Mark McElroy is an insightful guy. Not only that, but, a little like Da Vinci, his insights are fresh, unique and off the beaten path. Maybe that's part of the reason he was chosen to write the companion book to the Da Vinci Tarot. It serves as a wonderful guide, for beginning and advanced students of tarot, Da Vinci, and even the Grail,in a way. When I asked him why he thinks the Grail quest concept is so popular right now he said:

"While the book and movie are both works of fiction, I think Da Vinci Code mania reflects Western society's starvation for exposure to the Sacred Feminine.

Current interest in Tarot may reflect that same hunger for a less partiarchal, more personal spiritual experience. Divination represents a personal attempt to make contact with the Divine, to see the larger patterns at work in mundane events. This flies in the face of patriarchal spiritual traditions, which insist we must approach a male-dominated priesthood in order to commune with God.

I'm hoping interest in the movie will spur people to seek out Tarot, including the Da Vinci Tarot, and see what happens when, on their own, they spend time listening for that "still, small voice."

I think it will. I hope your interest, as mine was, is already peaked by his interesting perspective described above. Read on as we discuss the deck, and his ideas, further.

HOST: Can you elaborate on how "The Da Vinci Tarot" can be used to enahnce our understanding of Da Vinci?

MCELROY: Few people understand the tremendous range of Da Vinci's work -- and even fewer, I think, can recognize and name the sources of very familiar Da Vinci images. Working with the deck and the companion guide is like taking a Master Class in Da Vinci iconography! In addition to the more famous pieces, you'll start to recognize Da Vinci's more obscure works and recognize how many modern images are rooted in his work.

The deck is also a showcase of Da Vinci's techniques. While the artwork has been adapted by other artists, these artists were chosen for their ability to duplicate the subtle shading and tricks of perspective Da Vinci pioneered and explored.

HOST: I love that the deck draws also from his sketchbooks. Can you tell us a little about these/that?

MCELROY: Everyone recognizes the major works but most people don't realize that the vast majority of Da Vinci's illustrations come from the sketchbooks. Many of these sketches are very rough, very small, or relatively obscure. Even so, they show the mind of the Master at work: his appreciation for formal composition, his ability to use simple lines to suggest movement and flow, and his remarkable ability to add depth and dimension to a flat image.

They were also a tremendous challenge for me! Seriously: because the artists didn't keep notes on which Da Vinci images were used to inspire which images, I had to pour through the complete works of Da Vinci, including the sketchbooks, as part of an effort to identify the source images. Sometimes figures that appear huge on the cards were based on doodles barely bigger than a quarter! As I struggled to find all the source images, I felt as though I were solving a Da Vinci Code mystery of my very own.

HOST: With the deck, do we perhaps find a real inkling into what Da Vinci may have thought of the esoteric?

MCELROY: That's always possible, of course. One thing the deck does make very clear, I think, is how both Tarot and Da Vinci's art address universal themes; the same themes that are echoed again and again in the mythology and art of all human cultures.

The genius of the work, I think, is that it fuses Leonardo's exquisite art with familiar Tarot symbolism and then expresses that fusion in surprisingly clever ways. I see the deck as sort of "Da Vinci's work, as glimpsed through the lens of the Tarot." The book makes the deck more accessible and provides practical applications for the themes explored in each card.

HOST: Tell me more about the search for divine feminine. How about the androgynous nature of DaVinci's characters and how this can, perhaps, help us unlock our own inner DaVinci code, our own quest for the divine feminine within and without.

MCELROY: You're right: many of Da Vinci's characters, particularly his male figures, are androgynous, or even feminized. There are many reasons why Leonardo may have done this; scholars suggest everything from his possible homosexuality to, as Dan Brown's novel theorizes, his desire to communicate something about the lineage of the Christ.

Da Vinci would have been aware of the principles of alchemy, and the alchemical goal of symthesis, the ultimate reunion of masculine and feminine energies in one transformative burst of insight. It's a theme we see echoed in many early Tarot decks, which often illustrate The World trump (a card associated with wholeness) with a hermaphrodite, a being combining male and female traits in one flesh.

Esoteric principles, then, have long suggested that spiritual and personal evolution requires a fusion of the masculine and feminine into a cohesive whole. That's very different from the Western Christian tradition, which puts masculine forces on a pedestal while denigrating or marginalizing the influence of women, the Earth, and the Goddess.

As each of us pursues our own path to enlightment, as we solve our personal "Da Vinci Codes," you might say, we have choices to make. Are we comfortable getting "half the story," and depending on patriarchy to define spiritual truth for us, or will we trust intuition to lead us to a more holistic approach to awareness and peace?

Da Vinci's figures can be taken as a constant reminder that, concealed within the overtly masculine traditions of Westernized religion are more ancient truths, many of which honor intuitive, feminine, goddess-based traditions not reflected in Christianity.

HOST: Do you think there really is a DaVinci Code?

MCELROY: Dan Brown did a marvelous job of fusing art history, historical fact, symbols, myths, and tall tales into a compelling novel. Ultimately, though, the Da Vinci Code is fiction.

That said: myths don't derive their power from any basis in fact and given the popularity of Brown's novel, I think it's reasonable to treat it as a modern myth.

Instead of asking, "Is it true?" perhaps we should ask, "What does the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, a story that calls the very foundations of Christianity into question, have to say about society's attitude toward traditional faith and organized religion?" I like to think our love affair with the Da Vinci code points to a hunger for a more deeply personal, more mystical experience of faith.

HOST: How has Da Vinci's work, as an artist, engineer, inventor, mathmatician continued to inspire and challenge you, both with the deck and otherwise? How can it do so for us?

MCELROY: You'll laugh at this, but the Da Vinci stories that inspire me most are the ones we don't often hear repeated in public.

For example: Da Vinci loved to tinker, and after he received the commission for The Last Supper, he decided to paint it using an experimental new technique. The result? Disaster! Almost immediately, the painting began to deteriorate.

The inspiration for me, here, is the realization that a genius experiments, despite the fact that not all those experiments will produce popular, favorable, or even expected results! Leonardo's near-failure encourages me to embrace unfamiliar techniques and to see failure as a learning experience.

As people work with the deck, I hope they'll see a Tarot reading as I like to think Leonardo would: an opportunity for insight. Instead of searching for the One Right Answer to any given question, I hope they'll see every reading as a fountain of possibility and be inspired to explore dozens of different approaches and solutions. That attitude pervades Leonardo's work; we'd all do well to adopt it.