At Lodge this week I was given a great gift, a new Tarot deck. Given to me by a Brother, created by his partner.
As I understand it, this deck is a remastering and colorization of an extremely old deck, brought to life by MK Barr, and her partner and our Brother VW Frank Burk.
It is not a Tarot deck as we understand Tarot today, so I think it would need to be classed more broadly as a cartomancy deck. There are 50 cards, divided into 5 groups, each signifying a different aspect of life. There are no suits as we understand them today, or a Major Arcana, rather the groups are signified by color and name.
That said, one can see in many of these extremely old cards, influences that have survived into our modern Tarot. For example, many parallels can be seen between the Misero card pictured above and The Fool in the modern Rider Waite Tarot.
Additionally there are many shared concepts between this deck and our own Masonic ritual. Including:
Cards for each of the Cardinal Virtues
Cards for Faith, Hope, and Charity
Cards for the Liberal Arts
The Planets known to the ancients
Diverging from Masonry, but that I found quite interesting, a card that I would interpret as symbolizing Deity, and another symbolizing Deity in action. Also interesting to me are cards symbolizing each of the Muses.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past couple of days exploring and studying this deck. I’ve not yet attempted to read with it, and it did not come with the familiar book, but I believe that reading it should be fairly straightforward, using a traditional Tarot layout. Experimentation would be the key if one wanted to discover the best methods of reading with this deck.
The illustrations are delightful, the cards themselves are high quality, and I think that they make a great addition to the collection of anyone who enjoys cartomancy, or the collecting of Tarot decks. These cards could I think stand on their own in one’s practice, or serve as a adjunct to a more traditional reading as some do utilizing oracle cards.
If you are interested in a deck for yourself, VW Frank has them available at:
If you are interested in reading a bit about the involvement of Freemasons in the creation of the modern Tarot, plus a little about how Tarot cards can be utilized, I’ve written about that in the past on Emeth, most recently here:
Cartomancy certainly isn’t for everyone, but many Freemasons through the years have had a profound impact upon it.
In my view, that simply serves as a reminder of something I most love about our Ancient Craft. Its tremendous diversity. Freemasonry is so broad and non-dogmatic that the pathways one might walk within it seem almost unlimited.
And possibly is unlimited.