*knock knock*

brujaja

I created this majors deck over three weeks for a History, Fiction, and Memory class. There were a couple goals in mind -- to fit tarot structure onto different images and see how that changed the tarot structure as I knew it. To use images resonant with Western (Popular) Culture and explore ancient archetypes in modern guises. To use tarot as a tool for busting into western (American) academics, and my academic studies as a way of busting into tarot.

I used a mix of RW imagery, personal associations, and randomly found images (god bless serendipity and google image search). Text pulled is from books for that class. Regarding copyright: this deck is a study and shared in that spirit -- I have no intention of selling or reproducing these images.

Since I don’t have a site or tarot blog, I’m adding some notes as well.

cards 1-9: http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/kill_time/deck/?action=view&current=0784c60f.pbw

1. The Doctor
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The caption for this picture outta rolling stone's memorial for him reads: "Hunter and his essentials: Motorcycle, booze, cigarette holder, guns." And that table, just like the Magician’s altar.

2. The Spy
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A young Mata Hari culled from the internet and painted. She kind of inverts the RW imagery…the duality of those pillars is still there, but with negative space instead. She, in the middle, takes the emphasis.

3. The Greenhouse of Illusions
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Photo by my friend, of a strange Southern Californian flower. Text about Mama Pilar’s brothel in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Imagination Cultivation. Women tending the primal completion, self-proliferation, timelessness, paradise, the walled garden.

4. Ceasar
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Culled from the internet. Tying the traditional Emporer with Western Histor/iography.

5. Code Red
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Yes, that is Charlton Heston dressed as Moses. Scanned from my Charlton Heston Presents The Bible book. He is accidentally reversed, but I think it’s funny so haven’t changed it back. What’s rollin down from the mountains. (and a nod to the song of same name) An apt Heston quote: "...We have to pass on to America in the 21st century the same Bill of Rights that those wise, old, dead white guys that invented this country passed on to us. ..."

6. The Lovers, With Eris Ascending
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An old painting of Paris and Helen. Conjures all the connotations of temptation and choice while maintaining the lovers arc. But instead of the archangel, we have Eris -- who not only kicked off the whole affair but represents chaos and choice as well.

7. Check Your Lattitude
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Here’s Freud, lookin saucy. The basic symmetry of RW, with those dashing military youths rather than the sphinxes. The Chariot’s imagery is, indeed, said to be Oedipal. The cosmos circling out from Freud’s head. Waite sez:

“He has led captivity captive; he is conquest on all planes--in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. … He is above all things triumph in the mind. It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (b) that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; (c) that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; (d) that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and (e) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor if she questioned him could he answer.”

“He has externalized all these phases of his mind and sees them only outside himself. This is his fundamental error. He entered the outer court of the Temple of knowledge, but thinks he has been in the Temple itself. He regarded the rituals of the first tests as initiation, and he mistook for the goddess, the priestess who guarded the threshold. Because of this misconception great perils await him. Nevertheless it may be that even in his errors and perils the Great Conception lies concealed. He seeks to know and, perhaps, in order to attain, mistakes, dangers and even failures are necessary.”

Sounds like Freud to me.

8. Strength
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A still from “Lisa the Iconoclast.” I particularly love this one. In the episode, Lisa busts her little ass to uncover the shocking truth about her history -- only to realize that she doesn’t have to be destructive… “people need the myth too,” and there are other ways to go about it. So we see her -- her hair making her a fusion of the RW woman and lion -- poised as this higher golden alternative to the violent showdown between the cardboard-cutout of History and the shrouded silver tongue of Truth.

9. DaDa
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Thinking about inside/outside and reciprocity. About DaDa and “outsider art.” About the need to share from beyond the border, but the eventual co-opting and mainstreaming. Give and take.

the rest will follow...
 

brujaja

10-18

10-18 slideshow: http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/kill_time/deck/?action=view&current=0784c60f.pbw

10. Psycles
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Another internet gem. I love old sciency illustrations. I love those simple little arrows they use to demonstrate complex physical processes. A scholar will say "I'm studying history, not making predictions!" but physics tells us otherwise. Added the RW population and a line from Carson’s Plainwater: “’round each here rolls there.”

11. Justice
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Edwin Abbey made this for a Philadelphia building in the early 20th c.
“Justice is end of government it is end of civil society it ever has been ever will be pursued until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
Here, Justice is blind, but she retains the scales and sword and foot position. At first I thought she was trampling the dragon, but no -- I think he’s her guide.

12. Suspension
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This is the wikipedia illustration of “unitard.” But the posture is totally RW!

13. The Dance of Death
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Remember the medieval dancing plague? These are the only two pictures that came up when I google image searched that phrase, and they fused quite well. Circles within circles.

14. Temperance
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This is Siddhartha and his river in RW’s template. I photoshopped his arm so he could hold those jaunty cups, but he came with his own lotus shoes.

15. The Angel of History
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W. Benjamin writes:

“My wing is poised to beat
but I would gladly return home
were I to stay to the end of days
I would still be this forlorn”
(-- Gershom Scholem, “Greetings from Angelus" [tr. Richard Sieburth])

“There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.”

The Devil is partly The Light Bearer, the Fallen Angel, after all…

16. The Gingerbread Tower of Babel
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Some girl in flickr land actually made this beauty! Now when it rains, the little black and white Marseille men fall into a world of candy color, trying to collect it in their posh little hats. (Academically, Deconstruction).

17. The Water Bearer
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Portrait of Sei Shonagon, who wrote The Pillow Dream Book circa 1000. Text from that, and Carson’s Plainwater. Women tending the primal dissolution, self-restraint, decay, the swamp, the wall with a hole in it. Shameless.

18. Howl
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RW but with a starker, lunar landscape. In Plainwater, Carson riffs on this card a lot. Danger, she says, Attenti ai cani. Also acknowledging Howl the poem, that mad dream energy.

...
 

brujaja

19-22

slideshow: http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/kill_time/deck/?action=view&current=1aec5819.pbw

19. The Buddhic Marco Polo
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Chinese statue of Marco Polo of unknown origin since the website was in Italian. There’s also The Sun’s Child Heart element, and the classic kid game Marco Polo.

20. Judgement
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Miles Davis. Waite writes: "What is that within us which does sound a trumpet and all that is lower in our nature rises in response--almost in a moment, almost in the twinkling of an eye?"

21. The World
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Carson again. She starts with this adage -- "The joy of living is to alter it" -- and then keeps weaving this question, "Alter what?"

(0). The Fool
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Thinking about The Fool in terms of Latency, I did an image search on “latent” and this illustration came up. The usual idea in the Waite card is that he’s about to stumble off the cliff. Well: what if he just kinda wanders off into the sky? And his little dog too? This is no mere flight of fancy. If the mountains/docks need balloons to hold them up, are the ships naturally afloat?


I suppose that’s plenty for now, eh? Thanks for takin the time. I eagerly await correspondence.

Peace
brujaja
 

Durant Hapke

Massive Blasting Big Brujaja,

Way to bring it...

... Lot's to digest...

Your into some heap of thinking here.

My short take?

Wave forms, baby, that's what it's all about -- you, me, the universe, it's all an echo of an echo.

Your Jack bird action is exploring your inner workings (right on?), your personal take on it all, your creativity -- that's as close as you'll ever get to touching the divine -- the only way you'll see anything of any real meaning.

If you don't find it inside yourself, it doesn't exist (right on again?).

Perhaps, a drink is in order...

I will pour, and ponder...

Blast off.

Durant "more ice please" Hapke
 

blackroseivy

These images really do resonate deeply. Thank you so much for sharing. :D
 

brujaja

<<These images really do resonate deeply. Thank you so much for sharing.>>
But of course. I'm glad to hear they resonate elsewhere too.

<<Your Jack bird action is exploring your inner workings (right on?), your personal take on it all, your creativity -- that's as close as you'll ever get to touching the divine -- the only way you'll see anything of any real meaning.>>

Exactamundo, me hearty. At first they were simply an exercise, but something about the haste of making them all so fast made me just keep going with my gut...and standing back, now, they are starting to come alive. telling me secrets, jokes, and crazy new spreads. invading my dreams, even.

gets lonely, tho, dreamin all the time. i'm hopin an image will ignite somewhere else and we can groove a bit surfin this wave form. only time will tell, right?

<<Perhaps, a drink is in order... >>
another round, then! where's the "bottoms up" emoticon?
heh.