Over the past three years I have been volunteering at the Durham Book Festival. I have had the pleasure of attending many thought-provoking, informative, and entertaining events but Jill Dawson’s Pixie tarot evening had a special kind of magic that immediately made it jump to the top of my list for stand out events.
For those who have not read Dawson’s twelfth novel, Pixie, it is an incredible work of historical fiction based on the life of Pamela Colman Smith, who was also known by her nickname Pixie. Smith was an artist and illustrator who illustrated the Rider-Waite (now known as the Rider-Waite-Smith) tarot deck, which remains the most iconic, widely used tarot deck to this day.
Smith’s contributions to the deck were erased by Arthur Edward Waite, who never credited Smith for the illustrations that she had provided. Dawson highlights Pamela Colman Smith and all the incredible women in her life, (that also more than likely served as the likenesses within the deck’s illustrations.) In an incredible turn of phrase, Dawson noted that she consciously chose to ignore the “half-baked-men”, in Pamela’s life who hadn’t credited her for her creativity and brilliance.
Now to the event itself which was chaired by the amazing Kym Deyn who was the recipient of New Writing North’s Jerwood Fellowship this year. They are a writer, poet, and most importantly for this event Deyn is a tarot reader. Deyn had written their questions as a response to tarot cards that had been drawn prior to the event, and this is where the magic all started to happen.
Over her time writing for Pixie and all of her other novels, Dawson has drawn tarot cards for her subjects and noted that there always seems to be a touch of magic in the cards that have been drawn. For example, she recalled a recent story where a film agent had drawn a future card that was a new 79th card in a Rider-Waite-Smith deck that included a card containing the untold story of Pamela Colman Smith and crediting her for the deck’s illustrations.
Only a short while later Pixie landed on this agent’s desk. Then as Kym Deyn drew one of their cards, The Empress, and asked Dawson how she developed her interest in tarot as a reader she told us that the first and only person to read her tarot before she taught herself, was a woman who was referred to as ‘the Empress’.
The process of drawing tarot is a magical and intuitive process for Dawson, much like her writing. To research for her novels, she immerses herself in the lives of the subject. Much like the Major Arcana of The Fool, Dawson sets out on her path with innocence and an intuitive aptitude as she followed in Smith’s footsteps, sleeping in her bed in Jamaica, reading her correspondences, which formed a complete character of who Pamela Colman Smith was to her.
Dawson described that she grew to know Pixie as a woman who was playful, comedic, and who she related to as also possibly being neurodivergent. She also interprets Smith as being queer, while there is no definitive historical evidence to support this it is well known that Smith counted openly queer women amongst her friends and desired to leave her estate to her life-partner in the novel, Nora Lake.
As always, events at the Durham Book Festival end with questions from the audience. An interesting mystery remained following the event, as Dawson politely refused to comment on the inner workings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the secret society that Smith and her peers were involved in.
While she teased the audience with the knowledge that she had uncovered some new facts of the Order, she told us that she always wants to, “tell a secret and keep a secret”, and so she did…