In volatile times, can tarot make your day?

By Howard Chua-Eoan

“Death is actually a good card,” said Carl, one of my companions at a small but potent exhibition of tarot cards at the Warburg Institute in Bloomsbury, London. We were gazing at the original early 1940s watercolor by Frieda Harris for a deck done to the specifications of Aleister Crowley, the infamous occult impresario (or grifter, if you heed his critics). It features a nimble grim reaper — painted in the vigorous industrial-style of Fortune magazine covers of the 1930s — on the verge of slicing a scythe through a web of threads attached to souls. The skeleton is unclothed, without the customary cowled robe, adorned only with a crown resembling that of Osiris, ruler of the ancient Egyptian underworld.

The card is a good omen among the 78 of a full tarot deck because it’s come to mean new beginnings and transformation rather than the grave and decay. On the other hand, Carl says, “the Nine of Swords is terrible.” Harris’ version of that card isn’t on the walls, but there is art from other decks depicting it — with all those threatening blades. They do look bleak, full of anxiety, paranoia and doom dangling above you.

Carl and I and three others were on a private tour of Tarot: Origins & Afterlives led by the Warburg’s director Bill Sherman on a Monday, when the show was closed to the public. What impressed me — as we were waiting in the lobby — were the number of young people who walked through the front door hoping to get in. As ivory towers go, the Warburg is pretty lofty, not where you’d expect small flocks of 20-somethings. The would-be visitors left dismayed, but eager to try again later in the week.

Art and history form part of the appeal. However, most people still want the benefit of prophecy, even if most of them know it’s a fool’s game. We all see through a glass darkly, no matter how authoritative our oracles of choice may seem. Yet I do think that tarot cards provide solace and service for people of all ages in uncertain times.

Tarot always trends up during turbulence. There were surges in sales when the UK untethered itself from the European Union and again when most of the world was locked down during Covid. Today, tarot readings may be more predictable than tariffs. Might there be covens of financial advisers with ardent customers fanning out a deck for guidance? When you’re afraid to index your nest egg to the S&P 500 index — down more than 4 per cent year-to-date — the future may just as well be in the cards.

Through the centuries, there’s always been a consistent market for the physical tarot themselves. Someone in my tour group said they had a friend who’d amassed a collection of 1,000 different decks. One online list of publishers enumerated 300 purveyors of cards, ranging from huge houses like Harper Collins to oracle-card specialist Lo Scarabeo. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, a series of fantasy novels by Steven Erikson, has its own version of tarot-like cards for aficionados of the sci-fi epic.

The rarity of some sets can make them interesting investment vehicles. Just surfing Google, I’ve come across a deck designed in 1979 by the late Italian graphic artist Andrea Picini selling for £2,322.35 ($3,011.56). In 2009, the Italian government paid €800,000 ($871,160.77) to private owners to nationalise the oldest surviving full set of cards, dating to the 15th century. The cards — beautifully hand-painted — are now in the Brera Museum in Milan. Parts of the oldest known but incomplete set — the Sforza Visconti deck — are in museums around the world, including the Morgan Library in New York City.

But can the cards peer into the future? I’m of the school believing that the tarot — which began its existence as a card game, not a tool for divination — has some use in clarifying our thoughts. The symbols, numerals, cultural references, creative refinements and redefinitions of tradition, all multiplied by an endless array of artists interpreting the deck, become veritable Rorschach tests for individuals. You cannot know how to walk into the future if you do not know yourself — and the cards you are dealt may just sync with your psyche at the second it needs the prompt. Out of the jigsaw puzzle of consciousness, suddenly a clearer vision may emerge.

It’s akin to Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity — the uncanny way events link up with each other — though I think the tarot effect is more serendipitous than paranormal, more therapeutic than wooh-wooh. You just need to open up to the benefits of randomness. Jung — the former associate of Freud who went on to establish his theories of archetypes — was of the belief that you could get the same effect out of a common 52-card deck (king, queen, knave, ace… no Death). Is it synchronicity that he shares a first name with Carl, who provided commentary through the exhibition? Hmmm.

Coincidences can mean nothing — or play the role of pointing you in a direction you may not have thought of. That kind of mental rambling is not, however, rocket science or financial advice. Otherwise, what would you do with the fact that tarot echoes oddly in the age of Donald Trump, even as it surges in popular interest. The most ornate group of cards in the deck are a group of 22 called the major arcana (21 if, like some tarot masters, you exclude the Fool). Back in the 15th century, they originally called trionfi, or triumphs, after ornate victory parades of those feudal times. The English translation transformed trionfi into — you guessed it — trump cards. Uncanny.