Literature and card meanings

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 25 Jan 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Alex	25 Jan 2003
I was wondering if there are short poems or quotations people strongly associate with some cards. The one of Goethe below, I associate with the Chariot. This one, is the four of cups as I see it. "Somehow enternity almost seems possible as you embrace. And yet when you've got past the fear in that first exchange of glances the mooning at the window and that first walk together in the garden one time: lovers, are you the same? When you lift each other to your lips mouth to mouth drink to drink - oh how oddly the drinker seems to withdraw from the act of drinking." Rainer Maria Rilke, Second Elegy, from Duino Elegies (German speaking folks, I'm sorry, I know translations fall short for the original).

Hedera	28 Jan 2003
Alex, what a great question! Lots of stuff springs to mind, but I'm very bad at quoting, so I'll have to go look it up... In any case, some Walt Whitman poetry for the fool. I'm going to spend some time going through my book collection, which is (so far) a little bigger than my tarot collection. I'll get back to you! :)

Hedera	28 Jan 2003
Here's a quote I love, but have trouble putting a specific card with (sorry, it's a long one): "Things are good at their beginnings. But how rarely in the history of men and small towns or big cities is the ending good. Then, things fall apart. Things turn to fat. Things sprawl. The time gets out of joint. The milk sours. By night the wires on the high poles tell evil tales in the dripping mist. The water in the canals goes blind with scum. Flint, struck, gives no spark. Women, touched, give no warmth. Summer is suddenly over. Winter snows in your hidden bones. Then it is time for the wall. The wall of the little room, that is, where the shudders of the big red trains go by like nightmares turning you on your cold steel bed in the trembled basement of the Not So Royal Lost Canary Apartments, where the numbers have fallen off the front portico, and the street sign at the corner has been twisted North to East so that people, if they ever came to find you, would turn away forever on the wrong boulevard." (Ray Bradbury) Three of swords, I guess. Or maybe five of cups. Hedera.

Alex	28 Jan 2003
"WER, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?" Rilke, DUINESER ELEGIEN ("Who, though I cry aloud, would hear me in the angel orders?")

The Literature and card meanings thread was originally posted on 25 Jan 2003 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.