Rachel Pollack

Once upon a time there were two people who loved art, and stories, and an odd game of oracular playing cards called Tarot. Their names were Karen and Alex, and they lived in one of the world’s most magical cities, a place of mysteries called Prague. One day they were crossing a bridge when they heard a plaintive cry for help. It was hard to hear among the crowds but they followed the sound until they discovered a muse trapped under the bridge. When they freed her and she asked what boon they wanted they said “We would like to give the world a wondrous pack of cards.” Be careful, she told them, for some wishes, once granted, will never let you go. But they insisted, and that night inspiration seized them. They would create a Tarot from the city of Prague itself!

The Tarot of Prague managed the fairy tale task of creating strikingly beautiful cards that could be read as a traditional Tarot pack, or given layers of meaning and wonder from such old stories as the golem, the artificial man created by Rabbi Loew in the 16 th century (and still hidden in an attic in Prague). But just as the muse warned them, once she speaks to us she doesn’t leave (I know; in the mid-70s I thought it might be interesting to write a book about Tarot cards. 14 Tarot books later…) After the Tarot of Prague the muse suggested they revive a curious old tradition from the 18 th century, dressing cats in elaborate costumes. Thus, the Baroque Bohemian Cats'

Tarot was born, in my opinion the only cat cards that truly work as a Tarot pack.

And then the Tarot muse went deeper, with the kind of idea that wakes you up in the middle of the night and sends you grabbing for a notebook. Why not create a Tarot deck based on fairy tales? Now, just as with cat Tarots, fairy tales have been done once or twice before, but never, to my mind, with such a full approach. For one thing, Karen and Alex made the decision not to stay only with the most common tales, Snow White, Cinderella, etc. These can bring a smile of recognition from us, but they also can trap us in a Disney spell of nostalgia. By reading and absorbing fairy tales from all over the world Karen Mahony has given us a true fairy tale universe, the real thing as opposed to the clichéd ideas that some of us may have developed through over exposure to a limited number of tales. The pack becomes strange and wonderful, filled with delights.

Karen and Alex, and Irena Triscova, who did the original drawings, also made the wise choice not to tone down the dark and violent quality of some of the tales (for example, The Juniper Tree for Justice). The stories work best when we take them as directly as we can from the oral tradition, for then they give us access to a kind of raw artistry that touches the psyche at deep levels. The Tarot itself is famously dark, with such cards as the Devil, and in modern Tarots, the often violent suit of Swords (earlier packs just showed a series of ornate swords for the suit, but modern ones depict scenes, such as a man with 10 swords stuck in his back).

At first glance it may seem a little odd to bring together fairy tales and Tarot cards. We think of the cards as a set of symbols with meanings for use in divination, while stories have an open-ended and emotional quality. But any Tarot reading is really a kind of narrative. From the various pieces of information seen or intuited in the cards the reader puts together a coherent message.

The most famous Tarot in the world is the Rider pack, designed by A. E. Waite, and painted by Pamela Colman Smith, whose nickname “Pixie” places her square in the world of fairy tales. Generally, people attribute its great popularity to its revolutionary breakthrough of picturing a symbolic scene on every card. I think there is more to it than that. The images on the Rider are not just beautiful symbols. They all have a quality of story. You can take any one of them and spin off a tale about the people, the action, the setting, what might have come before this moment, what will come after. And when you place a group of them in a reading a more complex tale begins to emerge. The Rider cards are indeed symbolic, based upon a very complicated system. But you can look at them, play with them, read them, your entire life without ever studying the detailed structure that underlies them.

The Fairy Tale Tarot is based on the Rider, but in an unusual way. Most themed packs that use the Rider will try to find appropriate scenes to match the actions in the Rider cards. This is what Karen and Alex did with both the Tarot of Prague and Baroque Bohemian Cats. Here, however, Karen has taken the concepts and themes of the pictures and found particular stories that bring out those same qualities. Thus the pictures do not at first glance resemble the well-known Rider scenes (they certainly are a far cry from the socalled “Pixie clones” that appear with great frequency) but under the surface they will strike a chord with anyone who knows the Rider tradition.

Each of these cards illustrates a particular story. But Tarot cards have a way of taking on a life of their own, a bit like the golem. When we look at them we may find that our mind strays from the original tale and begins to construct a whole new narrative. This is one of the delights of Tarot cards. Because there is no actual text on the cards, only scenes, they can become, in the words of the great Italian master Italo Calvino, “a machine for constructing stories.” To honor the Fairy Tale Tarot I decided to take a single card, one where I did not know the original tale, and see if the picture alone suggested a fresh story. Here, then, is a new tale inspired by the Ten of Coins.

(you can read this story in the Fairytale Tarot book)