Author Julie Gilbert Discusses the Writing of Her New Book ‘Giant Love’
Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
Menu
The first time a friend convinced me to let her read tarot for me, I was reluctant: I didn’t want to know the future. I didn’t want to feel defined by a psychic prediction I had no agency over. Today, that remains true. If it feels ironic that despite this, I now read tarot for a living, it’s because the mainstream perception of divination rarely gives the cards credit for their wide application beyond future-gazing. Here is what I’ve found: the tarot, in psychic hands, may indeed function as a fortune-telling device, but for us mere mortals, this pack of 78 images printed onto cards has a different, but equally magical purpose: it facilitates storytelling. Within these cards are what the novelist and tarot expert Rachel Pollack called “78 degrees of wisdom”—portals of possibility and guidance that allow us to examine our life experiences by unpacking memories, desires, and fears we know intimately, but may have never thought about in context with the wider narrative of our lives. For us mere mortals, this pack of 78 images printed onto cards has a different, but equally magical purpose: it facilitates storytelling. But the tarot can be more than a tool for exploring and reflecting on the story of your life—the cards can pave the way to help you tell that story to readers. In her memoir, Vesper Flights , author and naturalist Helen McDonald observes “how unerringly the cards reflect my deepest states of being, emotions I’d not let myself feel at the time.” Autofiction author and memoirist Alexander Chee , whose Substack “The Querent” takes its name from the formal title given to a person receiving a tarot reading, has written often about his relationship with the cards. In a piece published this summer , Chee remarked: “What I like about the Tarot is how it makes me think of my life holistically.” Sylvia Plath drew on tarot imagery to examine her thoughts and experiences in such poems as “The Hanging Man,” “Daddy,” and “Ariel.” The tarot can help you reflect on your deepest states of being, in Chee’s […]
Click here to view original page at Inspiration in the Cards: How Tarot Can Help Us Narrativize Our Lives
© 2024, wcadmin. All rights reserved, Writers Critique, LLC Unless otherwise noted, all posts remain copyright of their respective authors.
Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
The Mallorcan Joana Marcús is a young bestseller in Spain and America, writer of young adult novels with a romantic
