Event Date
A monthly speaker series featuring faculty and students whose research focuses on the study of religion.
The Tarot, Esoteric Spirituality, and the Semiotics of Neurodivergent Reading
Gregory Dobbins, Associate Professor of English
While the Tarot might bring to mind professional fortune-telling, New Age spirituality, or social media-based trends in the popular imagination, such associations are relatively recent in origin. Looking back much further to its origin in 15th century Italy as a deck of playing-cards designed for a game called Tarocchini, the Tarot has proven to be remarkably accommodating to just about every spiritual and philosophical system associated with the long history of Esotericism. As an open and flexible archive of sorts, the Tarot serves as a practical means to evoke and conceptualize what historians of Esotericism call the ‘counter-normative’, or that which is resistant to the logic of modernization. This talk will consider how the “counter-normative” intersects with Neurodivergent thought and expression. In particular, it will propose that the late 19th century refashioning of the Tarot as a complex system of Esoteric correspondences by French and British magicians is itself evidence of a Neurodivergent response to the empowerment of Neurotypicality. Aside from suggesting how the semiotics of a Tarot reading are consistent with the aesthetic principles of Symbolism and Modernism, this talk also seeks to explore the therapeutic and interpretative qualities that make the Tarot so attractive to Neurodivergent practitioners.
Tuesday, April 28
12:00 – 1:00pm
Sproul 912
Lunch Served
