It's my business to catch the overtones of the soul... the ghosts of beings highly organized enough to have looked on Hell and known the meaning of what they saw.
--Richard Upton Pickman, in H.P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model"
If there is a modern artistic successor to Richard Pickman, surely it must be Joseph Vargo. Vargo draws like H.P Lovecraft writes -- his work does more than illustrate or describe; it creates feelings of melancholy and dread that give his works emotional impact, drawing the observer deep into the world of the dark and sinister. In his images of graveyards you can almost smell the cool, damp, moldy air as it gently blows by. That WAS just the wind, right? -- or was it something less tangible, something that should have been left deep within the mind, but somehow escaped to pass by almost unnoticed in the night. Many of his creatures are hideous, yet also convey a sense of sympathetic humanity: one just has to ask, what's it like to be a gargoyle?
The Gothic Tarot is a collection of Vargo's artwork cleverly arranged in the form of a Tarot deck. In some ways, this is a traditional Tarot deck -- the arrangement roughly follows the Golden Dawn lineage, though some interesting adaptations and interpretations prevent this deck from being considered an RWS "clone." On the other hand, the images are not the usual, standard Rider-Waite or Marseilles graphics re-cast in some particular theme. The images stand on their own, and are art works in their own right, whose meaning is enhanced by presenting them in the Tarot framework. This concept of using the Tarot as a medium for presenting the images, as opposed to the usual process of creating images that follow the expected Tarot format, is one of the features of this deck that places it well outside -- and imaginatively beyond -- the usual flurry of clones.
The deck follows the traditional Marseilles arrangement of Major Arcana, suits and court cards. Most of the artwork is in Vargo's usual tones of bluish grey set against black borders and backgrounds, suggesting ancient stonework and forgotten graveyards lit by the moon on a dark night. There are notable exceptions, particularly among the Major Arcana: the Fool is Vargo's "Realm of Shadows," showing a ghostly figure in a stone archway with an eerie green luminescence, to which a large wolf was added for the Tarot version. The Emperor is Count Dracula himself, with details added in blood red. Red dominates Death and Temperance (adapted from Vargo's "Sorceress"), while greens return in the Devil. The Minor Arcana are, for the most part, moonlit style art to which the appropriate number of wands, cups, swords, or pentacles have been added. The backs are black with Vargo's "Realm Icon" in red; the backs are not reversible, though why that should matter is beyond me, since most readers read the fronts and not the backs.
The small booklet that accompanies the deck gives some short interpretations for the cards, and suggested layouts for reading them. This is only minimally useful, mostly for those who read only occasionally, or have only a passing interest in the Tarot. A more useful book has recently appeared: "The Gothic Tarot Compendium," written by Joseph Vargo and Joseph Iorillo, is a far more comprehensive guide to the cards and their interpretation. Each card is illustrated in black and white, along with a divinatory meaning, description of the card, and more extensive notes on the background and interpretation of the artwork.
The trouble with this kind of thing is that the interpretations found in any book or booklet are those of one individual, arising out of that individual's background and understanding, which may be very different from yours. Further, reading Tarot cards according to keywords or one-liners amounts to the same thing as reading fortune cookies, and misses the whole point of the Oracle. A Tarot card does not "mean" what any book or expert -- or even its author -- says it means. It "means" what it draws forth from your own imagination, and skill in reading the cards does not mean learning any system or set of meanings, but rather learning how to immerse your own consciousness in the imagery of the card. The Tarot is not about your "personality" or your own situations; it is about Poe's "vast formless things that shift the scenery to and fro" -- the invisible, impersonal forces of spirit and nature that shape the events of past, present and future. The wind is not about you, the movement of the sun and stars is not about you, but those things can affect you, and how you interact with then can affect the past, present and future. That is what the Tarot is about: understanding those forces, how they affect you, and how your own consciousness interacts with them.
This is particularly true of the Gothic Tarot -- its imagery is unusually rich in feeling tones and imaginative depth, and how its images affect you cannot be determined a priori. Take, for example, The Chariot. In most decks, I find this card somewhat ambiguous and shallow. But in the Gothic Tarot, it is very different. The image is that of a dark carriage with a ghostly, top-hatted driver, drawn by two fiery red-eyed horses, through a fog-shrouded woodland of bare-branched trees. The Compendium tells us that, "The Chariot teaches us to take the reins and steer your life in the direction you truly wish to pursue." Bah. When I first saw this card, I immediately thought of Count Dracula's carriage, carrying poor Renfield to his fate. Like, he truly wished to pursue THAT? No, fate is, as Idries Shah quotes an Islamic teaching, "An endless succession of intertwined events, each influencing the other." The Chariot is a card of forces in motion, and not entirely under your own control. You may, however, have some control over how those forces affect you, and in turn how your actions can affect those forces.
I discuss these matters because, more than any other deck, the images of the Gothic Tarot have an imaginative richness that puts it in a class by itself. Of course, you have to like the images and the theme for it to work in this way. You also need to spend a great deal more time with this deck -- it doesn't wear its meanings on its sleeves. If dark imagery appeals to you, then you may find the Gothic Tarot to be the best deck you have ever used.
