Alquimia e tarô

by Robert M. Place

Robert M. Place é um dos principais pensadores e instrutores de Tarô de todos os tempos. Ao associar os arcanos do tarô à sabedoria hermética de modo responsável, didático e eloquente, seus métodos e suas lições aproximam a dinâmica das imagens aos processos humanos e facilitam o modo alquímico de operar transformações através da leitura das cartas. A tradução deste que é o seu maior e mais importante livro enriquece o tarô praticado em língua portuguesa.
Você aprenderá:
• As correspondências esotéricas, os símbolos, os números, os quatro elementos e os significados de cada arcano;
• As origens, os processos e os conceitos de Alquimia e suas associações com os arcanos maiores e menores;
• A história do tarô ao longo dos séculos e as relações literárias, filosóficas, iconográficas e alegóricas;
• A leitura do tarô a partir das noções de polaridade, direção, rima visual e meditação;
• Métodos exclusivos de divinação.

Genres: Tarot, Alchemy, Nonfiction, Esoterica, Occult, Divination

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 2012

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid reference for the Alchemical Tarot, one of the more original and celebrated tarot decks published in the last 20 years. The deck was first published in 1995 and fell out of print some years later, commanding increasingly dear prices on the secondhand market until deck creator Robert Place regained the rights to his deck and started printing and selling it himself in 2007. This companion book was originally published in 2011 when Place published the third edition of the deck. (The fourth edition of the deck was published in 2015 and remains available directly from Place on his website and via Amazon.)

I first became interested in The Alchemical Tarot soon after I began studying tarot in the early 2000s, and it became one of the earliest additions to my tarot deck wish list. However, despite my joy when I found out that Place was resuming publication of his deck, I did not manage to finally purchase a copy of it until 2016. The reasons for this were various, largely clustered around how inconsistently I've worked with tarot over the last several years. At this point, though, I take it as destiny; I was not ready to work with this deck until now; it was waiting for its time. In the last year, images and words associated with alchemy, a subject I hadn't considered for years, started coming to me unbidden in dreams and in the course of Jungian analysis. As part of a larger study of alchemy I undertook in response, I realized it was time to return to tarot and to work with this deck.

I was grateful to be able to buy the book when I bought the deck. First, I thought it would help me better understand alchemical symbolism by linking it with a symbolic system I already understood (the tarot). Second, I knew I'd need it to be able to work with this deck, which is not self-explanatory to even an experienced tarot reader. While some decks simply "clone" the Waite-Smith symbol system and "dress it up" differently to fit a different theme, others like this one at least partially rebuild the card meanings around a different symbolic system. Such decks tend to require more than a "little white book" to work with intelligently. I never owned or read the original book that was co-authored with Rosemary Guiley and released with the first edition of the Alchemical Tarot in 1995, and so cannot compare this book to that one. Having followed Robert Place online, it does seem that Alchemy and the Tarot incorporates more recent research as well as research that likely made it into that first book.

Given that Robert Place has published other books on the history of the tarot and the origins of tarot symbolism, I was somewhat surprised to find a sizable chunk of this book (at least 80 pages) dedicated to that same subject. As someone who has not read his other books, I appreciated the overview of this research, but also felt this particular book could have benefited from having fewer pages dedicated to this material and more pages dedicated specifically to alchemical symbolism. I particularly missed having any significant reference for the alchemical glyphs that are prominently featured on the fourth edition of the deck. Many of the symbols Place used on the Major Arcana to signify alchemical processes are not ones I've found in any other reference I've consulted.

I also would have appreciated more background on why Place made some of the choices he did when he linked each card with an element or alchemical process. For example, why have cards 2-5, symbolic of the four elements, also collectively signify the process of dissolution, rather than have each card signify the process specific to each element (calcination for fire, dissolution for water, etc.)? Why is The Emperor the card for the Air element instead of the Hierophant? Place clearly depicted the Hierophant as a scholarly figure with a book, an intellectual, and The Emperor is more typically depicted as a fiery, willful figure. Even as depicted in the Alchemical Tarot, I still see The Emperor as associated with the fire element--the eagle might be a symbol of air, but in alchemy, it's also a symbol of the volatile. And why link the Chariot to the alchemical process of sublimation? My immediate association with the Chariot was the process of separation. The horses reflect a separation of aspects of the self and the card traditionally reflects a separation from home. I also wondered, why use the Hanged Man, a card I've never associated with the fire element, to signify the alchemical process of calcination?

Place does mention in passing the sources of many of the images he based his cards upon, but it's not clear why he chose one source image over the other, and these brief blurbs often raise more questions than they answer. Again, the issue is not that these subjects aren't treated at all, but that they are treated so briefly in a book I would have expected to be more focused on them. That said, this book certainly provides valuable insight that goes far beyond what one would get with the standard "little white book" that comes packed in with a box of tarot cards. I finished this book still perplexed on some academic matters like the above, but with a solid understanding of the deck on its own terms that made my first work with it a pleasure.

As clear as it is that Place is a scholar who engages in significant research for his projects, I came away from reading the card descriptions with the conclusion that the choices made for these cards were significantly informed by intuition, the unconscious, and personal understanding of the processes of inner growth and creativity. This is a very, very good thing for those wanting to work with this deck to foster personal transformation and a deeper understanding of creative energies. My first reading with these cards was very illuminating as to some of the currents in my formation as a writer and the blocks I currently face in living from my soul.

Given the depth of understanding of these matters reflected by these cards, it would have been more interesting to read more about Place's personal experience with creating them and less about his otherwise impressive academic and historical knowledge of tarot. This would have made the book more valuable beyond its use as a reference for a particular tarot deck, as a touchpoint for others wanting to understand the personal pull of these ancient images and ideas. As many articles and books as there are that use alchemical symbolism as a touchpoint to explore personal growth, few offer more than the same shallow treatment of the same limited selection of concepts. Place's knowledge on this subject clearly goes beyond what is usually offered and while this book does justice to its subject, it is a shame that it only offers glimpses of Place's personal journey with these images.

Perhaps my favorite part of this book is its brief but very illuminating final chapter on using the cards for divination. Rather than simply offer descriptions and brief explanations of a few spreads, as most tarot books tend to do, Place offers a new paradigm for readings that is useful regardless of which spread is used. The Celtic Cross and the three-card spread are probably the two most commonly used, and useful, tarot spreads, and Place's thoughtful discussion adds even more depth and utility to the three-card spread. Looking at cards in the way Place describes allowed me to get a lot more out of my initial reading with them than I otherwise would have. The Transmutation Reading, an elaboration of the three-card spread, is an excellent spread to use with these cards, but could work well with any number of decks, especially other "deep decks" like this one, such as the Mary-El and Navigators of the Mystic SEA.

In conclusion, I am glad for this book and will likely continue to use it as a reference as I continue to work with this deck, but I cannot really consider it much further than its basic utility. As a self-published book, it shows want of editing in its typos, but more significantly in the flow and the focus of the text. Its language is clean and clear and not at all a trouble to read, but is also not poetic, fiery, or transformational in itself. Not that it needs to be; one of Robert Place's greatest virtues as a thinker, designer, and artist, is his clarity and his subtlety, his way of distilling and capturing the essence of ideas in clean and simple images. What I'd most want in a future edition of this book is not more literary language, but more information about this deck itself, its history, and the dreams or visions that led Place to create it. Even with all of the remarkable decks he's created since and continues to create, I suspect he would call this one his magnum opus, and it deserves to be more of a central figure in its own book.

[Sabine Mendes Moura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Place se aprofunda nas conexões entre a alquimia e o tarô, utilizando uma linguagem tão direta que me parece acessível a diferentes públicos interessados no tema. O que mais me chamou a atenção é que o livro não se reduz a uma série de históricos ou descrições associadas à maneira a partir da qual o autor encara o tarô. Na parte final, há dicas valiosíssimas para aquelxs que estão começando a jogar, incluindo comentários bem esclarecedores sobre o momento em que nos preparamos para ouvir/interpretar/compreender a linha narrativa que cada jogada aponta. Como alguém que trabalha com as cartas, recomendo muito (mesmo para quem, a princípio, não se sinta tão atraído pela alquimia (alguns capítulos podem ser úteis independentemente disso). Para quem já gosta da abordagem alquímica (como eu) é o pacote inicial completo. Vale destacar a importância de termos editoras como a Presságio se dedicando a esse tipo de tradução. Obrigada!

[Joana Silva]

Muitos dados interessantes históricos sobre alquimia e Tarot (como o título indica), com informação sobre os assuntos separadamente e depois mostrando como se unem, nomeadamente através dos quatro elementos (sobre os quais também temos aqui diferentes visões). Apesar de achar que não é necessário ter conhecimentos profundos sobre os temas, porque está tudo muito bem explicado, se o objetivo é aprender a ler cartas não me parece o livro ideal.