Not necessarily Marseille...
I think falling in love is a good expression...
I don't think I can accurately describe my love for the tarot in analytic words, not just yet anyway. But it must be the old cards, older than we are anyway, and somehow beyond our understanding.
I wrote something when I first knew I had fallen in love, and it still expresses how I feel, despite my dry reputation.
Tarot as a woman
I had a dream, and in the dream the Tarot was a woman – a young woman, whom I found attractive, although I can’t describe her face or form, though I think it was slight, but really my attraction was intellectual – intellectual and spiritual. Nonetheless, my wife was jealous, as she has been complaining for days that I must have a girlfriend, and when I rose (in the dream) to visit the young woman on the couch, my wife got in between us with a ruler, so that we couldn’t sit together – I began to wake up . . . and it was then, in these warm feelings I had for the form I had seen, that I realized who this girl was – because all tonight I was awake with the cards of the early decks in my mind, and did rise and come to the couch to write everything down and meditate with the images beside me – and the feeling for the young woman in my dream and the meditating in the Tarot are the same feelings – I am in it now.
I have not studied Jungian psychology, but from what I gather this is my anima, and it is not unusual that an archetypal toy should bring her to me. But I have seen her before also, when I rebuilt, with love, patience, tender compassion and true interest, a very old machinist’s lathe. I knew and cleaned every screw and bolt, every gear ; I brushed off every speck of rust from the lovely smooth steel, got all the shiny handles turning, arranged all the accessories in a cabinet I built, shined the plate with the name and gear ratios, and finally levelled the bed, and oiled it to perfection. I knew and touched every part of this old tool – 1919, I phoned South Bend lathes in Indiana and found its history through the serial number – and one night I spent all night with a lovely young woman, and found myself tenderly rubbing oil over her back for an eternity, and when I awoke I knew it had been the spirit of the lathe, brought out by tender love and compassion, unconditional surrender to the thing itself, to only learn its ways, and not to impose on or hurry it, or rule over it, but to serve it. And isn’t this what « tender » means, to tend to with love and patience ?
And now I’ve understood again how it is with « men and their cars », although I have never had this in particular – that’s why the swimsuit model appears on the hoods of cars and beside chrome-sparkling Harleys, not because « sex sells », but because she IS the machine, the soul of the machine, the anima of every man who lovingly tends and toils over his machine, the humble servant maintaining her perfection.
And this must be why ships are « she », since the men who sail it look after it so well, tend her, so that the spirit of the ship comes out and guides them, and they make an image and put it on the very front to show everyone her soul.
And this must be why the early scientists called the World Soul a woman, because they were falling in love with nature, and finally not imposing rules on her but learning her ways through patient observation and unconditional love of it for itself, tender love, and it became to them a woman, the spirit of the world, and this dream made its way into the engravings and paintings of the scientific awakening.
And finally, (but it has been quick) I understand a little, although I am not a poet, of the beloved of the sufis, the troubadors, chivalry and the Fidèles d’Amour like Dante, who so rigorously studied and observed the rules of their art, that the art itself became a woman to them, their soul came out, through their patient absorption in the contemplation and performance of their craft. And I am not a musician, but it must be the same with an instrument – now I see !
And so last night the Tarot came to me as a Woman, after I had given up trying to impose upon or drag something out of the cards (these are just words, I don’t know if I was doing that), I just studied them in themselves, tenderly contemplated them and lovingly arranged them, and with rapt attention heard their story told through time, a new story (to me at least, one I have not shared with the list), but in a way which must resemble what humble men, all servants of love, have always done through the ages, which is to open up unconditionally to understanding, to become empty so the beloved can fill you up. Last night Tarot came to me, and She filled me up.
Ross