Saturday, February 18th
Time: 2pm - 6pm
Admission: $120 ( $99 for Patreon members $5+) - Limited to 6 persons.

This class is in person, and will take place in the Brooklyn / Flatbush area. The address will be sent privately to each participants.

In his 1940s short story “The Passer Through Walls,” French author Marcel Ayme narrates the story of Mr. Dutilleul, an office clerk whose dull existence is totally altered the day he realizes that he possesses a rather extraordinary ability: he can walk through walls, his body moving effortlessly through the bricks. Not limited by physical boundaries, Dutilleul feels alive for the first time, a new trickster attitude enabling him to derail his narrative from boredom to the adventurous, committing joyful acts of disobedience and even falling in love.

If a single tarot card presents a self-contained world of meanings, this integrity collapses the moment we arrange several of them into a spread. Suddenly, their singularities flow into one another, like communicating vessels, forming a language of their own. As card readers, we ought to be like Dutilleul himself, trusting we can pass through the walls of the prototypical meanings of the cards to see the story they tell emerge. What’s at play once the cards form a narrative landscape?

In this four hour live, in person class, we’ll focus on tarot as a storytelling device, using single cards as a departure for imaginative work. Most importantly, we’ll focus on how to capture the flow between cards, and create symbolic connections beyond the “walls” of formulaic meaning, beyond the boundaries of the cards themselves. Criss-crossing through the arcanum, we’ll isolate the plot, the characters, and the dramatic influxes tying up the story together, while appreciating the Tarot’s peculiar grammar, voice and tone, and “writing” style. We’ll experiment with the “wildest” of all spreads, the Grand Tableau, for a self guided, labyrinth-like experience akin to a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel experience.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a simple three card spread will unfold an Odysseus of strange adventures. Ultimately, we’ll look at the power of fictional stories generated by the Tarot and how to use it to redefine our own narrative.

Image: Le Passe Muraille in Paris Catacombs, photo by Yves Morel.