There were two things that filled my days with passion when I was young: writing and theater. So much so that I then made out of the second a profession. And like all well respected theater people, I was in love with Shakespeare’s! I was lost in Othello’s jealousy. Moved by Marcantonio’s love for Cesare. Amused and then overwhelmed by Falstaff’s adventures. Moved by Romeo and Juliet’s encounter. Resentful of Shylock’s stinginess. Troubled by Richard The III’s desire for revenge. Fascinated by Hamlet’s dilemma between life and death! Ahhh.. all of existence, its feelings, its passions, its troubles as well as its joys, was enclosed in those pages that, as a voracious reader, I waingdevoured as if searching for some arcane secret that could reveal to me what this thing we call life was made of. It was during that period that I read by chance about a young artist from the early 1900s, a certain Pamela Coleman Smith. This woman, who had lived in the theatrical environment for many years painting the billboards for the Shakespearean productions in London, had painted, on commission, a series of 78 panels depicting the cards of a new type of tarot. The Raider Waite Smith. The novelty of these tarots compared to those that preceded them was evident: the series of minor arcana no longer portrayed only the symbols of the suit of the reference card. It depicted people. Characters. Actions. Just like on a stage! So much so that there is actually a stage illustrated in some of the cards, and the characters act on it, as if they were in a theater! “All the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players. They have exits and entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” Wrote Shakespeare. Wow! Pamela must have had this message very clear within herself. I informed myself better and began to study those tarot cards from the point of view of someone who wants to deepen their connection with literature and theater. I then discovered that many writers, playwrights and screen writers from those days to today, used and still use tarot cards to outline their plots, enrich them, deepen the various aspects of the characters’ personalities, discover deep or not yet known parts of them, give original qualities to their actions and so forth.
From this study I then moved on to applying the use of tarot cards to self-exploration. Discovering the parts of myself that I couldn’t or didn’t want to see. Finding my Inner Resources. Give answers to some of my questions. Or simply have fun experimenting my creativity through their language.
In writing, you can really do so many things with tarot cards. In Infinity, I write.
