EyeCorner Press has come out with a fantastic pair of books by Enrique Enriquez
EN TEREX IT: Encounters Around the Tarot, Volume One, and EX ITENT ER: Encounters Around the Tarot, Volume Two.
Where else except in this rich collection of interviews with 47 people can one meet architects, dancers, tarot consultants, ritual magicians, mentalists, historians, psychics, novelists, mystics, professors, journalists, fortunetellers, psychotherapists, scientists, and graphic designers in one place? Each interviewee has or had some form of experience with the tarot.
Enriquez dares to ask questions such as:
- What promises are in magic that technology cannot fulfill?
- How do you think all will end?
- Shouldn’t we put the tarot on parole, and keep it away from bad company?
- How many mandorlas do you have in your life?
- What is the role of tarot readers in Western comtemporary society? Are we evolving? Should we?
- How can one be a trickster without being a charlatan?
His subjects offer up these kinds of gems:
- The true encounter with an image begins, and perhaps ends, with silence.
- I think reading Tarot is very much like singing: everyone can sing and most people are pretty awful.
- We seek to share with others an interaction with the symbols that is beautiful and alive.
- To be honest, I wish there were fewer readers.
- For a craftsman/artist, the more you make beauty, the more your soul is beautiful.
- Spending luxurious, contemplative time with the symbols and characters of the tarot would be enough to change us from the inside out.
One subject struck me as trying too hard to be clever and another mentioned his book at least twice on every page. Fortunately, the other forty-five interviewees were less self-absorbed and engaged my attention from beginning to end. The tarot attracts one heck of a fascinating cross-section of people.
What excites me about this collection of conversations is that one can absorb so much about life and how one might live it. The diversity of perspectives is refreshing; the books end up being a sort of council where many voices and philosophies sit side by side and offer what they’ve learned so far. Both the tarot and life are celebrated as works of art, as poetic acts that carry the potential to make a difference to individuals and to our culture.
Perhaps the message of these two books (it’s helpful to get the pair) is best conveyed in Enriquez’s own words: “I think about the cards and that makes my life better, not because any message or meaning the cards may have, but because the beauty of the visual connections I draw between them is uplifting.” After reading these two books, I felt as though my creativity had been stimulated and that I had been changed for the better somehow. I highly recommed both EN TEREX IT and EX ITENT ER to anyone who wants to enrich not only hir understanding of what the tarot can be, but also what life can be.
You can purchase both books on Amazon and through the publisher, EyeCorner Press.
A nice teaser James about the rich and humane scope Enrique was able to get from a variety of people who have some connection with tarot. These volumes represent a powerfully wrought collection of underrepresented views about what tarot is and maybe. Having been one of those people as was yourself, I am happy to be included in this collection, even if I wince now and then by my utter self-absorption and the bombast of some of my remarks in retrospect.
Fear not, Paul. I didn’t count yours as one of the self-absorbed
There’s so much in each interview to chew on, isn’t there? I appreciate that there are contrasting worldviews, too. We get to hear about the tarot and about human living in a variety of ways.
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