The tarot, or tarocchi deck—four
suits plus a 22-card “trump” suit—has been used to play games since the 15th
century. Since that time each card has also accumulated meanings. By the
18th century the tarot was used for divination or for oracular
purposes, much like the Delphic oracles of old. Nowadays the trumps, or major
arcana, are believed to chronicle, symbologically, the journey of the Fool
through life.
How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) explores, exploits, and sometimes
downright twists the major arcana and the meanings they have accumulated, in
the order in which the many hundreds of tarot decks now travelling the world
present them. The Star, connoting hope, exists simultaneously as metaphor and
feral dog; the rebirth nestled inside the Death card becomes female friendship
and escape from patriarchal binds.