Kubrick and The Tarot?

Did Stanley Kubrick encode images representing certain tarot cards in his films. Well we can never know for certain because even if he was still here, he would probably give a vague and enigmatic answer leaving us to make up our own minds. However, quite a few people have discovered what may be tarotic imagery and subtle suggestions that Kubrick was using the 'Fool's Journey' in at least one of his films. Consider the following image comparing 'The Lovers' with a scene from A Clockwork Orange.


It's also worth noting that card 6 is in some schools known as Children of the Voice Divine because in Anthony Burgess original novella, the two girls that Alex picks up, drugs and rapes are aged only ten years old. For obvious reasons Kubrick had to change this, but he still hints at the source material by shooting the scene in the Chelsea Drug Store, and having the girls behave and talk in a very childish manner. The rest of this possible Fool's Journey can be found here, and it's probably best to advise this as NSFW because it does examine the themes of a film that contains sex, violence, sexual violence and drugs;

Now things get a little spookier, as we turn our attention to Stanley's Magnum Opus - The Shining. Below are two screen captures from the film, have a study (take as long as you like) and see if there is any imagery within either scene that reminds you of a particular Tarot card.


Once you've come to a decision, check out the next two links, and see if you see what I see, if you see what I mean.


The second image was originally spotted here;

'The Mask of God' is an AMAZING article!

Of course, now 'The Thieving Magpie' is playing in the back of my mind ...

Personally I'm not convinced that Kubrick consciously portrayed tarot concepts or images. But it certainly is fun to go treasure-hunting in such symbol-rich material. And of course we can never know for sure...

Lee said:

Personally I'm not convinced that Kubrick consciously portrayed tarot concepts or images. But it certainly is fun to go treasure-hunting in such symbol-rich material. And of course we can never know for sure...

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Well, it is really Kubrick's influence, or little jokes the production designer slipped in here and there? Or the fact that some of what is portrayed is merely archetypical? If you had to portray one man picking up two women - would you make both of them redheads? Wouldn't you make one fair and one dark?

The light fixtures in 'The Shining' - that one is quite a stretch to believe ....

With virtually every director except Kubrick and Polanski, I would opt for the 'archetypal image' and coincidence type of theory. But with those two and the intricate ways they weave layers of meaning around the highly complex structures within their work, I'm much less sure that these things aren't intentional. Some of the Russian directors like Tarkovsky also populated their work with symbolic themes and it's always interesting to play "Hmmm... man with large pole in hand standing behind a table with lots of weird looking apparatus on it.... what card does that remind me of?"

In the final analysis you can of course spin them any way you want, it's how coherent your rationale is that counts. Here's a dude who's used the RWS majors to go through The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut;

tarotbear said:

The light fixtures in 'The Shining' - that one is quite a stretch to believe ....

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If the Devil's a stretch, some of these are pure insanity;

Oh yes, you can read all about 'Crypto-Kubrology' discover the 'Shone Report' and uncover the delights of 'Subliminal Bears'.

Got less than 2 minutes into 'Subliminal Bears' and got bored - That is like taking anything and finding a way to make it into 100s of different things that only exist in one person's mind....

Kubrick threw lots of stuff into his films, but I find the 'subliminal bears' would be too much work to have to set up to be more than 'accidental'.

I have a comedy piece where I 'prove' that Alan Jay Lerner only wrote one musical ... 6 or 7 times ... and the audience never noticed ... and every single one contains the exact same song ... it's very humorous and my ex (a musician) said I was 'over-stretching' to make the song fit ... but for me - I'm right!

Well, it's not tarot, but you might be interested in this:

http://www.alchemylab.com/alchemical_kubrick.htm

rachelcat said:

Well, it's not tarot, but you might be interested in this:
http://www.alchemylab.com/alchemical_kubrick.htm

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Jay Weidner's essay is one of the seminal pieces written on 2001, and the first time that I (like most people) encountered the proposition that the monolith could be interpreted as serving as a visual metaphor for the cinema screen showing the film itself. Whether that proposal is correct or not is of course a matter for conjecture, but what can be shown is that there is a common use of a trick of visual perspective in both 2001 and The Shining to create the appearance of a capstone-less pyramid;
I believe this is highly significant, because both times that the monolith is touched in 2001, there is the implied suggestion that a 'higher intelligence' has been contacted. The ape that touched it discovers that tools are a more efficient means of killing, and when the astronaut touches it the signal from the larger monolith orbiting Jupiter is activated. In Shining, Danny touches the bathroom door when he scrawls 'REDRUM' on it - however he is 'possessed' by Tony at the time, and thus what we have is 'automatic writing'. This of course has long been regarded as a way of 'piercing the veil' (note the knife Danny is holding) and getting 'in touch with the other side' or 'higher intelligence'.
The message that Danny scrawls is revealed to be 'MURDER' when his mother sees it reversed in the mirror, and we could cite Crowley's advocacy of saying and writing things backwards as an explanation for this prophetic message, which comes to pass near the end of the film when Jack murders Hallorhan. We are therefore, now in the arena of divination, with a prophetic message received through automatic writing from a higher intelligence. There are however, two further points of interest here I feel - the first is that in King's novel 'Tony' is revealed to be Danny's future self, whereas Kubrick never gives an explanation for what Tony might be in the film. Secondly, REDRUM is phonetically very similar to DRENCROM, which appears scrawled on the wall of the Korova Milk Bar in Clockwork Orange.
The bar serves milk laced with drugs, and Alex lists some of the (fictitious) ingredients one can request: vellocet (opiate), synthemesc (synthetic mescalines), drencrom (adrenochrome).
The fact that Alex is drinking milk laced with drencrom (redrum) is also significant I feel, since adrenochrome, whether real or fictitious was regarded by both Huxley and Thompson as being "like a combination of mescaline and methedrine" (see the adrenochrome link in the above Wikipedia article). This of course is exactly the sort of thing (along with ayahuasca) that shamen ingest when they go into visionary trances in order to contact higher intelligences. To link back to Shining, Danny is seen with a glass of milk in front of him just before he has his first vision of the twins and passes out;
Near the end of ACO Alex also appears seated at a table with a meal on it, wearing a robe that is in the same colours as the tablecloth in front of Danny. He's offered a drink that is laced with drugs and passes out, the drink isn't rum, but it is...
Oh go on, you know you're dying to "Try the wine";