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The Vampire Tarot

The Vampire Tarot
By Robert Michael Place

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Product Description

The Vampire Tarot ties the tales and mythic figures associated with the vampire legend to the equally iconographic figures and forms of the tarot. This deck is a beautifully rendered, fully realized tarot, capable of providing a clear reading to those that use it. But beyond that, it explores the history of the vampire starting with Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel, Dracula, as well as those writings that inspired Stoker and the vampire lore that derived from it. Stoker and his most famous work were both closely tied to the classic Rider-Waite-Coleman tarot.

Now, author-illustrator Robert M. Place brings these two mythic traditions together in this soon-to-be classic tarot. Included is a four-color, fully illustrated seventy-eight card deck, and a extensively researched book that guides the reader through the subtleties and parallels within The Vampire Tarot, providing a guide for getting the most out of reading.
 
Sure to delight not only tarot devotees but the general fan of the vampire mythos as well.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #222072 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-06-23
  • Released on: 2009-06-23
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 240 pages

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About the Author

ROBERT M. PLACE is an artist and illustrator whose award winning works have been widely exhibited in museums and galleries and have appeared in numerous books and magazines. He is the illustrator and co-author of The Alchemical Tarot and The Angels Tarot, as well as the author-illustrator of The Tarot of the Saints and The Buddha Tarot. He lives in Saugerties, New York.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

 

The History and Philosophy of the Tarot

 

As we stated in the introduction, it may seem odd that a symbolic spiritual tool such as a Tarot can be created incorporating the vampire theme—a theme that is more at home in horror literature and movies than in the self-help or New Age section of the bookstore. It is the view of this deck and book, however, that the vampire of literature, which reached the height of development in Stoker's masterpiece, Dracula, incorporates a mythological theme that is related to the allegory expressed in the Tarot. The reason that this may not be self-evident is that the mystical allegorical aspect of Stoker's book has been lost in many of its reinterpretations in .lm, which is how most people are familiar with the story today. Likewise, the mystical allegory incorporated in the Tarot's symbolic images has been distorted by the occult reinterpretations of the deck that emerged four or five centuries after it was created. In this chapter, we will take a brief look at the actual history of the Tarot and at the symbolism that was likely to have been intended by its creators. We will save the discussion of the vampire theme in literature for the next chapter. The information in this chapter is based on The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination by the same author as The Vampire Tarot, and for a more detailed study it is recommended that one also reads that book.

 

Defining the Tarot

 

For those who are not familiar with the Tarot we will start by describing the deck. The standard Tarot is a set of playing cards, much like a regular poker deck, but instead of having just four suits, the Tarot also has a fifth, more powerful suit, composed of a procession of twenty-two enigmatic images. The Tarot also differs in that its four minor suits, which relate to the poker deck, feature the antique Spanish and Italian suit symbols—swords, cups, staffs, and coins—instead of spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. Like the poker deck, each suit has ten pip cards, from ace to ten. Traditionally, these are illustrated with a repetition of the suit symbol like the pips in a modern poker deck. The four minor suits in the Tarot also have four royal cards—the knave or squire (often mistakenly called a page in English decks), the knight, the queen, and the king—instead of three in each suit like a poker deck. This makes a total of seventy-eight cards in a Tarot. Today, the Tarot is primarily used for divination or spiritual exercises, particularly in English-speaking countries. Originally, however, its primary use was for gaming, and divination was secondary. Also, in the fifteenth century, the first century of its existence, the number of cards in the deck varied.

 

It is essentially the addition of the fifth suit with its mysterious figures that makes a deck a Tarot and transforms it into a spiritual tool. This fifth suit includes the unnumbered Fool and twenty-one numbered trumps arranged in a hierarchical order from the lowest to the highest. Some of the trumps depict humans, such as the Magician and the Pope, and other allegorical or religious figures, such as the Wheel of Fortune and the Last Judgement. The trumps have captured the modern imagination and account for the Tarot's popularity, and it is through the trumps that the Tarot expresses a timeless mystical quest, the hero's quest for immortality.

 

Here is a list of the twenty-two cards in the fifth suit based on the number and order of the French pattern known as the Tarot of Marseilles, which is considered the modern standard. It also contains a brief description of the image on the card.

 

The Fool—a jester wearing motley, with a pole over his shoulder with a bag on the end, walks to our right while a dog rips his pants.

 

I. The Bateleur, or The Magician—a street performer holding a wand stands behind a table.

 

II. The Papesse, or High Priestess—a woman on a throne wearing a triple tiara sits between two pillars.

 

III. The Empress—the Holy Roman Empress sits on a throne and has an eagle emblem on her shield.

 

IV. The Emperor—the Holy Roman Emperor sits on a throne and has an eagle emblem on his shield.

 

V. The Pope, or Hierophant—the pope on a throne, wearing a triple tiara, sits between two pillars, with two priests before him with their backs to the viewer.

 

VI. The Lovers—a man standing between two women, with Cupid above.

 

VII. The Chariot—an armored warrior stands in a chariot facing the viewer.

 

VIII. Justice—a crowned woman sitting on a throne holds scales and a sword.

 

IX. The Hermit—a man in profile and in a hooded robe holds a lantern before him.

 

X. The Wheel of Fortune—a wheel has three foolish monkeys ascending, surmounting, and descending it.

 

XI. Force, or Strength—a standing woman, wearing a wide brimmed hat, controls the mouth of a lion.

 

XII. The Hanged Man—a man hangs head-down by one foot from a scaffold.

 

XIII. Death—a skeleton with a scythe stands in a field with severed heads and limbs.

 

XIV. Temperance—a standing winged woman pours water from one cup to another.

 

XV. The Devil—a beast stands on a pillar with two minions chained below; he has a human body but bat's wings, eagle's talons, and antlers.

 

XVI. The Tower—a tower is struck by lightning as two figures fall from it.

 

XVII. The Star—a large star in the sky is surrounded by seven smaller ones; below, a nude woman pours water from two pitchers, one on the land and one on the sea.

 

XVIII. The Moon—the moon, with a face in profile, hangs in the sky between two towers; below, two dogs howl and a crayfish emerges from a pond.

 

XIX. The Sun—the sun, with a face, hangs in the sky; below, two youths stand in a walled enclosure.

 

XX. Judgement—an angel blows a trumpet in the sky; below, two nude men and one woman emerge from graves.

 

XXI. The World—a beautiful nude woman dances in the center of an oval wreath; outside the wreath in the four corners are placed the symbols of the four evangelists: an angel, an eagle, a lion, and a bull.

 

Early Tarot History

 

Since the late eighteenth century, occultists have been drawn to the Tarot and have considered it an indispensable part of their magical equipment. To provide it with, what they considered, a suitable ancient pedigree, occultists have made up numerous spurious histories and associations for the deck. Most commonly, it was given an origin in ancient Egypt and said to be the creation of ancient Kabalists or of Egyptian priests under the guidance of the mythical sage Hermes Trismegistus, a Hellenized version of the Egyptian god Thoth. The twenty-two cards in the fifth suit were said to derive from Egyptian hieroglyphs but, strangely, also represent the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet as well as celestial and elemental symbols associated with each letter. Not all the insights of the occultists were wrong, but these assertions are false. At their worst, the occultists' associations have become a wall of confusion that blocks one from appreciating the mystical heritage that is preserved in the deck. The first step in understanding the symbolism and allegory presented in the Tarot, therefore, is to become familiar with the facts of its history.

 

THE ORIGIN OF THE TAROT

 

Historic evidence indicates that the Tarot began in Renaissance Italy some time between 1410 and 1442 when a set of trumps was added to the four-suit deck that had existed in Western Europe since the late fourteenth century. The birthplace of the Tarot is most likely Milan but possibly Ferrara or Bologna. The trumps or trionfi, as they were called in Italian, were added to the deck to play a trick-taking game that is the ancestor of bridge. Unlike modern bridge, played with a four-suit deck, the Tarot has a natural trump suit that outranks the other minor suits. Game-playing was the Tarot's main purpose, but, as stated previously, there is evidence that it was also used for divination. Because the Tarot was created primarily to play a game, we may think that the allegory told in its pictures is trivial or meaningless and not worth all the attention that it has been given, but, in the Renaissance, it was expected that works of art should have an intended symbolic meaning and even a game was considered a suitable place to express a profound mystical allegory.

 

In a letter he had written in 1449 to Queen Isabelle of Lorraine, her agent described two decks that he was acquiring for the queen but were originally created for Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan (1392-1447). Here we find a description of what may be the oldest Tarot deck. We also find that the question of profundity in a game was addressed. Of the two decks, the oldest was designed for the duke by his astrologer, Marziano of Tortona, sometime between 1412 and 1425. The deck consisted of four suits, each with a type of bird as its suit symbol: eagles, phoenixes, turtledoves, and doves. Each suit has seven pips and one royal card, the king. To this, Marziano added a fifth suit of trumps consisting of a hierarchy of sixteen classical ...

Customer Reviews

A Dark & Delicious Divination Tool5
Robert Place has created yet another splendid contribution to Tarot in The Vampire Tarot, his most recent opus. Place's artistic style lends itself beautifully to a darkly elegant interpretation of the Tarot images filtered through the scrim of vampire mythology, and his scholarship makes for some unique takes on the Tarot.

Thematically, the deck is primarily focused on Bram Stoker's Dracula, the quintessential Vampire novel, although he draws on the lore and traditions of vampires dating back to the Greeks. The glossy, sharp-edged (a nice touch!) cards are drawn from a variety of of other Gothic, Romantic (the movement, not the sentiment, which is why Lord Byron, Franz Liszt and other, possibly unexpected, people appear in the Court cards) and vampire imagery. The images are arrestingly beautiful and frequently disturbing, dancing along the themes of death and resurrection, blood and salvation, madness and creativity. Place uses the alchemical quest for enlightenment, the desire for immortality that informs the vampire mythos and the Tarot facility for mapping the progress of the soul to craft a timely and satisfyingly coherent themed deck.

The book is a fascinating exploration of the history of Tarot and the evolution of the accoutrements of the Vampire legend, pulling from a wide research base, and a valuable contribution in itself to Tarot literature. Place brings the earlier versions of Tarot from the early Renaissance to the development of the Marseilles style decks back into descriptions of the Tarot, which enriches the descriptions of the cards and their meanings. Between the information on vampires and the elaboration of Tarot imagery and history, the book gives one a lot to chew on.

The production values are very high - good quality card stock, a densely packed booked and a handsome storage box.

Stunning5
This handsome boxed set is a great value for the money. The cards are large and varnish-coated, and come shrink-wrapped and you will probably have to pry them apart, as the high-gloss finish makes them sticky. My cards came apart however without damage. I thought the size and finish might make these cards difficult to shuffle, but the cardstock proved surprisingly supple. One minor disappointment: the square corners on these cards - I would have preferred rounded corners, and I may end up taking a craft store corner-rounder to them.

On to the images. If you are familiar with Robert Place, you know that some of his interpretations are different from the standard Rider Waite, and more in line with Marseilles-type interpretations. That said, the images he has chosen can be interpreted in a number of ways and are not inconsistent with the more widespread (in America, anyway) RWS meanings, with the exception being the Cups suit, where the author really diverges from the Rider Waite system (the 8 of cups, for example, shows a stack of weapons, and the card meaning is "variety"). Also, the minor suits are renamed: Garlic Flowers for Pentacles, Holy Water for Cups, Stakes for Wands, and Knives for Swords. All are weapons used to defeat vampires.

There is a hefty companion book describing in great detail the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, which inspired this deck (although other sources are used, including works of Poe and Coleridge). There is also a long history of tarot, which will be familiar to those who have already read Place's other works. The companion book does a good job with meanings on the major arcana, but the descriptions for the minor arcana are short, and feel a little perfunctory. Again, this is consistent with the companion books for Place's other decks.

Most importantly, the artwork is stunning. Place continues to use his terrific line-shading, but combines it with color shading to produce a new impression of three-dimenality. Some of the vampire faces just seem to glow in bluish white. The colors are vibrant, high-impact, with sharply contrasting white and black, and lots of browns, reds, and purple-blues. The court cards are portraits of famous artists, associates, and characters of gothic literature, set to backgrounds of dusky turqoise, rose, green and amber. They are truly lovely. If you are a fan of 19th century literature, or of vampires, I predict you will want this deck. (But if you still need further prompting, you can see all the cards at Tarot Connection, where you can order a votive candle of your favorite card.) Get this deck!

"And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh."5


Given the current fascination with all things vampire, the extravagance of Bram Stoker's imagination and the tarot's links to history and myth, this is an excellent combination of vampire lore and the ancient tarot. Mining Stoker's interest in the tarot (Stoker was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn and friend of Pamela Coleman Smith, creator of the most used tarot in history), Place explores the images of Stoker's darkly romantic Dracula on his cards, each a superb depiction in gothic shades of black, purple and red, whether a pulpy heart impaled with three daggers or the pale-skinned Mina, two puncture marks on her delicate neck. Here is rendered life and myth, King of Knives (Lord Byron), or King of Garlic Flowers (Bram Stoker). The cards are high-quality, heavy-coated cardstock with square edges.

The matching book offers a tour of vampire and Tarot particularities: "The History and Philosophy of the Tarot"; "The Vampire in Legend and Art"; "The Vampire Tarot Trumps"; "The Minor Suits and the Tools of the Slayer"; and a guide to using the cards. The author cautions those who are familiar with his previous sets- based on alchemical, Christian and Buddhist symbolism and mystical philosophy- that he has not crossed over to the dark side. Death, rebirth and eternal life are the constant themes of myth. The Vampire Tarot celebrates the literary vampire as an ancient mythological creature focusing on mortality and the nature of the soul. These are no clumsy, frightening monsters from village folklore; rather, "the literary vampire is an esthetic creation of romantic poets... influenced by the gods of mythology".

If you are a tarot aficionado, the cards speak for themselves. If you are a neophyte, consider The Vampire Tarot a challenge, an opportunity to expand the mind and embrace the great themes of rebirth and immortality, an archetype of the unconscious on a journey of transformation. Luan Gaines/2009.