The New Expanded Symbolism of The Tarot Trumps: Through The Eyes of The Artist
A Workshop With Robert M Place
$150
When I read Tarot cards, they work best when I have made friends with the figures on the cards so that the images speak to me. To make friends, it is essential that I understand the symbols on the cards as the artists who first created them intended.
Besides creating spurious histories for the Tarot, many occultists created systems of association for the cards, relating them to Hebrew letters, planets, astrological signs, and obscure sets of esoteric meanings. At their worst, these associations became a complex set of secret symbols or secret codes that had nothing to do with the artwork depicted on the cards.
All known facts tell us that Renaissance artists created the Tarot in the 1400s, and we can easily see that their illustrations relate to other works of art from this period. By examining this history and comparing the Tarot images to other works of art from the same centuries in which the cards were evolving, we can learn to see the Tarot trumps as the artists who created them would have.
Purchase NowThe series will consists of three recorded two-hour classes.
Week 1: learn the structure of the Tarot Trumps in relation to the Renaissance Triumphal parade
We will learn that the Trumps consist of three groups of seven cards, each of which relates to one of the three parts of the Platonic soul. And we will compare the Fool and the first seven trumps to related works of art.
Week 2: Tarot Trumps in relation to the Renaissance Triumphal parade continued
Continue relating the remaining trumps to Renaissance art, placing them in a historical context.
Week 3: Examine the earliest written interpretations of the tarot's trumps and minor suits.
Robert M. Place is the designer and illustrator of twenty-four Tarot and oracle decks: including the internationally acclaimed and award-winning Alchemical Tarot, The Angels Tarot, The Marziano Tarot, the award-winning The Tarot of the Saints, The Buddha Tarot, The Vampire Tarot, The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery, The Tarot of the Alchemical Magnum Opus, The Alchemical Tarot of Marseille, The Hermes Playing Card Oracle, An Ukiyo-e Lenormand (based on Japanese culture), The Raziel Tarot and The Burning Serpent Oracle (for both of which he collaborated with Tarot diva Rachel Pollack).
Besides writing books to accompany his decks, he is the author of The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, which Booklist has said, “may be the best book ever written on that deck of cards decorated with mysterious images called the Tarot.” He is the author of Astrology and Divination, Magic and Alchemy, Shamanism, Alchemy and the Tarot, and The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism. He is the curator of “The Fools' Journey” and the author of the catalog for this exhibition of Tarot art that originated at the LA Craft and Folk-Art Museum, in 2010.
He was the guest of honor at the opening of the Tarot Museum in Riola, Italy, in 2007. His Facsimile Historic Italian Tarot is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he recurrently lectures on their card collection. He and his work have appeared on the BBC, A&E, the Discovery Channel, and the Learning Channel. He has taught and lectured throughout the US and on five of the seven continents. His newest work, The Fist Occult Tarot, is a deck and book based on the descriptions written in 1781 by the come de Mellet, the first occult author to describe a Tarot deck.
