17-03-2025
In Volatile Times, Can Tarot Make Your Day?
'Death is actually a good card,' said Carl, one of my companions at a small but potent exhibition of tarot cards at the Warburg Institute in Bloomsbury, London. We were gazing at the original early 1940s watercolor by Frieda Harris for a deck done to the specifications of Aleister Crowley, the infamous occult impresario (or grifter, if you heed his critics). It features a nimble grim reaper — painted in the vigorous industrial-style of Fortune magazine covers of the 1930s — on the verge of slicing a scythe through a web of threads attached to souls. The skeleton is unclothed, without the customary cowled robe, adorned only with a crown resembling that of Osiris, ruler of the ancient Egyptian underworld.
The card is a good omen among the 78 of a full tarot deck because it's come to mean new beginnings and transformation rather than the grave and decay. On the other hand, Carl says, 'the Nine of Swords is terrible.' Harris' version of that card isn't on the walls, but there is art from other decks depicting it — with all those threatening blades. They do look bleak, full of anxiety, paranoia and doom dangling above you.
