{"id":13945,"date":"2025-02-24T20:35:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T03:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13945"},"modified":"2025-02-24T20:35:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T03:35:22","slug":"a-cookbook-for-tarot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13945","title":{"rendered":"A ‘Cookbook’ for Tarot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was in college and learning to cook, I looked at a lot of cookbooks — books owned by my friends who were “foodies” avant la lettre<\/em>. But the trouble with cookbooks is that they were one self-contained recipe after another.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“What I need,” I thought, “was a ‘process’ cookbook. It would say something like, ‘Here is What Makes a Cream Soup.’ And then it would offer suggestions on how you could make a cream soup with mushrooms or mourning doves — or whatever.” Instead of just giving This Recipe and then That Recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, I did encounter such a cookbook, but I am here not to talk about it but about Rhyd Widlermuth\u2019s A People\u2019s Guide to Tarot: A Primer for Everyone<\/em><\/a>, which to my mind does much the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wildermuth has taken a sort of \u201cprocess\u201d approach that many authors do not. He begins with the \u201cinner logic\u201d or grammar of the Tarot, its cycles and its narratives. And he notes how the aces, twos, threes, fours, etc. of each suit represent similar stages in the world of that suit, each being one of the four archetypal element<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Sixes are really nice cards, primarily because they speak to the period of growth and the success that comes after we face and resolve the crisis of the fives.

The esoteric meaning of the sevens is that the represent the introduction of the spiritual or external into the six earthly planes. A simpler way of putting this is that they\u2019re what happens when an unknown complicates everything that we thought we knew.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And then he offers a page of text about each card, much like the “little white books” that come with most decks, or like any number of guidebooks, but more approachable than many of those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, I like the messiness of the Tarot. I like that fact that it combines an Indo-European four-element system with with a Renaissance symbology (the major Arcana) that speaks of the subtle survival of Pagan elements in the 15th\u201316th centuries when when they were preserved by masquerade\u2014or LARPing if you prefer. (For more on that, read Joscelyn Godwin’s The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance<\/a>. <\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Golden Dawn-style magicians who tried to hammer and pry the cards into congruence with the Hebrew alphabet or some other system just did violence to the Tarot, which is motherless and fatherless and owes no deference to anyone. Maybe in that sense it is “the people’s.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in college and learning to cook, I looked at a lot of cookbooks — books owned by my friends who were “foodies” avant la lettre. But the trouble with cookbooks is that they were one self-contained recipe after another. “What I need,” I thought, “was a ‘process’ cookbook. It would say something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[159],"class_list":["post-13945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tarot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3CV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11873,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11873","url_meta":{"origin":13945,"position":0},"title":"How Makers and Creators Might Price Their Work","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"When I graduated from college, I owned three Tarot decks: the Rider-Waite\/Pamela Coleman Smith deck (of course), the Marseilles deck (for history), and David Palladini's Aquarian Tarot (well, it fit my personal aesthetic at the time). This is fun, I thought, I should collect more Tarot decks. And then the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"King of Cups Tarot Card","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Palladini-King-of-Cups.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5867,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5867","url_meta":{"origin":13945,"position":1},"title":"Tarot Cards \u2014\u00a0They Are for Catholics Too","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Thomas L. McDonald, Patheos' \"Technology | Culture | Catholicism\" blogger has a five-part series on the history of the Tarot cards. It starts here. The real history of the Tarot, however, begins in the early 15th century in Italy, and their story is an important part of gaming and cultural\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10222,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10222","url_meta":{"origin":13945,"position":2},"title":"A North American Tarot Deck","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"This would make a nice bookend to the American Renaissance Tarot \u2014 Emi Brady's North American Tarot. For more than a decade, Denver artist and printmaker Emi Brady toyed with the idea of her own tarot card deck. She \u201cwasn\u2019t ready\u201d until more recently. \u201cTechnically, I wasn\u2019t ready and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/cpr-swolf_brady-tarot_dsc6869.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8366","url_meta":{"origin":13945,"position":3},"title":"Thinking How the Tarot Smuggled Paganism to the Present","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In my twenties, the Tarot was about the most \"occult\" thing around that I could bring out in public settings. I learned to read the cards semi-competently and had some adventures thereby. When I made it through an evening of reading for casual strangers in a nightclub, I figured that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0715645722","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8581,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8581","url_meta":{"origin":13945,"position":4},"title":"A Haitian Take on the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Members of a Haitian artists' group are re-creating the Tarot designs of Pamela Coleman Smith, otherwise known as the Rider-Waite Deck. Photographed by Alice Smeets, they are calling it the Ghetto Tarot. They have lots of machetes to substitute for swords. Information on crowd-funding and purchase here.","rel":"","context":"In \"Haiti\"","block_context":{"text":"Haiti","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=haiti"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/nine_of_cups_tarot_465_465_353_int-300x228.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14029,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14029","url_meta":{"origin":13945,"position":5},"title":"Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"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 \u2013\u00a078 of them, to be precise. I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Tarot\"","block_context":{"text":"Tarot","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=tarot"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/eden-gray-doctor-x.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13945"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13951,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13945\/revisions\/13951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}