Tarot Poetry

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 02 Mar 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Charles Stein	02 Mar 2004
I am a poet and have recently introduced myself on the new member forum, if that is what is called, by posting a couple of my poems. I have written an entire "deck of poems" based on the images from Rachel Pollack's Shining Woman Tarot (the predecessor to her "Shining Tribe" tarot). What I would like to do on this thread is post poems from my deck and also post "auto-commentaries," as it were, to the poems and invite discussion. Let me start by re-posting the two poems I put up already, the poems for The Fool and The Magician. The Fool Balance cannot. An inch up on gravity tilts the game. Access from everywhere leverage for none. Win or rain. Shine or stand on the mountain. The mountain? Her flight exceeds her mountain. Out onto the back of the sky. *** The Magician In Me the stony Zoroaster speaks again… What's that up the sky though? A twig-in the suit and tie of an ordinary bank manager (local branch) aerially absconding with an entire tribal culture's totemic apparatus recently foreclosed upon. The blackened blue-capped mountains loom over Cartier-Bresson invisible waiting for his moment before an onrush of absolute signs. With face paint, hard-on, and finger english he budges the bushes (a-flame) into coming to be. He ladles soup. (While the bugs at the bottom of everything eat the dust from the sky.) *** A hint for the Magician: Cartier-Bresson is a French photographer known for his style of waiting for the "decisive" moment. *** Charles Stein

punchinella	03 Mar 2004
Hi C.S., nice poems (especially the fool). I've been planning to write a tarot for quite some time now. But it hasn't actually happened yet . . . if it's meant to, it will in its own sweet time, I'm sure :) --Interesting to hear from somebody else with the same idea! P.

Cerulean	03 Mar 2004
There are theme decks that I can relate to style of poems in terms in my personal associations--for instance the Ukiyoe by Koji Furuta and collected traditional zen poems by monks. I have a particularly gifted poetry instructor that I like who also used the Thoth for his personal inspiration. I think you are the first person that I encountered who used the Shining Tribe for poetry. Several decks or artwork or nature does inspire poetric inspiration in me--but I've not the eye nor the associative desire that you have for the Shining Tribe. I hope you do not take the question amiss. If it is a very personal choice that you do feel is not pertinent to discussing your poetry, then please excuse the question.

Charles Stein	04 Mar 2004
What caught me with this deck was several things. First, it sustained the traditional tarot deck structure but added as it were, another layer--the transformation of suits,in a sense backwards, from wands to trees, cups to rivers, swords(for air) to birds, coins to stones. Its imagery moved from Medieval forms to archaic contexts. But mostly the images were quirky and to some extend unreadable. I did not read Rachel Pollack's account of the meanings of the images. I looked at the strange figures and responded. In a sense, I don't think the poems depend upon the deck in the end at all. They themselves are both cards and readings of cards. You can ask the deck a question, and the meanings of the poems are formed or transformed by the question. That is, their obscurity comes into focus around the question asked. For instance. I just cut my deck (I have produced my deck of poems as an actual tarot deck so that I can use them manticly) asking it to comment upon my enterprise of posting the cards on this forum. I got the following answer: …whose hooded mind 's an accidental vortex… whose hands are brooms… The three Geks like crosses stand- two thieves and the broken god on a wind-ripped wheat field. Wheat blows this-a-way- beard of the godGek that. b'gum gay swak b'gum gay swak b'gum gay swak The follower fellows feel for wind but it blows all ways. (Hail, the contradictories Three of Trees Reading the poem and reading the card now coincide. One has to use the same imaginative faculty that one would use in reading a poem to read the card, and vice versa. The poem is contextualized by the question. I am particularly struck by the last three lines. The card seems to warn against discipleship and speaks suggestively to a deep philosophiocal problem in regarding to sortilege in general, that is, how are we to understand the role of chance? Taking "wind" as symbol of chance. As tarot readers, we "feel for wind," seeking answers from chance procedures. But the problem with the wind or chance is not, as sceptical thought would pretend, that it is meaningless, but rather the opposite--"it blows all ways." The card does offer this encouragement, however: Hail the contradictories. Here's another poem, just to post another in the series of the major trumps: The High Priestess We who have known, have known how to know her, have known where to seize her and how to site a snake beneath her dream. Yet we know that these Pillars have bespoken her Probity. She who attends the Dyad floods the void. Where has she fled to now? In what horn has she stashed that moon? And why is she seated no longer at the riverhead now that we've conceded her magistracy? Where is her tome? Where is her tongue?

punchinella	05 Mar 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Charles Stein (I have produced my deck of poems as an actual tarot deck so that I can use them manticly) :D :D :D Actually, the notion of a linguistic tarot being used for divinatory purposes strikes me as inherently profound (maybe this is just me . . . language striking a chord that 'real' imagery never manages to even contemplate . . . ) The two new poems are great too (I like them better than the first ones you posted)--especially 3 of Trees. It's 'out there' in places (this is high praise). P.

Cerulean	05 Mar 2004
Frederick Morgan, who wrote "The Tarot of Cornelius Agrippa" based on the images of the trumps of the Tarocchi di Mitelli, did beautiful parable and prose poems. I always did enjoy the idea. I found the Ukiyoe Tarot in conjunction with the Ken Rexroth Poems from the Japanese to be beautiful as crossroads. But I read the booklet for the Ukiyoe Tarot rather carefully and checked for design motifs that corresponded to what I knew...and since the minors have seasonal flower motifs, another idea came to check for seasonal poems to align with certain minors... At some point I was toying with some of the Asian-inspired decks and a calendar-poetry alignment. If you ever align your majors or minors with a 'wheel of the year' calendar orientation (Golden Dawn decks sometimes do this with astrology), you might have a great poetic calendar, as well. Best wishes, Mari H.

Charles Stein	06 Mar 2004
What I think I'll do is post a new trump each day and cut the cards for an additional suit card. If I cut to a trump, so be it (unless I turn up one that I've already posted.) The Empress The body goddess frog octaves [mountain sky path sectorings] colossus rising b'yond horizon turned away *** And here's what I cut to: The Moon Here is her tomb. Here is her tome. Here is her tongue. A web of ancient fabric ever-weathering. The beetle bearing the sun Y-g S-th-th. No air here. Head down you can tear pieces out of the light and apply them at that quarter where water dreams your life but later the ethers are aroused and we scamper to another celestial manner altogether

Ravenswing	06 Mar 2004
Great stuff Charles. It's nice to see variations on a theme. I've just started work on a new set of poems for a deck I'm working out-- I've done it a few times and I'm going at it again... I call them gematric verses... in brief, gematria is the numerology of the kabala, sort of. anyhow, I've created an English gematric system and use it to generate a word/concept pool for tarot cards. If anyone wants a more detailed explaination, PM me... The poem is the verbal "inspiration" for the cards. This one is the first wand-- what is usually called the ace of wands... first wand Behold! the first wand emerges The vision of the Spirit of Fire the All-in-all The journey begins with the understanding that there are no debts No fault. No blame. And so the tree shall blossom, the flower sweet and precious-- the triumph of hope Travel upon the path of the Great Work, ascending the ladder of lights And there, betwixt space and dreamtime, the majick of the deed shall be fulfilled. More to come.... It's real nice to be back. fly well raven

Charles Stein	07 Mar 2004
The Emperor They rise and they settle. The settle as they rise. My hidden neck unbows eye's seeds. Now these horns encower the world. It is of no concern that the City ins or outs me. Light is my shadow. Vault Locked Space. *** 1. The missing Entwives ought to be known here but are not. Rather, bug-like stellar dusts sprinkle in good measure as small leaves- Leaflets! (released from the stars. 2. The Mind that minds the rivers so they flow without abuse to mother sea is a Tree. Nothing is inside anything- or even tries. Knower of Trees The Shining Tribe Tarot replaces court cards with four special figures: The Knower of...The Gift of... The Speaker of... The Place of... In The Emperor, you begin to see the way these tarots fold up inside each other. The horns for instance, vis a vis the High Priestess. Also read the Moon together with the High Priestess. cs

Charles Stein	13 Mar 2004
The fifth trump, which in ordinary tarot decks is the Pope or Hierophant, in Shining Tribe is Tradition. This is the first trump in which a serious quantity of "sound" poetry appears. Tradition Mumdurb Mumdurb pooee pooee eeleeasso mbutusu ooeedey ooeeday, ooee lasto Chao Watu saee laydo Gar mímtin Díssua Komidómp Dáh di Dáh ka Dókiti Dáh diDAHse Mumdurb Mumdurb… * Coming out of the clay encasement- Buddhamud and the Sputum of the Ancestors. The change-link twixt mind and stone. Mud clump rub dance the fish out- Now the Shifters have fled from the sea. *** (Remember, in this deck, instead of pentacles, coins, or disks, we have stones. ) What if even shadows had chakras? Great black bouquets exploding in the hollows of bellies and bones? What if motionless shadows were pinned to the world? And a frocked black rock on a pointy neck had effected a spillage of dots the shadow birds peck at? Align your shadows on shadows. Elsewise no ways to get there. Four of Stones

The Tarot Poetry thread was originally posted on 02 Mar 2004 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.