August 17, 2005

• I switched rooms in the house where I’m living.

  And one of the things that happens when you do something like that is that you’re reminded of all the past versions of your current life. You find things you chose not to toss out.

  I found my green metal box full of stuff from when I was doing the whole newage tarot mystical mumbo jumbo thing, including my tarot decks. I can’t just have one deck, because that’s how I am. My favorite deck, however, is the Crowley one.

  Right now I’m The Fool.

  

  The Fool thinks he wants something, but really he’s just fooling himself. In some versions of this card which are more representational, there’s a cliff and The Fool is walking right off of it. He’s got a bundle on a stick, like a hobo, and he’s looking up into the sky innocently, and he’s just walking right off a cliff. And there’s a little dog, too, and this dog is either guiding him off the cliff, or is trying to warn him about what’s going on.

  In Crowley’s version, the dog has been replaced with a tiger, and there are a zillion references to just about every other card in the deck. The Fool, you see, is the zero-th card. He’s the hapless hero of our story. The tarot is a big long story, you see. It’s a big book where you’re never quite sure what order the pages should be.

  But The Fool is the protagonist, and he wanders around and meets people, is tricked by magicians, is beguiled by priestesses, is instructed by hermits, falls out of a tower, goes on a mysterious quest guided by the moon, and ends up being around when the universe explodes. Or something. He also learns things like how to set boundaries, the dangers of self-deceit, the bliss of true love… and, well, you get the idea.

  If you’re not sure what role you’re playing in the grand cosmic scheme (and you should worry if you do), then just go ahead and assume you’re The Fool. But there’s another aspect to The Fool: If you’re foolish, then a wise man will look like a fool to you. So The Fool could be the wisest person you’ve ever met. There could be a perfectly good reason he’s walking off that cliff, but you’ll just never understand it. You could be the little dog, who the fool is wisely ignoring!

  More than once I’ve entertained the notion of doing a lot of writing based on the tarot. Reading the cards, especially in that context, is a matter of being creative, not of being psychic. Though it does help. There are uncountable tales inside that particular book. Italo Calvino wrote a novel which is really a series of stories tied together by the tarot, so this idea isn’t new. And I have to mention that the narrative of one of my favorite movies, ‘The Red Violin,’ is based on a card reading early in the story’s chronology.

  So I’m going to do an exercise. This will not be a tarot ‘reading.’ People do readings, and it’s a special art, and I can do it sometimes, but I’m not going to now. What I’m going to do now is this:

  If you want me to write a story about a three (at least) card spread, comment with a number from 1 to 22, inclusive. I’m going to shuffle the major arcana and count out that many cards, and that’ll be the basis of the storytelling process. Stories might or might not be obviously connected to the cards in question. There might be other cards drawn, there might not. The story will be for you, however, as a gift.

  Anyone?

  • 1:32 am
  • 5 Comments