For a long while I thought I had not learnt an essential word. I did not know the masculine form of brunette. For some reason the authors of the term considered gender appropriate, unlike the authors of blonde or red-head. So on Friday, for the first time I took off -ette. I have no idea why I did not try it before. The appended form gives “brune,” which delights me. It connotes brute, which matches the intent of establishing a masculine term. Unfortunately, no one else thought of this term either. I looked at dictionary.com to confirm my answer and found there is a masculine form of brunette and I have heard it all the time unknowingly. The accepted conjugation is “brunet.” I am rather disappointed and may adopt my own version anyway as I privately have for other words. (His or her became hiser. I repurpose “he or she” into shhe.)

I have a love/hate relation with the Tarot. I prefer to think of it as an art portfolio rather than a divination tool. I wrote earlier about my plan to design a completely different deck. I tired of it after quibbling too long about how to unify its minor arcana themes. The urge stayed dormant until I hit the section in Jonathan Strange wherein Childermass performs a reading for Vinculus. Because Childermass did not really trust the scoundrel, he only explained part of the spread. Yet, I found myself confirming what he did say, supplying the interpretations he did not, and wondering at the parts I did not know. Nostalgia conspired with my confronted ignorance to reactivate my interest.

The first two times I approached the tarot, I focused on creating and unifying sets of concepts to encompass the whole of human experience. Unfortunately, this suits the major arcana more than the minor. The numbered groups loosely follow variations in creative, emotional, rational, and material Aspects (as wands, cups, swords, and pentacles respectively). This is a hard combination to beat and I abandoned the project. Though I knew the themes driving each, I did not study them enough to have an intuitive grasp of the entire deck. Had I gone forward (and I could have, I drew most of the art by then), the result would have been another version of Morgan’s Tarot: an overlarge major arcana with only stylistic unity in the concepts chosen and no minor set. While this allows a gratifying freedom, I can not pretend the deck would be at all suitable for actual divination.

That requirement drives and mystifies me at the same time. I do want to make a true successor to the tarot. If I did not, I would have finished the first time – back in high school. (My earliest existent notes are a colation of the original brainstorm and are dated 13 October 2004.) I have no faith in supernatural phenomena of any kind. I am an atheist. I do not believe that an alternate reality afterlife exists, nor one that intersects with our own (ghosts). There is no credible evidence for psychic phenomena. Divination is a farce. Yet, I do not deny that I can not kill Aspects that hold those ideas in some esteem. I fight to blank my mind as I pass my darkened stairway. (I long projected a Ring-like specter onto it.) I make hopeful gestures at cars to ensure they do not make a right turn into my lane. Thanks to Susanna Clarke, I will now cast the Tarot with as little irony as I can muster.

I suspect that the reason I dithered with the project last time is from a superficial knowledge of the Tarot as a collection and as used. Sure, I read essays. Professional alternate decks (Marseilles, Thoth, Osho Zen) sit in my archive. But, I never studied spreads or actually using the cards. It didn’t seem essential; the cards represent concepts by themselves. It isn’t as though they mean something else when lain on the table. Actually, they do. The spread is a framing device. The Hanged Man implies different aspects of its concept if it is “future influence” as opposed to “prevailing emotion.” I see no current path to appreciate this intricacy without literally using the Tarot in its intended fashion.

So I sat and tested with the only spread I do know. It is extremely basic: I cast three cards. The first is past, the second is present, and the third is the future. Here I bristled at one of the aspects of “oracular use” of the tarot. You need to concentrate on a question for your ‘subconscious’ to answer. This presents a problem because I know of three types of questions. What is X? Is X true/going to happen? When will X happen? I mean explanatory answers, yes or no answers, and numeric answers. I had no idea and just asked yes or no questions. While I could interpret the five results, I knew a more complex spread would have given more to work with. Also, my skeptical aspect continually mocked me.

Nevertheless, the experiment showed that I do not need lots of study. I just need a reference for general interpretations of each card and what each position means in various spreads. I have yet to broach the second because the first is damned hard despite having three resources to draw from. I purchased Arthur Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot along with his deck. The pack itself also had a booklet with instructions (interpretations). Further, I took a list of ‘divinatory meanings’ from learntarot.com. Imagine my chagrin when I learned that they conflict in places. I mean they literally conflict:

 

 

 Booklet – difficulty in launching new projects; difficult situations; new troubles.

Learntarot – juggling flexibility fun.

Waite – “On the one hand, it is represented as a card of gaiety, recreation, and its connexions, which is the subject of the design, but it is also read as news and messages of writing, as obstacles, agitation, trouble, [and] embroilment.”

Waite continually frustrates me in that fashion. Rather than be a clear authority on what the cards mean, he gives several divergent meanings for each card. I appreciate that these supplant nuanced aspects, but his attitude is more appropriate for someone who didn’t commission the designs himself. Further, some pictures contrast sharply with his suggestions.

 

 

The two of swords shows a “hoodwinked” (his words; blindfolded) woman holding two swords in a V. He interprets this as concord, friendship, tenderness, affection despite the fact that she is alone. Further, he recants “favorable readings must be considered in a qualified manner, as Swords are not usually symbolical of beneficent forces in human affairs.” I am aghast that he directed the artist so astray. Looking at the card I incline toward (learntarot) Joan Bunning’s interpretation: blocked emotions, avoidance, and stalemate. Because of this discord, I verify his answers against the other two and exclude the minority report that least suits the picture. Which isn’t entirely true, I even drew in Crowley’s deck to break the above standoff (he says peace, so I assented). I vacillate whether to ignore the problem and copy Waite’s effusions or stick with this divided committee.

This is not supposed to be the hard part.

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I realized this at work whilst walking back to break. I do not recall the incipient cause.

If discussing first principles with a theist, the conversation likely turns to free will. Suppose two speakers: Flor, a theist; Brau, an atheist. Brau challenges Flor’s theodic conclusions. He has just been rear ended and suffered a fractured rib. He has trouble breathing (sneezing laughing) like a burn victim has trouble dancing. Flor came to visit him and offer some encouragement.

She speaks brightly to inspire uplift. Brau rejects and resents her levity. An aspect recognizes her intent but cowers under the pain that simplifies all other input.

Flor . . You will overcome this Brau. Everyone overcomes it. Pain is fleeting.

Brau . . Yeah? Hnf. Do you want to trade places then? I have not been able to sit up for two days, Flor.

Flor . . You suffer now but when the pain is gone, no trace will remain. Then, you will no longer understand pain any more than you think I understand yours.

Brau . . Really? What do I do until then, Flor?

Flor . . I try to meditate on god and pray. That is what I did when I had the flu two months ago.

Brau . . That isn’t a good comparison. I understand that the last time my nose was running, it wasn’t as bad as this.

Flor . . It is a good comparison in my case. It was the kind of flu that made my joints ache. At one point I was scared I might have lupus, so I got myself tested. All the while though, I drew solace that God would not make me suffer too long.

Brau . . Pfft-uunngh. . . How do you know god would not make you suffer? People suffer in Africa every minute.

Flor . . I know how people can suffer, Brau Telit. When my family came here, my mother could not go back to bury her mother or both sisters. It …It is not the point. God does not make people suffer.

Brau . . Oh really? So I rear-ended myself? And those Africans could choose not to have their kids die of diarrhea? Didn’t god make the world that we all suffer in?

Flor . . God made the world, but we made it perverse. All suffering comes from the choices that Men have made that distance them from God.

Brau . . Those children chose to be evil? Really, Flor?

Flor . . No, they live in communities that imitate (and reinvent) patterns of their ancestors that turned from our covenant. So do we. That put you in a position where you were in that crash.

Brau . . Doesn’t that just shift the blame from god – who created us – to our ancestors and us. It blames the victim.

Flor . . God gave us free will and we live in societies. Those two things mean that our sins are our own and impact future generations without any necessary karmic reason for the ‘victims’ to bear the conditions. The only way to avoid this is to totally expel sinners (and few societies are self-righteous enough to do so).

Brau . . Well that sucks pretty hard. If ‘god’ were at all just, people’s actions would be self-contained. It is simpler to believe that this isn’t for the better good or whatever.

Flor . . Except, except that if our actions had no social consequence, there could be no charity or love. God gave us free will. Sure, we can pretend he could have made robots who only do Good and what He wants for us, but it would be meaningless. It would have the same depth as an algebra problem.

[We reach my new thought.]

Brau . . Yeah? You think god wouldn’t make people uh without free will? Have you ever thought about Hell, what it would be like?

Flor . . Hell is the absence of God. But, you aren’t going to use that interpretation are you?

Brau . . Hell is supposed to be eternal punishment for your sins. Eternal. No one gets parole, or graduates on good behavior. And, you sit as demons stab your eyes or whatever. That sounds to me like hell is a place where people lose their ‘free will.’

Flor . . This does not prove anything Brau. Most people do not believe hell is like that anymore.

Brau . . So what? This just exposes another contradiction in religion. Yet another reason I don’t believe in god. I bet heaven is the same way -

Flor . . Is this really what you want to talk about? I was just trying to help.

Brau . . I mean, people who go to heaven are all blissful and praise god for eternity too. Like they wouldn’t get bored or rebel if they still had free will.

Flor . . I’m going outside to make a call. Tell me when you calm down. And, the people in heaven don’t sin anymore because that is how they got in.

That worked better than I thought it would. I very much like how organic conversations look. Yet, throughout I fear a character will suggest a turn of phrase that will demand a strong response that leads too far away from my goal. I approached that potential when Flor put god above her fear of lupus. With my first few phrasals, Brau would have latched onto the Christian Science analog. The lupus is trivial and wasting time with a delay would sap my enthusiasm. Here is the source of the frustrating answer some writers give about their characters. (I thought about it until one day, sh/he came to life and I didn’t know where sh/he would take the story.) I know I can have either character say anything I want. However, I began with a conception and latched it to an aspect to simulate consistency. I did not want to stretch its credibility by offering it a hot topic yet pointedly ignore it in favor of an ultimate goal.

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