|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We have both been great followers of Leonardo's genius for many years but it was John who first thought of the idea of a Leonardo tarot on that anniversary visit to La Serenissima. Other projects intervened and it remained a pipe-dream proposal until November 2004 when we went to Connections to interest them in our idea. They were so enthusiastically interested that they wanted us to go ahead and develop the whole pack right then and there. Unfortunately John was caught up in another big project and couldn't share what has turned out to be an extraordinary journey.
The speed at which the definitions and card-titles arrived was astonishing, even spooky. I got a sense that the tarot already existed and it was only a matter of seeing it, like staring at a wall and suddenly seeing an image. Leonardo himself wrote about this process: "Observe walls splashed with many stains... in which you can see landscapes... these variegated stones act like the pealing of bells in which you can discern every name and word you can imagine." Well, it was just like that. This was an intense period of creation. I rose every morning from mid-December 2004 onwards to work on at least two cards a day, aiming to have a full set perhaps by the end of February 2005, but by the last day of that month, not only the whole pack but also its accompanying book had been finished. I'm known as a fast writer in the trade, but this tarot had something more than my own impetus moving through it.
The images of the front of the cards were by Leonardo, but I was determined that the backs would also be his. There was a surviving design of a repeating, interwoven pattern which Leonardo created to be an emblem of his own pipe-dream academy -- alas, never fulfilled. This densely interwoven design was a kind of pun upon his name "da Vinci," which means "osiers" -- the kinds of reeds used for basket-weaving. If this design could be repeated upon the backs of the cards...? Perhaps the whole pack might be laid out and somehow connect? The designers at Connections worked overtime to come up with a means of making this pattern work. Eventually, we found a way of doing it. By laying all the cards face-down, this repeating design connected all the cards in one pattern. Interspersed between the repeated roundels of Leonardo's design were the polyhedra he drew for the book of his mathematical mentor, Luca Pacioli in 1509. Imagine, having Leonardo da Vinci as the illustrator of your book!
Playing with a mini-deck of cards that had just the design of the backs printed upon them and just the title of the card on the face, I started to read for myself and others to see how the deck played. This is like test-driving a car before the paint-job and all the extra features have been added to it. I learned how the pack behaved, what kinds of answers it conveyed, how I needed to moderate my own reading method. The immediate excitement was seeing, no matter how many times you shuffled the cards, at least 7-8 cards out of ten would create a unique pattern or set of patterns. I read for a great-great-grandmother, for a student, a young businesswoman, an actor, among others: they were all interested in what the deck had to say.
Like Leonardo himself, we are all so busy trying to survive that sometimes our secret dreams of flight, the achievement of our heart's desire, are often pushed onto the back burner. We need radical reminders to pursue, manifest and honour these desires while at the same time retaining responsibility for our actions and consideration for others. These cards speak of these urgent matters, encouraging the user to look deeper into the soul's code of our destiny and how we are honouring its unique pattern. Working through the logistics of how Leonardo and the framework of the tarot meet, I have been aware of an accidental time resonance between Leonardo's life and my own, for he was born in 1452 and I was born in 1952. Of course, there can be no further comparison between us, save for this simple accident of age and perhaps a polymath's impatience to get to the next thing before accomplishing the last -- a kind of loss-cutting process that I'm afraid I sometimes share. But the frailties of old age are beginning for me as they did for him and the increasing urgency to create, consolidate and leave a legacy is one with which I greatly empathize.
Leonardo's searching perceptions, his quick mind, his self-taught study of the world were all unfettered by formal education, yet we think of him as a genius. His vocational energy continues to be an inspiration to us all. This tarot is a homage to him. © Caitlín Matthews NOTE: All images from The Da Vinci Enigma Tarot shown here are copyright and reproduced with permission. All further reproduction prohibited. |
 |
  This
site maintained by The Tarot Garden; Jeannette
K. Roth and Dan
M. Pelletier, proprietors.
This page © 2004, Jeannette Roth and the Tarot Garden, Inc. Images of tarot cards on this site are copyrighted to their respective designers, artists, and publishers, and are used for example purposes only; no copyright infringement is intended. Unauthorized use of our website material, including articles, text descriptions, database listings, image scans, and other Intellectual Properties contained herein, without our express written permission is strictly prohibited;.see our FAQ for additional information. Questions regarding this page should be directed to info@tarotgarden.com. |
The
idea for this tarot began back in Venice in 2001 when, with
my husband John, I went to an exhibition of Leonardo's
flying machines and other engineering inventions. In the
echoing nave of a decommissioned church were hung models of
winged flight and other strange contraptions that Leonardo
dreamed up. Rays of light arched down through the gloom,
illuminating the pulleys, levers and winches that swayed
from battens hung from the vault. The light shone down upon
the enigmatic pages of the artist's strange mirror writing,
the cipher of dreams unfulfilled. It was both magical and
surreal. I was only to find out later that Leonardo had
himself come to Venice and tried to interest the Doge and
his council in a submersible device that would help protect
the Venetian lagoon by sabotaging enemy vessels. Like so
many of his projects, it came to nothing because the
commissioning patron had neither enough imagination nor
belief in this strange Florentine and his weird ideas to
provide the cash for a prototype. It wasn' until two years
ago that someone created and tested Leonardo's underwater
diving ideas in the lagoon and found that they did indeed
work.
From
previous tarots on which I've worked, I know that I cannot
create a tarot piecemeal. It has to be entirely clear to me
like an architect's blueprint before I know whether it will
work or not. I began to pour over pictures and immerse
myself in Leonardo's writings, not just what other people
had written about him. Initially I was a little ambivalent
about pursuing this idea when I discovered just what short
shrift he gave to "alchemists and necromancers," whom he
regarded as charlatans and liars, but then I saw with what
respect he held the ancient, classical traditions of
mathematics, philosophy and natural science. I still held
back, waiting for some inner confirmation that this tarot
would not be disrespectful to his work. Then the whole tarot
hit me like a great dam bursting forth.
I
chose Leonardo's notebooks as the main source of the images.
He kept these notebooks throughout his life as his daily
companion, including his sketches, ideas, inventions,
observations and household accounts. They have images
captured as he moved through markets, churches and
countryside of men and women, animals and trees, landscapes
and always his beloved waters. He wrote his annotations in
mirror writing which is not ciphered, although it initially
seems like that when you first look at it. After his death,
these wonderful notebooks were gradually dispersed as their
guardians tore out pages to give to eminent or curious
people. Collecting these scattered pages from as far afield
as the Royal Library Windsor and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
in Milan and other less well-known libraries, the images
began to reassemble.
Tarot
may be seen in the words of Alice as "nothing but a pack of
playing cards," but it is so much more. I wanted to help
expand the way in which we view the tarot, and I hope
tarot-users will enjoy the new method of making a spread by
joining the chosen cards by matching together the design on
their backs. When the joined cards are turned over, they
reveal the shape of the question or issue in extraordinary
ways that are utterly unique. This kind of spread avoids the
"one size fits all" that often characterizes tarot. In
addition, instead of just the upright and reversed meanings,
there is a third meaning -- for the disconnected cards that
cannot be joined to the spread by any matching pattern.
These disconnected cards often pinpoint the reason why
things are not flowing and what we can do about it.
My
method of reading has always been to read for the present
moment of any issue and to see what the querent needs to
bring into balance now: the choices we make in the present
moment change the next moment. Sometimes it will mean
changes to our behaviour or outlook, sometimes it will
require us to be patient and consolidate, sometimes we are
in the process of bringing something important to birth. The
tarot-reader attends all these moments like a mid-wife, with
the tarot as a diagnostic tool: it is a task of great
privilege where there can be judgemental attitude, only a
willingness to understand the wisdom of the present moment
and how our destiny unfolds itself.
Writers
often speak of a sense of being accompanied by the subjects
of their books. I was continually aware of Leonardo's
searching concentration, his rigour and his impatience, his
deep distain of puerile pursuits and his great love of
beauty, harmony and music as I worked. Few people realize
that Leonardo was also a musician, though none of his music
for the lira de braccio (the bowed lyre) has survived. My
central point of contact with Leonardo was through the music
of the spheres: the eternal harmony that permeates the
macrocosm, the resonance of which we each experience in the
microcosm. This sense of Leonardo's closeness was further
highlighted when I discovered an entry in one of his
notebooks, describing his achievement of a self-set
geometrical task, "On St Andrew's night (30th
November 1504) I finished squaring the circle, the light was
at its end as well as the night and the paper on which I was
writing." Exactly six hundred years lay between that event
and the commissioning of the Da Vinci Enigma Tarot. I
shivered.