Tarot Network News

A journal serving the community of tarot card readers, Tarot Network News was founded in 1983 by Gary Ross. Ross had anticipated the new burst of enthusiasm for tarot cards largely because of the New Age movement and the neopagan Wicca movement. Throughout the twentieth century the tarot deck designed by Pamela Coleman Smith and Arthur Edward Waite and published by Rider & Co. in London (1910) has been the most popular deck. Some alternative decks were based on the Rider-Waite deck, but new designs were increasingly based on different psychologies and worldviews. Several decks adopted Egyptian motifs (including one by Oscar Ichazo, the founder of Arica ), and others operated from such widely divergent realms as tantrism, the 1960s counterculture, and surrealism.

Whereas Wiccans adopted tarot decks as simply part of their magic worldview, New Agers began to see the tarot as an important tool for personal transformation. Both movements created an environment in which creation of new tarot decks was seen as an important personal exploratory activity, and readers were encouraged to find a deck that suited their individual personality and concept of truth.

Tarot Network News, 12 issues of which had appeared by 1994, reviews new decks as they appear, discusses the meaning of the cards of the major arcana, and celebrates the expansion of the world of tarot cards. The News also sponsors the Bay Area Tarot Symposium twice annually. Gary Ross continues as editor of the News, which is published by Jack and Rae Hurley. Address: c/o TAROCO, P.O. Box 104, Sausalito, CA 94966.

Sources:

Jensen, K. Frank. "A Decade with Tarot!" Tarot Network News 12 (spring 1994): 24-32.