Ghosts and Swords: Hidden Lives in the Tarot
Finbarre Snarey
- Region:
- Anywhere
- Notice Period:
- Regular (more than one month's notice)
- Type:
- Professional speaker / journalist and researcher
- Fee:
- Paid: From £75, plus agreed travel expenses where applicable. Online talks by arrangement.
- Category:
- History
- Updated:
- 12th August 2026
- Tagged:
- Tarot | Art History | Social History | Pamela Colman Smith
The figures in the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot can appear to belong to a timeless imaginary world. Look more closely, however, and traces of real people, relationships and lives begin to emerge.
In this talk, Finbarre Snarey concentrates on a single suit: the Swords.
Moving through the cards, he explores some of the people, personalities and cultural influences connected with their imagery, alongside the remarkable artistic world of Pamela Colman Smith and the circle from which the deck emerged in Edwardian Britain.
By restricting the journey to one suit, the talk can look closely at details easily missed when the tarot is treated simply as a collection of 78 symbolic pictures.
This is tarot approached through biography, art and social history, uncovering some of the human stories still haunting the cards more than a century later.
No previous knowledge of tarot is required.
Views: 19 | Enquiries: 0About Finbarre Snarey
Finbarre Snarey is an arts and culture journalist, producer and tarot researcher based in Nottinghamshire. He is the founder of the British Tarot Archive and creator of Tarot Interviews, an interview project that uses tarot cards and chance to create unusual conversations with writers, musicians, artists and other cultural figures.
His research explores tarot as cultural history and living heritage, including the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, the work of artist Pamela Colman Smith, the preservation and circulation of tarot decks, and the changing place of tarot in British culture.
Finbarre has presented his tarot research at Goldsmiths, University of London, and works across journalism, podcasts, archives and festivals.
His talks explore unusual aspects of tarot, cultural history, interviewing and creative technology, combining original research with his experience of building independent arts and cultural projects.
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