The Way of Tarot

The Way of Tarot

Preface

How does one write a book about the Tarot? It is like trying to empty the sea with a fork.

For more than forty years, Alejandro Jodorowsky has been investigating the dynamic and multiple aspects of the Tarot through readings, lessons, discoveries, conferences… If it had been necessary to transcribe this work in its entirety, we would have ended up with tens of thousands of pages each equally impassioned and disorganized, each touching on the various aspects of this art that refuses to let itself be imprisoned within any kind of rigid structure.

As this was not possible and we needed one book, and only one book, Alejandro and I chose to present the Tarot from a variety of different perspectives that would allow this book to serve both as a manual for beginners and a serious tool for experienced Tarot readers, while giving all its readers a work that would be a pleasure to read.

This is why all the parts of this book include an introduction written in the first person by Alejandro, retracing the unique path he has carved out over a lifetime in the company of this demanding teacher and powerful ally known as the Tarot.

With respect to all the technical parts, our chief concern was to be faithful to the extreme plasticity of the Tarot, which is light and profound, linear and multidimensional, gamelike and complex. It refuses to be reduced to any one of the countless possibilities it opens. This is why we sought to create a book that could be read either in sections or straight through, in which each subject is both summed up briefly and discussed in great depth, and whose illustrations provide a ceaseless echo to the text, based on the truth that the Tarot constitutes first and foremost an apprenticeship in seeing.

The book has been organized into five parts. The purpose of the first part is to familiarize the reader with the overall structure of the Tarot and its numerological and symbolic foundations. The second part examines each card of the Major Arcana, while the third does the same for the Minor Arcana. The fourth part represents what we intend to be a first step in the dynamic reading of the Tarot: the study of pairs, the various combinations between two and more cards. For all intents and purposes, every element of the Tarot is linked in this fashion to all the others. Finally, the fifth part is dedicated to the actual art of reading the cards.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Barbara Clerc in particular, who has been transcribing and archiving the unpaid lessons and readings given by Alejandro Jodorowsky. She put all these archives at our disposal. Without her, they would have remained only part of oral tradition.

MARIANNE COSTA