“I Want to be Part of It”: Barbara Moore and the World of Tarot

By Stephen Winick

“You’ve caught me at a very interesting time in my life,” Barbara Moore said. “Everything seems to be changing. I’m becoming interested in things that I never was before. I’m interested in where publishing can go. Also, I’m interested in where Tarot can go and what it can become.”

Moore, who until recently was a senior acquisitions editor for Llewellyn Worldwide, is an important author of Tarot books, an experienced Tarot reader, and a powerful force behind the scenes at a major Tarot publisher. She is also a blogger and editor online at blogspot and at The Tarot Channel.

As if this weren’t enough, Moore is currently working, with others in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, to establish a Tarot conference. The Minnesota Area Tarot Symposium will be held July 24 -26, 2009. It will cost 78 dollars for registration, plus 78 dollars a night for the hotel. Plus, it will have 78 participants, which I suppose must mean Tarot enthusiasts travel in packs!

How did such a mover and shaker become interested in Tarot? Like many readers, Moore’s introduction to the cards came during her university years. Unlike most, she was older than your average college student, and had different concerns from those of the typical undergraduate. “I was about 27 (heading up on that Saturn return),” she said. “I was married to a man who was a quadriplegic, and attended a Methodist church after having left a fundamentalist evangelical church. I guess I was in such a state that I'd either run screaming from the campus in fear, or my brain would explode from opening up to so much so fast.”

Luckily, as she points out, her brain opened without exploding. In fact, it opened far enough that she was ready for her first encounter with Tarot, which occurred in her junior year. She shared a townhouse with another student, and they used to throw parties. They often invited friends who belonged to the Society for Creative Anachronism, a living history and recreation group with multiple points of connection to Tarot and divination. At one of their parties, talk turned to fortune-telling, and Moore’s roommate produced a small wooden box. Inside was a Tarot deck, the first Moore had seen close up. “I believe it was a Rider-Waite-Smith deck,” she said. “Everyone took turns trying to read with them, including me. All we had was the Little White Booklet. No one really knew anything. But I was curious…and hooked.”

During that time, Moore was working full time and attending school full time, so her newfound interest in Tarot had to wait. “I put myself through school by working and by getting scholarships,” she explained. “I worked…in the tutoring office and in the honors office. I also worked on the paint crew (that was an experience). I did some fascinating work in an archive at a historical library, and worked as assistant editor for an academic historical journal, The Michigan Historical Review.”

At the same time, she also had to study. “I was a history student,” she remembered. “I liked history because I could wrap up everything I could think of in one subject. For me, history included politics, art, literature, science, pop culture, economics, philosophy, religion, mythology, psychology...everything that makes up human life, I considered fair game for historical study.”

Moore pursued her love of history into graduate school. Although she was granted funding for her PhD, and considered studying in Scotland, the lure of better employment prevented her leaving the U.S. “I got tired of being so poor and said ‘enough!’ Now, I confess, I regret that decision. That experience would have been worth more than whatever higher quality of life I thought I was getting by having a few more dollars to spend. Live and learn.”

Nevertheless, Moore has made the most of her education. Her time in school coincided with a relatively new focus at many universities on interdisciplinary studies. This allowed her the freedom to make all the connections she wanted among the arts, the sciences, and the humanities. “In an astronomy class I did a presentation on how scientific discoveries affected art through the centuries,” she explained. What interested her most was the way in which a society’s myths were affected by historical circumstances, an idea she explored with relation to the “Hero’s Journey.” This was one of the interests that would lead her to explore the Tarot.

In fact, it was in graduate school that she found more time to pursue her Tarot studies, and her graduate work provided some of the tools. “I was in an atmosphere where combining lots of things to see what can be seen, looking for patterns, and drawing conclusions was just what you did,” she explained. “I was a history and comparative mythology student. The ideas of numbers, symbols, art, psychology, and history all in the palm of my hand was too much to resist.”

Moore’s Tarot development began as a self-administered reading course. “My preferred way of learning is to get a handful of books, read them all, and figure things out,” she said. “I believe I started with Step-by-Step Tarot by Terry Donaldson and Tarot in Ten Minutes by Richard Kaser. These were quickly followed by The Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore by Cynthia Giles.” In one of the early books she read (she is not now sure which one), she learned a Major-Arcana-only spread that she used for a long time.

Her first deck, she said, was the Haindl Tarot. “That kind of amazes me,” she mused, “because there is no way I’d read with it now. I think that using just the Majors made it possible at all. Or maybe it was just the perfect deck for me at that time.” In any case, she did not stick with the Haindl for all that long. “I practiced serial monogamy: one deck at a time, usually using one deck almost exclusively for several years.”

She does not remember every deck she used, or the exact order she followed, but she believes it was close to the following: Haindl Tarot, Mythic Tarot, Old English Tarot, Medieval Scapini Tarot, Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot (which she says she used “for a fairly long time”), Medieval Enchantment: Nigel Jackson Tarot, World Spirit Tarot, Gilded Tarot, Mystic Faerie Tarot. “That is not to say that I didn't buy, study, or do occasional readings with other decks,” she clarified, “just that I always had one main deck.”

Nowadays, this approach has changed a bit. “Lately, I’ve been getting kind of crazy and using multiple decks,” she said. Her current favorites are the Lo Scarabeo Tarot designed by Mark McElroy, the Bohemian Gothic Tarot by Karen Mahoney and Alex Ukolov, and the Manga Tarot by Riccardo Minetti and Anna Lazzarini. “Sometimes, if the mood strikes, I like the Victorian Romantic Tarot, also by Mahoney and Ukolov. I just received my author copies of the Mystic Dreamer Tarot and can’t wait to work with it, too.”

While working her way through the abundance of decks on the market, Moore decided to codify her knowledge of Tarot, and become a certified reader. In our interview, she acknowledged that the existence of certification, a relatively recent development in the long history of Tarot, opens up complex issues. “I’m not really sure how I feel about it,” she said. “As for it being any kind of gauge of quality of a reader, I don’t know. There are so many issues: who decides what qualifies one for certification, who certifies the certifiers, does the ability to take a test make a good reader, does it mean people who read intuitively or psychically are less likely to pass a certification, and if so, does that mean they are less talented?” Despite all these questions, however, she believes certification was the right path for her. “I think the process is great [for me], because it suits how I learn and process information,” she said.

It was especially useful to her as she came out of university. “First, I had just finished six years of college and was very immersed in the idea of study, be tested, and have some authority validate my knowledge,” she explained. “Second, I had spent almost ten years before that studying on my own with books in a very haphazard way. Third, I was just discovering the Tarot community and wanted to a part of it. All of this played into why it was so important to me at the time. It allowed me to take everything I’d learned, process it, and write out my conclusions. It allowed me to fill the gap in my life that occurred when I graduated. It allowed me to feel like I was part of a greater community. It helped me have more confidence entering the Tarot community.”

In fact, she sometimes thinks it might be worthwhile to do it all over again. “The process I used was so useful to me. But it was ten years ago and I’ve learned so much and changed so much. I think it might be useful for me to go through the process again on my own…not for certification but for the crystallization and organization of my beliefs,” she explained.

In 1997, Moore’s life changed significantly when she moved west to Minnesota from Michigan. Moore and her then-husband had a difficult decision to make. She was offered a job at the University of Chicago, while he got a job in Minnesota. They had to decide which way to go. One of the things she remembers was consulting a Tarot reader. “[She was] one of those old-school ones who lay out all the cards and just somehow read them. The only thing I remember from that reading is that she said, “You will move to the west and there you will find your destiny.” Chicago and Minnesota are both west of Michigan, so this reading might not have helped make a decision. But it was certainly accurate, as later events would prove.

They chose to move to Minnesota, where Moore’s husband had work. This initially made life hard for Moore. “He had a job, but I didn’t. I was lonely, homesick, and discouraged. To cheer me up, we went to a mall that had a Museum Store. They carried Tarot decks. In particular, they had Anna Marie Ferguson’s The Legend Tarot. I loved Tarot and I loved Arthurian mythology, so we bought it. The next day, Sunday, I was searching the classifieds for jobs to apply for. There was one for an administrative production assistant for a company called Llewellyn. I thought, ‘that sounds so familiar…where do I know that from?’”

Of course, she knew it from The Legend Tarot’s box, which was sitting right next to her on the table; it is one of Llewellyn’s most successful decks. When she realized this, Moore took it as a sign, applied for the job, and was hired.

Moore’s years at Llewellyn gave her an opportunity to work with many leading lights of the Tarot world. Among them, she particularly mentions two in her “about the author” biographies: Rachel Pollack and Mary K. Greer.

“There were two main things I learned from Rachel,” she said. “The first was the idea of creating spreads to answer specific questions. Rachel was teaching a workshop here in the Twin Cities and also doing readings for people. This was my one and only reading with Rachel. She asked me to talk about what I wanted to know. So I did. Then she sketched out a spread based on the main points of what I said. I was amazed. It was the first time I saw that.” Moore says that to this day, she almost always creates unique spreads for each question she is trying to answer.

“The second thing I learned from Rachel, which is only now beginning to show up in my personal Tarot practice, is a sense of irreverence and fun. Rachel has a wicked sense of fun that magically reveals unexpected bits of wisdom.” (As an example of this, Moore answers my standard question, about how she thinks Tarot works, with a bit of wisdom and humor she learned from Pollack. “I see you ask a two part question. ‘How?’ That question has occupied wise minds for centuries and we don’t have time to explore it here. Your second question is ‘does the Tarot work?’ The answer is ‘yes.’”)

From Greer, Moore learned other important parts of her Tarot practice. “From Mary I gained an appreciation for the beauty and importance of ritual, the necessity of scholarship, and depth of research,” she said. “Also, and almost in opposition to this, I learned the importance of experiencing the cards. She has a fantastic ability to blend the two and creating an intensely personal yet grounded understanding of the cards.” In keeping with this influence, Moore says that she uses Tarot cards extensively in personal ritual and spell-casting, among other things.

Despite her reverence for Greer, who is also a knowledgeable historian of Tarot, Moore has never developed an interest in the history of the cards. “You know, it surprises me a lot that I am so uninterested in the history of Tarot,” she said. “I'm a history grad, for heaven's sake. But, really, I'm so not interested. It's quite embarrassing and I don't think I've ever admitted that in public.” Instead, she chooses to focus on how Tarot can be used now, and where it might go in the future.

Besides Pollack and Greer, Moore is generous in talking about other teachers who have touched her life and her Tarot practice. “Mark McElroy, who is also one of my favorite people on the planet, taught me so much about using the cards in an empowering way,” she said. “His practical applications most closely mirror my own nature. He is the one who introduced me to the idea of using the cards to create what you want rather than using them to see what’s going to happen (or what is likely to happen). Actually, I think James Wanless is the one who planted the seed for this way of using the cards, but the seed did come to fruition during my work with Mark.”

Moore explains how this process works: “Let's say you are currently unemployed and you want a new job. You can ask the cards ‘will I get a job?’ Yes or no, right? And then what? And, so what? That answer is, in my opinion, based on how things stand at the moment. However, we do have some control over our lives and can change the direction of things. So, if you do want a job, a certain kind of job, etc., you can ask ‘What can I do to find a job that meets my needs?’ It's like brainstorming or problem-solving. You figure out what you want and you use the cards to come up with a plan, to maybe find out things that you need to be aware of that you might not have known logically.”

She credits Donald Michael Kraig with introducing her to what is perhaps her favorite method of using the cards. “I believe he calls it Dancing the Tarot,” she said. “I am not sure now if this is how he taught it, but it’s how I’ve come to use it. Go through the deck and select a card that represents where you are now (in whatever situation). Go through the deck and select a card that represents where you want to be or your goal. Set them out with space between them. Then shuffle the deck and lay out a few cards (I usually use three) in between them. These represent the steps to take to get from where you are to where you want to be. Now Donald says to mimic or act out the cards. I am a bit too uptight and inhibited for that, so I just interpret them and use them to create an action plan.”

“Corrine Kenner taught me how to teach and write about Tarot in a way that is accessible and entertaining,” she said. “She is also the one who introduced me to many Tarot journaling methods.”

In addition to these teachers, Moore has had a hand in acquiring and developing decks and books from many leading figures in Tarot. She shared her impressions of several of them. “Bob Place is intense, smart, brilliant, and whenever I'm around him I get tongue-tied stupid and can't say anything,” she revealed. Also, she recalled: “I met Brian Williams once before he died, at the Bay Area Tarot Symposium. He was beautiful, funny, witty, sweet, and I was smitten, head-over-heels in love with him (and, if I remember correctly, so was everyone else).”

One of Moore’s proudest moments in working with a Tarot artist was when she took a chance on Ciro Marchetti, who has since created two striking and original decks, and is working on a third. “Our art department receives lots of portfolios for artists looking for work doing book covers. The slush pile is what we call [unsolicited] submissions. I would look through it for inspiration or to find potential new artists. This is how I found Ciro.”

Although he was an illustrator looking to do a book cover, Moore felt his style would make a compelling Tarot deck. “I called him out of the blue and asked him if he wanted to make a deck. He already had some knowledge of astrology, and he agreed.” Marchetti gave himself a crash course in Tarot and created The Gilded Tarot, which has become one of the best-loved decks of the 2000s. “His innate understanding of Tarot makes me think he would have found his way to the world of Tarot in any case,” Moore said, “but I like saying that I introduced him to it.”

At the time she was working with Marchetti, Moore was also completing her first book, a popular introduction to Tarot entitled What Tarot Can Do for You. As Moore recalls it, the idea started as a promotional pamphlet that Llewellyn intended to give out to customers, explaining some of the uses of Tarot. A few weeks later, Moore brought back a proposal. “The editorial board thought there was enough material for book and asked me to write it,” she remembered. “Because this was my first project, I learned a lot about what it means to write a book. I learned the importance of explaining things simply and clearly.”

What Tarot Can Do for You is indeed a simple book, but it’s also a useful one, covering many of the basics of what can be accomplished with a Tarot deck. In addition to a lengthy section on divination, the book covers problem solving, meditation, journaling, magic, and self-improvement. It contains many spreads geared toward specific goals or problems, and many exercises that can be useful for newcomers to Tarot. It is, in short, a very good book for complete beginners, but probably won’t help people who have worked with the cards a great deal already. Furthermore, it betrays its origins as a publicity piece in both the section about picking a Tarot deck and the list of recommended reading: it suggests only Llewellyn books and decks.

As What Tarot Can Do for You was going to press, Marchetti’s Gilded Tarot was nearing completion. Llewellyn needed an accompanying book, and they turned to their newest author. “I don’t remember all the details, but there was some scheduling crunch or something, and probably a budget issue,” Moore remembered. “So we needed a book, and we needed it from someone who we could count on to meet a tight deadline and to do so inexpensively. I wrote it as a work-for-hire.” A work-for-hire contract meant that Moore was paid a lump sum, but receives no royalties for book sales.

“Even though, as an author, it was a very bad and costly decision, I am glad that I had the opportunity,” she said. “I love the images and was honored to write this book. I learned not to underestimate my worth as an author. I learned to see the spectrum of meaning in each card. I learned that I liked giving voice to the cards.” Moore approached the book as another introduction to Tarot and a way to get to know the cards—both the cards in general, and the cards of this particular deck. There are exercises to introduce the reader to aspects of the cards, descriptions of each card, and a series of five spreads that readers can use to answer specific concerns.

Moore has since written texts for two more Tarot decks and an oracle deck. The first of these was The Mystic Faerie Tarot, created by Linda Ravenscroft. Like Marchetti, Ravenscroft had submitted artwork to Llewellyn for consideration. Moore found it in the slush pile, and saw the potential for a Tarot deck. For this deck, they made the unusual decision to make the pips of each suit, Ace through ten, tell a sequential story. For example, the Wands cards reveal a tale of two faeries who find a dragon egg and hatch a dangerous dragon. This gives the deck an added storytelling dimension, but also to some extent limits its ability to tell other stories. The decision also guaranteed right from the outset that the deck would not be a clone of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot or any other deck, but instead would be its own Tarot system.

Once the deck was underway, it was time to seek an author for the book. “Every author I put forward was either too busy or for whatever reason the board said no. Finally, I was asked to do it.” Moore initially resisted. She had recently moved into a house that needed work, and was feeling the need for some distance from Tarot. The book deal would not be part of her day job, but a separate contract she would have to fulfill in her spare time.

It was a difficult decision, but she is happy with the choice she made. “I loved writing it,” she said. “I loved the whole experience. It started off a bit shaky. I sat down with the images and tried to come up with my approach. The darn faeries were having none of it! It was then I realized consciously what I experienced subconsciously with The Gilded Tarot: I had to let the cards do the talking. Not just in terms of their meanings and nuances, but the voice as well.” Not surprisingly, the chapters on the pip cards read like fairy tales; they even begin with “Once upon a time….”

Moore’s most recent Tarot companion book is for The Mystic Dreamer Tarot, a deck that features the dark and surreal art of Heidi Darras. Darras’s medium is photomanipulation; she begins with stock photographs of all kinds, combining elements of many photos, then adding special effects, textures, and digital painting. Because she did begin with stock photos, everyone in the deck looks like a model, and no one except the Hermit looks a day over 30. In a deck that mirrors the Rider-Waite-Smith symbolism, this can be a little disconcerting. Moore also notes another major change from the Rider-Waite-Smith system: the removal of Christian symbolism. Indeed, the suit of Pentacles looks far more pagan here than in the famous art by Pamela Colman Smith.

Moore took a different approach to writing this book, more or less ignoring the structure of the deck, which she discusses at more length in her other books. Instead, she emphasizes getting to know individual cards on a personal level, suggesting first of all that the reader keep a Tarot journal. She then describes each card, sparsely, without much emotional involvement or poetic language. “I realized that…the person reading the cards is meant to go into the cards, to explore their own responses, to have their own experience,” she explained. “So the writing is just meant to give them a springboard. It had to be spare so it didn’t get in the way of or influence their own experience. The writing had to be less personal so that their experience could be more personal.” Throughout the book, she encourages this personal involvement, asking open-ended questions to spark the reader’s intuition, and leaving blank, lined pages for the reader’s own notes.

Moore has also recently completed Hip Witch Tarot, which is not yet published at this writing. This is a companion book to Lo Scarabeo’s deck, The Witchy Tarot. To a certain extent, Moore feels this deck, aimed at a young women’s market, got a bad rap from reviewers. “Although this deck is filled with images of sassy, cute, sexy, powerful young women, it has received some flack about being cute, sassy, and sexy,” she said. “Even I had a bit of resistance to it. However, as I spent time with it, dug deeper, looked at the images closely, I saw that it was a really interesting deck with some useful and surprising insights. I hope a lot of people read it, especially ones who negatively reviewed the deck…just so they can see it from a different point of view.”

Moore also revealed that she counts designing spreads as one of her favorite parts of writing each book. “While I don’t use them, I love to create them,” she said. “I get these ideas and work them out so that they make sense logically (at least to me). Then I test them, doing readings for friends. I tweak and polish them. Then they go in the book.” After that, she admits, she usually doesn’t use them herself!

Moore’s books are, of course, her most visible contributions to the world of Tarot. But she also has other valuable experiences worth discussing. For eleven years, she worked her way through the ranks at Llewellyn, and in so doing became a senior acquisitions editor acquiring Tarot for one of the biggest publishers of Tarot decks in the world. “I acquired Tarot for Llewellyn until about 2003 or 2004,” she explained. “Then I did not; I was working exclusively on launching a new imprint, Midnight Ink (mystery novels), and fell out of the Tarot loop for a while. Then in 2008, they asked me to acquire Tarot again along with my Midnight Ink duties.” After a short time spent fulfilling both roles, Moore left Llewellyn in May 2008. However, shortly after leaving she agreed to acquire for their Tarot line as an independent contractor.

What exactly does this mean? She explained. “My function, as Tarot acquisitions editor and now [as a contractor], is to acquire three new decks per year and two new books. I find the new talent, develop the project, present the project to the editorial board, and negotiate contracts. I serve on the cover design committee. I review back cover copy. I watch the market, looking for trends and anticipating future trends. I watch sales of current products and see what worked and what didn’t and try to analyze why.”

As a top decision-maker and author’s liaison at a major publisher, she is well-positioned to give advice to prospective authors. “Some basic advice: follow the publisher’s guidelines when submitting the project,” she said. “Know the market and know your audience. Know how your project is similar to and different from other things on the market, and be able to provide comparable titles. If you say ‘there’s nothing else like it on the market!’ that tells me two things: either you don’t know the market, or there is nothing out there like it for a reason.”

Moore also has advice for the frustratingly common plight of the person who is not an artist, but nevertheless has a great idea for a deck. “This is a hard situation,” she said. “I’m not sure what it is like for other publishers, but for Llewellyn, if an established Llewellyn author has an idea, we might try to match up an artist for that idea. If you have a really great idea, it doesn’t hurt to send it in and see if we’d match up an artist, but it really would be a long shot. More likely, we find an artist and then match an author to that project.”

“I wouldn’t try to create the art yourself, if you are not an artist,” she continued. “The bar is really being raised on the quality of art demanded by tarot consumers. I suppose you could network like crazy and find an artist willing to do enough cards on spec for a proposal. Looking at collectible card games for potential artists might be a good idea. Those artists are used to making card-sized compositions and can usually work fairly quickly.”

In general, Moore suggested that authors not be discouraged if major publishers in the Tarot world (such as Llewellyn, Lo Scarabeo, or U.S. Games Systems) aren’t able to acquire their work. “My advice would be: be forward thinking, look to the future, be creative, don’t be tied to traditional publishing,” she said. “There are some great benefits to being with a larger publisher, but there are limitations. Llewellyn is looking for projects that will sell a certain number per year. Not all things will, so they are not a good match for Llewellyn. However, that does not mean they aren’t great ideas and shouldn’t be published.”

Moore advocates looking for innovative ways to market and distribute work. She points to an example from another of her hobbies, knitting. Recently, some knitting magazines went from a contract in which they bought first serial rights to knitting patterns, to one where they demanded all publishing rights. As soon as a designer published a design in a magazine, she gave up all rights to her own work. The magazine publishers then started selling the patterns online, separately from the magazine, making more money at the author’s expense. Like her own experience writing a book as work-for-hire, Moore recognized this as a raw deal for designers. But the knitting community fought back. “Enter the newly launched Twist Collective,” she said. “It is an online knitting magazine that shows patterns and gives some information. But they don’t provide the pattern. If you want the pattern, you pay for it. The designer then gets a percentage of that. So if they design something that is wildly popular, they are fairly reimbursed for their creation.”

What the Tarot world needs, she suggested, is ideas like this. “The Tarot community is creative enough and smart enough, she said. “I know we can come up with some great ideas.”

Moore also pointed to the ideas that are already out there. In the world of Tarot decks, Moore cited Magic Realist Press of Prague, Czech Republic, and Leisa ReFalo of Portland, Oregon, as examples of new paradigms for deck publishing. “They are both doing exciting things,” she opined, “MRP with the artistic quality and unique printing techniques [such as using metallic ink for their silver and gold editions], and Leisa with her smaller print runs, making available some very worthy projects that aren’t taken up by traditional publishers.” ReFalo’s projects include Robert Place’s Alchemical Tarot Renewed and ReFalo’s own Tarot of Color and Kaleidoscope Tarot.

Moore also wonders whether the future of book publishing will hold any surprises. “The community always wants advanced material,” she revealed. “However, the market doesn’t support this in traditional publishing.” Moore ought to know; Llewellyn’s Special Topics in Tarot series was one of the best places to find advanced thinking on Tarot’s thorny problem areas: court card interpretations, card reversals, spread design, and others. Precisely because they were advanced, and thus only appealed to experienced Tarot seekers, the books did not sell well. “But we sold some, so a venue that doesn’t require such large quantities might be able to find a way,” she mused.

Moore is changing her opinions on other elements of Tarot and divination as well. In the past, she was never interested in non-Tarot oracle decks. Recently, she found herself fascinated by them, just in time for a new project: writing the book for The Enchanted Oracle by Jessica Galbreth. A divination tool consisting of a deck of 36 cards by Galbreth, a book by Moore, and a fairy charm that serves as a pendulum, this will be of interest to lovers of fairy art and oracle decks. Moore even had some input into the cards this time. They began with a set of Galbreth’s existing illustrations, but Moore found that made for an unbalanced deck. “Using the Major Arcana as a kind of a guide, I went through the images and picked out five archetypes or ideas that I felt were not represented. I described them in words to Jessica and she came up with five brand new images for the deck.”

“It was very different than writing for a Tarot deck,” she revealed. “With Tarot there is some foundation to build on, some inherent structure that guides me. This was a journey into my own intuitive responses to the images and the symbols.” Considering that part of the idea of the deck was “to access your own inner power and magic,” this was quite appropriate. Moore also welcomed the opportunity to combine a card deck and book with a pendulum, as well as spells, enchantments, journaling activities, visualizations, and prayers, all of which you will find in The Enchanted Oracle.

In addition to working on non-Tarot decks, Moore is also changing her approach to Tarot. Until recently a devotee of Rider-Waite derived decks, she has recently moved beyond that mold with books about the Mystic Faerie Tarot and Witchy Tarot. This is not a coincidence; she has been more and more interested in non-Rider-Waite decks lately. “The Rider-Waite-Smith structure is a great framework,” she said, “but are we becoming too dependent on it? It was not the first deck; it is not ‘the’ way. Sometimes on the forums when I see people talking about non-Rider-Waite-Smith decks and they say ‘but that’s not the meaning of the Two of Wands,’ I worry. I worry that we are not allowing Tarot to evolve.”

“But I don’t worry too much,” she concluded. “Like I said, there is so much creativity in the community that I expect exciting new things to happen. And I want to be part of it!”