My Five Fave Decks in Regular Rotation Right Now:
•Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frida Harris – The Thoth is my first and still favourite deck of all time, and the one I’ve been using for public readings these days.
•The PoMo: A Post Modern Deck for Navigating the Next Millennium by Brian Williams – We’re in that next millennium now and this deck of re-visioned post modern art classics is a surprisingly powerful (and often amusing) guide.
•The Pulp Tarot by Todd Alcott – I just got this deck recently … you can see my review here. The more I get to know them, the more I love these images.
•Il Giardino Dei Tarocchi Tarot Cards by Niki de Saint Phalle – Another fairly new deck in my collection … here’s my review. It’a a stunning Majors-only deck, straight to the point and full of colour
•Science Tarot, a collaborative project: I’ve had this deck for years now, it’s a regular go-to for questions regarding the state of our world.
The other day, after watching an episode of the TV show, Closer To Truth, I asked my Science Tarot “Is the Universe ‘about’ something?”
The card I got was the Queen of Swords, Ernst Haeckel, Storyteller.
Exploring the World Riddle
Ernst Haeckel was an artist, philosopher, and biologist largely known for his illustrations of animal, plant and microscopic life.
His work helped in explaining Darwin’s theory of evolution to the general public, and he’s credited with discovering, describing, and naming thousands of new species.
According to Wikipedia, his philosophical text, The Riddle of the Universe, from 1901, is the genesis for the term world riddle, which of course is a phrase describing the exploration of the very nature of the universe and the meaning of life.
How perfect – that’s exactly what I was asking about … the big riddle.
Though I doubt that the cards were telling me that Haeckel’s theories explain all the cosmic secrets, I do think they were letting me know that the riddle is worth exploring.
Science, art, philosophy … my beloved Tarot – all can help us in our quest to understand. And like Haeckel, all of us can be storytellers along the way.
I guess the answer to my question, “is the Universe ‘about’ something?” is to just keep looking.
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A few days after pulling the Ernst Haeckel Tarot card, I unexpectedly came across this video called Life Forms by Thomas Lelouch and Antoine Presles. It’s a tribute to Ernst Haeckel. Nice.
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