"For like a double dagger, it may stab both ways."
—Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1913

The asterisk "originated as the sign that an enraged Hera placed on Zeus's brow when he slept where he shouldn't to remind him when he gazed into the mirror that he should be somewhere else." —Sylvia Söderlind, Liminal Postmodernisms (1994)

"It means we have justice for all, for everyone. That is 100 percent."
—Congressional Record, Nov. 12, 2002, p. 28768

"Death is a textual ellipsis."
—Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (1992)

"Her marks on the pillars of wisdom are those of the question mark."
—Heather Busch & Burton Silver, Why Cats Paint (1994)

Gordon inquires why it is that stage magicians ask, "What's your favorite card?" Gordon adds that this question is a pet peeve of his, and he contends that the question is "almost always rhetorical as many magicians barely pause to allow the participant to answer."

Here's our answer:

Like electricity that loses potential with each step through a circuit, solemn rites lose meaning and become mundane over time. Today, when a magician casually asks an audience member to name a favorite playing card, we hear a faint echo of the mystic of old seeking a "significator"—the one Tarot archetype best representing the supplicant.

A Magician from a 19th century woodcut. See full poster here.

Here's a proposal: always leave one card in every Tarot spread face down. Why? Consider this definition of the future:

"It should remain part of the definition of the future that it is unknown; and therefore allowed to retain its proper mystery." —The Future is Tomorrow: 17 Prospective Studies, 1972

Substitute the word "divination" for "definition":

"It should remain part of the divination of the future that it is unknown; and therefore allowed to retain its proper mystery."

See our analysis of Tarot archetypes in the Star Wars series over at MysteryArts.com.

See our guest post at BonnieCehovet.com about Tarot archetypes in Tom Stoppard's absurdist film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.