A view from the deck: The Mary-El Tarot

By Sarah Taylor

The Mary-El Tarot caught and held my eye the moment I saw it on a friend’s Facebook page a few months ago. The reason I think it made the impression it did was two-fold. First, the artwork on the deck is a vivid labour of love, ten years in the making by artist Marie White. Every stroke seems to have crafted an emotional impression into her canvass. Second, the imagery in the cards reflected my descent into depression at the time — and that reflection was far from comfortable.

Some of the cards captured my experience in a way that was hard to look at without feeling the reality of what I was going through. I found it a little like ‘tarot homeopathy’ — a dose of what it was that was afflicting me as medicine for the soul.

There is something about this medicine that feels both rooted in the history of ancient shamanic practices and otherworldly. There is an alien aspect to it that I can’t quite put my finger on, but perhaps has a lot to do with the distorted anatomy of some of the figures and the jarring compositions in several cards. I see this most notably in The Hierophant, where two imp-like figures hang from the breasts of the hierophant, who holds their heads with talon-like fingers. Many of the cards’ protagonists are hermaphroditic — a unification of masculine and feminine that feels more asymmetrical than congruent.

Yes, the Mary-El Tarot takes me into a different world, one that feels dream-like and where nothing fits comfortably into a waking narrative. It’s probably the reason why my writing has so quickly veered off the beaten track in terms of a conventional deck critique. And in fact this won’t be a conventional critique. I am going to approach it in the same way I approach my readings: intuitively.

I have not read Landscapes of the Abyss — the accompanying book, written by Marie White — save for dipping into the introduction and various card descriptions. I haven’t worked with the cards; I have gone through them meditatively, one by one, seeing what speaks to me, what doesn’t, and what is conspicuous about either of those. Moreover, the symbolism feels so rich and so very much the artist’s own that it would take some considerable time to get to know the cards in the particular language that they speak, just as it takes time to develop a working knowledge of a visiting guest’s mother tongue. I’m not yet versed in that language, but I can bring my own to bear and see how it holds up.

Purely practically, the cards are lovely to hold, although larger than many of the decks I have. They are 8.5 x 14 cms, printed on heavy stock, more shiny than matte. Each image is surrounded by a black border, the card names are written in a mustard-coloured serif font, and the backs of the cards depict a double, interlinked ouroborous on a black background, which is beautiful in its simplicity. There are the standard 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana; Justice is card 8 and Strength is card 11, as with the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot.

Many of the major arcana cards will be identifiable to those who have a working knowledge of, say, the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck (The Tower and The Hanged Man, for example), while others are a variation on a theme (The Sun, The Moon, The Empress — who carries a baby on her back — and the aforementioned Heirophant with its two accompanying figures). Others still are very different: Temperance depicts a tiger stalking through the ocean towards us (which I’m not sure works for me), and Judgement is a phoenix, it’s proboscis-like tongue curled around a pentagram (although I can see the link with resurrection).

The minors spoke a language that was far more obscure to me. I’m used to working with decks where each minor card has a depiction of both number and suit (i.e. two cups or ten pentacles), but many of the pip cards (Ace through Ten) of the minor arcana in the Mary-El have no corresponding imagery. When I found cards that did, they felt out of place (or my understanding of them was out of place), while I simultaneously felt the kind of relief you do when you’re listening to someone speak in a language you don’t know, but then you hear a familiar word: “Ah! I know that!”

The presence of the suits in the Two of Swords and the Seven of Disks (Pentacles) were something to hold onto in strange terrain; the Eight of Cups left me trying to locate a sense of what Marie White was trying to convey, without having to resort to the book. I love the imagery, of that there is no doubt. Looking at it, though, it is as if I have invited some strange ‘other’ in to dine with me, as I regard it across the table, thinking “Who the hell are you?”

I think that’s the point right there. In the Mary-El Tarot, there is a visceral sense of meeting with the other — something that calls to us at a level beyond words but which is simultaneously impossible to know fully, and to encompass intellectually. It has to be intuited; it can never be described.

I think that I’ve got the Mary-El Tarot in that sense, but there feels such a large part of the story — perhaps of the artist’s story too — locked away because it demands closer scrutiny and more research into the symbolism of the imagery. The deck draws upon Egyptian, Native American and Far Eastern lore — perhaps reaching even further and into some distant constellation that has at one time or another connected with humanity.

I would invite you to go to the Mary-El website and have your own experience with the cards. For now though, I will leave you with the three sets of two cards that wanted to be included in the reading today.

The Moon / The Sun — This is the most conspicuously deliberate pairing in the Mary-El deck, the two cards being able to be put side-by-side so that the two demi-luminaries sit back to back, forming a harmonious whole. My first thought was, “Why haven’t I seen this more often? It makes complete sense to me.” Even more so writing as I do today between two eclipses.

Two of Swords and The Chariot — The gossamer-like beauty of the locust-wings juxtaposed with the curved steel edges of the swords feel delicately balanced — describing the Two of Swords in a way that is both visually striking and effective. As for The Chariot, the imagery is familiar in some ways, unfamiliar in others: the asymmetry of the wolves kept drawing me back, as did their eyes. Those eyes!

Seven of Disks and Queen of Disks — I confess that I included the Seven because it was one of those cards that suddenly emerged from the deck with seven disks: the aforementioned familiar word in a string of foreign syllables that is most of the other Disks. Why the Seven, I wonder? I feel a deeper meaning just out of my reach, beckoning me in. Finally, I chose one court card — in this case the Queen of Disks — because what drew me to her were the parallels between this Queen and the Queen of the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck. Both have spiralled horns, and the diamonds falling from her eyes a familiar feature of the Thoth. There is something about that connection that speaks of a unity of language among decks — a striving and achieving of a sense of place. I cannot explain it more clearly than that.

I love this deck — no two ways about it. And what I love perhaps more than most features is its depth, which past a certain point moves into landscapes that are so deep as to be bordering on the unconscious. Hence the prickling I get when I move my hands over the cards, drawing yet another picture that has the ability to shift something in a place I’m not entirely sure I know. The Thoth has been my scout into this territory: through working with it, I learned that any reaction indicated the presence of a possibly rich seam of shadow work. I have a feeling the Mary-El Tarot holds similar seams waiting for discovery.

– Visit the Mary-El Tarot website.

– You can purchase the Mary-El Tarot box-set here.

 

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.