The Tarot Muse
Carolyn R. Guss
Certified Professional Tarot Reader and Teacher
610-658-3252
tarotmuse@earthlink.net
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The Gothic Tarot—created by Leilah Wendell
First Printing limited to edition of 1,000
(numbered & signed by Wendell)
Published by Westgate Press (Opelousas, LA; westgatenecromantic.com)
$25.00
ISBN 0944087108
I have seen the DEATH card and it is—The
Gothic Tarot. So has Leilah Wendell, creator and publisher (through her
Westgate Press) of this unique Major Arcana deck. In fact, Wendell has seen
Death itself—not as a near-death experience, but as a personal encounter
with Azrael, the Angel of Death, who
visited her at an early age, and with whom she has frequently communed. After
undertaking a career in mortuary science, Wendell went on to establish a
magazine, Undinal Songs; found a
publishing house (Westgate); and then a shop and gallery, first on her native
turf of Long Island, and then in Louisiana, to which she relocated in 1990.
The
Gothic Tarot, released in 1998, merges Wendell’s
focus on death with the medium of Tarot. This first printing, which Westgate
produced in a signed, numbered edition of 1,000, embraces the 22 images of the
Major Arcana much as Azrael embraces its subjects. To that end, Wendell created
the deck using full-color cemetery photographs from the U.S. and abroad, which
she enhanced with collage and hand-coloring. The results are intriguing
and—well, gothic.
This deck speaks a whispered language, the
voice one uses in graveyards. The images on each card are direct, not
ethereal—in keeping, I suppose, with Wendell’s philosophy of how we
encounter death: as an angel, yes, but a full-bodied one. (Despite the
often-otherworldly beings the sculptures represent, these are not gossamer
figures, but angels of stone.) Wendell’s approach to the Tarot seems right:
presenting possibilities, with a fair amount of room for personal
interpretation, thus echoing her belief that we all experience Azrael
differently, and in a highly personal way. The deck allows for freedom of
interpretation while mostly staying true to the traditional essence of the Major
Arcana. (I always appreciate both in any new “take” on the Tarot.)
That said, the DEATH card itself in this
largely engaging deck isn’t its strongest offering. But the entire deck
resembles one big DEATH card, so the loss is not too keenly felt. A moldering
skull, in what appears to be a crumbling crypt, is flanked by two crimson
candles and a pair of roses. (White roses would have proved truer to traditional
Tarot iconography and looked less like a Grateful Dead emblem.) Only a brilliant
amethyst crystal amidst ashes, bone fragments, and the detritus of death speaks
to the regenerative power this card usually represents.
My favorite cards from this deck include the
HIGH PRIESTESS, EMPRESS, EMPEROR, HIEROPHANT, LOVERS, HERMIT, and WORLD. I have
long associated the HIGH PRIESTESS with the symbol of the mirror: as a lunar
figure who shines with reflected light, she seems to hold a mirror up to
ourselves, showing us our potential. Wendell’s depiction is particularly
successful. A deeply-shadowed and seemingly impassive caryatid-type figure lifts
a rectangular frame above her head, in which we see a cosmic explosion of light:
a reflection of the wonder of possibilities ahead, when we engage with the
unknown inside ourselves.
Wendell’s EMPRESS—a granite angel who
seems more a creature of earth than heaven (like an escapee from a Wim Wenders
film)—is both modest and sensual with red flowers on her breast (true to her
Venus ruler) and a gilt-flamed torch in her hands. Behind her the flowering
trees suggest abundant life in the face of death, as one might ponder when
visiting a cemetery on a fine spring day. Wendell’s figure could be Demeter
holding her torch for Persephone as she stares down at the earth in hopes of
reclaiming her daughter from Hades.
The
Gothic Tarot’s EMPEROR and HIEROPHANT cards are
among the most compelling I have seen. What are we to make of the EMPEROR’s
power, since it seems to aggrieve him so? It’s as if he views a premonition of
his own death (as card number 4, he numerologically embodies the reduced number
of the DEATH card itself, 13) or a vision of where all his earthly authority
will eventually lead, and thus hides his face within the stone folds of his
cloak—so unlike the cherub in Wendell’s INNOCENCE card (equivalent to the
FOOL), who lifts hers tentatively toward the sky. She seems all question and the
EMPEROR all answer—although that answer may not be felicitous. However, in
studying this stark image a moment longer, one finds a second strong visage, in
profile, among the cloak’s folds. This is the true countenance of the EMPEROR,
who negates the FOOL’s uncertainty with the monarch’s own great confidence.
It is the face of the emperor that we see on ancient coins. A violent lightning
strike in a blue sky at the right side of the card suggests the energy that ego
and power engender as well as where they lead, and so serves as a harbinger of
the TOWER, card number 16 (itself a multiple of 4).
The HIEROPHANT is not frequently given its
visual due: the imagery is often static and flat. Wendell captures Trump V
hauntingly, bringing forth the deeply inherent mysterious qualities of the card
(the hierophant being known as the speaker
of mysteries) while honoring the sacred-in-the-earthly that it represents. A
hooded stone figure bows low over a void before an autumnal landscape. (In this
way Wendell’s image reminds me of Arnell Ando’s card from the Transformational Tarot, in which the SAGE—Ando’s equivalent of
the Hierophant—is set among fall foliage.) At its right a silver chalice
appears, a burst of fire issuing from it. And above, the all-seeing eye of the
Divine, whom the Hierophant ultimately serves.
The LOVERS reduces the multiple figures
typically seen in this card to one. A yearning sculpted figure, red roses strewn
in lap, engages with a beam of white light, like a comet on a vertical course.
But isn’t this the way love strikes us? Thus, the “light being” perhaps
symbolizes the union of human and Divine, the highest incarnation of the LOVERS.
Wendell’s HERMIT depicts a hunched and
grieving figure similar to the Rider-Waite-Smith
Tarot’s 9 of Swords. Through a “window” in the base of the monument on
which it rests, we see a deep turquoise pool that takes us nowhere but into
ourselves, s the HERMIT iconography calls for. A bat, a HERMIT familiar, wings
its way there.
Both SUN and WORLD cards display stone
figures with upraised arms and an orb aloft between them. The SUN’s cherubic
child plays with his solar star as if a toddler with a beach ball in a cemetery.
Beneath him burns a rapidly encroaching flame. The ambiguity raised by
Wendell’s WORLD is in-keeping with the challenging WORLD cards from the Haindl
and Universal Dalí Tarot decks.
There is vigorous beauty in this triumphant angel, with the Earth floating
above, despite the possibly ecological statement of an eye (first seen in the
HIEROPHANT), now red-rimmed, weeping a single, bloody tear. Beside the jubilant
angel a death-mask effigy appears, again reminding us of Azrael’s presence,
even in the face of life.
Gothic
Tarot images that work less well for me include
STRENGTH—which seems to suggest a lack
of this virtue with its cowed angel, hand atop a skull; and the HANGED MAN,
depicted as a classic crucified Christ backed by a blazing sunset rather than a
man upended and hanging by his foot from a “a tree of living wood, with leaves
thereon” (as Arthur Edward Waite so carefully asserted in his Pictorial
Key to the Tarot.) Admittedly, “hanged-man” type imagery doesn’t
figure prominently among even the most unconventional cemetery markers, but with
collage one can work imaginative
wonders. Another disappointment is the MOON, a card that would seem to present a
perfect opportunity for finding a cemetery source. Oddly enough, Wendell’s
lunar representation doesn’t depict a moon of any stripe (or phase), taking us instead inside a gloomy mausoleum.
A stone figure with outstretched arms stands superimposed over the entranceway,
which doesn’t offer me enough to connect with in this usually deeply
significant card.
As a predominantly art Tarot, The
Gothic Tarot stands alone, without need for an accompanying manual. However,
given the unusual nature of some of the imagery, a small leaflet might have
added insight to one’s own interpretations. With regard to readings, this dark
but powerful deck is especially effective for those Major Arcana only spreads,
such as the one detailed in Mary K. Greer’s book, Tarot
for Your Self. I also had excellent results with a self-designed
“Crossroads” spread I did on Hecate Night (November 16).
For a Scorpio native or those interested in
necromantic studies, this deck seems a must. It would also appeal to those of
the Tarot constellation EMPEROR/DEATH (4/13 vibration), and any Tarot reader who
is an admirer of Victorian cemetery art: the hauntingly beautiful figures that
grace Nineteenth-century graveyards in Europe and America. (It seems no
coincidence that the Victorians were fascinated—actually obsessed—with Death
as well.) Visitors of New Orleans cemeteries will certainly recognize a beloved
monument or two. Also, the deck might easily find fans among the Gothic
subculture. And of course it would be perfect for that All Hallows Tarot
reading.