Essay Disclaimers

Source Material Disclaimer

These essays are for learning about the Tarot by using famous individuals’ lives as examples of the card’s energies. They are not intended to be scholarly treatises. Thus, they are not heavily footnoted or even guaranteed to be 100% accurate. Instead, the biographical information is used purposefully to illustrate some quality inherent in the Tarot card.

The historical information is obtained from the Internet, primarily from Wikipedia. The articles on Wikipedia are heavily footnoted and meticulously researched. Other significant source material from the Internet is linked in the essays.

All images are from the Internet. Sources for these images will be acknowledged when known. The photos are used in these essays with profound reverence for the photographers and are for educational purposes only.

The Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck images were published in 1909 and are considered by some to be in the public domain. The copyright is held nevertheless by US Games Systems Inc.

US Games publishes many classic and contemporary tarot decks and other divinatory materials and greatly serves the Tarot community. The recently deceased founder, Stuart R. Kaplan, wrote the definitive book on Pamela Colman Smith, the artist who created the Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck cards.

Their policy for educational reproduction is as follows:

“Free Tarot education. Instructional materials used to teach about Tarot, including articles, without a commercial aspect and not involving or facilitating Tarot readings of any kind. Fees: Free of charge with attribution”

The meanings of the Tarot cards are my own interpretations. While there is general agreement about what a specific Tarot card means, the magic of Tarot is the seemingly endless stories that the cards can tell. I am a student of the Tarot, and these essays are exercises I am doing to gain more insight.

Gender Disclaimer

My essays are based on the 1909 Pamela Coleman Smith illustrations for the RWS (Rider Waite Smith) deck. Most of the humans depicted on the cards are identifiable as male or female or are labeled as such (e.g., Queen, King) and seen in gender binary pairs as in the Lovers, Two of Cups, the Devil, etc.

I firmly believe that all of these figures can speak to anyone on a spectrum of gender fluidity.

Thus, although I will default to using “him” and “her,” I do not intend to assign gender expression to the card. In fact, some of the essays will take a male appearing card, like the Page of Sword, and reference a female iconic figure, in this case, Greta Thunberg, or vice-versa.

© Naomi Rabinowitz 2021 - 2023. All rights reserved