Friday, February 25, 2011

The old Hollywood studio system excelled at producing images of actors that were archetypal in their power and beauty. These stunning images of the brilliant and beautiful Hedy Lamarr, found by my sister Carla, are no exception. In a Hollywood themed Tarot, the above image would naturally be the Star.

This image strikes me as warmer - a solar Hedy. It would make a glorious Sun card.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011


"The great stone tower swayed from side to side, then the air was rent with the sound of a mighty crackling and the walls split open like a broken egg. One tongue of flame shot out from the crack like a spear, and a winged creature that might have been a bird emerged. It paused momentarily on the brim of the shattered tower and we witnessed for a second an extraordinary creature. It shone with a bright light coming from its own body, the body of a human being entirely covered with glittering feathers and armless. Six great wings sprouted from its body and quivered ready for flight. Then with a shrill long laugh it leapt into the air and flew north, till it was lost to our sight."
—Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Monday, February 21, 2011

"Has it never struck you that the Tarock pack has twenty-two trumps—precisely the same number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet? And, what is more, do not our Bohemian cards have pictures which are obviously symbols? The Fool, Death, the Devil, the Last Judgment? How loud, my friend, do you want life to shout its answers to you? It's not necessary, of course, for you to know that Tarock, or Tarot, is the same as the Jewish word Tora, 'the Law,' or the old Egyptian tarut, which means 'One who is asked,' and the ancient Zend word tarisk, which means 'I demand the answer.' But scholars should know these facts before they assert that the Tarock pack originated during the time of Charles the Sixth. And just as the Juggler, the lowest trump, is the first card in the pack, so man is the first figure in his own picture book, his own double: the Hebrew character Aleph, which is formed after the shape of a man, with one hand pointing up at the sky and the other downwards, saying, therefore, 'As it is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above.'"
—Gustav Meyrink, The Golem (bold text ours)

Friday, February 18, 2011

"The playing card I had noticed first—the Juggler—was still in the ray of light that ran across the middle of the room. I stared at it, I could not tear my eyes away. As far as I could tell from that distance, it seemed to be a crude picture, painted in watercolours by a child's hand, representing the Hebrew character Aleph in the form of a man in quaint, old-fashioned dress, with a short, pointed beard, and one hand raised whilst the other pointed downwards. I could feel a disturbing thought seeping its way into my mind: did the man's face not bear a strange resemblance to my own?"
—Gustav Meyrink, The Golem

Wednesday, February 16, 2011


The Madonna Oriflamma of Nicholas Roerich. Evocative of the High Priestess.

Monday, February 14, 2011

"I received these in the mail recently and I was wondering if you could explain something to me." I hand him the one from Spain that read "Fun in the Sun."

Gerald looks the mail over with a careful eye, intrigued by the mystery I've laid out before him. "You say you received these recently?"

"Right," I say, and spread the cards out like a Tarot deck. Tulips from Amsterdam. Bier Gartens from Germany. The Eiffel Tower. Big Ben. The Roman Coliseum.

—Kirk Farber, Postcards from a Dead Girl (2010)

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Thursday, February 3, 2011