Madame Sosostris

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 12 Aug 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

catboxer	12 Aug 2003
In the famous T.S. Eliot poem, "The Wasteland," there is a verse about a tarot reader named Madame Sosostris. Could this character be based on a historical person? Perhaps that Blavatsky woman? I think that would be about the right historical time. The verse goes like this: "Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. " Of course, the title of the famous book by Ronald Decker, Thierry DePaulis and Michael Dummett is drawn from this verse. All I've been able to find out about this allusion is on a site called "Notes and Obserations on T.S. Eliot's Early Poems" by Patricia Sloane. In part 12, "Ambiguous Gender," she says: "Eliot reports that the name of Madame Sosostris is adapted from an episode in Huxley's Crome Yellow. In Huxley's episode, a man dresses up as a woman. Is Madame Sosostris, following Huxley, a man dressed up as a woman? As often noted, Madame Sosotris has a male name, adapted from that of the (male) pharaoh of the Exodus, who kept the children of Israel in captivity. The Greeks called the pharaoh of the Exodus Seostris. The Egyptians called him Rameses II." Can anyone out there help me shed a little more light on this topic?

Cerulean	13 Aug 2003
http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html These notes appear in context starting from line 20 to 60, seems to summarize this passage together, I believe. In the next segment, I copied more text, will winnow from line 20-60 for you. NOTES Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognize in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies. I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD Line 20 Cf. Ezekiel 2:7. 23. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5. 31. V. Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5–8. 42. Id. iii, verse 24. 46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the 'crowds of people', and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

Cerulean	13 Aug 2003
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20 You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, 25 (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 30 Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu. Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? 'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 35 'They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer. Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45 With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. 50 Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. 55 I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html I checked one or two other sites and they say these are T.S. Elliot's annotations. The next segments also talk of the Game of Chess, a quote from Dante's Inferno and then it moves on. I believe many people have tried to take the poetic fictions of the Wasteland and tried to make sense. I'll let you know if I find this is so. I sometimes think the poem's flow touches on the edge of understanding, then veers off. I wish I had more information, but I'm actually surmising it is mostly fiction---this is a big guess. (I know of one very interesting poet who took T.S. Eliot's Wasteland as a model of allegory when he tried to introduce Western poetry to post-war Japan right after the bombs dropped. His poetry also had that surreal feeling--at least to me.) Hope this helps a little. Mari H.

jmd	13 Aug 2003
Although there is no obvious reason to think this, when I re-read Elliot's Waste Land after becoming familiar with some of the Golden Dawn's history, the name evoked in me Madame Horos its apalling results. Looking for a site which could briefly discuss what I mean, I found this one the most succint. The 'Horos' affair occured in 1901, the poem presumably written in the early 1920s.

Cerulean	13 Aug 2003
Some editorial commentary I've read on newer poetry based on the Wasteland refers to T.S. Elliot's work overall as a commentary that reacted to World War I and it's aftermath.

catboxer	13 Aug 2003
Mari and jmd-- Thanks for digging all that stuff up. I've concluded that "Wasteland" must be mostly purely fictional, as Mari suggests. I'm so literal minded that I always start looking for real-life analogs whenever I read a work of fiction, but in this case there seems to have been no real person upon whom the character of Madame Sosostris was based, and the Greek name for Ramses II, Seostris, was probably the origin of the name. I doubt that the Horos affair would have entered into the picture. Eliot was very young and, I think, still in America when that occurred. The general historical atmosphere that produced both "Wasteland" and the wonderful "Second Coming" by Yeats was the aftermath of WWI. Some of the stuff in that verse is included simply because Eliot wanted to allude to things that would occur later in the poem. That's the case with the drowned Phoenician sailor with pearls for eyes (who sounds like he could be a real card in somebody's arcane deck). It might be possible also to mistake the Magician for a one-eyed merchant in some decks. I really liked the excerpt from Yeats, who seems to have been driven somewhat batty by the more outlandish goings on that occurred in and around the GD.

The Madame Sosostris thread was originally posted on 12 Aug 2003 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.