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World Tarot Day: decks and tarot readers united under the mystery of this oracle

2023-05-25T10:01:20.723Z

Highlights: World Tarot Day was established in 2003 to celebrate the tarot as an oracle. Marianne Costa, Dalia Walker and Jimena Balado spoke with Clarín about their favorite tarot decks. Costa: "The tarot, as a'mouth that speaks the truth' is an oracles that tries to help answer questions" Walker: "Tarot is a tool for self-knowledge, it is all contained in a deck" Balado: "It's a tool to help you understand yourself and the world around you"


The Marseille mallet or the Rider-Waite? Marianne Costa, Dalia Walker and Jimena Balado explain who their favorite is and why.


Tarot has captivated painters, sculptors, tarot readers and authors alike. With the richness and depth of their symbolic language, the 78 letters have been reinterpreted, read, transformed and treasured countless times around the world. Making known the magnitude of the deck as an oracle has been the reason why World Tarot Day was established in 2003.

The idea came from tarot reader Den Elder, who told the American Tarot Association in 2009 that her goal was "at least once a year, to stop and consider the tarot as a valuable instrument of personal and spiritual growth."

Twenty years later, World Tarot Day has, above all, a great diffusion in English-speaking sites and, for several hours, on the Internet the art of the deck is discussed, debated and celebrated.

Just as the Elder pointed out in that interview that her favorite deck was the Tarot of the Old Path (Tarot of the Old Path, in English) and the Universal tarot of Waite, one of the variations of the famous Rider – Waite deck.

World Tarot Day seeks to show it as a valuable instrument of personal and spiritual growth. Photo illustration Shutterstock.

Closer to our borders, Clarín spoke with three tarot readers about the scope of this date, the unfathomable mystery that lives in each roll and what is their favorite deck.

Marianne Costa: the master of the masters and her love for the tarot of Marseille

Marianne Costa: tarot reader, researcher, writer and great master of the tarot. Photo: Mona Boitiere.

The list of the most recognized tarot readers worldwide is headed by Marianne Costa. Called by many as "the master of the masters of the tarot", for more than three decades this French writer and tarot reader has investigated the deck from all possible angles: as an oracle, as a game, as a historical diversion, as a tool for self-knowledge.

From Italy, where he is now giving a workshop on the deck at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, he spoke with Clarín about the anniversary, his projects and his favorite decks.

"The wonder of the tarot for me, among many things, is its relational aspect: you can relate it to painting, to poetry, to dance, to gastronomy, to feminism, to queerness, it is all contained in a deck," he said. Costa reflected on the tarot as an oracle and explained, "The tarot, as a 'mouth that speaks the truth' is an oracle that tries to help answer questions."

Marianne Costa created together with Ana Groch and a collective of Argentine artists "El Tarot del Tango" in 2022. Here Osvaldo Pugliese as The Hermit, designed by Pablo Lobato. (Pablo Lobato)

The favorite deck of the author of The Tarot Step by Step (Grijalbo) is the tarot of Marseille by Pierre Madenié, created in 1709, which she uses as a model in the book. In Costa's opinion, the fact that the genesis of the tarot was a board game is one of the most interesting aspects of the deck.

The National Museum of Zurich, in Switzerland, keeps one of the copies of that deck and, in its blog, explains that the Tarot game "Troggen" became popular in the eighteenth century, especially in Solothurn, a commune located just over 30 kilometers from Bern, the capital of the country.

As he has said in previous interviews, Costa chooses as his favorite the tarot "type 2", characterized by representing the Arcanum XXI, The World, under the figure of a leaning on one foot.

In addition to this transportable deck, the French writer mentioned two decks that also top her list right now. The first is a "fluid genre" tarot that he is developing in collaboration with the Italian artist Alessandra Spagnoli, reinterpreting the iconography of the Marseillais. The second, a human-sized black and white replica of the major arcana that is part of the creative laboratory of contemporary dance that Costa performs with choreographer Agostina D'Alessandro in Brussels, Belgium.

In the background, the black and white replicas of the major arcana in one of the contemporary dance laboratories of Agostina D'Alessandro and Marianne Costa. (Courtesy of instagram Marianne Costa and Agostina D'alessandro)

"My dream is to be able to project the Triunfos in large buildings in Buenos Aires, Brussels, Rome ...", said Costa, while facing different editorial projects that, according to him, will bring her back to Argentina at the end of the year. In any case, he added that the size is not an inconvenience and that, as a nomadic sage, the format of mini-type mallets is also among his favorites.

Dalia Walker: the renowned tarot reader and "witchfluencer" about the historical decks

Dalia Walker poses with a replica of Arcanum III, The Empress according to the deck of the tarot of Marseille. (Courtesy of Dalia Walker. Photo: Vale Martins).

Dalia Walker, tarot teacher, podcaster and author of several books such as the bestsellerModern Witch (Monoblock), tells Clarín how she became one of the most recognized tarot readers. For Walker—who admits to not being very adept at ephemeris—, more than a World Tarot Day, "the day of the tarot for me is every day."


When talking about her decks, the tarot reader recalled: "My first deck was the Egyptian tarot, actually I started reading the tarot because I gave the tarot deck to a friend for the birthday. I had been connecting with the desire of the tarot, but it did not enter, the tarot scared me, I dreamed of the cards, I found cards in the street, I found cards in a house when I went to do an energy cleaning and my friend wanted to learn and I accompanied her and there I began to learn and I loved it. "

When it comes to decks, the Tarot of Marseille is the one chosen by the author. In fact, he was the one he used as the axis of work in his book The tarot as a key (Grijalbo) and the one he teaches at Escuela FE, the academy he directs. "The tarot of Marseille is the first deck, that's where all the other decks come from. The Rider-Waite is a more current deck. Marseille is super powerful, very powerful," he explained.

Dalia Walker at this year's Book Fair signing copies and doing quick readings of the Marseille tarot with the public. (Courtesy of Dalia Walker)

Walker added that right now his interest in historical decks has also grown, so much so that he incorporated them into the academy shop. These are exact reproductions of mallets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. "They look half blurred, with the colors of that time, and it seems to me that being in 2023 reading with a deck from 1700 is like traveling back in time."

When asked about some favorite arcane, he said that "they are changing because when I 'marry' one I live the experience thoroughly and then other things happen, I change all the time, that's why I never tattooed a card, the one I like a lot now is Temperance -the Arcanum XIIII-, I am connected with that card, I'm in a healing process and that letter works with that."

Jimena Balado: the tarot reader and collector "saturnina" and the deck that the sister with Anya Taylor-Joy

Jimena Balado: "The tarot has to do with traditional stories, with literature, with philosophy". (Courtesy of Jimena Balado)

For Walker and Costa the tarot of Marseille is the chosen one. But the Rider-Waite also has its followers. Jimena Balado (34), tarot reader for 17 years, told this media how were her first steps in the world of the deck and why she decided on the deck that Pamela Colman Smith illustrated for the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn in 1909.

"My first encounter with the tarot was from a very skeptical place, I am Capricorn, Moon in Aquarius, Mercury in Aquarius, I am very saturnina," he said when recalling a bad experience in an almost fortuitous first reading when he was 17 years old. A short time later, the mother of her then-boyfriend invited her to learn with her.

Balado began to enter the world of tarot and when he read Jung and the Tarot, by Sallie Nichols, he not only thought of himself as a consultant "so that they would not read it badly in the future", but as a tarot reader. "After several re-readings, I said wow, the tarot is not like a list of meanings or keywords, it has to do with traditional tales, with literature, with philosophy, it is transcultural, transreligious, it is very impressive and very deep and I said to myself: 'it would be good to investigate it further'".

The 34-year-old tarot reader began learning with the Marseille tarot, which her first teacher managed, but then opted for the Rider-Waite. "To me the Marseille tarot still seems as little accessible, because the minor arcana, 70% of the deck, has the representations of the suits distributed by the card, on a white background ... It was difficult for me and at that time I discovered that there were other decks that proposed other things with characters, with scenes, with actions, and that's when I found the Rider-Waite, which is the one I read today, "he said.

Balado, with a collection of more than 170 decks, uses the Rider-Waite tarot in his readings. (Courtesy of Jimena Balado)

Today, Balado is known for its Instagram user @saturninatarot and with a community of more than 6 thousand followers, shows, unpacks and reviews dozens of decks that come to its hands. He now has a collection of around 170 decks.

Currently one of the most used in his consultations in the centennial edition of the Rider-Smith, which qualifies as his "workhorse" and as an "unsurpassed" deck. "The tarot with which I read comes from a very esoteric tradition, it is crossed by the Golden Dawn, by astrology, by cabal, by ceremonial magic, by Freemasonry and it blew my mind," he said. As he opted for the deck illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, he was self-taught for several years.

Secondly, he chooses Morgan Greer among his favorites. "That deck was half revolutionary because it was the first deck that existed that did not have white edges the image, the color and the image reached the edges of the card."

The third is the Golden Art Nouveau, a deck that reworks the archetypes of the Rider-Waite and that gained a lot of attention when actress Anya Taylor-Joy showed it as one of the must-have objects in her bag during an interview with Vogue Mexico in 2021.

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy said in an interview that she reads the tarot and carries the Golden Art Nouveau deck with her. (Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images via AFP)

Balado explains that two of his favorite arcana are Arcanum VIIII, The Hermit, the card that corresponds to him by his date of birth; the Arcanum XVIII, the Moon, and of the minor arcana the Queen of Pentacles, also called Queen of Wands, who has tattooed.

It is that the tarot summons connoisseurs, artists, researchers, tarot readers and consultants alike. Whether with one deck or the other, the 78 arcana provide answers to the big questions and are there, at your fingertips.

See also

Tarot and cinema: the Russian artist who drew the 22 arcana inspired by "The Lord of the Rings"

The hidden history of Pamela Colman Smith, the great forgotten tarot artist

An Argentine sculptor carved the 22 arcana in wood: "The tarot commissioned me to carve it"

Origins of the tarot: the history of ancient knowledge and the challenges to interpret it

Source: clarin

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