Peg Kerr's Journal

I bought this one today, the Druidcraft Tarot. I went to four stores in all and looked through a lot of decks. I'm not totally in love with this deck or even sure that I will use it extensively, since I've never had a Tarot deck before. But I like it, and I thought it might be a good starting point. I have, however, also put the Jane Austen deck on my Amazon wishlist.

_lindsay_ asked to know a little about my previous remark that I'm somewhat wary of Tarot. That's true, I am. For one thing, I probably first learned about Tarot in detail by reading Tim Powers' Last Call--and that book is enough to terrify anybody from ever touching a deck! Tim is a devout Roman Catholic, and--it's funny--although he is a fantasy writer, he doesn't like or trust magic at all! In fact, in his stories, magic pretty much always leads to ruin. Tim has told me that he won't allow a Tarot deck in his house, and he would never dare play a game of Assumption, the game he actually invented for Last Call that is played with a Tarot deck.

Then, too, I have had somewhat of an inner struggle about what to think about Tarot because I am a Christian myself. A liberal one, but a Christian all the same. And Christianity has often been suspicious, if not overtly condemning, of things things associated with the occult, as Tarot sometimes is. I know that Tarot is a pretty amorphous, squishy concept, with connections to many different spiritual and mystic paths, not just Paganism--it has links to Masons, Hebrew, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Egyptian mysticism, Jungian archetypes, and more. I do not condemn Wicca or Paganism myself; I understand them to be different faiths than my own, and not, as some conservative Christians think, the road to the Devil and damnation. I am certainly very interested in many aspects of Wicca/paganism--the cycle of the seasons, the attention to the mother/maiden/crone, the reverence for the natural world, especially trees, male/female energy and balance, etc.--and I think my Christianity can learn and draw wisdom from that.

Do I think Tarot is magic? Well, I don't know what I think of magic, frankly. I am extremely skeptical whenever I step into a New Age shop. But I am interested and curious when I step in. I am not like Lavender or Parvati, credulous and perhaps gullible, but I am not Hermione, the totally rejecting skeptic who thinks divination is probably useless, either. I have had l_a_winter do a reading for me on Easter Sunday every year for probably ten years or so. I do not think that what we discuss when we do a reading is a prediction which will, of course, come true because Tarot is magic. Rather, I think that Tarot can tap into some useful insights, many, perhaps, Jungian, and I am interested in opening myself up to that.

Then, too, I have been to some panels at conventions about how Tarot may be useful to a writer, and that is because Tarot, as I understand it has developed over the centuries, can be a useful tool for intuition. I LOVE thinking and chewing over archetypes; it is one of the reasons I particularly adore fantasy literature, and why, when I write, I am particularly attuned to theme. Tarot is all about themes. And that in the end, I think, is what made me decide (after YEARS of thinking about it) to go out and get a Tarot deck. I have felt awfully stultified and stuck lately, and barren of intuition. I have been struggling with some things for years that my best attempts at using logic and reason have yielded no direction at all (and some of this is writing-related, some of it personal stuff that Elinor Dashwood does not talk about in this LiveJournal). I have been feeling very frustrated lately as a result. Why not try Tarot, with the understanding that I'm using it not as a "magical" device, or a step into a faith that is not my own Christian faith, but as a way to open up a pathway to my unconscious and intuition, the source of my creativity, which, let's face it, has been feeling awfully blocked lately?

So I looked around and after investigating and hesitating over a LOT of decks, I chose this Pagan/Druidic one. And yeah, I must admit I am a little uncertain and uncomfortable with that choice. But the artwork is cool, and I'm not buying it because I'm about to worship the Maiden/Mother/Crone or cast off my clothes to go skyclad or mate with a horned god or anything (no disrespect to my Pagan/Wicca friends on this friends list, I assure you). I may get around to wrapping the deck with silk, or I may not. I am not quite credulous enough to think I will be able to detect "emanations" from the cards, nor do I feel the need to bless my new deck with the ritual elaborated in the accompanying manual--I find it mildly silly rather than inspiring.

But I do want to listen to what the Maiden/Mother/Crone, or the Moon, or the Magician, or the Star or the Hanged Man have to say to me. And especially the Fool.

The Tarot is often described as the story of the journal of the Fool into achieving wisdom and mastery. I have felt a lot like a Fool lately, so I am sure we will have much to talk about.

(If there is anyone local and knowledgeable who might be inclined to meet with me over coffee some Friday night to sort of introduce me to my new deck, let me know. Thanks.)

Edited to add: When you think about it, Harry Potter would make a good Tarot as well. Lupin could be the Moon card, James and Lily could be the lovers, the Tower could be the death of James and Lily (the lovers) and explosion of their house. Judgment could either be the Sorting Hat or Harry's trial before the Wizengamot. Strength could be summoning the Patronus (with the Gryffindor Lion as the Lion on the card), or maybe Strength could be Neville Longbottom. Peter Pettigrew could be the Devil card. Death could be Voldemort, or the Dementors. John Granger has already done a lot of analysis of how the four Houses are associated with the four alchemical elements (earth, fire, air, water) which in turn are associates with the four suits (wands, pentacles, cups, swords). You have wands, of course, and the Sword of Gryffindor. Maybe Ollivander would be the Ace of Wands. Fawkes would be associated with Fire--perhaps the Sun card. Gilderoy Lockhart could be the Fool, or perhaps the twins, with Weasley Wizarding Wheezes. Sibyll Trelawney could be the Priestess. Something with a lot of pentacles could be a trip to Gringotts. (Maybe the twins would be the Knight of Pentacles, with their Triwizard Tournament winnings). The Magician might be Dumbledore, looking into a Pensieve. Etcetera. There are lots of possibilities.

There have been some people who have started developing ideas for a Harry Potter tarot on the web, but I think you'd have to wait until the seventh book is published to do it right, and no deck has been published yet.

I still have not figured out my next book. But I think I have figured out the book AFTER my next book.

My sister-in-law Tricia, a professor of French literature at University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, was burbling to me recently about the fascinating life of Madam Tussaud (of the wax museum fame). She was sort of the Forrest Gump of the French Revolution: she made the death masks of Louis the XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat, Robespierre. She was an artist at the Court of Versailles, and then she was in thick with the revolutionaries. Finally, she went to England, where as a single mother, she built a hugely successful business. . .

I thought about Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard, which made a fantasy novel out of the stranger-than-fiction lives of Keats, Byron, and Shelley. Why not do something like that, making a fantasy novel out of the life of M. Tussaud? So I called Tricia to pump her for more details. I asked her if she would mind if I took the material and did something with it. She said, no, not really, "although I'd love to do something with you." I have a collaboration going with kijjohnson already, on hold at the moment. I think I want my next novel to be something I write entirely by myself--I have to remember how to DO that. But Tricia's right: this is good material. Judging from Tricia's description, Madame T. was an extremely determined and strong woman, just the kind of juicy character I'd like to play with, and I also think it would be a great experience to collaborate with Tricia. I like Tricia a lot; it would be fun for us to work together, and having someone who knows a helluva lot more than I do about French history (not to mention the French language, although I can speak it a little) would certainly make everything easier.

That made the decision easy: we will certainly consider doing it together, as a collaboration--after I write my next novel by myself.

So . . . uh . . . that still leaves the question of what my next novel should be. Hmm.

I looked at more Grimm Fairy Tales tonight, and browsed through Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. Nothing quite leaps out at me. I think I need to check out some different fairy tale collections, maybe looking at some more obscure ones. There's also the possibility of expanding upon a ballad; kijjohnson suggested checking out The Oxford Collection of Narrative Poetry.

Mmm . . .

I do quite admire Powers' work. He likes to take the strange events of history and ask, "Okay, what was really going on here?" and come up with a fantastical explanation, but one which still fits the historical events.

But if I do try to do something like that--well, I did discover one big difference for the writer in writing a book like my first and one like my second: My first novel was in my own made up world. But my second was based on real historical events. If you're dealing with our world's history, even alternate history, it can take a huge amount of effort to get those historical details right. That can be fun, but it can also be anxiety-producing, and a real time sink. With The Wild Swans I also could compare the experience of writing the 17th century section with writing the 20th century section. The 20th century section was much more nerve-wracking, because I knew there were people who were alive who had LIVED through it, and if I didn't try really really hard to get it right, they would throw the book across the room, saying, "No, no, it didn't happen that way at all!"

So: older history is less stressful, and a made up world is less stressful still.

(Or maybe I was just less fussy with my first book???)

Peg, still thinking