Greater Secrets: Managing Fate Through the World of Tarot [9781503642577]

Overview

To be human is to crave prediction, especially during frightening and destabilizing times. We turn to all sorts of things to create meaning from the mayhem; from religion, to family, to therapy, to work. But, too often, these established structures are not equipped to help us with the existential uncertainties, the greater secrets of the human experience. It is this unmet need that has always fueled the world of the occult, wherein a vast array of spiritual goods and services are on offer. Tarot has become a dominant force in this space, and in this book, sociologist and card-reader Melissa F. Lavin explores its surging popularity, and the varied roles it has come to play for both its clients and its producers.

  Lavin asks how we can understand something as nebulous as tarot – is it a creative practice? Amateur psychology? A centuries-old wisdom tradition? Part of the gig economy? An entertaining gimmick? It is all these things depending on the context. Lavin compares tarot to a hydra, the many-headed mythical beast, in order to argue that despite, or precisely because of, its nebulousness, tarot does something that nothing else can do: it gives us control over the chaos. Its amalgamate nature makes it uniquely suited to meet the needs of a society fractured by relentless change, and it welcomes anyone reeling from the failures of mainstream culture.

  In Greater Secrets, Lavin brings readers behind the curtain, to the incense-infused realm of the tarotists and their patrons. A world made up of card readers, deck artists, occultists, collectors, hobbyists, and seekers of answers. The work they do together is real, whether you believe in their proclamations or not. To understand tarot is not to make it ordinary; rather understanding tarot imbues sociological theories about labor, emotion, and culture with a degree of magic.