Taught online via Zoom
Saturday, September 9
2 - 4 pm ET
$50 Patreon Members / $55 General Admission

Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot attend live

Please note: Zoom invites are sent five days before the class. If you do not receive it, please email us at info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com.

The iconic Celtic Cross spread is one of the most common ways to read cards in the anglo-saxon Tarot tradition. First discussed by Waite in his 1910 Pictorial Keys to the Tarot, this large cards tableau is both intriguing and confusing for readers, because of its tsunami of cards and the various attributions they hold. Normalized in practice, yet sometimes experienced as complex enough to deter tarot novices, the Celtic Cross is a tarot evergreen, a strange classic we lost touch with, often done in auto-pilot, point by point.

But as we’ll see, the history of this spread—rooted in the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn traditions and its multiple reinventions throughout the 20th Century—contrast with its monolithic image and univocal interpretations. By understanding its dual structure, echoed by the Waite Smith deck, we’ll unveil its dynamic skeleton. By understanding its rigidity, we’ll also be able to subvert it while considering different, unorthodox, and frankly more fun reading approaches. What if we could unhinge the Celtic Cross using Oulipo's absurdist constraint techniques? What if, as in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, we’d see through opened windows other layers of realities. What if we looked at it like game of gazes, like in Velasquez’ Meninas?

In this class, we’ll try to deconstruct this stone-like monument of Tarot practice, demystify it by looking at its history, reinvent it through games, and make it our own.

This class is part of the “Dissecting the Tarot” series, a Tarot class program aimed for beginner and experienced readers alike, studying technique, practice and tarot tradition through the lens of art, history, mythology and folklore.

French born Laetitia Barbier is an independent scholar, as well as professional tarot reader and teacher. She earned a Bachelor Degree in Art History from La Sorbonne University Paris in 2009. Laetitia has worked with Morbid Anatomy since 2012 as a programming director, head librarian and occasional curator. She is the author of Tarot and Divination Cards: A Visual Archive published by Abrams in 2021. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Image: Cross of Bride and Mary, Diane George