It’s somewhat hard to return to a project that was quiet for a few
months. To get to it again, and start to think of things that might be
interesting to put up here. To again devote some time to write them up
and present them to the Tarot community at large. But then, we felt the
project deserved more than just join the ever-growing limbo of dead
blogs that simply exist on the web, it’s creators to lazy to continue
them or too lazy to take them out of the web and put them out of their
misery. And so, they linger… Half-dead and half-alive, in a suspended
animation state while its creators go on to do other stuff. It happened
to us. We went on to do other stuff. And all of us left at the same
time. But we also didn’t forget about this blog. And so, we’re back.
As some of you might know, I recently presented a talk at the U.K.
TarotCon last September. It’s subject was one that was very dear to me:
Tarot and Comics. Two of my favourite subjects. Now that that
presentation is over, I thought it would be a nice idea if I wrote here
about some of the things that I talked over there, and probably expand
upon it. Since this is supposed to be a pretty long post, I’ve divided
it in three parts, of which this is part 1. The remaining parts shall be
posted in the next few days. If you happened to attend that conference,
think of this as a sort of companion piece; if not, just sit back and
enjoy the post.
When mentioning tarot and comics, most people will probably think of
Promethea. The Alan Moore comic book that started with a Wonder Woman
type hero but immediately evolved into an exploration of the Golden Dawn
Magickal System. A sort of crash course on tarot and magick. There were
32 issues published and collected in 5 volumes, that you can find here).
Promethea #1. By Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III
What was interesting to the series, is that each issue was based
either on a Sephiroth (issues #1-10) or a Major Arcana tarot card
(issues #11-32). Of special interest to tarot readers is issue #12,
which presents a journey through the Major Arcana tarot cards in 4
different levels. There’s the actual tarot card, created specifically
for that issue, as well as a description of the tarot card, how it
relates to world history events. But there’s also a word or expression
written in Scrabble tiles which is always an anagram for Promethea. And
there’s a little anecdote as told by Aleister Crowley divided in 22
parts, with each part attributed to each of the Major Arcana cards. Each
page drawn in such a way that when you put them all side by side, you
get a giant panel depicting Promethea’s journey through the Major
Arcana.
First four Major Arcana cards as depicted in Promethea #12
But the book doesn’t end here. In issues #5 through #8 (collected in the first and second
volumes of the series), you’ll get a brief exploration of the elements
and then, of course, you can browse through all the remaining issues and
try to figure out how each Major Arcana helped shape that particular
issue. In all, it’s an interesting reading and one that might offer a
new perspective to your understanding of the cards.
But comic books have more to offer than Promethea. With this in
mind, this presentation started with a comic book published in 1978
called Doorway to Nightmare by DC Comics.
Doorway to Nightmare #1, published by DC Comics
What was interesting in this comic book was the presence of a
character, Madame Xanadu, who was a tarot reader. In each issue, someone
would stumble into her parlour and have their cards read. According to
Jack C. Harris, editor of the series, the tarot cards were such an
important part of the series, “they were at the very heart of the idea from the beginning”.
The first issue of Doorway to Nightmare is also worth mentioning
because of a text that was published there about the origins of the
tarot cards, which is reproduced below. Bill Kunkel, the author, traced
the origins of the tarot deck to the fourteenth century and to elements
present in Dante’s Divine Comedy. He then goes on to explain how the
cards might have evolved and even present a way of reading the Celtic
Cross. Now this text does present inaccuracies, and some even blatant,
but even so, it is clear that its author tried to present the tarot in a
positive light and not as a game to be played at parties for the
amusement of guests. Which holds even more value, when one considers
that this is a comic book, and as such meant to be read by children and
teenagers. Who probably never heard of tarot and, again, probably would
forget about it half an hour later after finishing the book.
Tarot text that appeared on the first issue of Doorway to Nightmare
A few years later, in 1981, a new series starring Madame Xanadu
appeared, written by Steve Englehart. Once again, someone comes to
Madame Xanadu in search of advice.
It is unfortunate that the first card is wrongly attributed to the
Queen of Cups, when in fact, it’s the Princess of Cups. Even so, it is
an inspired reading, while it is also interesting to see how the artist,
Marshal Rogers framed the sequence, using cards as actual comic book
panels and easily leads us through the reading.
Meanwhile, over at Marvel, 1978 saw the release of Marvel Team-Up
#76, a comic book which also relies in tarot cards as a story device and
does present a Celtic Cross reading. However, it is the cover that is
of interest to us, as it features the first time superheroes were
depicted as Major Arcanas, with Spider-Man as The Fool, Dr. Strange and
his apprentice Clea as The Magician and The High Priestess and Ms.
Marvel as The Star. The villain, a sorcerer by the name of Silver
Dagger, was represented as Death.
Marvel Team-Up #76
It took almost 30 years, but the first decks featuring characters
from comic books were finally here. In 1995, Lo Scarabeo publishes a
limited edition Majors-only deck featuring some of Marvel’s superheroes,
while at DC, Rachel Pollack and artist Dave McKean put out the Vertigo Tarot,
featuring such popular characters as Dream and Death, from Neil
Gaiman’s Sandman; John Constantine from Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, Black
Orchid, among others.
Marvel Tarot Deck, published by Lo Scarabeo
Nowadays, it’s not so difficult to consider superheroes as
archetypes. We have a long history of stories featuring gods and
goddesses. For a long time, we used these stories to educate ourselves;
to teach us the ways of the world and how to behave in it. As our
religious believes changed, so did the stories we told each other. The
myths of yesterday started to loose its strength and new stories
appeared to substitute them. Stories about extraordinary characters. And
stories about people put in extraordinary situations. In 1938, Superman
appeared for the very first time. And ever since, kids and teenagers
throughout the whole world have once again embraced the idea of
super-human power.
Superman can be represent all that’s best in humanity. A being with
the powers of god, that only wished to live as a human. A being capable
of great deads, that came to our world from another planet. An
immigrant, who fought and found its place on Earth whilst never
deviating from its moral set of values and believes. Who got its powers
from our yellow sun. (For an interesting view on Superman and all
that he represents, do check this book). If we were to assign a tarot card to Superman, it would probably be Atu XIX – The Sun.
Looking at the stories behind other popular superheroes, it’s not difficult to find cards that can correspond to them.
With Spiderman, we have a teenager bitten by a radioactive spider.
Instead of using his powers for good, he choose to use them for personal
gain as a professional wrestler. One day, he could have stopped a
burglar, but he choose not to. The same burglar who would murder his
Uncle Ben just a few hours later, and teach Spiderman his most valuable
lesson:
From Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring the origin and first appearance of Spiderman. Story by Stan Lee; art by Steve Ditko.“With great power comes great responsibility.” Even
today, more than 50 years after his first appearance, writers milk this
motto to put Spiderman in situations where he must choose between doing
the right thing or doing what he wants. His tarot card? The Hanged Man.
With Green Lantern, we get the story of Hal Jordan, a pilot who is
presented with a ring capable of transforming his wishes into reality.
Imagination becomes Will and Will becomes Form. Or the Magician.
Green Lantern’s Origin. Published by DC Comics
The Hulk is just another variation of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
story. A man that harbors within itself a monster that symbolizes the
primitive mind. Or The Strength.
The Incredible Hulk #1. Published by Marvel Comics
With Batman, we have a man who, as a kid saw his parents murdered,
his innocence destroyed. That kid vowed to punish evil wherever it might
be and grew so obsessed with it that he devoted every single moment
henceforth and every single resource at his disposal to acquire the
means to actually fulfil his promise. Or The Devil.
The Legend Of The Batman: Who He Is And How He Came To Be. Published by DC Comics.
And the list goes on… Pick a superhero. Any superhero. Look at his
personal history and you can easily find a tarot card that corresponds
to him.
But comics can give us much more than just a new take on tarot archetypes. Join us tomorrow, for part two,
where we look at the Hero’s Journey, the Minor Arcana, and how can
comics make us see the cards in a different manner.
.................
In this part I will present some work I chanced upon throughout the
years. Books that for one reason or another made me stop and ponder a
while, and from which I took ideas that later on would coalesce and
build up into my personal view of the tarot. It was not a neat journey
as it would appear by reading this post, and sometimes, comics that I
will present side by side have reached out to me throughout the years.
This is also the part that mostly deviates from the presentation I
gave at Keswick, so if you did attend it, just follow through and you’ll
see how everything ties together.
Oddly enough, this journey starts not with a comic book, but with a
TV series: Jim Henson’s The Storyteller was one of those TV series that
retold several European folk tales using a mixture of live actors and
puppets. In one of the episodes, right at the end, the dog questions the
storyteller about a detail in the story that supposedly didn’t make any
sense. The storyteller’s answer was very simple:
“Ah…, you see? But that’s the thing. You should always trust the
story, for the story always tells the truth. But you should never, ever,
trust the storyteller”.
This little line forever changed the way I related to stories. To
what I saw or read. No longer were they these little pieces of fiction
without consequences, but rather strange new worlds that would somehow
touch our own world. It didn’t matter that they lived in the minds of
people, its only actual physical presence the inks and papers they
depended on… they existed here with us and would tell us everything we
ever wanted to know about life, the universe and everything. So when a
story presented us something that made us stop, well then… we should
really stop and hear what it has to say, for its of the upmost
importance. And even today I find echoes of that distant past. One of
the most rewarding ones has been Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ series The
Unwritten, about a Harry Potter look-alike character who possesses an
immense knowledge about literary geography and who might or might not be
a fictional character that actually crossed the line between fiction
and reality.
It’s a really wonderful series and you can find it here.
Anyway… comic books and tarot…
When we start learning the various meanings of cards, we get a list
of keywords. An immense list of keywords and some of them are
contradictory. For example, for Strength, we might find “Pleasure” and
“Fight”; for The Star, we might see “Hope” and “Illusion”, etc., etc. We
are told that cards can have positive meanings and negative meanings
and that the actual meaning will depend upon the context of the reading.
Opposites coexisting side by side, from which we get to pick the
correct meaning for each situation depending on factors like intuition,
logic, and pure dumb luck.
For a long time, my vision was exactly like that. Until I chanced
upon a comic written by Steve Englehart that depicted a fight between
two characters, Galactus and the In-Betweener, where the first defined
itself as “the absence of opposites” and the second as “the meeting of
opposites”. The comic was The Silver Surfer #18, part of a series of
stories that explored how to deal with opposite concepts.
Silver Surfer #18. Written by Steve Englehart, with art by Ron Lim and Joe Rubinstein. Published by Marvel Comics
In the comic, Galactus (or the absence of opposites) ends up winning
the fight, simply because he doesn’t have to jump from one state to the
other; from positive to negative; from life to death; from pleasure to
pain. He could be both of them at the same time and that enabled him to
become something else… A balanced being.
Other issues would follow on this idea and try to figure out how to
bridge two opposing concepts. And, at the end of the run (in Silver
Surfer #31), we get these two pages that tell us that between every two
concepts, every two opposing ideas there is a third one, a concept/idea
that links both sides and as such is made from both sides of the coin,
but is its own thing. And then, I started to look at the Tarot, and each
Major Arcana was defined as the path that linked two Sephirahs… Each
card was not meant to be just “Yes” or “No”; “Positive” and “Negative”,
but something that contained both aspects and everything in between.
From Silver Surfer #31. Written by Steve Englehart; Art by Ron Lim, Tom Christopher and Rob Williams. Published by Marvel Comics
This led me to something else I saw years before in a Hulk comic.
Now, the Hulk had been this rage-fuelled monster that existed inside the
body of Bruce Banner, a scientist. His dark, primitive side. And for
more than 30 years, that was all that he was. Until a writer, by the
name of Peter David came along and had the idea of integrating both the
puny, cerebral human side of Bruce Banner and the primeval monstrous
side of the Hulk into a single entity:
The
Hulk personas finally gets joins its human side, in this sequence from
The Incredible Hulk #377, by Peter David, with art by Dale Keown and Bob
McLeod. Published by Marvel Comics
And I remembered an Alan Moore comic published more than 10 years ago, Swamp Thing #50 (reprinted here and here)
The
climax of Swamp Thing #50, where Light and Darkness reach out and
literally join hands, to give us the Tao. Art by Steve Bissette and John
Totleben. Published by DC Comics.
And something made a click: cards do not show us a positive or
negative meaning, they show us a way to integrate whatever we have with
whatever we might be missing.
Looking at the Hero’s Journey, and how it relates to the Major
Arcana, we can establish three different sets of cards, as depicted
bellow:
Applying what was said above, we can again see the same principle: a
first set of cards, between The Magician and The Chariot, which I
usually call “The Path of Innocence”, in honour of the William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”
and a third path, from Atu XV – The Devil to Atu XXI – The Universe, or
“The Path of Experience”. And it’s easy to see how the each card in the
middle row relates to the one that is directly above it and below it.
How it takes elements of both end-cards and builds something else.
This all seemed nice and clear until a few years ago I stumbled upon
this particular page, taken from Firestorm #96, which had this most
interesting caption: “From awareness grew the knowledge of impulse and
reason (…) that guide our decisions”
“Fury of Firestorm”. Written by John Ostrander, with art by Tom Mandrake. Published by DC Comics
Going back to the Major Arcana, one easily recognizes the “Impulse”
and “Reason” as keywords to as The Wheel of Fortune and the Justice
cards. And that’s all that one needs to make a decision. Placing the
Major Arcanas in two rows, we get other interesting pairs:
Pairs like The Hermit (Scientific knowledge) and “The Hanged Man
(Intuitive knowledge); Strength (Life) and Death, and so on. But more
interesting still, is the combination of The Hierophant with The Tower,
where we see portrayed the influence of God upon Man (The Hierophant)
and Man’s attempt to reach out to God’s level. Or, to put it in another
way, where duality first appears, and where it is resolved. And, in this
aspect, The Star assumes an added importance: it’s hope, yes, because
it’s a return to Unity; A new birth where everything shines in a new
light. Or, as Alan Moore stated, again, in Swamp Thing #50,
Swamp Thing #50. Written by Alan Moore; Art by Steve Bissette and John Totleben
So, where does this leaves the Minor Arcana?
Well, the Minor Arcana are related to the Alchemical elements. Fire,
Water, Swords and Pentacles. Or Will, Love, Reason and Material
Resources. In the Rider Waite deck, these cards depict also depict
journeys. Not the mythical journey, but the day-to-day struggles. If we
want to turn to stories, we should not look at the concepts, at the
ideas, but at the actual paths the characters make. We should look at
biographies. Sure, there’s still plenty of ideas and concepts one can
milk stories from, as we can see from these examples:
Panels from Fantastic Four #322. Written by Steve Englehart. Art by Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott. Published by Marvel Comics
And
Pages from Crossing Midnight #6. Written by Mike Carey. Art by Jim Fern and Mark Pennington. Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
But we’re probably better served when looking at a character’s
evolution. To understand Fire, we need to understand Will,
determination, creative energy. How to fuel this determination and
channel it to our objectives. Mike Carey’s series Lucifer (which you
can find here)
tells us the story of how Lucifer pretended to escape his creator’s
role by creating a new Universe that might better correspond his point
of view. What it takes to bring something forward and defend it, sustain
it and, ultimately, make it stand.
For swords, we could turn to the stories of the samurais. Swords are
about reason, but they are also about balance, fluidity and adjustment.
In order to live by the sword, one must be centered, fluid, and
disciplined. Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond (available here) brings us the fictionalized account of Miyamoto Musashi,
considered the greatest samurai that ever lived. How he learned his
trade. How he incorporated the zen teachings he chanced upon, and how he
developed his own style of fighting, a style that made impossible for
any opponent to get near him, het alone cut him down.
Pentacles is an easy one. If you want to learn about resources,
social networks and money, you need to look no further than Uncle
Scrooge. Of particular interest is Don Rosa’s The Life and Times of
Scrooge McDuck (available here),
where he tell us the story of how Scrooge got rich, in ten chapters
that closely correspond to the suit of Pentacles. Also of interest are
Carl Bark’s stories featuring Uncle Scrooge.
Carl Barks was the creator of Uncle Scrooge and the one that got to
define his personality and charm. And it’s interesting to see that for
all the pettiness and the eye for business, he also gave Scrooge a heart
that shone even more brightly than any gold coin he might find.
Which leaves us with Hearts. Love, feelings and relationships. The
bonds that allows us to nurture ourselves and grow. The bonds that
ultimately will define where we came from and who we are. David Mack’s
Kabuki series (available here)
is all this and more. A love letter to his mother, and then to himself
it shows us how everything around us and everyone around us can fuel us,
drive us forward and ultimately help us on our path.
And thus ends part two… a personal journey through comics and tarot
that I hope might open some new avenues for you. But comics have more to
teach us than just stories. Join us tomorrow for part 3, where we look
at what else can comics bring us that’s of interest to tarot readers. In
the meanwhile, do browse our archives for some other goodies
After seeing how comics and tarot have interacted with each other
throughout the years and how comics could be a fertile field to mine for
ideas, in today’s post I’m going to focus on what’s probably the most
important reason to read and / or study comics: its structure.
In comics, we combine pictures and words to tell a story. Sometimes
the story is carried by words, other times, it is the images that carry
the story. With the tarot, we use the pictures to find out the story
which will then be told to the querent. In common with comic books, we
have printed images with captions. However, unlike comic books, the text
doesn’t accompany the images. A typical tarot card will look something
like this:
Typically, we have a card which is filled with an image and one or
two captions above and/or underneath. So, the first question would be
if more than 95% of the tarot card is filled with an image, why do we
keep going back to the keywords? If keywords are really that important,
maybe we would have have cards like this one:
where we would just have the card’s name and some keywords written on
it. We could even have customized decks where each reader could write
its own keywords. Instead, we have images, with just a few words to make
each card understandable and easy to identify and relate to. We have
thousands of decks, each providing us with an alternative take on the
card’s meaning.
So the images in the cards, are important. And it’s the images that
we should first look at. And, sure, keywords also have a part to play in
the reading. In the midst of thousands of possible meanings each card
has, if we didn’t have a way to navigate through that, we would have a
pretty troubled journey. So keywords are also useful. But we should not
depend exclusively on them.
Steve Englehart, a comic book writer, that had some of its work featured yesterday, when asked for a quote about tarot and comics had this to write:
As a comics reader, I always liked what I was looking at,
but it wasn’t until an artist named Gil Kane (GREEN LANTERN,
SPIDER-MAN, et al) sat me down one day showed me how he led your eye
through each page that I fully understood it. It is an art, within the
art, and I would say the same for Tarot reading. The first step is to
know what each card means. The next step is to string those meanings
together to get a complete story. Everyone begins with the “cook book”
approach, where you’re more concerned with adding the flour and the
sugar and not yet seeing the pie, but a good cook will soon come to
understand how it all folds together. When I was learning Tarot, I was
given a number of exercises where three cards were grouped together and I
was asked to read those three as one story. Then we moved onto five
cards… Bottom line, it (simply) requires the reader to see the big
picture while working his way through all the little ones.
When learning the trade, we’re often taught that the images in the
tarot cards function as triggers, as sort of key that can unlock our
imagination and have us access new ideas and concepts. David Mack, in
his Kabuki: The Alchemy book (available here) presented a similar view on comics:
Kabuki – The Alchemy, by David Mack
Comics as a book of doors. As a device capable to open your mind and
and see what is between the images. Which is exactly what we, as tarot
readers do. Or should aim to do.
We write our stories by placing tarot cards next to tarot cards. And
then finding something that will link them together into a cohesive
whole. So, for example, while this would be a typical 3-card spread,
A few speech balloons are really all that separate us from transforming the above set of cards into a comic strip.
Strip by Luis Aguillar for Tarotvignettes. You can reach him out at the above address.
Mike Carey, another of the comic book writers featured in yesterday’s post, when asked for a quote had this to say:
I think a large component of the way we respond to images
is highly subjective and inferential. Pictures create associations for
us that are personal and emotionally charged. Other sensory stimuli do
this too, but the triggers work with different intensities. When reading
words – or at least, words arranged into sentences – the rational and
logical parts of our minds are fully engaged and there’s limited space
for the irrational, associative parts of our minds to go galloping away
on tangents. Poetry, though, affects us differently and often (not
always) sets out deliberately to increase that interpretative space.
Comics can be more like sequential prose or more like poetry,
depending on the artist. And of course it has as much to do with the
relationships between images as it does to the images themselves. Each
new picture creates multiplying possibilities for interpretation – or
else closes them down by making an ambivalent meaning explicit.
In that sense a comic page can be like a tarot spread. The panels,
like the cards in a tarot reading, are not read in isolation. They
combine to form an interpretative space that can be either loose and
open or tight and clearly defined. The mind moves between them and makes
the connections. Meaning – seldom definitive – arises as a result of
that activity.
As exemplified in the sequence below, what we get from each image is a
frozen moment in time and space. The images don’t move. They are just
there and movement is made apparent by spotting the differences between
each image.
Sequence from David Mack’s Kabuki – The Alchemy
Just like in a reading, we look at the images shown in the cards and
try to figure out what’s there and what is missing. We try to figure out
what details jump out to us, what elements are repeated and what
changed. In a nutshell, when reading a spread, as in all other areas of
life, we go after what picks our mind’s interest. This is what’s behind
such common image reading skills as pin-pointing and bridging. This is
also what we do in our everyday lives with the information we gather
from our senses. We sort it out between what matters and what doesn’t
matter and quickly eliminate everything that doesn’t matter.
Will Eisner, one of the most influent comic book artists once said
this at an interview (published in Will Eisner: Conversations. M. Thomas
Inge (ed.)):
Now, when people ask me what I do, to answer it as
quickly as I can, I say “I’m a writer. I write with pictures. This is my
medium and I think there’s an advantage to sequential art, because,
first of all, it communicates more rapidly than text alone. Text cannot
be dismissed, because text is capable of revealing the great depth that
single images or static images cannot do. And that’s one of the
challenges of this medium.
So we write our stories by placing tarot cards next to tarot cards.
Panel after panel. We need to have a start point, something that informs
us where we are. In the same way, we need to have a finishing point: a
card that will tell us how the story ends or, at least, where it is
headed. Between these two cards, we place a finite number of cards. Just
enough to have the essential plot points, the main happenings that will
allow us to figure out what we have before us.
Most spreads follow this simple rule: from past (our establishing
panel) to the future or the resolution (the end panel) and between, all
the necessary cards needed to give meaning. Each card a fundamental part
of the Story before us. And, as Scott McCloud reminds us,
Panel from Making Comics, by Scott McCloud
So, taking the time to read comic books and look at them, at how they
are made can also gives hints as to how to build spreads. How to
arrange the information we have with us into a spread that is functional
and is easily readable. Taking, for example, the following page,
Page from Hawkeye #2. Written by Matt Fraction, with art by David Aja. Published by Marvel Comics
we can see the main panel, in which we see two persons diving in what
looks like a pool, trying to escape what seems like a hail of
projectiles, most probably bullets. And then, we have a series of short
panels around this main panel; each of these little panels tell us
something about what we are seeing: The innocent bystanders that get
shot; that indeed those projectiles we saw in the main panel are
bullets; the bullet cases that continuously drop from the gun.
Taking this as an example for a spread, we would have something like this:
If you’re reading about relationships, then you can figure out if the
other party is going to laugh at your jokes; if the sex will be good;
if you will be able to talk or easily put up with one another. Or maybe
it’s a job related question. Then you could find, for example, what type
of boss you will have; if the work is too demanding or not; if you will
be have any problems or not. Etc, etc…
As a final example, I would like to present this page, again from David Mack’s Kabuki: The Alchemy
This ended up as the base of a spread I called “Self Portrait”. The
spread is very simple and you can use it to train your image association
skills. So,
TAKE A CARD FROM THE DECK – this is your outline
LOOK FOR SOMETHING IN THAT CARD THAT REMINDS YOU OF ANOTHER CARD FROM THE DECK – this is your potential
So, if for example you’re using the Rider-Waite Smith deck created by Pamela Colman Smith and you’ve
drawn the Hermit, and saw the Lantern, you could associate it with the
Sun; or the Ace of Pentacles. Or maybe you saw the staff and thought of
the Ace of Wands; or the Magician. Or the hooded figure reminded you of
the veil of the High Priestess. Just play with your imagination and see
where it will lead you. It is, after all, your potential 🙂
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