12/2/2022 + 2
Another loop!
Recap: I’ve been documenting a series of events that occurred in the space between 11/22 and 12/2, and eventually took on an interconnected meaning. As explained in my last post, the account was getting so long that I decided to loop out for a bit, and share some interesting links and decks. I promised to tell the “signs” story on Sunday.
Now it’s Sunday—and the signs story is even longer. But it really was getting finished, until a “stop the presses” moment occurred. I just can’t wait to share same, so (once again) the signs story is pushed ahead, briefly.
I want to offer some inducement to patience, however, so I’ll telegraph this: My insight at the end of the signs journey has to do with the relationship of Tarot and Kabbalah. For me at least, it was a conceptual breakthrough.
But for now, a completely hilarious detour. (That’s “hilarious” in the old sense of the word, which meant “cheerful, lively, merry, joyful, of good cheer.”)
Divinatory Play-Doh
For context—one of my (too many) projects involves finishing a book about Star Trek that’s been waiting in the wings for quite a period of time. The relevance for today’s post has to do with my ongoing attempt to figure out why The Original Series (TOS) so often featured unnatural colors.
Even if you’re a Trek enthusiast, you may not have noticed that food is often depicted as you see it in this snap from “Journey to Babel.”
And this one from “By Any Other Name”:
I have some ideas about the TOS color palette, but let’s set them aside for now, and focus on today, when I happened to see a Play-Doh advertisement. And it suddenly occurred to me that the TOS food looks like it was made out of Play-Doh.
It wasn’t, but the colors are similar, which led me to wonder why. I had no idea when Play-Doh was invented/marketed, but quickly discovered that the substance itself was developed in the 1930s to get coal soot off of wallpaper. When coal-burning stoves became less prevalent, someone thought up a new use for the cleaning glop, and presto! A classic toy.
So the Play-Doh we know today, along with its characteristic colors, came along in the 1950s, and may well have influenced the TOS palette. But whenever I get interested in something, I check to see if there’s a related Tarot deck. And more often than you’d think, there is.
In this case, there’s not a deck (though we’ll get to some other toy-related decks below)—but there is a mesmerizing Instagram video, utilizing Play-Doh as a method of divination.
I won’t be able to adequately summarize, so I urge you to watch at least some of the video. It’s not only unique, but engaging. You’ll find it on the Path And Tarot website, in a post that also talks about why and how the author made this experiment, as well as conclusions he drew from the experience.
Basically, he played with the Play-Doh, while live-streaming and answering questions in live chat. To see how all that unfolded, you’ll have to have a look at the video. But here’s how the post concludes:
The live stream I would consider a success. It was fun to hang out with people and provide spiritual guidance. It was also enjoyable to be able to have play-doh in my hands. I haven’t felt what play-doh feels like in a very long time. As soon as I touched the play-doh all my memories of it came flooding back. It was if I could re-enter my childhood in some way.
In the end, I think there is something to be said about using tools to occupy some part of your conscious mind. I think that this allows your unconscious mind to take over and become more automatic.
It felt like I was able to deliver the first thing that came to mind because I didn’t have to think about it. The answer or message was just there. I think the play-doh that occupied my motor functions allowed me to go into a more unconscious mode of thought that I could regularly perform.
And . . . .
During the stream, I made two balls, a square and a long tube-like shape. The play-doh also seemed to stick to the paper to create interesting textures. These shapes and textures formed a face at the end that I named “benevolence of the fool.”
Toys and Tarot
Thinking about this Play-Doh experiment reminded me of the 1977 book Toys and Reasons: Stages in the Ritualization of Experience, by noted German psychologist Erik Erikson. I read it (sort of!) in graduate school, at a time when I was not yet thinking about Tarot or divination.
But now it’s now, so I couldn’t resist checking. And here’s a passage found with just a quick search:
If childhood play and the other spheres of playfulness as yet to be reviewed depend on a strong visual element, they are dominated also by an almost visionary fascination with the temporal fate of figures meaningfully arranged in a circumscribed “world.” This combines the two meanings of vision, namely, the capacity to see what is before us, here and now, and the power to foresee what, if one can only believe it. might yet prove to be true in the future. To find the origin of these two aspects of human vision, we must go even further back in ontogeny and immerse ourselves in the earliest and least distinct beginnings.
I’m absolutelly fascinated by that passage. For now, though, I’ll leave it as something to think about, and wrap up this post with two explicitly toy-themed Tarots.
After I’d made the Play-Doh connection(s), I immediately wondered if there’s a Barbie Tarot. And of course there is! But it’s not exactly what you might expect.
To get the full fun out of this deck, I urge you to check out another video. In this one, a very pleasant person “unboxes” the Barbie Tarot—and the delightful part is watching her try to figure out in real time how each of the illustrations might even possibly be connected with our conventional understanding of Tarot. At around minute 6, I was laughing uncontrollably!
But not at all in a mean way. Just appreciating the improbable kinds of creativity, generosity, and resourcefulness that can so often be found in connection with Tarot.
For the flavor:
By most of the way through the deck, I began to think of it as exquisitely true to the spirit of Barbieness. Perhaps these cards represent very well how Tarot concepts would take form in Barbie-mind.
But wait. There’s more.
I of course wanted to know who had channeled Barbie-mind into this deck, so I went to Etsy, where the unboxer (Lisa, of Luna Moth Creations) had bought it. No trace of the deck, or the seller it came from (Lilac and Lavender Moon).
So—dead end there. But in the process, I discovered a completely different Barbie Tarot, which Michelle Erica Greene had created in 2006, just to share with friends online. Then, in 2021, she discovered that someone had made print copies of the deck and they were for sale on Etsy. She was very, very upset but received no support from Etsy.
You can still see her deck images, but she has asked that no one reproduce them, so I won’t. But for reference, they are photographs of staged scenes, featuring posed dolls from her own collection. (I really like “The Hermit.”)
To conclude the Barbie part of this post, I’ll share a bit of Michelle Greene’s commentary:
Despite a regrettable lack of diversity in the Barbie play line until recently and some really stupid marketing choices ("Math is hard"), Barbie has achieved every school and career goal she has ever set for herself; she has attended dozens of universities, played on both college and professional sports teams, become a doctor, lawyer, ambassador, photographer, movie star, teacher, paleontologist, Army captain, artist, dentist, circus star, musician, firefighter and President of the United States, all while helping to raise her younger sisters, carrying on decades-long friendships and maintaining a romantic relationship of long duration. G.I. Joe's achievements have never come close.
I hadn’t really thought about it that way!
But I had thought there would probably be a Lego Tarot, and I was right. Fortunately, there’s no long story connected to this one, just fun.
Each card has a short “making of” commentary from the creator—and if Lego was one of your childhood creative tools, you’ll appreciate this combination of Tarot inspiration and Lego ingenuity.
I meant this post to be short romp, but more things kept turning up. As usual.
“Signs, part two” on Tuesday. C