| Meditations on the Tarot |
[Feb. 1st, 2006|04:13 pm] |
 | | I've been working more regularly with the Tarot lately, and so it's been in my thoughts. I began with the Rider Waite Tarot, which I admired, and knew as a good beginners deck, but didn't resonate with me at all. I ended up choosing the
Tarot of the Origins, which feels rich, deep, and vibrant in my hands. I'm hoping to add Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck to my collection soon, and eventually the Mary El Tarot, which I despair of ever being whole or complete. |
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| Walking to work today I was ruminating on the differences between the traditional images in the standard Tarot and the ones in the Tarot of Origins, specifically to the tower. In the Tarot of Origins the traditional image of the tower has been replaced with a menhir. There is no lightning, there are no falling bodies. There is no magic in the air (as represented by the white yods you see floating in the black sky). There is merely a prehistoric man standing at the top of a large standing stone, staring off into the horizon. | |  |
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| I like the Tarot of Origins because of that aspect, because it lacks the drama that Pamela Coleman Smith (a member of the Stieglitz circle, including Georgia O'Keefe and, my favorite, Steichen) packs her images with. There is less determined provocation in the Tarot of Origins and less outright evil, and, to my mind, therefore less inherent dualism. There is only one focus in the Tarot of Origins, and that focus is man. From man stems all, good and evil are both of our creation. The Devil doesn't exist here; it is replaced by the demon, represented visually by a man wearing a mask. The source of evil stems from pretending to be what we're not. It is a mask we wear when we'd rather not be ourselves, when we are disguising something authentic with something false. |
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 | | In that same vein the toppling bodies and lighning of the storm have been replaced with a prosaic nature scene. For me, the difference in action (or violence) begs the question about the meaning of the card. What does the tower mean? I've always taken it to mean that despite minding my own business tragedy may strike, out of the blue. But upon further consideration, I believe that the tower is really the collapse or destruction of something of our own creation. I believe that watching Icarus launch from the tops of the Palace at Minos, and I can imagine that if those two people survive their fall from the tower, their friends are going to ask with more than a little judgment in their manner, "What were you doing in a brass topped tower during a storm anyway?" |
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The Tarot of Origins, on the other hand, rather than implying the danger and violence of being at the top, implies it. It's a big tower, that's a precarious perch, and it's a long fall. That, to me, communicates the danger of the Tower more clearly: be careful to holding on to things of our own creation, we have little or no control over when they're taken away. Bringing something into this world is as risky as it is satisfying, and while we must enjoy them, we should be wary of holding on too tightly to them, or of being to proud of them. It's a lesson that Daedalus learned in letting go of his son, and one that the people in the tower learned as well.
A. | |
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