It Doesn't Have to be Perfect

Spot the 110 year old mistake

Our capitalist society has a thing about quality and professionalism. The source can only be capitalism because it connects the worth of things to their economic or productive value. That's why it's okay to be snooty about the unemployed but billionaires can exist with impunity in our society.

When you take economic or market value out of a thing it has a remarkable effect because the word amateur comes from the Latin for love for a reason. I was inspired to think again about this when I was recently writing my post about not writing a tarot book, and I was thinking that to get a book commercially published you have to say what the market is perceived to want to hear otherwise you 'fail'.

Take that pressure out and you have more what looks like the blogging world where you can say pretty much what you want and also control any comments about your witterings. Magically this is moving from the element of earth alone, and prioritizing air (thoughts), fire (will, desire) and water (love, desire). Take the financial lead out of it and the elements are already more balanced. 

If nobody will hear you it doesn't matter if your singing is terrible. It doesn't matter if nobody else understands your art, and so on. Doing things for the love of it is about as revolutionary as you can get!

The other thing I was thinking was that many people look at the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck and rightly think it looks like it was thrown together by a very drunk four year old but it has been remarkably influential. Personally I've tried a couple of the tidied up versions and simply can't engage with them in the same way.

Since this is about being unprofessional let's have some artists. 'Is he artistic? No, he's musical,' as Dame Hilda Bracket used to say. First one who genuinely didn't realize what she sounded like, and so enjoy Florence Foster Jenkins singing Mozart's Queen of the Night:

While looking for that video, fortuitously I came across a real review from 1934 of one of her concerts:

Mrs. Jenkins appeared in flame-colored velvet, with yellow ringlets piled high on her head. For a starter she picked Brahms’ Die Mainacht, subtitled on her gilt program as “O singer, if thou canst not dream, leave this song unsung.” Mrs. Jenkins could dream if she could not sing. With her hands clasped to her heart she passed on to Vergebliches Standchen, which she had labeled “The Serenade in Vain.”

The audience, as Mrs. Jenkins’ audiences invariably do, behaved very badly. In the back of the hall men and women in full evening dress made no attempt to control their laughter. Dignified gentlemen sat with handkerchiefs stuffed in their mouths and tears of mirth streaming down their cheeks. But Mrs. Jenkins went bravely on. For a Spanish group she wore a mantilla, carried a big feather fan, undertook a few little dancing steps to convey more spirit. While she was getting her breath, the Pascarella chamber group played Dvorak’s Quintet and cameramen photographed the happy laughing faces in the audience.

Sometimes, her concerts were painful in more ways than one, the review noted, not only because she “struggled” with the songs but also because she once literally tossed roses into the audience and “in her excitement, the basket slipped from her hand, [and] hit an old gentleman on the head.” Source

The linked article correctly comments that if she were alive today she would be trending on YouTube.

In a rather different vein we have the legendary Jonathan and Darlene Edwards who definitely did know how to do it and get paid for it in their regular careers but had a side career out of doing it wrong:

Finally I'm delighted to introduce you to Francisco and Fernando, two Venezuelan backpacking friends who self funded an album of them singing. You wouldn't be hearing about it now if one of them hadn't subsequently gone on a talent contest and let out that there was in existence a whole album of the singing he treated them to. Do join in the chorus. It really won't make much difference if you're tone deaf, sing in a different key (I mean different to the at least three keys the song is already being sung in at once) or feel like singing a different song. That's the point.

Meanings Can Be in the Details

Sometimes the relevance of a tarot card to a situation can be in the details. In fact there is a whole technique taught by the Tarot School of New York called The Voice in the Card. You let your eye wander over a card and fix on a detail, which is what the card has to say in that reading. It may have no relevance at all to the book meaning of the card!

Some examples of these details are the many details on the Rider Waite Smith deck which have been chewed over at length by the tarot community. In fact I have previously done a whole post on Hidden Mickeys in the deck.

 

The lizard on the King of Wands, the snail on the 9 of Pentacles, the rabbit on the Queen of Pentacles, and the red ticket in the pocket of the man on the right on the 6 of Pentacles.

Sometimes these meaning-supplying details are still something relevant to the design, such as the plan or mallet on the 3 of Pentacles, or the tents on the 7 of Swords.

And sometimes they can be details of the card which otherwise might be thought to function purely as part of Pam's setting of the scene, such as the wall in the 6 of Cups or the tree (look carefully, I promise it's there!) on the 4 of Pentacles:

In fact I find that tree particularly edifying, especially as the Golden Dawn title for the card is Lord of Earthly Power. The tree and the city in the background make me think of a politician sticking to his guns over preserving the environment for the benefit of the state. This meaning is literally miles from common interpretations of this card as meaning a tight wad, a stubborn bastard, medically suggesting constipation or blockages and in a love reading no chance of anal at all. It's interesting how the details make the card mean something else in these cases, whereas if you think about the plan on the 3 of Pentacles, it doesn't really change the normal textbook meaning.

Sometimes allowing details of a card to rise in your mind brings up things which aren't depicted on the card and arise purely from your connection with the card.

Forget the Fool's dog, this is all about the Hierophant's y-fronts. And they are literal y-fronts. Read into that what you will. And then there is the 9 of Pentacles lady's decree absolute which is of quite extraordinary importance to her even though you can't see it. She told me.

I might do a post of random details suggested to me by the cards and their characters but I fear it would be far too personally revealing....

Advanced Tarot Secrets

Periodically I get an urge to write a book about advanced tarot. In fact this blog was partly inspired by my frustration with the lack of advanced magic books, although I will never actually write this book - I mean, have you found a publisher that would commit commercial suicide by publishing the kind of autocratic opinionated stuff on this blog? - not just because I lack the application these days but I don't think it is possible.

There are only two sorts of magic books. You have the general introduction sort which clutter the shelves of Foyle's. In tarot terms these all without exception take you through the meaning of each card then talk about technique so they are all essentially the same book. The other is the advanced book and these are all (with a few exceptions) a detailed guide to a particular tradition. You find this for both magic books and tarot books. It can help to get the principles of a couple of magic or tarot trasitions under your belt but not helpful to keep on doing this. There are a few pagan authors who have made a writing career out of writing essentially the same book, just for different traditions as their interest moves.

There are just a few exceptions to these two sorts of books and they are written by genuine experts. The big secret is what makes them experts. Experts at tarot have moved beyond the basics and internalized tarot in a way which you can't from books. When you listen to them you will hear that they have actually entered the tradition in a very experiential way, complimented by book learning. Alejandro Jodorowsky actually describes doing this in The Way of Tarot, living within and communicating with tarot in a very personal way. Exactly like you would with any other magical tool.

Other examples would be Mary K Greer and Rachel Pollack. They all know a lot intellectually but have got inside the tarot in a way which is very personal. This also reminds me of Pamela Colman Smith's favoured tarot reading technique, of getting into the position of the characters on the card. Like that, you experience what they are experiencing and thus what the card is depicting.

This would mean that apart from a very detailed book about a whole tradition of magic or tarot it isn't possible to write an advanced 'textbook' because the advanced learning comes from the tradition. I am very aware that what I am saying is essentially the same thing as the Christian monastic tradition's 'Sit in your cell and it will teach you everything'. Or sit in your hedge, if you are a hedge witch.

I'm not even sure that specific techniques can necessarily be taught, as they can tend to be too directive and end up taking the student into one tradition again. I'm also very mindful (mindful, geddit?) that there is a significance to the sitting thing because of the Buddhist tradition of sitting meditation.

So I think you can rest assured you're spared the effect on my head of having a book published any time soon.

Hedge trimmer anyone?

The Rider Waite Trumps are Seen From Inside the Tree

I can't believe it has taken me over twenty years of studying and reading tarot but just this week I discovered that the Major Arcana in the Rider Waite tarot are designed as seen from the other side of the Tree of Life to the one we look at and only make sense when seen in mirror image (excellent background to the Qabalistic Tree of Life and tarot here).

The top of the Tree showing the top two pathways with their corresponding Trumps is shown above. I suppose I had probably thought the Fool and Magician looked slightly wrong imposed on the Tree (look, many magical men are gay for a reason) but then I read this:

'This iconic image of the Fool holds a number of hidden references to the Tree of Life. The white sun at the upper right refers to Kether, the first sephira. [...] The line of the image passes from the sun to the lower left, reflecting the Fool's path from an inside-the-Tree perspective.' T. Susan Chang and M.M. Meleen: Tarot Deciphered. Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury Minnesota, 2021, p.27.

So if you take the white sun on the Fool as representing kether, it means the Fool is actually depicted from inside the Tree, the other direction from the one we normally see it. To make sense on the Tree as normally depicted it needs to be seen in left-to-right mirror image thus:

And suddenly it all starts to make sense! The sun clearly represents kether and is in the right place and both the Fool's trajectory and the line of the mountains match the angle of the pathway as seen on the Tree. They are even in the all important to the Golden Dawn exact shade of the pathway so clearly can only mean the pathway.

So the Rider Waite Smith tarot contains some allusions to the Tree of Life which aren't automatically apparent because they're depicted the wrong way round for the Tree as we normally look at it. I wonder if this was one of Waite's deliberate blinds? I've come across many of them but didn't even know about this one!

Unfortunately further down the Tree it doesn't work so well because the Trumps are less obviously directional (or maybe Waite ran out of inspiration LOL) but on the other side the Magician also perfectly fits the Tree when seen in mirror image:

Perfect! Left arm raised towards kether (above) and right lowered towards binah (below), again in the angle of the pathway coming out of kether.

I can't believe I have missed this all these years!

Incidentally, before I hit publish, apologies if this looks peculiar on your screen. Although I have so far escaped the current problems with Blogger when I tried to preview the post it really didn't like it so I have no idea what it will look like when published. 🫣