fiction writer needs to consult tarot expert
Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 08 Jun 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.
| Aitana |
08 Jun 2005 |
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Hello, tarot enthusiasts. I'm new to this forum and to the topic of tarot cards. I have a few specific questions for people with expert tarot knowledge who might be willing to (briefly!) help a novelist create a few plausible scenes. My character is a Basque woman of humble means who takes care of a girl in a wealthy Madrid family. The time period is the 1950s. This woman loves the little girl she takes care of and worries about her future. She has tarot cards that she secretly does readings from to try to assess the girl's future. She does maybe three readings as the girl grows older, once when she's an infant, once when she's five or six, and another when she's 11 or 12. Each time, the cards show a troubling/ominous future for the girl (who will end up betraying her cousin/best friend in her early 20s and joining forces with an evil man.)
I need some advice about what type of deck the woman would use, since apparently the Basque and Spanish decks weren't published in Spain until the 1970s/early 1980s. I also need a little advice about the card reading scenarios. I will probably want to describe a few of the cards she lays out in the last, troubling reading. I don't need a ton of details, but just a few historically accurate/plausible details to help me write some convincing scenes. Please forgive me my total ignorance about tarot cards! Any or all advice you'd like to give me on this is welcome. Thanks for your time.
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| Ross G Caldwell |
08 Jun 2005 |
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Hello Aitana,
I think a Basque woman of the 1950s would probably have used regular playing cards to tell the future - either of the Spanish or French type - rather than tarot cards. Everybody and every region plays and reads regular cards, while tarot has never been popular in the west of France or in Spain. I mean tarot "the game", which is how the cards got around, before the popularization of divination in the 1960s and especially the 1970s. The 1950s is a tough choice, if you insist on tarot cards being present in your story in Basque country or Madrid.
But if you need to have tarot cards in your story, I would suggest the Paul Marteau "Tarot de Marseille", which was first published in 1930 and quickly became the standard European occult deck.
If you want something more exotic, perhaps a 19th or early 20th century Etteilla deck - although many don't consider them "tarot" decks in the strict sense (since they don't have the usual subjects).
But I think it would be plausible to suggest just about anything, if you can show how the deck ended up in her hands - either by a relative or in a bookstore in Biarritz or Vittoria (the Heraclio Fournier museum of playing cards is in this northern Spanish city) - as long as the deck existed by the 1950s.
This is just for the historical plausibility as far as I know it. For the details of the readings you need, I must humbly defer to my betters in that department.
Ross
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| Grizabella |
08 Jun 2005 |
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Try reading some books by Raymond Buckland. His grandmother used a unique deck she made partly with playing cards and partly of her own making. He's written books that tell of that and I think it would be a good research tool for you. I think he even once published a deck based on the one she made. It's not the more recent Buckland Romani deck, though. It's one he put out before that and I don't remember the name of it. I think that would be what I'd use as part of my research if it were me, and I'm a writer too, so we have that in common. :)
If Raymond isn't his first name, I'm sure someone will correct me. It's a little early in the morning and pre-coffee for me.
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| lunalafey |
08 Jun 2005 |
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I'm no expert on decks, but it looks like you have some pretty good suggestions. I liked the playing cards idea, for they are easily accessable.
As far as the three readings go-
First there needs to be a layout of the cards. The first experience with 'tarot' was actually with playing cards (cartomancy). The cards where layed out 3 or 4 rows of 6 or 7 cards each. Each row told some sort of story.
That is probably alot of cards to deal with in a book. I was thinking three rows of three. In most tarot spreads each card has a positional meaning. Self/person, enviroment, attitudes, outcome, foundation, past, present future, mind, body, soul. Again I go back to my first experience. The rows had no meaning, it was just the cards and how they interacted with each other.
who will end up betraying her cousin/best friend in her early 20s and joining forces with an evil man.)
Some cards that could apply to what you have told of the story
Knight of Swords, Page of Wands, Tower, Emperor, Devil.
But there needs to be more details as to why she does it, what she's thinking what she's feeling- specifics. Many cards speak of betrayal in some way. A few cards express evil persons. But what is the source or motivation? That narrows it down to a specific card.
Sounds like a fun thing; having a situation and making a layout to fit it, ooo all the possibilities! (then we could debate what cards are better and why!)
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| MeeWah |
08 Jun 2005 |
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I would recommend regular playing cards as they were (& are) widely available & the most likely for the circumstances mentioned.
Regular playing card meanings tend to differ from Tarot card meanings & can be peculiar according to the reader.
I am somewhat familiar with the late British psychic Maurice Woodruff's system of regular playing card meanings, most of which differ markedly from Tarot equivalents.
Recommend this site for information on the playing card meanings:
http://www.geocities.com/twelveofhearts/
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| Cerulean |
08 Jun 2005 |
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1. Given your question, perhaps the Basques would have used playing cards or a Sibilla?
2. R. Somerville has wonderful 'historical' decks. If the Basque woman for instance received as a gift such cards from a rich woman giving away her grandmother's trinkets or found some tourista tarot cards in a cafe from a rich flapper or debutee cruising through Madrid (a la Daisy Miller) -- that might describe a possible way a Basque countrywoman could get such things. The best that I know art deco steamship 'tarot' deck with French pips would be called now the Alan Tarot. It's actually a reproduction (authentic) of a 1910-style luxery giveaway from the Lloyd (?) Steamship lines and both the descriptions and double-ended courts/majors would help you develop the good/bad fortune scenario. It also looks like playing cards with the pips, but it's a tarot.
3. I thought you might want to avoid the Etteilla/pseudo-Egyptian tangles that overtake what should be a background subplot. But here's a stab at a summary if you do want to 'go there':
If any of them were in Italy, perhaps an Etteilla offshoot in Italian of the 1800s.
If in Paris or France, perhaps a Picquet deck of the 1700s and 1800s or an Etteilla--but please let us know a possible card acquisition date, because the Etteillas vary in the 1800s!
Grimaud of France supposedly bought Lismon in the 1890s according to one dealer of the 1880/1890 Lismons and put out their own Etteilla variations in the 1900s, 1930s, 1969. But the standard booklet from 1800 would have been a Julia Orsini "Grande Livre de Thoth" in French if the edition came out with a booklet. (I can correct this later if you need an exact title).
4. If the Basque woman came by way of England, the story gets even more interesting, depending on how she got the cards. That's a backstory for your character that might be a whole book in itself.
Best regards,
Cerulean
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| jmd |
09 Jun 2005 |
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I am only going to add a different kind of suggestion not because I disagree with the others (in fact, if the setting were in Basque country, I would personally also ask why you would even want her to use a Tarot instead of other deck), but because of the question that asks and already seems to want a Tarot deck to be included... and for the many of us who have a passion about Tarot, its use in myriad settings is wonderful.
I presume two things from your description of 'My character is a Basque woman of humble means who takes care of a girl in a wealthy Madrid family. The time period is the 1950s.'
The first (which of course need not be the case) is that she takes care of not only the girl in a wealthy Madrid family, but that the setting is in Madrid (after all, she could be looking after a girl in a wealthy Madrid family currently located in the Consulate in Paris, for example).
If the family in Madrid is indeed wealthy, perhaps the cards she uses are not her own, but a deck that forms part of a box of goodies in the attic or granary - which she only occasionally consults. This may have been a deck from earlier times, even perhaps even from an earlier Fournier made not long after their move from Paris to Spain as card-makers (in the late 1800s) - or even brought with them as a family issue from a hundred years before their move.
If such is the case, then there is no reason why it could not be a Marseille style - only that it would not have been called 'Marseille', but simply 'Tarot'.
A good feeling for what the deck may then have looked like would be as the Dodal (Cf Jean-Claude Flornoy's tarot-history.com site).
With regards to the readings showing that 'Each time, the cards show a troubling/ominous future for the girl (who will end up betraying her cousin/best friend in her early 20s and joining forces with an evil man)', part of the cards that may emerge will need to take into account why or how she 'joins forces with an evil man'. Of immediate possibility is that at least the Devil is one of those cards, combined, for betrayal, perhaps the Hanged Man or Lovers (which can also represent choice).
Of course, if you are going to name the cards, then you will possibly also have to at least have an idea either as to the spread used (perhaps seven cards in a row, as an example), and whether she chooses them after 'fanning' the deck in front of herself, or drawing them from the top of the stack (or one of three, for example, smaller stacks).
The 1950s Spain also was virtually a third world nation, with Franco's economic policies quite at odds with those from surrounding nations, and a deeply divided Spanish population between those who had astounding wealth, and those who would gain far more by even moving across their northern border and taking on menial tasks.
From what kind of background, then, did the Basque woman herself come - probably uneducated in the scholarly sense, but also, perhaps, with a rich familial tradition of past glory... I suppose I only mention these more as questions, as they may even impact on how she may even read the cards that emerge. For example, taking one of the cards above, she may very well see the Devil as reflecting the binding in which a person may find themselves in given the (then) current 'enslavement' of the population which eventually gave rise to political upheavals.
Anyhow... another too long a post of mine for a question that had possibly a far more straightforward and clear direction :)
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| Fulgour |
09 Jun 2005 |
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I also need a little advice about the card reading scenarios. I will probably want to describe a few of the cards she lays out in the last, troubling reading. You can discover a wealth of images
here, especially the Jean Dodal...
http://www.tarot-history.com/
And might not an imaginative Duenna
have travelled so as to acquire a Tarot?
For "ominous" cards here, perhaps see:
Le Bateleur, L'Empereur, Le Maison Dieu,
and quietly, inescapably, L'Hermite...
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| Alta |
09 Jun 2005 |
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"She does maybe three readings as the girl grows older, once when she's an infant, once when she's five or six, and another when she's 11 or 12. Each time, the cards show a troubling/ominous future for the girl (who will end up betraying her cousin/best friend in her early 20s and joining forces with an evil man.)"
You have had a wealth of information on decks. I was thinking over the spreads.
For a book, to keep it simple, honestly just three cards each time. It would be rather complex to explain more cards. And clearly you would want a progression because the future is not fixed at birth. Presumably key events occur which steer the child towards here end.
So for the baby you might want the reading to be starting out with her having good possibilities but with maybe just one card showing an ominous foreshadowing. Kind of depends on the plot.
For when she is 11 or 12, presumably some events have occurred to lead her towards the final action of betrayal so the cards should point to those and to the possible outcome and the last set should be completely ominous.
if you could give us some factors, perhaps we could suggest some specific cards.
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| closrapexa |
09 Jun 2005 |
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Just wanted to say that it is so refreshing to see a writer actually research the subject, and not do what so many other auther/movie,akers do, which is use a scare tactic and leave it at that. So many books and movies ahave shown only the Death card or the other "dramatic" cards and leave all us Tarotists chuckling at best, or indignant at worst.
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| Aitana |
09 Jun 2005 |
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To everyone who has responded to my query: I'm very grateful to you for your astute, generous and detailed reponses. Based on your advice, I will probably go with the regular playing cards, to keep things simple and plausible. Some of you pointed out the complex political situation in Spain (this period being post-Civil War, which resulted in widespread poverty and political repression by Franco) might affect my character's behavior and attitudes, especially since she's a Basque. Interestingly, while many Basques detested Franco--due to terrible events like the firebombing of Guernica, a Basque town--others managed relatively well, given that Basques ran several important industries whose profitability Franco welcomed, and thus the standard of living was well above the average in Basque areas.
Anyway, your responses also helped me decide to further simplify matters by having my character do just one card reading for the girl she takes care of. Here's my thought: she will offer to read the girl's fortune "just for fun" as her own grandmother used to do. Then, with the girl sitting across from her (and the girl's cousin, whom she'll later betray looking on), she'll lay out some cards. As she does so, she'll become nervous and agitated, but will try to hide her concern from the two girls. Nonetheless, it will become obvious to both girls that the cards foretell something dark in the girl's future, sufficiently troubling to worry the nanny a good deal.
Some of you suggested some card sequences, and/or attached links that might be useful...I'll definitely look into those. Feel free to make any other suggestions that occur to you. Gratefully, Aitana
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| Aitana |
09 Jun 2005 |
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A few people have sent me private emails, which I really appreciated and tried to send replies to, but was told they didn't transmit. So for people who send me private emails on this forum, please know that I probably won't be able to respond unless you also send me your private email address (which one person did, fortunately, so I was able to reply to that person.) Best, Aitana (problem may have to do with my wireless airport connection to the internet, but I'm not sure)
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The fiction writer needs to consult tarot expert thread was originally posted on 08 Jun 2005 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.
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