If you think that the Barbieri Tarot is a collection of beautiful artwork by Paolo Barbieri that just happens to also have some symbols on it to suggest it’s part of a tarot deck, I couldn’t really argue with you because it can definitely look like that while flipping through the cards. However, I think that this interview has taught me that there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Deck Interview spread with Barbieri Tarot — **INTERVIEWING THE BARBIERI TAROT**

**What major lesson are you here to help me learn?** *8 of Cups*
**Through which divine energy can we best communicate?** *6 of Swords*
**In what area can you aid me to help others?** *The Star*
**In what area could your guidance be easily misunderstood?** *Ace of Disks*
**What can I do to keep our communication clear?** *8 of Swords (reversed)*
**How can I use your guidance for the highest good?** *7 of Swords (reversed)*
**How will I know when we’re ready for a new lesson?** *Ace of Cups (reversed)*

I’m just going to put it out there that this deck needs to be read intuitively rather than relying on pictorial assistance and you should also have a specific set of schema. Although this deck is beautiful with Barbieri’s fantasy art, the imagery can feel a bit arbitrary, which will take some getting used to for readers who want either Smith-Waite linkages or minimal distractions from their set Thoth or Marseille or numerological and elemental schema. It’s why I would generally recommend reading it intuitively.

Yet the 6 of Swords that crowns this reading—the divine guide—offers some structure for those who need a way to get into the meaning beyond the sometimes overwhelmingly refined images. I often see the 6 of Swords as a card of astrological relevance thanks to its Thoth associations, so I was thrilled to see that this deck, like the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, has incorporated its astrological link (per the Golden Dawn tradition) to Mercury in Aquarius. The 6 of Swords has been depicted here as a ferryman, or more precisely as Charon, the ferryman of Hades who brings departed souls across the River Styx. Yes, he’s a man pushing a boat out, just as in the Smith-Waite image, but he’s not just any old man. Mercury and Aquarius combine here in the image of the psychopomp, or underworld guide, crossing waters. Mercury was a traveler between worlds and led some lucky heroes to the underworld in his role as Hermes Chthonius, and the Water Bearer brings that watery imagery to a symbol of air (Swords are air). I fully admit that this is an intellectual extrapolation for what could very well have been a simple decision by Barbieri or his publisher to just show a person on a boat. And yet the 6 of Swords is a very intellectual card (Mercury the thinker and Aquarius the inventor), so I’m right in line with the divine guide for this deck anyway, aren’t I?

But let’s get back to the first card and the lesson it has to give me and the lesson many of us can take away from this deck, the need to read more intuitively and to use the images. Lingering on the visuals makes sense with this deck since it’s an artist’s deck, and the card titles are easily ignored or missed because they’re pictorial for the international audience of most Lo Scarabeo decks. Why prioritize English or Italian or anything else when you can use symbols?

But the lingering also comes about from its place in the minor arcana. The 8 of Cups can be a card of needing to move on—and it’s not reversed in this reading—but it’s about leaving when the time is right, about leaving behind what no longer serves you. Perhaps it’s the haste of the gut punch that needs to be left behind with this deck, or it could be the traditional Waite meanings I carry with me to non-Thoth decks.

If I focus on the imagery, the shadowy figure lurking behind the woman in this card recalls a dark reflection (Frank in the mirror of Donnie Darko) and the hazy dream images surrounding that mirror monster feel more like the 7 of Cups. How does that inform the need to leave versus the need to linger? The woman herself is in a state of reversal, even if the card is not. Like the 8 of Swords elsewhere in the spread, she’s limiting herself, and that’s an important (negative) aspect of the number 8: stability upon stability or imprisonment, tradition that binds rather than helps us.

The paradox is that I’m using the traditional Waite meaning to get to this idea of “abandoning” the traditional Waite meaning. With this central lesson, I feel that this deck will challenge me to find the middle ground where both the traditional and the intuitive and the systematic (astrology, numerology, and so on) can coexist beautifully. It’s really a lesson I didn’t expect from this deck, which I bought because I think Barbieri’s work is pretty, not for any particularly good or spiritually insightful reason. And yet the spirit guides can find a way!

Now, the 8 of Cups and the 6 of Swords are both very tied to leaving in the Smith-Waite tradition, even if the imagery of one feels much more about stasis and an inability to move. They have different flavors, but they can both be seen as cards of moving on. I think that movement is useful as a central theme in the deck. Moving on may not seem as though it’s all that related, but the interplay and conflict between movement and stasis certainly are.

Looking at the cards for where the deck will help me help others and how I can best communicate with the deck, we see that notion of movement and freedom from stasis (or paralysis) playing out. The third card is the Star, a guide in the night and a sign of hope. Here she is also an archer—often associated with the moon—and that hope that she provides is directed guidance. While the Star is a (relatively) static point to help guide, the archer aims and fires. She reinforces this idea that the Star is a target to which we aim and aspire. We can’t just sit there staring at it and hope that things will work out. We have to get moving.

I only came to this realization after staring at the Ace for a while. As the card of where one can miscommunicate, it seemed counterintuitive. After all, the Aces are about new action. But seeing it paired with the reversed 8 of Swords, I realized that this message is more specifically about doing the hard work to move through what seems to be stuck. I don’t know about you, but I certainly find it easier to just start over with something than to edit it. (I do lots of editing, but I don’t like doing it, and it doesn’t fill me with the excitement that starting over from scratch does.) When an obstacle presents itself, and we get trapped up in our own decisions, it can be very easy to just want to tear it all down and start over. In fact, it often is easier to do that than to solve the problem. But chances are good that we’ll make the same mistakes again because we haven’t done the hard part and tried to understand what was really causing the problem. This deck isn’t going to reward that kind of behavior. It’s going to require digging in and getting my hands dirty. There are no shortcuts.

This seems reinforced by the reversed 7 of Swords, which is all about the highest good. I often associate this card with the trickster or the sneak, and taking shortcuts would be one example of the 7’s behavior, but I also see in the image the bindings I would normally associate with the 8 of Swords and I also see those bindings loosening as I literally dig deep with a mining bore. The same tentacles (or roots or whatever) that loosely bind and also protect the central figure look like the spirals on machinery used to drill into the ground. These cards and this deck more broadly offer a rich opportunity to work with others to see into the things that really matter to them, not unlike with an inkblot test. That psychoanalytic bent is probably a limitation for me right now, and I suspect that the deck has nearly limitless potential that I’ll discover when I can let that piece blend more seamlessly with the magical. At least that’s what I get from the reversed Ace.

Deck Interview: Barbieri Tarot