Dan: To start with, I want to
know the simple details. Who is Lee Bursten?
Lee: Well, I suppose
I'm various things, and it's hard to know what
order to put them in. I'm a 42-year-old man, a
Tarot devotee, and a student of
astrology. I was born and raised in
Brooklyn Heights, New York. I've been on my
own and supporting myself since the age of
17. Tarot had always been an avocation for
me, yet in the last year I've become -- somewhat
to my astonishment -- a professional Tarot
reader and a published deck creator. This is the
hardest question I've ever had to answer!
Dan: Tell me about how
your journey from Brooklyn, to here...
Lee:
My inner journey doesn't actually correlate much
with my geographical journeys, which consist of
various moves from my birthplace of New York
City to the Southwest, back to New York, then to
Washington, D.C. for a four-year stint working
for the Federal government, then back again to
New York, and finally back again to the
Southwest. All of these changes were
occasioned by job considerations. While working
in D.C., I was offered the opportunity to work
at home, which I accepted, for a substantial cut
in pay. This meant I could no longer afford to
live in the D.C. suburbs, and that's how I ended
up back in the Southwest. At present, my
life is a bit isolated, and I work the same long
hours as I did before, but I have more free time
due to not having to travel to work every day.
Dan: And more time for
Tarot, creative pursuits, and studies.
Lee: Speaking of
studies, I actually never attended
college. My father died while I was still
in high school, and my mother moved out of state
to live with her niece, and so at 17 I found
myself on my own and having to earn my own
living. Although I had been very much
involved in community theater during my high
school years (and in fact was accepted into a
prestigious workshop for musical theater
songwriting sponsored by the music licensing
company BMI), by the age of 20 I found that I
lacked both the talent and the determination to
attempt to attain success on a professional
level in that field. I'll be forever
grateful to the late Lehman Engel, a Broadway
conductor and founder of the aforementioned
songwriting workshop, who wrote in a book, that
aspiring performers should ask themselves if
they can imagine themselves doing anything other
than theater. I could indeed so imagine, so
I took Mr. Engel's advice and decided my path
lay elsewhere.
After working as a typist,
word processor, and legal secretary for several
years, I undertook training for a more technical
occupation, and having successfully completed
that training, I began my present career, which
took me to the different places I've lived. Part
of my job with the Federal government required
me to travel, and thus I had the opportunity to
see much more of the U.S. than I would have
otherwise. I also took business trips to
Trinidad, Japan and Belgium.
Dan: Tell me a little
about your inner journey.
Lee:
My inner journey rides on two simultaneous
tracks: one involving my sexual identity, and
the other involving my interest in divinatory
systems, including the Tarot. Although I
spent much of my teen years working at a
community theater where there were many openly
gay men, it didn't occur to me that I myself
might be gay until my early 20's. At that time,
I came out to myself, and very quickly met my
life partner, Larry -- a fortuitous meeting
indeed, since we are still together after 20
years. I've never been much of an activist,
although I've certainly experienced the sorrows
of setback and the joys of advancement of civil
rights for lesbians and gays. Although I
personally tend to blend into the background and
conform to societal norms in terms of how I
act/dress/speak, I also honor and respect those
people who are conspicuously "different,"
because it's largely as a result of their
courage and determination that lesbians and gay
men have the rights they have now.
Although I had mentioned my
sexual identity in one or two of my deck
reviews, becoming an openly gay author was just
about the last thing I expected to happen. But
when Lo Scarabeo offered me the opportunity to
create a gay deck, I couldn't find it within
myself to use a pseudonym. Doing so would have
been completely impossible for me. It would
have felt as if I were ripping my soul out of my
body. So now I find myself a little more
openly gay than I had planned to be. But it
doesn't matter. If my deck helps even one
gay person feel more comfortable with their
identity, then that completely eclipses any
petty discomfort I might have about being in the
spotlight. In a society where some gay and
lesbian teenagers are killing themselves -- and
being killed by others -- because of their
sexuality, my discomfort matters not at all.
My parents were very
non-religious people. They felt that if
their children wanted to be religious, it should
be because we investigated different religions
on our own and found whatever we felt
comfortable with. I remember as a child tagging
along while my mother took my older brother, who
was in the midst of a passing infatuation with
witchcraft, to a book signing by Sybil Leek. Of
course I had no idea what a Sybil Leek was, but
for some reason the incident stuck in my
mind. My brother graduated to other
enthusiasms like Communism and computers, but I
do remember that there was a Rider-Waite Tarot
deck lying around the house, although I can't
remember anyone actually using it for anything.
I would occasionally leaf through some of my
father's books, which included Blavatsky and
Castaneda. My mothers' copy of Gurdjieff's
Meetings with Remarkable Men was of no
interest to me at all.
Dan: Did reading
Blavatsky and Castaneda trigger your esoteric
interests?
Lee: My interest in
the esoteric really began when I was a teenager
and bought a set that consisted of Eden Gray's
three tarot books and a Rider-Waite deck. I
wasn't completely satisfied with her books,
finding them too event-oriented and not
psychological enough. Later, I bought
Rachel Pollack's 78 Degrees of Wisdom,
and liked it but found it too
psychological. (I grew to appreciate it more in
later years.) Another book I bought early
on was Sallie Nichol's Jung and Tarot,
which engendered an appreciation for Marseilles
decks. And, in fact, that was my next deck
purchase. I went to Samuel Weiser's bookstore in
New York (which no longer exists) and bought a
Grimaud Tarot
de Marseille. At this point, my
collection consisted of my Rider-Waite, my
Marseilles, and the Aquarian Tarot.
Dan: So you were
hooked?
Lee: Not at all. My
Tarot activities then went into hibernation for
about 15 years. Then, I happened to be
reading Tad Williams's fantasy trilogy,
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, in which a
major character performs divination with
knucklebones. Something clicked in my
head. I went and dug up a copy of Ralph
Blum's Runes, but quickly realized that wouldn't
satisfy me. So I got all my Tarot decks and
books off the shelf, dusted them off, and began
a love affair with the Tarot, which will
probably last the rest of my life. I began
buying decks like crazy, trying to find the
perfect deck. Annoyingly, I never seemed to be
able to find the "right" one! After subscribing
to Mary Greer's newsletter, I wrote her a fan
letter in appreciation of her deck reviews. In
her gracious response, she suggested that I
myself might like to write reviews, and she
included the URL of Michele's Tarot Page, a site
founded and maintained by Michele Jackson,
herself an important Tarot reviewer. After
reading all of the reviews on the site
several times, I decided to write a few reviews
and submit them, just to see what would
happen. Michele posted my reviews, and I
found myself writing review after review.
Perhaps writing the reviews helped tp alleviate
the guilt I felt in buying so many decks! When
Diane Wilkes took over Michele's site (which
then became Tarot Passages), she was also
kind enough to post my reviews, so I kept
writing them. Thanks to Michele's and
Diane's encouragement and friendship, at this
point I have over 70 reviews on the
site. So, Mary, Michele, and Diane set into
motion a series of events, which eventually
would culminate in my having a deck of my own,
published by a major Tarot publisher.
Dan: Could you expand
on how you went from reviews to having a deck
published?
Lee: I wrote the
reviews out of a simple desire to express my
views about decks and to help potential deck
purchasers in deciding whether a specific deck
would be a worthwhile purchase. But an
unintended consequence was that I got to know
Riccardo Minetti, an editor and deck creator at
the Italian publisher Lo Scarabeo. Riccardo
wrote me and told me that Lo Scarabeo wanted to
publish a deck with a lesbian and gay theme, and
would I be interested in creating such a
deck. Needless to say, I said yes!
I never really knew what sort
of deck Lo Scarabeo had in mind, other than the
basic theme, so I worked up a proposal, sent it
in, and it was accepted.
Dan: Some critics
might say that your deck is too gender focused.
Your response?
Lee:
I decided to make it an all-male gay deck, for
two reasons. First, I felt it would be
presumptuous of me to try to write
lesbian-oriented material, since I feel lesbians
have their own story to tell and surely they
would be the ones to tell it best.
Secondly, I had for a while been playing around
with the idea of an all-male deck, to counter
what I saw as a definite trend in tarot decks
over the last few decades to emphasize women and
the feminine. I have no argument with a trend
toward the feminine; I just felt that men, and
gay men in particular, were being left out of
the equation. There are a few decks that
hint at gay themes, some explicitly, some more
covertly (examples are the Cosmic
Tribe Tarot by Stevee Postman, the
Tarot
of Light and Shadow by Michael Goepferd
and Brian Williams, the Renaissance
Tarot by Brian Williams, and the
Art
Nouveau Tarot by Matt Myers). I
guess I felt that if various ethnic and cultural
groups could have decks of their very own, gay
men could, too. As it turns out, there are
a few females who have found their way into my
deck after all, so it's not militantly
male-only.
Dan: Listen... I'm a
straight man; why should I buy the deck? A
straight woman... why should she buy the deck?
Lee: I absolutely
think there are reasons why lesbians, straight
women, and straight men would want to use the
deck, although of course they might not want to,
and that's okay too. The primary reason is
that they may do readings for gay men, and it
would come in handy for that purpose.
But there is a deeper reason.
In the years that I've been collecting decks,
I've had my horizons broadened considerably by
investigating the art styles and ethnic cultures
and mythologies explored by various decks.
Usually that wasn't my intention; I just thought
I was buying an intriguing deck. But along the
way, I've managed to learn all kinds of
interesting things. I think the Gay Tarot
could help serve as a user-friendly way for
straight people to begin to understand and feel
comfortable when dealing with issues of sexual
diversity, if they've felt uncomfortable with it
previously. Or even if they do feel
comfortable with it but are curious enough to
explore it further. Also, Antonella's
artwork alone, in my opinion, is reason enough
to want to own the deck. And from a tarot
perspective, I think there's enough material in
it which is different and interestingly-done (if
I do say so myself) so that many tarot
aficionados will be interested in owning it,
even leaving aside the issue of sexual identity.
Dan: Tell me about the
how the Gay Culture, racial issues, and
sexuality are explored within the deck.
Lee:
Some gay folks may be disappointed because I
don't deal with issues of sexuality or
relationships in every card. But I was
specifically trying to break free from the
stereotype that gay men are obsessed with
sex. I think gay men probably don't think
about sex any more often than straight men do,
and in fact there is much in gay men's lives
which is not about who they're having sex with,
but rather simply about getting through the day
and keeping a roof over our heads. That's why I
showed many scenes of men in different
professions, at different recreational
activities, etc. I also wanted to drive
home the point that any of the people one meets
in daily life might be gay -- a police officer,
a judge, an athlete. And that's also why I
showed men of different ethnicities. I have
no objection to a deck being entirely Caucasian,
if that deck has a specific historical or
cultural theme which dictates such
homogeneity. But there are many modern
decks that are all white, when they don't need
to be. If a deck is going to have a modern
setting, then I think the people on the cards
should reflect the same diversity that we see
around us in real life.
Dan: From one reader
to another, I have to ask: tell me about
sexuality and reading.
Lee: Sexuality and
reading -- that's a good question. There
are some correlations between a sexual encounter
and a divinatory encounter. (I rather like that
phrase, "divinatory encounter," I'll have to
remember that!) Both require a level of
intimacy, which is missing from normal everyday
interactions. Both require that the two
participants give something of themselves
(unlike the stereotype of the fortune-teller who
rattles off a prophecy to the silent and awed
client).
Dan: Can you expand a
bit more on gender issues in context to
readings?
Lee: Does the gender
of the participants matter in a divinatory
context as it does in a sexual context? I
say it does, because as tarot readers, we must
be able to see things from the other's point of
view, even when the person we're reading for may
have a different gender, a different culture, a
different political viewpoint, or a different
sexual orientation from our own. And this
is another reason to own the Gay Tarot --
it could help us as tarot readers in
understanding viewpoints other than our own,
which can only improve our reading abilities.
Dan: May I ask you the
"Question from Hell?"
Lee: I'm ready.
Dan: Okay -- it'll be
fun, stick with me a bit. In Ceramics
Monthly (May 1999), Jon Britt writes: "The
writings of Bernard Leach have inspired potters
for decades. Yet his romantic notions of the
potters role in the modern world are what is
holding us back as the beginning of a new
century dawns." He continues, "The primary
assumption on which the entire system balances
is that Orientals are more sensitive, intuitive
and gifted humans. Leach writes in A Potter's
Book: Children play with pebbles with a
similar awakening of perception, and Orientals
have lost touch with the fresh wonder of
childhood less than we have."
It is explained that Leach's
position is: "Orientals are intuitively gifted,
mystical and enlightened... have perceived that
utility is the first principal of beauty, and
simple and restrained (poverty of expression) is
the second principle. Simple and restrained are
inexorably linked."
Jon Britt then states: "The
original premise that Orientals are childlike
beings who act in an egoless manner is a little
bit troublesome... they are no more gifted or
enlightened that any other human being on the
planet earth. They are as ego-filled, as the
course, as adult like as any other adults in any
other culture. They are in fact merely human.
They are not divined from a higher authority...
their aesthetics hold no higher place in the
kingdom of beauty than any other mortals vision
of beauty."
"... At that time in history
(1854-1935) this was a pretty easy premise to
accept. You see, China had just opened up and
Japan had just ended several centuries of
self-imposed isolation. The Orient was still a
mysterious place and people assumed a lot of
things for the simple fact that not much was
known about it.‚"
To this I personally add
Egypt.
In 1909, Leach was teaching
etching in Japan, and Waite published his Deck
and Crowley published Liber 777. The
world was adapting to an industrial age. Perhaps
they romanticized that which they (Waite,
Mathers, Crowley et al) did not fully
understand.
We are now immersed in a
digital age.
Would you like to see Tarot
break its bonds from a past that never was‚
and move forward into a new age?
Lee:
This is an interesting question. First of
all, and I know this isn't specifically what you
asked, but I can't help noting that Leach's
condescending attitude toward Asians -- an
attitude which, oddly, is simultaneously
respectful and demeaning -- is similar to the
way many different minorities, including
lesbians and gays, have been seen throughout
history. For example, while gay men are seeing
an unprecedented exposure in Hollywood films and
television, many of these depictions show a
stereotyped fantasy of gay men as glib-tongued
creatures of fashion, which, needless to say,
does not reflect the reality of gay men, whose
personalities are just as diverse as those of
straight men.
To get back to your specific
question: the way I see it, Mathers, Waite,
Crowley et al., were trying to express
something. In order to express this thing,
they had to find a vessel, so to speak --
some system or language already present in the
culture of their time and place. They chose
(and I don't mean to suggest that this was a
conscious choice) then-current speculations
about ancient Egypt, which we now know were
completely imaginary. I'm not enough of a
scholar to be certain of this, but my personal
feeling is that most of them (except perhaps the
most credulous) knew that there was a certain
amount of invention going on, and knew that they
were being perhaps not completely faithful to
even the little that was known at that time
about the culture of ancient Egypt. We must
remember that they didn't subscribe to modern
concepts of respect toward cultures different
than one's own.
So, they found these
pseudo-Egyptian concepts and symbols useful to
communicate their occult ideas. I don't think
this was necessarily a bad thing for them to
have done. Just about any creative endeavor is
going to rely to some extent on the cultural
context of its time and place. But I think
the gist of your question is this: now that a
century has gone by, do we still need these
pseudo-Egyptian remnants in our tarot decks?
I don't think it has to be an
either/or thing. The trappings of 19th century
occultism are a valuable reminder of the roots
of our present-day tarot concepts. Also,
many people find these elements to be
intuitively evocative. At the same time, I would
like to see tarot decks designed that choose
different, more modern concepts and symbols to
express the archetypal truths. I would
like to think that the Gay Tarot has been
a small step in this direction. Although
there are some Minor Arcana cards in my deck
that specifically comment on their
Rider-Waite-Smith forebears, the majority of the
cards use modern scenes, people, and objects. In
other words, they show us as we live our lives
now. But it's important to acknowledge that
there already have been decks that represent a
departure from the RWS mold. To name just
one example, the Voyager
Tarot is a deck that has many passionate
adherents, as well as those who don't like it so
much. But one can't deny that it takes a
rather large step away from 19th century
occultism, using modern imagery,
multiculturalism, and a system of meanings for
the Minor Arcana that is completely free
of the Golden Dawn's system. Personally, I
would like to see more decks moving away from
the faux-medieval setting and the arbitrary
Minor meanings of the Rider-Waite-Smith
deck. At the same time, I have a great
fondness for the RWS, and I also enjoy seeing
new decks which use it as a template but bring
creativity and originality into the mix and thus
make it something entirely new (I'm thinking of
decks like the Gilded Tarot, the
International
Icon Tarot, and the Golden
Tarot). I must also admit that
while I admire decks with non-RWS Minors, it's
the RWS-based decks that I find myself using
professionally.
While
I welcome both traditional decks (that is, based
on RWS) and entirely new decks (like
Voyager), the realities of the publishing
world dictate that we're more likely to see the
former than the latter. I suspect there are
many tarotists who won't buy a deck unless the
Minors have scenes that conform to the RWS
standard. My guess is that the publishers
suspect the same thing, and they seem to have
good reason. Decks that have original
meanings for the Minors are probably the ones
that don't sell as well. Although in
fairness, I must point out that Lo Scarabeo has
published several decks, which don't conform to
the RWS standard in their Minor Arcana scenes.
One example of an entirely
original deck is Ellen Lorenzi-Prince's Tarot
of the Crone (http://www.croneways.com/).
This powerfully creative deck, which uses
entirely original numerology-based scenes for
the Minors, deserves to be published by a
mainstream publisher, but as far as I know, to
this date no publisher has accepted it for
publication, despite the fact that the original
limited self-publication generated much
excitement in the tarot world and was
quickly sold out. Until publishers are
willing to take some risks with decks like the
Tarot of the Crone, we are more likely to
see mostly artistically innovative versions of
the RWS, or else "theme" decks that still rely
on the RWS for their Minor scenes (which, as
I've said, I enjoy as well).
But here again, I find myself
making it an either/or situation when it really
isn't. For example, the Gilded
Tarot (http://ciromarchetti.com)
uses RWS-type Minor scenes in a medieval
setting, but the Majors are completely new and
original imaginings of the tarot archetypes and
don't rely very much at all on Waite. Does
one classify this as an RWS clone or a
completely new deck? It's definitely not a
clone. It simply uses the Waite
image-concepts in the Minors, while still being
a wholly creative and original deck. So
it's not either/or. Deck creators and
artists are finding ways to respect tarot
tradition and create new works of art at the
same time. The tarot doesn't need to break
its bonds, as you say in the question. I
see it more as a butterfly, continuing the slow
but inexorable emergence from its
cocoon that has been going on since its
creation in the 15th century.
Dan: Okay Lee, as we
close, I'd like to thank you for your time, I've
had a great time. However, tell me the scoop --
the news -- what's in the works?
Lee: You're quite
welcome, and I'd like to thank you as well. I've
enjoyed answering your very thoughtful
questions.
As it happens, I do indeed
have something in the works. I'll be supplying
the accompanying text for a new deck by Ciro
Marchetti (creator/artist of the highly
anticipated Gilded Tarot). This new
project is still in its early stages, and so I
really won't say anything about the nature of
the project at this point, except that I've seen
a few prototype cards, and they're absolutely
gorgeous -- and very different from the
Gilded Tarot. I'm excited and
honored to be associated with an artist of
Ciro's caliber.
Lee Bursten's Gay Tarot is
available in the Tarot Garden Boutique --
click
here for details.
© Lee Bursten and Dan
Pelletier
30 July 2004
