In recent years, Tarot has become a mainstream concept familiar to many, from children to older adults coming from all the corners of the world. When one becomes acquainted with this mean, they will certainly encounter giant, monolithic names such as those of Arthur Waite, Aleister Crowley, or Pamela Colman Smith, authors of absolute best-sellers and all-time classics like the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot and the Thoth Tarot.
However, there is so much more to uncover in the world of Tarot.
Beyond these famous personalities there are many more that have shaped our contemporary look over the cards, but due to a number of causes it is either not easy to get hold of their books or their history becomes sadly overlooked.
In this blog post, we would like to guide you through the lives of some of the bravest, most interesting personalities that contributed to the history of our Tarot. We hope these names will spark your interest in this subject and will inspire you to dig deeper into this wonderful, mysterious divinatory art.
Mary K. Greer
This is an amazing author we are talking about, still active to this day, and an incredibly talented woman that has talked Tarot since the 70s, and has not stopped ever since!
Mary K. Greer is a scholar and a writer. She has written extensively on the Tarot, counting titles such as Tarot for Yourself and 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card, both very famous books that have guided countless people in their journey to cartomancy. She is also a priestess and expert of ceremonial magic, and wrote the wonderful book Women of the Golden Dawn, a classic, if you ask us, of today's literature on this deeply interesting magical society.
Mary has reinvented the approach to Tarot in a way that has silently influenced readers over the decades; the way she sees it, there are many ways a reader can approach the cards, besides the classic (not so classic these days) occult view. Reading cards can also be done by using techniques that are interactive, transformational and empowering. Mary still joins Tarot conventions around the world and writes on her blog - her latest post being from February 2025.
Rachel Pollack
Rachel was an extremely interesting personality, a gifted reader, an academic, comic writer and trans activist, and her history is deeply intertwined with literature.
As a science fiction writer, she worked under the umbrella of DC, contributing with her writing to forever classics such as Doom Patrol, creating the figure of Coagula - the first mainstream trans character in comics - and daring addressing societal issues regarding the condition of women and transsexual individuals during a time where social activism was not as popular as it is today. Her name is also associated with giants of comics such as Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman.
She was very active within occult circles, writing extensively about Kabbalah and the image of the Goddess, in such books as The Kabbalah Tree and The Body of the Goddess.
Not just this: along with Mary K. Greer, she was a prominent Tarot teacher at the Omega Institute in the state of New York, contributing to Tarot literature by writing the bestseller 78 Degrees of Wisdom and her Tarot deck The Shining Tribe. Rachel introduced a new way of reading the cards by underlining their psychological aspect and the storytelling thread that runs across spreads.
Rachel passed away in 2023, but her presence and wisdom are still alive and unwavering in the Tarot world, showing an example of grace and courage to all those that venture in the realm of divination.
Terry Donaldson
Terry was a larger-than-life character beloved by his audience, and a marvel of creativity.
He was well-known across the UK, appearing on TV, magazines, and heading the London Tarot Training Centre. Despite his controversial life, we choose to remember him because of the great contribution he has made to the world of Tarot and his infectious personality.
He started his career in Camden Market, where he became known under the name of Terry Tarot, and was an expert on Tarot as well as being extremely well-versed in the art of astrology, making friends gape at his knowledge.
His work encouraged his audience to explore Tarot, and was one of the big influences that initiated the rebirth of card divination in the UK.
His view on the Tarot challenged the esoteric, technical writings that discouraged readers from venturing into divination, and replaced it with accessible and easily digestible information that beginners and seasoned occultists alike greatly appreciated, being such a breathe of fresh air. His approach was engaging and non-conformist, and his knowledge of Tarot produced many books and Tarot sets that were widely acclaimed throughout the 90s, including the hands-on bestseller guide Step by Step Tarot, and early 2000 classics such as the Hobbit Tarot and the Dragon Tarot.
To this day, his death is a mystery, but his books are still available in our store and all major bookshops across the UK.
Eden Gray
And speaking of personalities that belonged to the screens, Eden Gray, born Priscilla Pardridge, was a pioneer of Tarot and the original cause for its popularisation in the US. Her life a long, veritable journey across creativity, and an ode to courage and passion.
In her early years Eden aspired to be a Broadway actress, however her parents forced her to work and abandon her dreams. This didn't stop her aspirations: not only she went back to theatre, but her name became notorious within the theatre circle. She later became fascinated with the occult, and this is where her interest in Tarot started.
In the 1950s she founded Inspirational House, a metaphysical bookstore and publishing house and one of the first venues in the US to offer Tarot cards for sale along with Tarot classes.
In 1960, Eden Gray self-published her first book, and one of the most influential books in Tarot literature, Tarot Revealed, where she applied her innovative New Thought perspective. To her, the Tarot was a soul journey, hinting at a concept championed by Arthur Waite, and saw the cards as a spiritual guide and a tool for self-reflection. Her books became a life jacket to the Hippie generation of the 1960s, who felt lost during the huge changes, the fears and the insecurities of the world at this time. To mention one of her quotes:
“So watch for the pitfalls when you read the cards; recognize how very suggestible everyone is—and then go ahead and use the cards for good. . . . Give those for whom you read encouragement to strive for their highest ideals. The seeds you plant can blossom into lovely flowers of accomplishment.”
Eden Gray went on to publish several more books, among which best-seller Mastering the Tarot, and stood proud in a Catholic American society who wasn't ready for the revolutionary arrival of the Tarot, occultism and mysticism yet. In her last years, she embraced the arts again and continued her interest in painting and theatre. She died at 97.
Sir Michael Dummett
Moving into the academic circle, we must add Sir Michael Dummett to this list, because of his
ground-breaking contributions to the history of Tarot and his insatiable curiosity towards all things worldly and metaphysical. An acclaimed professor, he held teaching positions at the University of Oxford, Birmingham, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard. Over his long career as a professor, he won many prizes and went on to be knighted in 1999. Dummett was a top scholar in the field of card games, among many other fields, and included Tarot under this domain. His studies suggested some fundamental and much discussed truths regarding the origin of the mystical art. In fact, he stated that the occult interpretation of the Tarot is as recent as the 18th Century, and placed its origins in 15th Century Italy. His theories were explained in his masterpiece The Game of Tarot, an analytical and fact-based book that has become the go-to text for all serious students of the Tarot.
While these facts may appear to us as basic truths in the study of cartomancy, in the early 80s they were a revolutionary statement that kickstarted an interest in the fact-based study of Tarot as we know it today, based on its history and potential influences from pre-existing civilisations, and inspiring many other scholars, including Sola Busca and Marseille experts Peter Mark Adams and Cristophe Poncet.
In recent times, the posthumous book A History of the Occult Tarot (Dummett, Decker, 2013) was published, and focuses solely on Tarot history, differently from The Game of Tarot that delved in the whole history of card games.
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