Rainbow Sword: Tarot as Cultural Text

In this essay I look at Tarot as a cultural text. What does this mean? This means that I look at how the visual language of Tarot intersects with cultural precepts about a given phenomenon, a type, an archetype, a relation (of class, gender, race, sex), reality, magic, and the physical and metaphysical world. This is already more than what most people associate with Tarot: a fortunetelling device that the gypsies, neo-pagan witches, and other such devils employ in their charlatan endeavor to cheat venerable people out of their money. By taking point of departure in tarot history, I look here at how oracular, visual texts can shape our understanding of contemporary modes of spirituality. As such texts form a poetics, I argue that they are part of the counter-cultural discourse whose aim is to destabilize the 'natural' order fo things. The essay also serves as teaching material, as it tackles heads on the idea of interacting with images with the purpose of getting instruction.