I've had a Tarot reading only once (seems I couldn't resist the magnetic pull of Madame Anna and her card table setup - Venice Beach - circa 1991), but I am a long-time fan of Tarot art. These images from Emmanuel Polanco are some of the most fantastic and beautiful interpretations of Tarot symbolism that I've ever seen.
Tarot (Tar-oh) is a system of symbolical images. Whatever their original significance, the cards have been used since they first surfaced as much for divinatory purposes as for trick-taking card games*. Tarot is currently used as tool for reflection on one's personal life, as well as an aid to meditation. Tarot is normally embodied in a deck of 78 cards, similar to a regular set of playing cards. In the English speaking world, Tarot is widely seen as a form of cartomancy**.
In France, Tarot is most often employed as a trick-taking card game. The game has long been regarded as taboo, due to obscure associations that predate its 19th-century occult associations. Roman Catholic sermons inveighing against the evil inherent in playing cards can be traced to the 14th century.
* any one of a class of card games where play centers around a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks.
** fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards.
:emmanuel polanco
10.01.2008
tarot of marseille
