Templar Tarot

By Brother Richard Harris

This afternoon, me and Augie Dog were sitting in our chair, minding our own business, when suddenly the delivery guy showed up with a package.

Now, of course, Augie Dog is absolutely convinced that all delivery men have murder in their hearts, and we would all be brutalized to death, lying here in pools of blood, if it weren’t for her efforts at driving these men away.

Alas, I think she is probably wrong about the intentions of the delivery guys, and alas, she weighs about ten pounds, so I’m not sure how much terror she actually inspires, but why burst her illusions?

So, she and I are sitting here, delivery guy comes up to the door, and drops the brown paper envelope on our wet doormat. Now, of course he could have set it on the chair positioned right next to the door, but it is apparently better to always place paper in water.

I get up. Augie Dog decides it is probably most prudent for her to remain in the chair so that it can be guarded properly. I fetch the now wet envelope and bring it inside.

It’s addressed to me. There is no return address. It has lots of tape. I can’t help but notice that Melinda is conveniently away from our house today. When she left in the morning, she fed Augie Dog and me some nonsense about working in her office in the Capitol today. Very suspicious.

I figure that she’s probably arranged to have a letter bomb delivered to me while she’s away. Another attempt to get rid of me after her previous murder attempts have all failed.

But, taking my life into my hands, I got the scissors, and sliced open the envelope…

The Templar Tarot by Richard Harris

I survived.

It wasn’t a bomb.

It was the beautiful Templar Tarot and guidebook, a gift from its creator, my friend and Masonic Brother Richard Harris. How cool is that?

Months ago Richard provided me with a prototype copy of this deck and guidebook. Today, here it is, in all of its glory.

The Templar Tarot is a Majors Only Tarot deck. On great cardstock with a guidebook in which Richard explains his thoughts and intuitions behind the creation of the deck.

While they aren’t used too often in the United States, I’ve always been a great lover of Majors Only decks. I find them to be quite valuable, and this one certainly doesn’t disappoint. If you aren’t familiar with this kind of deck, here’s a truly great spread as explained by Mary K. Greer. Try it, I think you’ll really like it.

As I’ve always known The High Priestess to be my card, the card that most speaks to me, and that best represents me, I figured that I’d better show it in this post:

Templar Tarot, The High Priestess

Boaz and Jachin are there for us, just without the initials seen most notably on the Waite-Smith deck. We ourselves are truly the third pillar, existing between them.

The cards of the Templar Tarot are not reversible. Honestly, that’s A-OK with me. I do read reversals when they come, but I never intentionally create reversals, and I don’t think it is important to read reversals. Those who do not can read Tarot just as well as those who do.

But, the card backs are the only thing that I don’t really love about this deck. I would have preferred them with nothing but the red cross on white background. That’s a meaningless gripe though. We read the card faces, not their backs, so I should shut the hell up!

Templar Tarot, Backs, and Judgement

Isn’t Judgement beautiful?

From a material standpoint, both the card stock and the guidebook are high quality, with the cards packaged in a plain slip case. Both came packaged together inside a plastic envelope, so it didn’t matter that the delivery guy put the package down in water. Nothing at all was damaged.

The deck does contain two ‘bonus’ cards:

Templar Tarot, Extras

Wisdom, from the Greek, and Abraxas from Gnosticism. The inclusion of extra or bonus cards like this is certainly not unique in the world of Tarot. I remember my Thoth Deck, purchased so many decades ago had a couple of them, an advertisement of sorts for the OTO, and a rendering of the Unicursal Hexagram. My go to Smith-Waite Centennial deck comes with a cards depicting some of Pamela Smith’s non-tarot artwork.

But my initial hunch is that these two extra cards, Wisdom and Abraxas, could well have been included with the deck in order to be used with it. That hunch may be wrong, as they are not mentioned in the guidebook, but they certainly seem as if they might ‘fit.’ Perhaps Brother Richard will tell me his intention behind them.

The Templar Tarot is a wonderful deck that should speak quite clearly to Freemasons, particularly Masons of the York and Scottish Rites who have received the chivalric Degrees.

I’m looking forward to using this deck in the days to come. I kept wanting to actually use the prototype, but I feared that I’d damage the cards doing so, as they weren’t printed on cardstock. Now, I’m really eager and ready!

I’m certainly pleased to recommend our Brother’s deck and guidebook to you.

The Templar Tarot deck can be purchased here:

Templar Tarot Major Arcana Deck

The Templar Tarot guidebook can be purchased here:

Templar Tarot Guidebook

I have no doubt that any interested Mason, and particularly interested Masons holding Degrees of knighthood will find this Tarot a wonderful tool for their meditations.