I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props – 78 of them, to be precise.
I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before I encountered the Tarot, The former probably matches the last year of high school, when I was being educated in these things by a 20-year-old from North Beach (San Francisco), who became a sort of honorary big sister, and when all “alternative” spiritual practices came from the East.1
I finally touched Tarot cards as a college freshman, eventually buying my own pack, which given the options of the time was of course the “Rider Tarot” (today better called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck), from Samuel Weiser, Inc. It came with the obligatory “little white book,” but of course a student soon wants more. The most accessible how-to book at the time was Eden Gray’s The Tarot Revealed, which was matched with that deck. She included a section on Tarot meditation, but essentially this was a bigger, better version of the little white book.
That name “Eden Gray” sounded like a pseudonym through: an unusual first name balanced with a plain English last name. I did not think much about it; I wanted the “woo,” not the history. My wish list included reading in a night club, and I did it — once — it went OK but I was not asked back. A slow midweek night, what can I say? And then other things like grad school got in the way.
Mary K. Greer, the grande dame of American Tarot, wrote a short piece about Eden Gray in 2008 (they knew each other). As Priscilla Pardridge she was the good-lookingl daughter of a well-off Chicago businessman. Born in 1901, she defied Daddy’s wishes and ran off to the bright lights of Broadway. She was a reasonably successful actress on the stage, in radio, and a few movies,2 before taking a metaphysical turn in the middle age. (You may have heard that narrative before.)
Mary Greer writes,
Eden Gray ran a bookstore and publishing company called “Inspiration House,” one of the few places where a person could buy tarot cards and take tarot classes in the late 1950s and ’60s. Her customers complained that the available books were not easy to understand, so she spent weekends in the country coming up with a more accessible way of approaching the cards.
Read the rest at Greer’s blog: “Eden Gray’s Fool’s Journey.“
Time passed, and I bought some other books too, getting more interested in the history of the cards. But when my paperback copy of The Tarot Revealed wore out, I bought another one, just out of loyalty/
Mary Greer certainly and deeply knows her Tarot. She taught me a lot through her books and website.
As an undergraduate, the first Tarot deck I ever purchased was David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot. I appreciated that artwork. It was probably early days in the proliferation of themed Tarot decks. O My Fandom!
I learned about Tarot reading using John and Caitlin Matthews’ Arthurian Tarot and the year and a day workbook they also developed to go along with it. That’s the one I consult.
The Palladini deck was the second one I bought, I think, when I began to fantasize about collecting decks as a twenty-something. And then the deluge hit, and I realized that I would have to rent an apartment with a bedroom just for Tarot storage. So I think I stopped at five or so. Maybe I should locate all of them and put them on one bookshelf.
I think as an actor, Reagan was better-matched, both intellectually and talent-wise, with his on-screen partner in “Bedtime for Bonzo” — and no, I don’t mean Diana Lynn!
Now there, along with Universal’s “Revenge of the Creature,” are two really detailed, utterly realistic, in-depth, carefully researched fictitious depictions of how humans practiced Skinnerian, behaviorist psychology in the 1950’s!
Without much success, I hasten to add.