Tarot Drama

The modern esoteric tarot is intimately connected to the stage.

For example, Pamela Colman Smith, who designed the Rider Waite tarot, worked as a theatre set designer. This is manifest in her deck in the somewhat unreal world she creates; additionally, there is a whole series of cards sometimes called the Stage Cards. These are marked by a straight line near the back of the scene (pictured) that makes it look exactly as if the character is standing on a stage. If you accept the existence of these cards, they could be interpreted as meaning that there's something not quite real about the scene or situation. 

Additionally, Pam's own favoured method of interpretation was straight out of an acting manual rather than an occult manual. She advocated getting into the position of the character depicted and seeing how it feels. This is a method which doesn't get mentioned that much these days but is really useful.

Convinced of the theatrical element in the modern tarot's makeup I have been casting round to find an acting method that would click with the tarot as a means of interpretation.

Possibly Pam's reading technique is closest to Michael Chekhov's psycho-physical approach (think Jack Nicholson swoon), which aims to create a conscious awareness of the senses through a focus on mind and body.

I have of course dipped my toe into Stanislavsky, although I have had to back out as what I read made me more confused than anything else.

Currently I have a manual on Meisner on the go by the loo and hope to see how his organic authenticity can illuminate the tarot. I love his focus on motivation, because I feel a focus on motivation explains so much human behaviour.

Sources:

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/acting-techniques-stars-swear-11321/

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/meisner-much-repetition-1456/

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/the-definitive-guide-to-the-meisner-technique-67712/

Life Lesson from Donald Trump 4

I have been listening to Alison Gill's reading of the lovely Jack Smith's revised filing in the light of the Supreme Court's ruling that the president of the USA is legally immune for official acts, on the Jack podcast. I have been howling with laughter every time she does her impression of the orange freak but nonetheless it's provided me with yet another life lesson from him.

This is that if you are going to pretend that you're concerned about, say, election interference you should act as if you are and not just go looking for it where it would affect you personally. Smith's case would be a lot weaker if he couldn't keep pointing out that Trump wasn't looking for actual electoral problems because he only looked for it where Republicans lost.

Besides, every time Smith calls tRump 'the defendant' I want to hump his leg even more.

Obviously you shouldn't take legal advice from someone pretending to be a dog on the internet, but I believe this reflects a legal principle whose name I can't remember, that you should at least behave in accordance with the position you are claiming. Until recently an example of this in UK law was in adverse possession, where if you squatted a property for long enough and the owner made no effort to get you out, after a certain length of time the property belonged to you. Whereas if you'd done that and in court the owner proved they'd been making endless efforts to get you out, you wouldn't be granted adverse possession.

Essentially in one case the owner is acting like he doesn't mind you having the property and in the other the owner is acting like he doesn't want you to have it. To translate this in Trump terms, he's saying the election wasn't secure but is acting as if he's just looking to win regardless of what he has to do.

This also reflects a magical principle often called 'acting in accord': you put your intent out there and it behoves you to act as if that's what is happening. If you act in a way different to the intent you have put out you're messing it up and it won't happen.

Luckily Donald tRump is obviously not a magician otherwise his hair and skin would look different. 😱

Spirit of Place: Highbury Hall

Last week was Heritage Week and one of the things I did was go on a tour of Joseph Chamberlain's house, Highbury Hall.

It has a resonance for all sorts of people because like so many other things, the Cluedo/Clue game was invented in Birmingham and Highbury was the inspiration for the floorplan on the board. In fact walking in to the house it does feel like the game board!

It's a fuck off massive house with hundreds of rooms cunningly designed to look much smaller and Chamberlain used all sorts of tricks to persuade visitors that it was an ancestral manor in the country, including taking them on confusing routes to the house, while the servants got there first because they went directly from New Street.

In other words there is a high degree of artifice and pretence about it.

Given that it's pretend it will come as no surprise that Chamberlain was both a prominent politician in Birmingham and also in the House of Commons. Frankly the effect has largely been to put me off Joseph Chamberlain and I'm particularly not impressed with the way he had a single home-grown chrysanthemum brought from Birmingham by train to London every day when he was an MP. He managed to create chaos both in the old Liberal party and in the Tory party, and despite supposedly being a competent man left no provision to run the HUGE house he built so it was sold straight after his death. It was a hospital in World War 1 and was ultimately given to the council who used it as a care home and is currently being looked after by a trust. When I say it's huge I'm not exaggerating and on the tour they showed us how when one services installation is outdated they just leave it there and pick another empty room to be the next plant room.

If it embodies the spirit of place it's the spirit of self-serving ambition with no thought for the consequences and that of making out everything is fine when really you've bollocksed it up. A spirit maintained by Birmingham City Council.

Absolutely Not Gardening

I have managed to get involved with 'graveyard gardening' in the city's two listed cemeteries at Warstone Lane and Key Hill. This probably sounds uncharacteristic but it's not really gardening, and in fact filling in a sunken grave with crud taken out of a gully feels much more fundamental and witchy.

This week I've been cutting ivy off overgrown graves, some of which have never been catalogued because they have always been overgrown, and the rest of this post will just be pictures of this satisfying activity. I do have family in Key Hill and keep picturing an arm reaching out of the ground and grabbing me by the ankle.

Incidentally this is yet another confirmation for me that volunteering is much better than an actual job: it was the capitalism that was the problem all along!

Tarot by the Background

Perhaps I had better say that this post is by way of thinking aloud, what I'm going to say is purely a personal thought and if anyone wants to say I'm talking rubbish I won't disagree.

I have thought of a possible way to divide up the tarot cards (based on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck). It is somewhat arbitrary since it came out of thinking about the background colours.

In the RWS deck there are only a few background colours used, and I wanted to attribute a meaning to them. It's possible that I will think more about the backgrounds because sometimes they are something slightly hidden which might be revealed, or provide an environment for the action of the card, or sometimes are literally like a stage backdrop.

By far the most have a blue background, but I am starting with the ones with a yellow background. I am taking my cue from the Fool for this with its predominantly yellow background (although the sun itself is white) and I've decided to attribute a theme or enlightenment or illumination to the cards with a yellow background.

The Fool also has a line in the background of the two other predominant background colours: blue of various shades, and a sort of greyish white.

I have arbitrarily taken the 7 of Cups as my hint here and am attributing a theme of instability or things changing to these cards with blue backgrounds.

Conversely I am attributing a theme of things being stable or solid to the cards with a greyish white background. This may seem strange when Death, the ultimate change, has this background. However I am taking it that death refers to an expected, inevitable change, which is therefore actually stable and unchangeable.

Once again I will stress that this is just a thought and so shouldn't be treated as gospel: you won't find these attributions anywhere in the literature.

The few cards with a black background presented me with a few difficulties, although since they all depict difficult moments of decision and power (I'm taking 3 of Pentacles to refer to a situation where you have to get on with it and make the situation what you will, with the dark background through the doorway representing a future that still has to be created), I have taken them to refer to traumas, initiations and negotiations of power.

This leaves only two which don't fit in. I am taking the reddy-orange of the Emperor to mean authority and the snow of the 5 of Pentacles to mean being outside in the cold so you're not seeing the real background at all. 

I will play with this idea and see how I get on with it. Once again I'm struck how tarot strikes one differently at different times.

Oh, there's something we have to do still:

Ritualising It Out

The phrase of ritualising something out of your system is a direct quote from Anton LaVey but then I'm nothing if not ecumenical.

All the textbooks of practical magic, without exception, say that when working magic you must attain a point where the desire has left you. The 'itch' you are working on has to leave you completely, in other words, to manifest on the material plane, where you want it. The theory is that if you keep thinking about the matter, or chewing it over in any way, the spell comes back to you and won't manifest.

I have always found this incredibly difficult, because I tend to chew things over and find it very difficult just to leave things. For this reason I have always tended towards magics where you can keep coming back and scratching the itch until it does actually leave you. I would not dispute the need for the desire to leave you, just need to make sure it actually does go. 

Personally I think I just sometimes need to keep working on things until it goes. You know when it's left you because it just doesn't bother you any more (bearing in mind that the chief target of magic is always the magician himself, really). If you will pardon my unsubtle way of putting it, it can feel like a cat does when they've used the litter tray and run round the house because they feel much lighter.

These thoughts are occasioned by a matter leaving me today, although it's been evident that things have been moving for some time. Things have seemed to come to a head the past couple of weeks and after events today I am sitting here surprised that I really don't care about it any more. This is how I know that what I want is going to happen.

Of course since someone with an actual legal responsibility for this situation has asked me to let them posted on what is happening on the day I have ceased to care about it, I'm still going to have to do that. But I think that's more along the lines of acting in accord with the spell. The person, who is the hopeless building manager of the building I live in, should have been more interesting in this situation all along, and the fact he has now taken an interest is what shows me something will happen.

I'm sure he wouldn't like me to happen to him!

Tarot:Joe Biden

Of course it's no use and being so inquisitive I just had to ask tarot the question people are asking tonight but hasn't been officially answered yet: why did Joe Biden stand down as presidential candidate?

The answer is fairly straightforward: 8 of Cups (Abandoned Success) and 10 of Swords (Ruin). Both are minor arcana cards so the reasons are down to earth, humanly controllable, and not some huge 'act of God'. They are also in the domains of emotions and thought.

I think that Biden (and/or his advisors) felt and thought that he couldn't win the election, or simply that he is too vulnerable a candidate to the vicissitudes of old age. He has therefore done the right thing and stepped aside.

There is no suggestion of illness here, it's all about the likelihood of loss if he continued to try to fight the election.

And this isn't in the cards but standing down is the more upright thing to do compared to continuing through the election and then standing down so that Kamala Harris would be president, as I have seen suggested, even if he would be more likely than her to win. As I say I think he's done the right thing and it's obviously been a difficult decision.