Source: Aeclectic |
The Cook's Tarot by Judith Mackay Stirt is a big-hearted,
saucy tarot deck in the colors of tropical fruit. With its sultry colors,
aromatic dishes and houses full of pets, The Cook's Tarot had me at hello. I
had not gotten through all 78 cards when I decided that it would be one of my
favorites.
The Cook's Tarot cards are large – 3.75 inches by 5.5 inches.
The backs of the cards are light and dark olive green, with a crosshatch pattern
created by intersecting spoons and forks. The cards are not fully reversible. Apples
appear on many of the pentacles suit, drinking vessels on the cups, knives and
skewers on the swords suit, and matches on many of the wands. The images are
hand-painted gouache. While Stirt was creating the deck, synchronous events
occurred in her own life. A friend died on Valentine's Day; this inspired the
three of swords.
The azure shades of tropical seas are among the dominant
colors, along with rich greens of an equatorial forest, but the cards span the
palette. The Fool's skirt is a swirl of cherry reds and dawn pinks. The Devil
hangs suspended in a blob of purple hell. The child in the five of pentacles
sports a yellow rain slicker. In the eight of pentacles, a baker labors as the
first rays of dawn (or shafts of sunset) add a glow to his otherwise dull
kitchen. There are some browns and grays for cabinets, furniture, cats, and a
teddy bear in the six of cups. Bottom borders are a subdued gold that
complements each color in the cards.
Light and shadow are subtle. The five of cups depicts a
depressed woman sitting on the floor of a darkened, midnight kitchen. The
dimmed colors, and the shadow cast by a gallon of milk on the countertop,
convey the time of day and lack of illumination.
Stirt's style is blunt and bold. There are no fine, fussy
details. Her style could be called childlike or primitive. The woman in the
Lovers looks a bit like a woman in a Gauguin painting. The naked woman in the
seven of cups looks like a Keith Haring outline. There are lots of swirling
lines. Sometimes the swirls are steam rising from food, or sugar the Fool
spills; sometimes they are vines from which The Magician selects a leaf;
sometimes they are the letters of a neon sign behind which the High Priestess
awaits. The swirls are like tendrils pulling the viewer into the world of the
deck.
Stirt is a nurse. "I had no use for anything other than
hard facts and reality. No fairies, dragons, or cute kittens for me,
please." She appreciates cooks. "If you cook with awareness, you are
nurturing the spirit." Thus these cards are close to everyday life. Repeated
motifs in The Cook's Tarot include, of course, food, cutlery, dishes and cups,
flowers, cats, dogs, tables, chairs, tablecloths, rugs, windows, beds, dishes,
faucets, bodies of water and visible signs of weather: leaves tracing wind,
raindrops, shadows and sun. Almost all the cards include large, prominent,
human figures, in whole or in part. In some cards, such as the aces, not much
more than a hand is visible. A few cards contain no human figures. These
include Death, which depicts a wishbone, a feather, a meat cleaver, a stewpot,
and thirteen chickens awaiting their fate, and the Moon, depicting dogs, a cat,
and the shadow of a crab.
Stirt wants to tell stories with her cards. The page of
swords suggests an entire novel. A dramatically-lit woman in a trench coat, wielding
a knife, stands between a boiling pot and an open computer laptop. A window is
behind her; it blows oak leaves and cold-looking raindrops into the room. Your
mind races to fill in the backstory.
There's a great deal of humor in these images, but the
humor never undercuts the card's meaning. The Tower is an elaborate meal
rendered garbage by a marauding pet and a precariously stacked set of dishes on
a tectonically sliding table cloth. The Lovers eat a breakfast in bed prepared
and served by an angel. The Chariot is a blue-jeaned shopper pushing a full
grocery cart. Perhaps my favorite re-imaging of a classic image is the High
Priestess. She is a restauranteur, standing behind the transparent curtain of
her establishment, preparing the show, and hiding culinary secrets only she
knows. Stirt has a gift for including the minimal details necessary to tell her
story. The eight of cups depicts the shins, ankles, and soles of the feet of a
human figure in retreat from eight cups; the retreating feet step over a spiral
rug.
The World card, a casually dressed woman holding aloft a
champagne flute, a map and an oyster full of pearls behind her, didn't wow me
as I'd hoped, but there are fewer duds in this deck than in most. Most of the
cards are visually eloquent delights. The minor arcana have been lavished with
as much artistic TLC as the majors. The five of pentacles is an example. A
small child perches on a rainy sidewalk outside a fully-stocked candy store
window. You can't see the child's face but the child's posture communicates all
the outside-looking-in yearning of the five of pentacles card.
The people in the Cook's Tarot are multiethnic in a way
that feels utterly natural and unforced. That the skins of the people in the
cards are of various hues is of no more or less importance than that pets are
multicolored. Other than the angel in the Lovers card, I've noticed only one
overtly religious reference in the deck. The seven of cups depicts a Jewish
wedding ritual.
The companion book is 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches and 160
pages. Each card receives about one page of text and a black-and-white
illustration. Stirt offers a verbal description of the visual image on the
card, and an explanation of each of the card's elements. She then offers a few
paragraphs on the card meaning, and she closes with a quote.
I was impatient with Stirt's unsourced references to this
or that belief attributed to this or that group. Example, "early cultures
believed that a single drop of rain fell from the heavens and became the heart
of an oyster." Really? Where? When? Who says so? Stirt herself says that
"In this age of religious questioning, Tarot has become the spiritual
version of church." For that reason accuracy matters. A small complaint; I
love this deck.
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