting
Speaker 1: my job in a blaze of glory, I took my
Speaker 1: mom's advice and went to an indo chronologist who diagnosed
Speaker 1: me with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is fairly common one
Speaker 1: in ten and results in a higher androgen level in
Speaker 1: the blood than normal, which, as you said in your podcast,
Speaker 1: causes the devil dots. I was put on Yasmin straight away,
Speaker 1: and six months later my skin had cleared up. I'm
Speaker 1: twenty seven now. Side note, I switched from Yasmin to
Speaker 1: another birth control brand due to questions regarding Yasmin's safety,
Speaker 1: and I'm still grateful when I look in the mirror
Speaker 1: and don't see spots. As you always say, hormones control
Speaker 1: everything in your body, and no amount of face washing
Speaker 1: and topical ointments will change what is going on inside
Speaker 1: of you, even if for peace of mind, get your
Speaker 1: hormones checked out if you developed severe adult acne. If
Speaker 1: it is pcos, it's amazingly easy to treat, and it's
Speaker 1: made a huge difference to my self image. You both
Speaker 1: do a great job, and my boyfriend and I look
Speaker 1: forward to listening to more of your podcasts while I
Speaker 1: deal with some of his occasional spots. Yet, Kristen, other
Speaker 1: couples do that as well, So it's thank you Isabella. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got a letter here from our about our anal
Speaker 1: sex episode. She writes, I was so delighted to listen
Speaker 1: to your podcast on the topic of anal sex. I've
Speaker 1: had a variety of first and experiences, both positive and negative.
Speaker 1: As a teenager, I had an underwhelming first experience with
Speaker 1: a high school boyfriend, and shortly afterward experienced an older
Speaker 1: lover pressuring me to try again. It was when I
Speaker 1: was in my early twenties and in a long term
Speaker 1: relationship with someone that I was comfortable enough to be
Speaker 1: with two sexually explore that I became one of those
Speaker 1: who not only has anal often, but absolutely loves it. Well,
Speaker 1: of course, it isn't for everyone. I found it so
Speaker 1: enjoyable and intimate, and I've certainly found it improving my
Speaker 1: ability to orgasm. I was recently talking about this with
Speaker 1: my best friend, and we've discussed how we each feel
Speaker 1: confident and like we have full agency over our sexuality
Speaker 1: when we performed this act. It was so great to
Speaker 1: be able to listen to a whole podcast about this
Speaker 1: activity that we both love, and it would be a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing if everyone who wants to try could do
Speaker 1: so in a comfortable and enjoyable way. As you said,
Speaker 1: the statistics on just how many teenagers have such negative
Speaker 1: experiences is a strong testament to how vital comprehensive sex
Speaker 1: education is. This is something I have found over and
Speaker 1: over again in the UK. When I was pressured to
Speaker 1: comply as a teenager, I had never been told that
Speaker 1: I had agency to say no, and I remember over
Speaker 1: hearing girls at school discussing stories much like the ones
Speaker 1: related in the podcast. I'm about to start working with
Speaker 1: therapists within my old high school to improve the sex
Speaker 1: education and I've definitely got a huge amount of information
Speaker 1: from Sminthy. Thank you guys so much for all the
Speaker 1: amazing work you do. Listening to you always makes me smile,
Speaker 1: so thanks so much, our and thanks everybody who's written
Speaker 1: into us. Moms Stuff at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: is our email address and for links to all of
Speaker 1: our social media as well as all of our blogs,
Speaker 1: videos and podcasts with links to our sources. So you
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