Lit clue- Nov 10th

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 10 Nov 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Mesara	10 Nov 2004
Excerpts from "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe. The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. Blood was it's avator and it's seal-the redness and the horror of the blood. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. And while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at the masked ball of the most unusal magnificence. In one apartment, there stood a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang, and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note that the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound, and thus the waltzers perforce cease their evolutions, and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company, and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in a confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly, the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if in their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. It was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There was much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these dreams writhed in and about, causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away-they have endured but an instant-and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told, and the evolutions of the walters were quieted, and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock, and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept , with more of time, into the mediations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus it happened there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth, the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited, but the figure in quesiton had gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dappled in blood, and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. "Who dares?" the prince demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him- "Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him- that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!" Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of revellers at once, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form. And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

arcanalefait	11 Nov 2004
I thought of four or five different cards as I read this passage. How about the 10 of swords?

Emily	11 Nov 2004
Knight of Swords?

Mesara	11 Nov 2004
No, keep guessing! p.s. sorry I submitted such a long lit clue, but it was honestly the only one I could think of to use!

cheekyminx	11 Nov 2004
Boy was that a long one.....Death?

Phoenix Rising	12 Nov 2004
Knight of cups

AmyV	13 Nov 2004
Wow, heavy stuff - beautiful! Wheel of Fortune?

arcanalefait	13 Nov 2004
7 of cups?

yupkigirl	13 Nov 2004
I loooooove Edgar Allan Poe!! uhhhmmm....the Tower????

WhiteRaven	14 Nov 2004
King of Swords

Mesara	14 Nov 2004
Good guesses, but so far no one has got it yet!

OakDragon	14 Nov 2004
The Moon?

WhiteRaven	14 Nov 2004
The Devil

Mesara	14 Nov 2004
Hooray for Oakdragon! I was very weary about posting this particular lit clue; it seemed like a whole lotta text to dig through for just one card meaning! I chose it because of the masquerade, which is one of the things I always think of when the Moon comes up- things not being quite as they seem, an element of danger lurking through the sea of disguises and deception around you. A warning to open your eyes and take heed of what is around you, to be careful where you place your trust and confidence. The Moon (to me at least) is a card that clouds itself within the workings of a dreamscape, by which I mean that there is a haziness and obscurity to the situation, facts are distorted or hidden, people's motives and characters are unclear, etc. I thought the story played out the elements of the card quite well, ending with the Red Death victorious over the prince and his court because they refused to see past the illusion they had created for themselves. Take it away Oakdragon!

OakDragon	14 Nov 2004
Cool! I'll see what I can come up with.

The Lit clue- Nov 10th thread was originally posted on 10 Nov 2004 in the Tarot Games & Fun board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Tarot Games & Fun, or read more archived threads.