The Mary El

[inomminate]

Hi
I am intending to have a detailed look at the Mary El and would like to start a thread where people can post anything to do with it. The deck has interested me for a long time and I would like to hear other peoples opinions of it.

My own starting point will be to look at the ideas behind it starting with Joseph Campbell who I believe was a big influence on her. I don't know his work so I will have to start reading him. If anyone has information about him I would be pleased to read it.

I am going to keep a one-note notebook on the Mary El. If there is anyone else who uses one-note then I would be happy to share this over the net.

inomminate

[Clover]

Hello,

I think this would be a great idea. I think the deck deserves to be analyzed more in depth. I will be honest, I find some of the images to be highly disturbing for my personal taste, not excalty my ' go to' deck, however on the same token, I can't put the deck down. I am highly intrigued by the images, mainly because includes a bit of thinking process when looking at the cards individually. Some of the cards I am disappointed in but it's probably because my mind wants to tie the interpretations to traditional Rider cards

[Clover]

"The labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world"

~Joseph Campbell







Ace of Pentacles/Disks. I edited the photo, PG13 forum. It's an Aphrodite with a head of a animal. I noticed with a lot of the figures she has their sacral areas with a color circle or Labyrinth. I think this Ace of Pentacles/Disks throws me off the most or can become frustrating on a question. Any thoughts? I get it with the Universe being inside us or the 'start of the journey'. Not sure if I grasp the image alone of this card well enough to tie it to a standard simple question, but if you all would like to add thoughts to Joseph Campbell/Labyrinths.

From what I understood from the little I read on Campbell, he believed in the 'hero sequence'. I am sure we can view the tarot journey starting from The Fool and every descion we make after, that we are the Heros of our own stories/journey. The journey in this Labyrinth all leading back to self. Very non dual if you think about it

[inomminate]

Hi
Thanks for this post. It is exactly what I was hoping for. I think the Mary El is disturbing but if you stay in your comfort zone you don't progress.

From what I am reading of campbell (The Hero with a thousand faces) I fell that the labyrinth and the minataur are the sort of deep images that he would say keep coming up out of the abyss within us.

I would like to discuss these images in relation to the Ace of Disks.
inomminate

Ps I am in the uk so my posts may not be in sync.pps. my wife would like to point out that your labyrinth pattern is the same as the rug on our floor. we discovered labyrinths and the drawing of at a little museum down in the Forest of Dean many years ago. I'll post a picture when I've reached the allowed number of posts.

[inomminate]

First Thoughts on the Aces.

I find posting these thoughts helps me to clarify what I am thinks. Hopefully they are some use to others.

The Aces were the first minor cards that she produced. There was a limited edition deck which just had the majors and the aces. I have one of these. This means I have been looking at these aces for some time.In a sense I am still coming to terms with them.

These images are beings. Now I have seen the aces in Crowleys' way as being elements not entities. In fact he says they are not even the elements but the seeds of the elements.

If we look at the progression from the Ace of wands to the two in the Mary El then we are looking at something like birth. In the keywords for the Two of Wands she gives A doorway and birth channel.

To start the section on the Two of Wands she gives the following quote:

in the universe, there are things that are known and things that are unknown, and in between
there are doors.
William Blake

Mow I am happy with the view that the aces are forces from outside this world that are unknown/unknowable before they have been given form by the twos. The most organic metaphor that I had for this before the Mary El was that the progression of a suite was like the growth of a plant. The aces as seeds. The two as the plant with its first two leaves. These leaves, the dicotyledons, Being different from any leaves that follow because they still have something of the aces in them. Extending this idea to birth is an interesting step.

Inomminate

[inomminate]

Hi
Marie White made the following post to a study group which she ran:

Study Group Post #1, Introduction to Mary-el Tarot
Posted on September 11, 2012 by Marie White

Below I am posting an introduction to the structure and ideas as found in the Mary-el Tarot. This will be the first in a series for the Mary-el Tarot study group. I will try to update several times a week with new exercises and essays. Feel free to comment and question as much as you like! Hopefully this will grow into a decent resource on the Mary-el Tarot and tarot philosophy in general.

Introduction

The idea for the phrase “Landscapes of the Abyss” came to me when I was working on the Fool card. I couldn’t get the composition just right and I felt like I was missing something important that was just outside my reach. Finally one night I had a dream in which I was standing beneath a giant pyramid-shaped mountain. There was a river that came from the mountain and flowed straight toward me , across a flat plain and became a waterfall as it fell off a cliff into some unknown depth.

On one shore of the river was a tall luminescent tower that looked like it was made of pearl. On the other shore was a red dragon who’s tail was curled up on the land but the rest of him stood high up in their air as if he was on guard.

Somewhere over my head was a person flying and I could see his slippered feet, just like in The Fool card.

I thought of the spire, the dragon, and the mountain, as the supernal triad of the tree of life, and the Fool was jumping off the same cliff the waterfall was tumbling over – into the abyss that exists in that space between what is ideal and what is real.

I remember thinking at that time that all of these images and symbols we find in tarot, and maybe in our lives, are the landscapes in the abyss, this space or void that was made – into which everything can be created, manifest.

So that’s why I titled the book, Landscapes of the Abyss.

The Mary-el Tarot was created over about a 13 year period. All of the cards except the Knight of Cups, measure 11.5 inches by 7 inches and they are on either illustration board or masonite which is a type of pressed wood. The reason I used that instead of canvas, which I usually prefer, is because I didn’t want there to be any obvious canvas marks in the final card images.

They are painted with oil paints in an old method called grisaille which literally translates to “grey” in French. Traditionally, a painting is completed in shades of grey only, then you lay on a thin wash of a neutral color called an imprimatura, Italian for “first paint layer”, which lends a nice middle toned ground upon which to start layering on thin glazes of transparent color until the painting is complete.

Structure

The main pattern or structure of the Mary-el tarot is based on the Tarot de Marseille. It has 22 Major Arcana, including the unnumbered Fool, and 56 Minor Arcana. The card order is that of the Tarot de Marseille (and the Crowley Thoth) with Justice 8 and Strength 11.

The Minor Arcana are completely illustrated and are based on the numerology as set forth in the Major Arcana. So, the Aces are based on the Magician, split within the 4 elements, the Two’s on the High Priestess, the Threes the Empress and so on. The Court Cards are fairly traditional; they are titled Page, Knight, Queen and King, and I also associate those with Major Arcana, so the Pages which follow the 10s get associated with Strength, 11. The Knights with 12 The Hanged Man, The Queens with 13 Death and the Kings with 14 Temperance.

The Suit symbols are Wands, Swords, Cups, and Disks. Wands are Fire, Swords are Air, Cups are Water, and Disks are Earth. I see the order those are in as being very subjective, and they can appear different depending on where you stand, but for the sake of keeping things in some sort of simple order I usually describe them in the order of Fire, Air, Water Earth because that is the elements from the lightest to the densest, and also if you can imagine moving down our bodies, Fire being somewhere up here, Air being in our heads, water being here in our hearts and earth being down here.

Below is a brief chart, and we will go further into the elemental correlations later because it is a very important part of this deck.
Element Fire Air Water Earth
Suit Wands Swords Cups Disks
States of MatterIn order of density Plasma Gas Liquid Solid
Sun Atmosphere Bodies of Water Ground/Rock


So, even though the traditional structure of tarot is there, and something I highly value, this deck is not a clone of The Rider Waite, or the Thoth, or the Marseille, or all 3, or any other deck. Rather I wanted to learn where the underlying symbolism came from and illustrate that. I believe that all of these decks as well as any kind of symbolism humans tend to record, are based on a much older and basic truth, one that exists within us as archetypes.

Theme

A lot of people ask what the theme of the Mary-el is.

It doesn’t have a theme as we usually think of them in modern tarot decks, but there has been an overall prevalent idea of balance and symmetry. When I started I had the perception that tarot was lacking a certain balance between male and female energies, yin and yang, with most decks being one or the other predominantly. Also I believed there was a disparity between depth and quality of art as opposed to the internal quality of the symbolism. We all know about the art decks out there that are symbolically shallow, or even energetically shallow and the great decks tend to be lacking artistically. Now over time I have come to think of the art in some of the great old decks as fantastic and brilliant and I love it! I love Pamela Colman Smith’s art! I love Frieda Harris’ art! I love the old woodblocks and medieval art! BUT when I first began I sensed a lack of quality art. Maybe what I sensed was a lack of quality modern art, modern style, and I wanted to do that. Remember this was like 15 years ago now so many beautiful, and symbolically rich decks have come out since then.

Throughout the journey of creating this deck It taught me about itself, slooowwwwlllyyy. In the end I think it is the language of the subconscious, the same language of dreams,art, and creativity. I believe very much in archetypes and the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, that there is a symbolic language we all possess and know, if not consciously, then subconsciously. It is constantly the foundation of our actions and decisions, and it communicates with us through thoughts and emotions, intuition, gut instincts, etc. It basically underlies and colors everything we do and perceive. I think dreams are like stars, they are always in the sky, it’s just we can only see them when the sun goes down. The same way I think that dreams , that flow of symbolism, is always there 24 hours a day.

There is an idea about a tiger and a monkey. The tiger is the subconscious and the monkey is the waking conscious. The monkey riding on this tiger’s back really thinks he is in control but the whole idea is completely ridiculous as you can imagine.

I think one of the things you learn through study of that internal language is free will, which happens in the 7s. And what you learn is not to control the tiger, but to work with the tiger because the monkey is smart, we can harness and use the power of the tiger, we can be aware of the tiger and direct our life to a meaningful end.

inomminate

[inomminate]

Hi
I see the conscious/unconscious/collective unconscious thing. The symbolism of the tarot coming from the collective unconscious. However I feel there is also a supernatural element. Early on she used to say that she felt the deck was a created by her and something else but this has disappeared from what she says know. Perhaps she came to think the something else was from the collective unconscious or perhaps she felt people didn't like it. Myself I feel that the supernatural element is still there.
inomminate