Mountain Dream; Parq magazine

[Le Fanu]

As some of you may know, my partner is director of a magazine here in Lisbon; art, architecture, fashion, design etc. I have written an article this month all about Bea Nettles' Mountain Dream Tarot. I often do articles and he kindly lets me indulge myself and do tarot ones ocassionally . Some of you may remember the article we did on the Magic Realist Press at around the time the BG was launched.

It's all part of my quest to see tarot design/ graphic design of tarot, in magazines alongside other forms of contemporary design and artwork!

Unfortunately the article is in Portuguese (sorry folks!) but you'll be able to get an idea of the graphic style. I do have an English translations which I can try and post but - to be honest - I'm amazed that I was able to post this jpg of the original without being told it was too big! Not sure if I'll be able to post the English version but will try...

Basically, I write about the 1960´s artistic community spirit round Penland Art School where the deck was shot, and its place in late 60s/early 70s occult counterculture. Bea was very helpful and we had a nice exchange of emails and she let me ask all kinds of question about the creation of the deck, the artistic process involved and her life at that time.

I think this deck is a serious milestone in tarot deck creation and it's odd to see it so rarely mentioned here.

Special thanks are also in order to cardlady22 who got me a copy of the deck and which - when I had it in my hands - made me feel it really deserved a reappraisal in terms of its design and concept.

 

[Le Fanu]

Done it! Here's the English version...

 

[moderndayruth]

It seems to be a great text! I'll post more when i finish reading the whole thing - i missed your second post and actually was making my way through the article with babelfish... its readable actually, though the finesse is lost.

"In astronomical terms, the Age of Aquarium happens all the 2160 years and marks the end e start of a new cycle of the rotation of the land. When BEA NETTLES entered in the age adult, this místico knowledge was interiorizado in popular culture e, she stops certain communities, this Age represented a chance of deep changes of mentality. Thus, some had considered new social organizations, with one level of allotment never until then existing. For THEODORE ROSZAK, historian specialized in the against-cultures, these místicos subjects had reached the height in the end of years 60, beginning of the decade of 70. The sufficiently popular I-ching and Tarot were e, curiously, in 1967, popular mago ALEISTER CROWLEY appeared in the layer of the album of the BEATLES, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts club Band, to the side of figures as EDGAR ALLAN POE or CARL JUNG."

 

[Hedera]

That's a lovely article!

It's a great deck I think; very much a personification of a certain time for me.

I like to use it in the summer, there's something very light and refreshing about it somehow.

 

[Le Fanu]

"In astronomical terms, the Age of Aquarium happens all the 2160 years and marks the end e start of a new cycle of the rotation of the land. When BEA NETTLES entered in the age adult, this místico knowledge was interiorizado in popular culture e, she stops certain communities, this Age represented a chance of deep changes of mentality. Thus, some had considered new social organizations, with one level of allotment never until then existing. For THEODORE ROSZAK, historian specialized in the against-cultures, these místicos subjects had reached the height in the end of years 60, beginning of the decade of 70. The sufficiently popular I-ching and Tarot were e, curiously, in 1967, popular mago ALEISTER CROWLEY appeared in the layer of the album of the BEATLES, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts club Band, to the side of figures as EDGAR ALLAN POE or CARL JUNG."

ooops! Goodness! Do people actually use Babelfish to extract information?

 

[Hedera]

ooops! Goodness! Do people actually use Babelfish to extract information?

It's like an oracle, really.

 

[moderndayruth]

ooops! Goodness! Do people actually use Babelfish to extract information?

Yes! But i more or less understand Portuguese anyway, so this was just to double check everything. (I moved in with two Portuguese and one Brazilian flatmates after my Italian studies, willingly or not - i ended up with passive knowledge of Portuguese. )

 

[zan_chan]

Well done, LF. Very intriguing article. Excellent to see tarot existing outside the tarot world.

(And Google Translate seemed to work well enough...Though my French did help a bit in understanding the wonky sections..)

 

[cardlady22]

Bravo, Le Fanu! My only regret is that I cannot read it (or hear it read) in your language!

I think you expressed the "environment" of this deck quite beautifully.

 

[Teheuti]

Wonderful article, Le Fanu. You really evoke the period and give us a sense of Bea. A mutual friend, Dorothy Kannon, gave me a copy of the deck in 1975. I was amazed with what Bea Nettles had created.