EN TEREX IT: ENCOUNTERS AROUND THE TAROT VOL I
ENRIQUE ENRIQUEZ
DIVINATION
DECEMBER 2012
ISBN 978-8792633217
PAPERBACK | 6×9 | B&W | 358 pp
LIST PRICE $15
DESCRIPTION
In 2 volumes Enrique Enriquez gathers fresh voices and sharp tongues to speak of the art of Tarot as the art of living magically. Forty-seven tarot luminaries (readers, historians, philosophers, magicians, and scientists alike) gather here to offer unique perspectives on what we can think of as divination with bones, human bones. Artists, deck creators, and modern-day neo-platonists follow Enrique’s lead, letting themselves be enchanted by the piper at the gate of games. Some of the central questions that Enrique deals with are: do we read for the symbol, or the image? Do we read for the narrative that the cards create or their potential for transformation? Do we read for the plot, the poetry, or the formal properties?
We find Enrique holding the torch and asking everybody the same questions: how do we experience the tarot? Through symbolic readings or through interacting with the image? While it is clear that he goes with the latter, he gives everyone a chance to state their preferences. But he doesn’t stop there. He wants to see what the argument is for such preferences. What are the motivations in considering where images take us? How do the images do that? Why do we go to fortunetellers? My own contribution to this is to suggest that we read cards for the magic of narrative. We go to fortunetellers to see others play with our lives. Here are 47 of them. – Camelia Elias from “HE RECO ME: Enrique Enriquez Poetics of Divination”
“Enrique Enriquez is a great innovator in the world of tarot. Setting himself against the enormous modern preoccupation of the English-speaking world with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and its many offshoots, Enrique pledges allegiance to the older and relatively unpopular Marseille tradition. He approaches the cards not as a doorway into mysticism or as a branch of psychotherapy, but as a visual work of art capable of producing great poetry. Of course poetry can be prophetic and healing too. These two volumes of interviews feature Enrique interrogating a number of fascinating personalities from a variety of disciplines, including tarot celebrities such as Rachel Pollack, Mary Greer, and Robert Place, about their own approaches to tarot. Some succeed in withstanding his intimidating intellectual sophistication heroically, while others fare less well. But there is humour and insight on every page, and every interview is thought-provoking. The overall effect is to massively expand our appreciation for the tarot itself. Like Enrique's beautiful first book Tarology, which is certainly the strangest book about tarot ever written, the philosophical and poetic concerns of these two volumes are a million miles above the many ‘how to’ beginners guides to the subject that are currently flooding the market. Mind expanding.” – Tom Thornbury
