Connecting with an ancestor through the Dali Tarot.

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Oct 31

Welcome to the Samhain Tarot Blog Hop! The theme of this hop is the Ancestors. Each of us blog hoppers have shared something about how we use tarot to connect with the Ancestors. Hopefully you have arrived here from, our blog hop wrangler, Raine Shakti’s post over at Tarot of Change. If not, you can check it out afterward by following the “PREVIOUS BLOG” link at the top or bottom of this post.

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I recently learned that a dear friend had passed and while processing this news, I decided to get a copy of the tarot deck he had been using during the Tarot for Creatives Writing Workshops that I lead. In fact, the deck was in the mail when the Ancestors theme was announced for this blog hop. The idea of working with the deck that my friend used in order to connect with him occurred to me because I’d chosen decks to connect with specific ancestors twice before. I may come back to post about the other two decks, but here I will share just about the most recent: The Dali Tarot.

*Dali Tarot* by Salvador Dali © 2019 TASCHEN.

I’ve long felt that there are certain people that you would have to know in order to really understand who I am. Have you felt this too? When someone important to you passes, it can be difficult to imagine that another person who becomes an important part of your life later on will never have the opportunity to know them. For me, this has led to a lot of thought and care put into how I carry each of these people with me in the world so that they may be known in some way through me. Choosing a tarot deck to stay connected to such a person has the dual benefit of maintaining a connection to them while also providing a means to express that connection to others and to the world.

It was when my friend Geoffrey began attending the Tarot Writing Workshops just this year that I realized he was one of these people. I found myself filled with the feeling of “everyone here gets to meet Geoffrey!” It is this feeling that makes me feel Geoffrey has joined the realm of my ancestors, though we share no blood relation. I hadn’t seen him myself since we were working toward our MFAs at Naropa University back in the early 2000s. Aside from my roommate, he was the first person I saw on the morning of 9/11/2001. We both had friends and relations back in New York City and the event wasn’t real to me until hearing his thoughts about it. I’d even put on an “everything’s fine” face when I left my house that morning and didn’t drop it until we started to talk.

It was in front of the Lincoln Building, at Naropa University’s main campus, that we talked that day. Geoffrey and I had been keeping in touch via Instagram messages for the last couple of years and I’d shared with him that I remembered our conversations as if they all happened in front of that building even though I know that’s not true. The last time I saw him was on Zoom and he showed up with the Lincoln Building set as his backdrop.

I was recalling all this as I rewatched the recording I’d made of that day’s Zoom session. I was looking for something needed by one of the other writers who attended. When I got back to her, she noted that she hadn’t seen Geoffrey at the workshops since then and asked how he was. I admitted I was concerned. I’d last heard from him in June when he reported he was recovering from a fall. I’d sent several messages since and hadn’t heard back from him. Mostly, I’d written to let him know Rachel Pollack had been ill as I knew he had a connection to her. My understanding is that her book about the Dali Tarot is at least a part of the reason he felt connected to this tarot deck. (A copy of Rachel Pollack’s Salvador Dali’s Tarot just arrived in the mail as well.)

Having voiced my concern, it occurred to me to check Geoffrey’s Facebook page and it was there that I learned of Geoffrey’s passing--just nine days after I’d last heard from him--from a post his family had left on his page. Seeing no comments from any of our mutual friends there, I wrote a post of my own to let them know. I included a screenshot from our Zoom session--Geoffrey with the Lincoln building behind him. It was only later in the day that I realized I made this post on 9/11/2022.

The Lincoln Building at Naropa University’s main campus, Boulder, CO.

I went through the deck and chose a few cards that might help me to tell you something about Geoffrey, so I’ll begin by sharing those:

The Magician:
This card, depicting Dali himself, has got to be the most well known image from the deck. It is the image used for advertising the deck and the image used on the front of Rachel Pollack’s book about the deck. Although the Dali Tarot was amongst the first five tarot decks I’d ever owned (and later sold), I will now always associate the deck, and this image, with Geoffrey. In fact, the gesture of Dali’s body here is just how Geoffrey was holding himself through much of that Zoom call. And of course Geoffrey is a brilliant writer connecting to the energy to the Magician in that way. In Rachel Pollack’s words: “..the Magician represents the creative principle, the spark of light that begins existance.... He stands with crossed arms, a sign that the artist retains his inner mysteries.”

The Magician. *Dali Tarot* by Salvador Dali © 2019 TASCHEN.

Ten of Pentacles:
This card is actually the reason that I sold my first copy of this deck. I still felt unsure of my tarot readings at the time and while all of the Dali cards have their own unique take on the traditional images, I just couldn’t reconcile this one with the traditional meanings I knew for the Ten of Pentacles which usually relates to family and inheritance. In particular, I didn’t like the voyeuristic feeling I get from the image. In Rachel Pollack’s words: “The way the picture appears through a hole in the background gives a sense of distance or of looking at the scene through a lens. It is something we see without participating in.” If you read tarot and have some thoughts on how this image relates to the Ten of Pentacles, please let me know! I still wonder about it. I shared with Geoffrey that this card was the reason I sold the deck but I never got a chance to tell him that the writing he shared during the workshops was leading me to want to connect with the Dali Tarot again if even only as a writing deck.

Ten of Pentacles. *Dali Tarot* by Salvador Dali © 2019 TASCHEN.

Strength:
Of all the cards in the deck, this one comes the closest to allowing me to share Geoffrey with you--as I knew him--without your getting to meet him for yourself. This image to me depicts what it’s like to be Geoffrey’s friend. I’m speaking as a long-distance friend, of course, so no disrespect meant to those who know Geoffrey in greater detail than I do. He made it known in his social media posts that there were other details. But he was the type of friend who didn’t hesitate to deliver a complement or a positive word if he had one for you. This was true even at our writing workshops where his delivery of his own just-written work came off so polished that it could be intimidating if it weren’t so inspiring and the attention he gave to other’s work made you (or at least me) want to step up to that inspiration. In Rachel Pollack’s words: “She signifies the inner strength gained through self-knowledge, while the lion symbolizes the passions, controlled not through repression but through its opposite, bringing them up until the released energy becomes transformed. In Dal’s card, taken from a tapestry in the Musée de Cluny we see this psychic change in the flowers above the woman’s head.”

Strength. *Dali Tarot* by Salvador Dali © 2019 TASCHEN.

With all three decks that I have chosen to work with specific ancestors, I have found the best connection is made by using the deck in the way that most resembles how I would have connected with that person in life. Geoffrey was not the type of friend I reached out to for personal advice but rather for creative inspiration. I have tried to do a few personal readings with the deck and it just doesn’t give as clear answers as I can get from another deck. Maybe that will change as I work with it more. For now, however, using the Dali Tarot for writing allows me to call in creative inspiration that doesn’t seem available from other tarot decks. It feels kinda like hanging out with Geoffrey and writing together.

Here are a few poems I wrote from the Dali Tarot during a Tarot Writing Meetup:

Ace of Wands.

This is what passed from hand to hand.
Trinkets for playing cards,
a large empty house,
and a night sky
still
with its blue in it
swirling
as if the birds
or bats
swung a clothesline
between them
and were catching
the wind.
This is what passes for hands.
My hands at last on the ground and yours in midair.
There’s a stair here
I’m not ready to climb.
Twisted vines
like clothesline
carry us there.

Ace of Pentacles.

The spirits graced you with a lineage to carry.
It just wasn’t your lineage
or it was broken
by adoption
or the madness of your ancestors.
Who’s to say
according to spirit
if blood is thicker
than the air one breathes.
If a tree can flourish
without its roots.
If it’s pretty enough
as a dead thing
so long as
a cat
or a breeze
doesn’t knock its leaves
to the ground.