Yes, that’s me in 2015 with my devil may care hairdo and 50+ extra pounds, ten years later I still count both the publication of the TAROT of the Time Being as well as the collaborative process leading to that momentous occasion to be among the most worthy of my life's—ok let’s be honest here, several decent, yet far less than I would one day like to claim as my life’s—many accomplishments.

Among these is the TOTB: Advanced Practitioner. As a concept, the TOTB:AP emerged from the static a short while after we elected our first unapologetic & openly racist tv personality to high office over here in the land of the free and home of the brave; and just like the rest of us hardened ultra-liberal, goodie-goodie-two shoes with heads buried in worthy causes in the verdant sands of Vermont, I never saw that one coming (check out Ryan Murphy and his writing partner provide an excellent portrayal of that awakening moment in episode #1 of American Horror Story: Cult). TOTB:AP is a work that will bookend the original TOTB and will encapsulate this very distinct period of time which we are now living in a way that cast a backward glance in an attempt to gain insight from hindsight, in comparison to the ‘collective love conquers all’ vision imbued with 2015’s renditioning of the TAROT in my writings.

Tarot, Tarot, Tarot

I would fall hard in love with the imagery of tarot around the age of twelve, despite the fact that I was growing up in a household with parents who I knew would be very disapproving had they known of my new found love. The imagery of the cards allowed my already fertile imagination to wonder over the archetypes that are present everywhere, yet remained inaccessible to my prepubescent-self, save only for these pictorial elements of the collective unconscious the imagery of tarot represents, which fascinated me then as it still does now.

Ten years later I would fall hard in love again, yet this time with a different sort of archetypal figure altogether, a man named Steven J. Kilbey. Now, one could, if they so choose make the argument as to the question did I fall in love with the man or with his work. I remember the laborious days of Art School at the now defunct (sadly) SFAI as that same question was tossed around and around. Personally, I care NOT to make the distinction.

The worlds of TAROT and of everything Kilbey would combine gradually, almost imperceptibly, becoming a fan of The Church, Mr. Kilbey's Rock n Roll band in 1988. As I've mentioned in the FAQ the tarot was a subject, though by no means overly pontificated upon, nonetheless present at the origins of my long distance back-n-forth conversations with Mr. Kilbey circa 2002. (There's pretty good blow-by-blow as to how our collaboration went down documented it a 2015 Red Bull interview by Aug Stone entitled–The King of Songs)

Though whatever that exact moment was, perhaps due the recent publication of the DEK ov MEM, my own multi-decade work of tarot (with Steve writing the introduction) the idea or intent of demystification was heavy upon my mind if NOT an actual conscious objective.

Some of the stronger criticisms of the original 2015 deck as reported to me would go as far as call the deck "useless"–which actually makes me giddy as I love a good backhanded compliment, even if–in this case–wasn't intended as such. And indeed I may have had great concern over such a statement, if it were NOT for the fact that I can back every painstaking decision made in the course of the five years it took to complete the TOTB manuscript, as each card and it's imagery was paired with the next in comparison to every conceivable variation I could find among other works of TAROT including the Deck of Toth, Dali's Deck, The Ryder-Waite, the Hermetic OTO's. Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Way of the TAROT" was hands down the most influential of all, and that was before his work was translated into english–and I do NOT read or speak Spanish–how easily could I have written off what was so valuable to me as being "useless".

Ultimately, though my objective of demystification was a failure. Because as successful as I was in presenting a visceral, unpretentious real-world experience of divination, the tarot is so much larger and more intricate than I, yet exactly how much so would NOT be clear until several years after the last of three-editions were well out of print and the TOTB became well established as part of my daily personal and professional practice.

[to be continued]