Rainy afternoon, November 1972— Skeletal trees near the square, dripping with rain. Wearing an ankle-length paisley dress and a black wool cape sewn by my mother, I knocked on the door of the Theosophical Society Library in London. I don’t remember who suggested I go there – or even how I got the address, but one gloomy day, I rang the bell and was admitted to the inner sanctum. I stepped into a lounge where a few pale-looking older people, very conservatively dressed, were sitting on sofas, browsing through magazines. They didn’t at all look the way I expected them.
A woman at a desk seemed quite puzzled by my request to use the library. She deferred to an older gentleman in a worn beige sweater and gold rimmed spectacles— who after a few minutes, informed me that although the library was usually only for members, they could make an exception – because they liked me. Never had I received such a generous comment from a stranger before. It never occurred to me that someone might like me right off the bat like that.
I was shown into a huge room with many tall bookcases packed with leather-bound tomes, a midnight blue Chinese rug, a huge lacquered table, and a few comfortable arm chairs. I said I was looking for books on the Tarot, and a kindly lady brought me a couple to peruse – and thus began my romance with this archaic set of characters who point out a path of initiation and self-knowledge.
One of the books mentioned that the Correr Museum in Venice had a few 17th century cards in their print cabinet – so a few weeks later, traveling in Venice with my artist boyfriend, we stopped off at the print cabinet and I asked to see the cards. The attendant seemed rather astonished that I knew they had these cards in their collection and even their precise location numbers. They were brought to me in a manilla envelope – and just dumped out on a desk – four magnificent cards of the minor arcana – on thick pasteboard and covered with rich gold leaf. The rest of the deck had been lost. It was humbling and thrilling to think how the missing deck had been used, and in what hands it had passed, and where the missing cards might now be. Here I was holding them in my hands, and tracing the great gold ace of coins with my finger.
A few days later, I bought a deck of my own at an esoteric bookshop near Chartres cathedral and from then on became a collector and reader of tarot cards.
I bought several decks over the years, including a facsimile of the Visconti Sforza deck, which was the one I preferred, purchased in Florence at a bookstore that no longer exists.
So I became a reader of cards, and after a decade or so, simply stopped, put my cards away in a little Tibetan bag, and stopped thinking of them. I gave all the other decks away. But the Tarot and its images were always in the back of my mind.
In writing my novel, Signatures in Stone, A Bomarzo Mystery, I got the idea that the sculptures in the garden were similar to Tarot cards, that is – figures with a specific divinatory and psychological meaning. I worked out a path of eleven figures – and Sante Fe artist Carolyn Florek drew them for me. Some are based on the statues in the Park of Monsters/ Sacred Wood. The others are drawn from the story itself. The eleven tarot aracana are interwoven with the heroine’s discoveries in the garden.
Recently, asked to contribute an essay on Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden for a publication by local Tuscia historian, Mary Jane Cryan, I took the little Tibetan purse off the shelf, and opened it for the first time in over a decade. Researching Saint Phalle’s concept of the Tarot has been fascinating, because she sometimes uses traditional imagery from the classic Rider deck, and other times deviates with her own interpretation and depiction. I find I can read them more fluidly now. Keep reading to find out more about Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in my next posts. The Tarot Garden of Niki de Saint Phalle 1
The Magic Library of Bomarzo 
I love the Visconti-Sforza deck. I have a large collection, and that deck remains one of my favorites.
LikeLike