Music & The Tarot

I have been interested in the Tarot ever since a friend gave me a reading when I was in college.  At first, I was skeptical, and learned to do readings to test how accurate the deck was.  Now, more than 20 years later, I still read the cards, and have studied mythology and archetypes of many cultures, and have degrees in psychology and social work.

The Tarot is made up of suits like our modern playing cards (which were modeled after the Tarot, in fact) as follows:  Swords (spades), Wands (clubs), Cups (hearts), and Pentacles (diamonds).  There are 14 cards in each suit - Ace through Ten, plus four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, King (sometimes Princess, Prince, Queen, King).  These 56 cards are called the Minor Arcana.  In addition, the Tarot has 22 additional cards called the Major Arcana, which represent the primal archetypes of everyone's Life Path.   There are similarities in Joseph Campbell's work in defining the mythic path of the "Hero's Journey," as well as in psychologist Carl Jung's work defining  universal archetypes and the idea of a collective unconscious.

As I have written music over the past years, I have developed interpretations that correspond to the 22 Major Arcana/Archetypes of the Tarot cards.  Eventually, all twenty-two Arcana cards will be represented, each by a piece of music that intentionally was created with the qualities, aspects, and associations of that archetype in mind.  In all the years I have studied the Tarot, I have not found very much already existing in terms of meditation or ritual music that goes into this level of connection with the Tarot.  

Here are the Arcana in standard order (followed by Song Title):

~ Click on Song Title for more in-depth information ~

                   0.   The Fool  (Leap of Faith)

                   1.   The Magician  (Journeyman)

                   2.   The High Priestess  (In Visioning)

                   3.   The Empress  (Gaia's Dream)

                   4.   The Emperor  (Four Winds)

                   5.   The High Priest  (Shaman)

                   6.   The Lovers  (Serenade)

                   7.   The Chariot  (Sweet Sorrow)

                   8.   Justice/ Karma  (Root and Crown)

                   9.   The Hermit  (Solstice Eve)

                   10.  The Wheel Of Fortune  (Lemniscate)

                   11.  Strength  (Lypiphera)

                   12.  The Hanged Man  (Inversion)

                   13.  Death/Rebirth  (Metamorphosis)

                   14.  Temperance (Angels' Weeping)

                   15.  The Devil  (A Call To Arms)

                   16.  The Tower  (Heartache's Release)

                   17.  The Star  (Holding On To Hope)

                   18.  The Moon  (Song of the Siren)

                   19.  The Sun  (Solstice Dawn)

                   20.  Judgment  (Daybreak)

                   21.  The World  (Tabula Rasa)

CONTACT:  morganne@morgannebaum.com


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