The Tarot Garden Library
About the Author
Edouard Finn is a practicing
psychotherapist and lecturer, with expertise in the use of
tarot as a psychotherapeutic tool. He is the author of 10
published books and numerous articles, including Tarot,
Gestalt & Energie (Ed. de Mortagne, Montréal,
1980). His website can be found at http://www.edouardfinn.com
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The Arc-en-Ciel ("Rainbow")
tarot deck was published in 1992 by the
Belgian publishing company Rainbow
Awakener. However, this plain, library
catalog-like description doesn't reveal
a bit of the extraordinary adventure of
the genesis of this unbelievable deck.
It was a formidable human saga, full of
drama and prejudices, but also with a
tremendous explosion of creativity
involving several persons.
I'm not going to start its history
back to the 14th century -- the reader
may rest assured of that. The story
begins on a clear morning of 1990 in
Brussels. The telephone rang, and on
the other side I could hear a female
voice, very stern, without any kind of
seduction in the communication, asking
for an appointment. As I practiced
psychotherapy and gave psychological
tarot readings and lectures, I asked
what she had in mind. She immediately
asked me to teach her how to read tarot
cards. I offered her the chance to join
a newly formed group, but she raised
her voice, saying: "No! No! I want
private lessons with you!"
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"But I would be forced to charge
you my normal psychotherapy fee…"
"I don't care! By the way, I'm sure
it'll have a psychotherapeutical effect
on me. Could we just have two hours
long sessions?"
"It would be better, but then
again…"
"When can I come?"
"Next Thursday at 10 a.m." And she
clapped back the telephone on its
cradle.
I tried to imagine what she looked
like: not very young, with a probable
"religious sister" flavor, and a
regional French accent that I
immediately identified. I was born in
one of the poorest neighborhoods of
Brussels, and I had to suffer that
accent number of times -- sometimes to
the point of humiliation. She had the
accent of the wealthy and the
well-educated. So she was a "bourgeois"
lady -- or even worse: an aristocrat!
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We're not going to delve into a
discussion of class struggle; suffice
it to say that I am the son of a Jewish
immigrant who wandered about Europe
from Vilna (Lithuania) and Moscow to
Berlin and Lausanne, and who eventually
settled in Brussels in 1935 in the
middle of an economic crisis and at the
doors of World War II. So when he
landed (a figure of speech since there
were no planes for us) in Brussels (I
was born in 1938), things were kind of
a wreck. Naturally, we took an
apartment in the poorest part of the
city. We were a family of seven, living
in four little rooms. Every room had a
bed, except for the kitchen.
I share all this to explain the
difference of social class between
Hélène and me, and my
prejudices...
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She presented herself on time and
jumped out of the elevator. Upon seeing
her for the first time, I received a
bit of a jolt. She was wearing an
ankle-length, flowery dress. Her hair
was tied at the back of her head in
some sort of bun. Not a dab of make up
or nail polish. Only her hair was dyed
blonde (later she would even stop
dyeing her hair) with the grey showing
underneath. She wore nothing of the
classical feminine apparel. She was in
her early fifties and did nothing to
hide it. I showed her in. She pulled a
recorder out of a huge raffia bag. "Can
I record the session? " she asked. I
nodded yes.
We began. I didn't feel too
comfortable in her presence. She
appeared like something crawling out of
mothballs from England's 19th century.
Like a character from Dickens' "Great
Expectations." It was as if a
grandfather's clock had stopped
somewhere in her soul. I had often
lectured on Tarot symbolism --
including some appearances on the third
channel of the Belgian radio network,
along with Alejandro Jodorowski (the
filmmaker, who is also very
knowledgeable about Tarot). But this
time, in front of that woman -- stern,
and a little withered -- I suddenly
felt that I was not speaking of
the Tarot, but rather, that I was being
spoken to by the Tarot! This
never happened before. "This is
extraordinary!," she exclaimed. "I just
knew I had to meet you!"
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We met a dozen times to study the
major arcana, then for another six
sessions for the minor arcana, followed
by two additional sessions to practice
various readings. We worked together
for a total of 40 hours -- 20 sessions
in all. Unforgettable hours. Each time,
I would effortlessly open secluded
doors in my mind to explain the Tarot
in a kind of trance.
She invited me to dinner at her
place. While there, I met the excellent
Louis Darms, who was her very close
friend. She was defending his ideas
about "Interstance" with touching
fervor. During the meal, I got up to go
to the bathroom, and my hip hit a
statue on a pedestal which wobbled and
fell to the ground. Broken! I was
paralyzed with terror.
Hélène was a sculptor,
and her salon was literally invaded by
her works. She chastised me because I
didn't even mention any kind of
reparation. In fact, I was terrified at
the prospect of having to pay for a
very expensive statue, since she was a
renowned artist. She scolded me with a:
"I don't want money! I would have
preferred it if you'd not played dumb
in this matter, that's all !" She was
right. I'd been childish, trying to
pretend that my arm or hip was
responsible, and not me.
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Following that incident, we became a
little closer. The next spring, she
organized a 40-hour course of tarot
symbolism for her friends, and she
wanted to go through the course once
again. "The sessions are to take place
at my friend 's castle in Jodoigne,"
(30 km from Brussels) she had stated
casually. For me, it was the beginning
of my understanding what her world was
all about. They were aristocrats.
Hélène was the baroness
Hélène Delvaux de
Ffenfes; her husband Edouard Houtart
was a baron, and the grandson of Henri
Carton de Wiart, who was the prime
minister of Belgium in the 1930s (a
street was named after him).
Hélène's father was once
the personal secretary to King
Léopold III; before that, he had
been the Belgian ambassador to China
(where Hélène was born in
Shanghai in 1933) and to Portugal. Her
friend had a gorgeous castle. It
boasted one of only three pigeon lofts
located in a medieval tower remaining
in the world. In the center of the
tower, there was a revolving scale
allowing access to all the nests, which
were arrayed along a helix. My lecture
was to take place in that castle during
the magnificent spring of 1991.
The group was very receptive.
Naturally, everybody was well-mannered,
which I appreciated. Still, I was
sensitive to the eagerness of these
people to obtain favors from important
people: a place at the Julliard School
of Music for a summer class in cello
for one young lady; a contract with the
United Nations for another; or help to
just start a business. I had had to
work so hard… so hard! We never
came to speak about that.
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In those days, I used to spend my
summers in South East Asia. Before I
left, Hélène talked of a
project of her own: to draw a Tarot
deck under my guidance. She showed me
some preliminary drawings, and gave me
a set of photographs of the sketches. "
Take them to Thailand…Write
something on it… a book… and
I want to pay you in advance for a
Tarot reading for my daughter, who is
working for Handicap International at
the refugee camp of Aranyaprathet near
the Cambodian border."
Permits to visit the camp were very
difficult to obtain. I was interested
in going to Aranyaprathet, but on the
other hand, I had no interest in
writing something on the Tarot, since I
was working on a book entitled
Stratégies de Communication
vol. II (not translated into
English). Normally, I would go to Nan
-- a remote little city in northern
Thailand -- to write, and
Hélène knew it. Because
of her, Strategies of Communications
vol. II was not published until
1995. Hélène was a person
who wouldn't take no for an answer! She
was so persistent -- nailing her will
in your mind, sometimes in a rough
manner.
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When I returned, she spoke about
publishing a kit: a Tarot deck, a book,
and a cassette with my voice performing
a hypnotic induction based on the
symbolism of her cards. She thought the
cassette should have a musical
background, and she proposed that her
son François play Bach on the
organ. I thought Bach's music was not
the "best fit," and I instead suggested
that we recruit my nephew Nicolas, who
was a talented musical artist and whose
first record sold more than a million
copies. He had been through some rough
times, and I was sure this was exactly
what he needed to motivate him to work
again. Unfortunately, the result was a
disaster. Nicolas was in the middle of
a creativity drought, and ended up in
the psychiatric hospital with a
psychotic episode. Eventually, Pascal
Chardome and his girlfriend Line Adam,
freed from their obligations to the
Belgian star Julos Beaucarne, accepted
an offer to create a musical
improvisation to accompany my voice,
and the cassette became a CD. During
the recording of my induction (which
required two changes of sound engineers
and two studio changes), I again got
the strange sensation again of being
"spoken to" by the Tarot. In fact, we
completed the entire recording in only
one take of 75 minutes, without any
stuttering. It was totally improvised.
So surprising!
Afterwards, Hélène had
to find a printer for the cards.
Everyone knows Belgium in the most
important place for cards printing.
Carta Mundi in Turnhout is one of the
biggest card factories in the world.
But Hélène preferred a
printer of her acquaintances to
reproduce it (and probably at a lesser
cost). She also founded a publishing
company, Rainbow Awakener, to publish
the kit in the proper way. Finally, she
asked her son Sébastien -- a
talented designer -- to format the
entire kit, and in the spring of 1992,
the Tarot Arc-en-Ciel was born.
Hélène did the math, and
decided the kit had to be sold at 220 $
US. Only a few were sold. Her ladyship
wouldn't tour the bookstores with
cartons full of kits. I introduced her
to my P.R. agent for my other books,
but this encounter produced no results
whatsoever. The Tarot was left
"rotting" in her garage, and I was
probably the only one to sell a dozen
copies of them when I was lecturing.
The last copy I sold was to a lady in
San Diego (California) in 1999.
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All I've told here doesn't reveal a
word about our fights during the phase
when she was drawing. She worked so
hard, to the point where she would
damage her eyes, since she never was a
miniaturist. On the other hand,
regarding the card of the Empress, she
wanted to paint a pelican nourishing
its offspring with her own flesh (which
is a common Italian medieval symbol of
Christian compassion), but she refused
to paint the blood, and nothing on
earth could make her change her mind.
She said she was tired of the Catholic
dolorisme (a theory of
suffering) that she was raised into,
and that the pelican would show no
blood. She also insisted on painting a
clepsydra (a water clock) at the feet
of the Empress, which I thought would
be more appropriate for the Hermit
card. Nothing doing. But she was kind
enough to have the figure of the
Strength mounted on a unicorn, as she
knew I had written a book (partially
published) on the subject. On another
day, I pointed out to her that the card
of the moon had a strong sexual
connotation. She was embarrassed -- but
not for too long, and of course, she
left the card unchanged. I also noticed
that the Devil had some kind of lice in
his pubic hair, but she showed no
reaction to that. She wanted to
represent the astrological sign of
Cancer, and that was that.
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I respected her viewpoints, as she
never made a remark about my writings.
I still regret that the kit never
really sold in bookstores, because it
is really a collector's item and not
priced for the general public, who
often do not understand how the value
of this type of special item differs
from that of the 'everyday' tarots that
are more typically found in such
venues. As a result, I never received
any royalties. This is one good example
of where the perfection of the product
was ignored by the public. Alas, this
is a time of marketing and
standardization. Hélène
and I were craftspeople, like those of
the Middle Ages. Hélène
Delvaux died in 1998.
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© Edouard Finn
31 July 2002
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