Seasons Tune

We went along the rails of traces laid out by those mysterious sages of the past – or were they? Yes, Oh! Holy men (why men?) packed their knowledge, which they saw would otherwise become lost (why are we so accustomed to the idea that „knowledge is lost“, like it is a base condition for knowledge to be lost or secret in the first place?), into mundane means, hence arriving at playing cards. The story was told, believed, debunked, reanimated, sprayed over with the holy water of science, and did not die. Oh, the story has not been told completely – replace men with man, add „Hermes“ (the universal delivery service for about anything, apparently), and stick the origin of the trump suit to the firmament, then the trumps predate the ordinary playing cards because those are like a lesser manifestation of their bigger origin up in the heavens, which needed more time to bring their form to life – or vice versa, the first principle was – of course – the numbers, hence, the first packs were ...

Not too long ago, it was lively around the Tarot, very much so. The whole thing was unknown to many, the history unclear, its use, a mystery, its users hidden, and what you could do and to which lengths one could take it – unexplored. The egyptian hypothesis rose and fell, as did the revival of the Golden Dawn, and numerous packs appeared on the market, mostly clones of the Rider-Waite-Smith or Thoth packs, some in line with „la Marseillaise“, some daring to explore whole new areas, while others are done in alignment with the insights of their creators. The cartomantic endeavour rose into to the limelight, fortunetellers were en voque for some time, then a new notion appeared: Telling fortunes was not the way to go, rather, to read for insights into the psyche. To discover ones fate was still amongst it, but soon left out, as it became a trend to say that fate is in the hands of the individual. „I do not read your future“ is a perfectly fine thing to say nowadays as a reader. It wo...