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| Mary K. Greer: The High Priestess Of Tarot |
Welcome to The Divination Nation blog!
We are Pleasant Gehman and Crystal Ravenwolf, a
duo of divination divas, “spiritual sisters from another mister”. We’re
life-long Tarotistas and obsessed with all things esoteric, occult and
paranormal. We’ve created this blog to share our knowledge and to connect with
the vibrant worldwide metaphysical community.
We are
extremely honored to feature Mary K. Greer as the first interview subject in
our new “Seers And Sages” series.
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| Mary K. Greer, cartomancierre extraordinaire in her element |
To say that Mary K. Geer is
respected in the Tarot world almost is an understatement. The word revered comes
to mind, as do venerated, celebrated and honored. In fact, let’s just say that hands down,
she’s The High Priestess of Tarot.
Mary has an M.A. in English Literature and is the author of nine hugely popular books on various aspects of Tarot. Her 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (Llewellyn, 2008) won the COVR award for Best Divination Book. Her latest book is Who Are You in the Tarot? Published by Red Wheel/Weiser…but trust us, they’re all great and packed full of information, as is her blog.
Since most of the interviews we’ve read with
Mary concentrated on the scholarly facets of her work with Tarot, we thought it
would be interesting to find out more about the more personal aspects of her
extraordinary life...enjoy!
When
did you first start getting into Tarot?
It was Christmas, 1967 and I was a junior in college.
My best friend got Eden Gray’s Tarot
Revealed. The pictures immediately “spoke” to me. But my friend got only
the book without the deck. Asking where I could find such a deck, I borrowed a
car, and set out on what I consider my first “spiritual quest.” I ended up at a
metaphysical bookstore in Tampa, Florida and bought the University Press
edition of the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck.
The minute I saw the pictures
in the book I was drawn to the idea that you could reveal something about a
person based on these story-telling images. It fit right in with my college
studies as an English major in symbolism and archetypal criticism and with my
recent introduction to Joseph Campbell’s The
Hero’s Journey. It also went along with the kinds of exercises we were
doing in acting classes. It was like all my interests came together in this one
thing.
Did you know right off the bat that it
was going to be your life’s work?
Within that first year I
decided that I would someday teach Tarot in college as an academic subject and
that I would eventually write a book about it. I set about finding out anything
I could about Tarot.
How did you learn at first- was it passed
down to you, did you study on your own, take classes, or were you mentored by
someone?
When I began I couldn’t find
anyone who knew anything about Tarot, so it was mostly my reading books and reading
the cards for others on the fly. Making associations between images and a
person’s life seemed to come naturally to me. I searched out every book I could
find on Tarot and struggled to understand the more esoteric concepts on my own,
taking up the additional studies of astrology, magic, Kabbalah and even
Spiritualism.
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| Mary on London's Hampstead heath, 1970 |
I moved to London where I met
several people who furthered my interests including a young man who had known
Fritz Perls and started me Gestalt Therapy techniques with Tarot and a woman
who was studying with Paul Foster Case’s Builders of the Adytum, which I subsequently
subscribed to. By 1974 I offered my first class as a non-credit course at the
University of Central Florida, Orlando where I worked as a typesetter and graphic
designer and got my M.A. in English. For my second Tarot course 60 people showed
up! It was around this time that I met someone who had written on Tarot and was
very much into Jungian psychology—helping me expand my awareness of how these
fit together. But it wasn’t until after I moved to San Francisco in early 1976
and had been teaching Tarot for several years in a college that I took my first
Tarot classes from others: Hillary Anderson, Angeles Arrien, Jason Lotterhand
and Diane di Prima among the first. I’ve been regularly speaking at Tarot
symposiums in San Francisco and elsewhere since 1979.
Please share an anecdote about your
early days about any of your earliest readings, or first professional gigs?
While still in college, I
quickly learned that reading for people I didn’t know (friends of friends) and
often without even knowing the question, got the most impressive and accurate
results. Potential boy friends became very uncomfortable at my ability to “see”
into their deepest secrets that I would blithely reel off with little
understanding that they hoped to keep these parts of themselves well hidden.
What is your creative process for the books
you’ve written?
Each book has presented me
with a unique challenge and requires a unique approach. I no longer think I
know the “secret” to how to go about it, like I thought I did after writing my
first few books. Mainly it is long hours of writing and rewriting and, where
required, doing far too much research and practice before I feel competent or
ready to share what I know. All the exercises are tested thoroughly in my
classes. A book’s subject matter largely dictates what and how the book will be
presented, along with synchronicities that arise. I was in Paris researching Women of the Golden Dawn when I noticed
a postcard of a painting on an outdoor rack. It was Walter Crane’s Masque of the Four Seasons. When I
learned that Crane probably knew several of the people I was writing about, the
painting, representing the four women, became the cover. I also structured the
book around the “four seasons” of his or her lives, each section introduced by
a verse from a seasonal “folksong” which I later found out was really written
by the mother of someone who became a friend. A “masque of the seasons” is a
kind of ritual and, since I was writing about the magical lives of my subjects,
I decided to place the entire book within a ritual context with chants of
invocation and release at the beginning and end of the work. The writing-a-book
process itself leads me down strange roads that I can never predict!
What sort of process- intuitive and/or scholarly- do you use for your own
work?
I’m not sure how this is
different from the books I write. Certainly I have studies that will probably
never come out in a book. I started my blog to present my more scholarly work,
which publishers are loathe to publish. Or my studies form the basis of
workshops and advanced teachings. As I mentioned before, I over-research and
over-prepare. What I love most are the practical ideas and insights that come
in the midst of workshops – perhaps when someone asks a question about how to
do something and I make up an exercise on the spot that will demonstrate the
process. Sometimes the exercise fizzles out and sometimes it’s a great success.
Most of my successful teaching exercises have ended up in my books.
How did you start integrating art,
psychology, history…and all the things that make your approach unique- into
your work? Did it evolve organically, or
did you make a concerted effort?
Wanting to know everything possible about
Tarot involves all of these things and more, including mathematics and
probability theory, science, literature, philosophy—pretty much everything
found in a humanistically inclined Liberal Arts education. What can I say? I’m
a perpetual student! For instance, besides teaching in a college for eleven
years, I’ve been in a Jungian-based book-group, meeting several times a month
for over twenty years.
You’ve travelled all over the world-
lived, taught and spoken in several countries…
do you notice any cultural differences regarding Tarot in the places
you’ve visited?
I really can’t speak from a
global perspective. I haven’t yet taught in Asia and my teachings in Egypt were
to westerners. France and southern Europe tends to use more Marseille-style
decks with their own esoteric underpinnings (non-Golden Dawn). I felt that the
Tarot readers I met in Brazil felt far freer in using Tarot and other
cartomantic systems as only one part of their healing work. They include
everything from crystal healings to Santeria practices in a session. In the
USA, I perceive a sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, divide between those who
work more psychologically and interpersonally and those who are more
descriptive/predictive (focusing only on interpreting what the cards say in
response to a question). But I’m really oversimplifying a wide range of reading
practices by my comment. While the internet has opened up an awareness of
creative and innovative approaches to Tarot it has also made clear that there
are Tarot “fundamentalists” who believe their approach is the only right one,
and they aren’t tied to one culture.
What places would you recommend for
“Tarot Tourism”?
Northern Italy: Milan, Ferrara,
Bologna, Siena, il Guardino dei Tarocchi and more. Egypt is worthwhile if just
to convince you that, while the great archetypes are well portrayed, it is not
the source of Tarot. Additionally, attending one or more of the major Tarot
conferences can be a real eye-opener—I definitely recommend doing this. You’ll
make friends for life!
Who do you admire, (living or passed, established or newer on
the scene) in the Tarot universe?
I love everything about
Tarot: the books, decks, personalities, and its connections to all forms of
human culture. The list would go on and on and on, so I’ll just mention A.E.
Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, as, without them, I may never have developed my
love for a Tarot that speaks directly to me.
Please let us know about any upcoming projects
you’re working on…
I prefer to not talk about my
projects until they are produced, although I’ll say that I’ve expanded my
interest in Tarot to include all forms of cartomancy and a great interest in
the lives of cartomancers.
What is most important piece of advice
you have for card readers, or aspiring readers?
Rules are made to be broken!
At the same time you might want to take a look at what a rule is trying to
express and determine if is it worthwhile in some form or another. Let go of
rules that are unnecessarily limiting. When you look at a card and can’t think
what it means: Simply describe the card. More often than not, that will get
your intuition flowing. Intuition is not always right. It is different than
psychic insights and it is worth cultivating those differences. While your
first thought is worth noting, it’s not always worth saying. Continue to
develop your reading skills, which include everything from symbology to
interpersonal communications.
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| The Moon and Mary |
Study on line
with Mary here:
Keep up with Mary’s amazing, info-packed blog here:
Purchase Mary’s books on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/qeognaw
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To find out more about Pleasant click here: http://www.pleasantgehman.com/
For more on Crystal’s
background, click here; http://crystalravenwolf.com
