She has literally lived The Fool’s Journey. In her quest to find all the information she could about tarot, Mary K. Greer discovered that there just wasn’t much out there in 1967. With no path to follow, she forged her own, leaving footsteps that countless tarot students, readers and enthusiasts have since followed.

            Mary was still in college, majoring in English and Theater at the University of South Florida in 1967, when her best friend received “The Tarot Revealed” by Eden Gray as a Christmas gift and her interest in tarot was ignited. She immediately spotted parallels between tarot and the teachings of Carl Jung, as well as a correlation between the Major Arcana storyline and “The Hero’s Journey,” by Joseph Campbell, and realized how all this could apply to people’s lives. But there wasn’t anything further to study; to pull it all together and put it to use. And so, this intrepid tarot explorer slung her satchel over her shoulder and stepped off into unknown territory.

            “I borrowed a car and went on my first spiritual quest: to find a tarot deck,” she says, having to drive to the other side of Tampa just to find a metaphysical bookstore. That original deck, with the iconic images drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, was simply called “Tarot Cards” at the time. Besides the deck, she purchased two tarot books and immersed herself.

            “I just started studying, using them, trying them out with all my friends, and they started bringing their friends over,” she says, noting that her newfound mystical skills weren’t welcomed by everyone. “Dating was a challenge. I would read guys’ cards — and they realized they didn’t want to be dating someone who knew so much about them.”

            After college, Mary moved to Georgia in 1969, working for the Atlanta Economic Review at Georgia State University, and delved into astrology, but further explorations in tarot were done on the down-low because it was illegal to do divination or astrology in Georgia at that time. 

            “Everybody felt they had to whisper about it and do it surreptitiously.” 

            Feeling the pull for more information, Mary “scrounged money to go to Europe for a summer and ended up staying a year.” Her studies included classes at the Astrological Lodge of the Theosophical Society and the Astrological Association in London, but she continued to be frustrated by the lack of information on tarot.

            “I couldn’t find classes in tarot. I was studying on my own. I would check books out from the library and write them out by hand.”

            Eventually returning to the U.S. in the mid 1970s and working as a typesetter and graphic designer for the University of Central Florida, Mary gathered up all she’d learned about tarot and began teaching tarot there while working on her master’s degree in English. She discovered that she wasn’t the only one who just couldn’t get enough of the tarot.

            “In my first class at the university, 30 students showed up. In the second, 90 students showed up. People responded. People were hungry. Nobody else was teaching tarot in the Orlando area at the time.”

            Not long after this first foray into teaching tarot, Mary relocated to Bolinas, California in 1975, working in San Francisco at the New College of California, a small liberal arts college located in the Mission District, where once again, she found herself teaching tarot classes, which even in the Bay Area were hard to find and “fortune telling” was still illegal.*

            “I was able to professionally read and teach tarot in San Francisco — nobody paid any attention to the laws,” she says with a smile.

            Moving into the city, Mary continued to work, teach and study until 1989, exposing herself to a wide array of belief systems, including witchcraft, astrology, Kabbalah and Native American studies. It was during this time that Mary not only birthed her daughter, Casimira, but began writing the tarot books she couldn’t find. The first in the string of 12 was “Tarot for Your Self,” published in 1984, followed by “Tarot Constellations” (1987) and “Tarot Mirrors” (1988). Beyond merely providing a bounty of insightful information, the books feature self-study lessons that offer the reader experience and practice, as if Mary herself is right there, offering step-by-step guidance. 

            In 1989, Mary gathered up all this experience and relocated for the last time to Nevada City, California, where she still lives. Her home there is a tarot wonderland. Stacks upon stacks of every tarot deck imaginable — 2,000 in all, she says, and nearly as many books on the topic — are neatly arranged on bookshelves lining the walls of her study. For a tarot enthusiast, just viewing this dazzling collection is like walking through the gates of Disneyland for the first time; the eyes widen in wonder just taking it all in, and the heart flutters with anticipation of spending time with a genuine tarot icon.

            Even with her immense expertise, a visit with Mary is delightfully joyful and welcoming. Her enthusiasm for tarot and the art of reading it bubbles forth, as she describes her journey to become amongst the most sought-after teachers and tarot readers in the world, teaching not only in America, but as far and wide as China, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Egypt, the British Isles and Canada, and next year in Portugal and Israel. In addition to sharing her knowledge of tarot and its history, she shares her own methods of reading.

            The hallmark of Mary’s approach is that she doesn’t provide answers while reading a spread. Her clients do. Guiding a person to mine his/her own inner knowledge — as opposed to fortune telling or predicting the future — came to her naturally over time.

            “People originally gave all the energy to me, believing that I had all the answers. When I was working on “Tarot For Your Self,” I was really frustrated. I was doing lots of readings, and teaching at college and at home, and writing my book and raising my child. I had to come up with a technique which gives the power back to the client, and I came up with the breakthrough process.”

            Her breakthrough process involves identifying cards in a spread that present obstacles. Within that same spread, there are cards that indicate how to break through those obstacles. The client picks one obstacle card, and the process begins.

            “I write down their words. I am the scribe. I only take notes. I can clarify something, but don’t offer a solution. I don’t tell them how to solve their problem. Now they have chosen a way to actually deal with that problem — a concrete, specific action to deal with it.”

            Using her notes, and the client’s own words, she encourages her/him to create an affirmation — not the familiar “I am” affirmation, but a positive, active statement about oneself, such as, “I joyfully dance my truth.”

            The client is then tasked with identifying something in his/her life or choices over the next 24 hours that is fully in alignment with that affirmation. The client is additionally given a 21-day “prescription.”

            “Instead of taking two aspirins, say your affirmation three times a day, morning, noon and night, in front of a mirror, and convince yourself that it’s absolutely true.”

            She explains that employing an affirmation helps the client to start noticing reinforcing experiences in her/his own life, and also provides a problem-solving tool. 

            “Once you’ve really got this affirmation in your head, start noticing where it’s true in your life and where it’s not true. Pat yourself on the back where it is true. Where it’s not true, don’t beat yourself up — treat it lightly. You win some, you lose some. Focus your energy on what you want.

            “Whenever you have a decision to make, say your affirmation and ask yourself which choice is most in alignment with your affirmation. You don’t have to choose that, but you need to be conscious of what you are choosing.”

            Mary also employs “RITE Readings” when working with a client.

            “RITE readings are ‘Readings that are Interactive, Transformational and Empowering,'” she explains. A Reading is an Interactive experience with that person; Transformational by clarifying goals and revealing change; and Empowering for the person who discovers new ways to deal with their issues. Regarding empowerment, however, Mary emphasizes that she doesn’t empower others — her clients empower themselves by discovering their own internal power.

            As for the actual spread of choice, despite having tried hundreds of tarot spreads, Mary says she still prefers the classic Celtic Cross, just as she does the original Rider-Waite deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith when it comes to decks. 

            “You can see all the underground pathways in the Celtic Cross,” she says, and notes the universality of Coleman Smith’s archetypal images. She adds that the Rider-Waite deck is simply more functional because of those collectively understood images. Even those who know nothing of the Golden Dawn inspirations behind the drawings can look at them and “describe the card and have it be meaningful; talk about feelings, emotions and attitude, make up a story, have it be relevant and closely aligned with the meanings found in books.”

            With the Rider-Waite deck, Mary says a client can make up a story, beginning “once upon a time.” This is more difficult to do with many other decks with more artsy or unclear images.  

            Colman Smith’s contribution to the world’s most well-known tarot deck is amongst Mary’s passions, and inspired her to be one of the contributors for “Pamela Coleman Smith — The Untold Story.” published in 2018 by U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for which she spent a year and a half immersing herself in research. Mary pushes back against the belief that Colman Smith never really accomplished much else, and died unknown and poor. Mary notes that following a colorful and varied history in theater, art and self-publishing, Colman Smith chose to leave tarot behind and dedicated herself to serving as the keeper of Our Lady of the Lizard Chapel in Cornwall, England, where she prayed for those who drown along that southern coast.

            “She had a richness to her life. She did all of those incredible things,” says Greer. 

            Whether discussing Pamela Colman Smith or the various facets of reading and understanding tarot, Mary’s passion surges throughout. Her over-arching motivation as both teacher and reader is to guide people toward their own path of healing rather than bowing to her authority and celebrity.

            “Part of it is the joy of seeing people’s self-realization. I get more pleasure out of someone coming to their own realization than anything else, and the cards make that possible because people tell stories about the cards that reveal their own truth, and I can be a witness to that.

            “I’m a midwife of the soul. A midwife assists in the process. She can’t do it for you, not like a doctor that does a caesarian. The woman gives birth. I am assisting you in your own process. The truest things come from your own self-realizations.”

For more information about Mary, her books, and her teaching and upcoming classes, visit her tarot blog, https://marykgreer.com.

This story first appeared in SageWoman magazine, issue 94, December 2018.

* The state Supreme Court in 1985 struck down laws in many California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, that banned fortunetelling outright. But laws regulating the practice in some cities remain in force.  ~ Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2003