2.4.24
A mini-synchronicity + a double feature . . .
Welcome everyone!
Almost immediately after publishing the 1.22.24 post, I realized I’d left several stones unturned. I didn’t get to write more at the time, but made some notes, and will follow up Tuesday with more about alchemy manifesting in my Inbox.
Meanwhile, though, I’ve been captivated by a “co-incidence” that doesn’t quite meet my well-established synchronicity rule: three occurrences, less than a week, entirely different contexts.
I’m calling this one a mini because there were only two occurrences, and one of them wasn’t that odd. But they came so close together that I had to take a further look.
First . . . at this week’s Four Continents competition, Canadian figure skater Wesley Chiu performed his long program to music from the film Kill Bill. He didn’t have a particularly good skate, ending in eighth place—but the music choice caught my attention.
I’m a fan of Kill Bill, and a really big fan of competitive figure skating, as EP readers learned in this post. I don’t usually think of the two things together, though. And I wasn’t expecting Kill Bill to appear on one of my streaming services the very next day.
Okay—so that’s just two. But neither thing has happened in the last couple of years at least, so I was curious. And it just takes a moment to Google “kill bill and tarot.”
As usual, I didn’t expect any results, and as usual, I was surprised. There’s not a whole deck (though I can imagine one), but it turns out that The Bride—aka Beatrix Kiddo—is depicted on the Judgment card in The Movie Tarot.
The most I could find out about the deck comes from this description at the Academy Museum Store:
Be guided by the stars in this unique new tarot inspired by movie characters. Movie Tarot! Begin with Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump as the Fool, Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption for Temperance, and Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music for the Sun, and you’ll find a perfectly suited character represents every card. Includes 78 cards that work as a fully functional tarot deck, plus a booklet which explains the choice of movie stars and the deeper personality traits they embody, as well as information on how to interpret the cards and conduct your own readings.
About the Authors: Natalie Foss is a Norwegian illustrator who focuses on bold colours, patterns and emotions. Clients include Penguin, Little White Lies and the BBC. Diana McMahon Collis is a tarot consultant, co-founder of the Tarot Association of the British Isles and author of the best- selling Tattoo Tarot.
The examples mentioned sound spot on to me! And on the box, you can see The Bride heading up a group that cleverly includes Donnie Darko as Death.
If you haven’t seen Kill Bill, I can’t help you much. There’s no short version—except to say that The Bride (played by Uma Thurman) has every reason to seek revenge. Violent, brilliant, surprising, and unforgettable.
I was still pondering the connection when—just like magic—that original quest led me to another movie-themed deck . . . .
Yes, it’s The Dude’s Tarot.
And if you haven’t seen The Big Lebowsky, I’m going to be no help again.
But if you have seen this Coen Brothers classic . . . well, I’ve realized all of a sudden that The Dude and The Bride might be twins separated at birth. Opinions welcome.
At this point, I’m wondering whether two cult movies in one post may be a bit much. Or not enough? Just in case, I’ll double down with this flashback to one of EP’s most popular posts.
If you happened to see the teaser-trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s remake of Nightmare Alley last summer, you might have noticed a close-up image of a Tarot reading. But you won’t see that frame—or anything else about Tarot—in the “official” trailer that has now replaced every previous version.
From what I can piece together, the film’s emphasis shifted somewhat in the final cut. The atmospheric early trailer was a kaleidoscope of scenes from the protagonist’s rise and fall (from carnival barker to celebrity spiritualist to victim of his own ambition). Whereas the final trailer is focused intently on the theme of human depravity.
It seems from reviews of GDT’s film that his version is closer in spirit to the original novel than the 1947 noir classic, which starred Tyrone Power in an uncharacteristically dark role. That film was considered so depressing at the time that the studio insisted on a tacked-on ending that offered (in about 30 seconds) hope for a happier outcome.
Not so the remake! If anything it is more grim than William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, ending the same way but descending even further into the depths. At the time of publication, Gresham’s novel was widely seen as a crime thriller, but more recently it’s been viewed as a social commentary, and in the words of Washington Post reviewer Michael Dirda, “a portrait of the human condition.”
The relevance of all this for EP begins with the fact that Gresham structured his novel in 22 chapters, each with the title of a Tarot trump. He had taken a strong interest in Tarot during the 1940s after become disillusioned with psychotherapy—and his portrait of an icily evil psychiatrist in Nightmare Alley seems like a commentary on that aspect of his experience.
The trump-titled chapters are not in order, so they seem to unfold as a reading might. Here’s the sequence from the novel:
1 The Fool
2 The Magician
3 The High Priestess
4 The World
5 The Empress
6 Resurrection of the Dead (Judgement)
7 The Emperor
8 The Sun
9 The Hierophant
10 The Moon
11 The Lovers
12 The Star
13 The Chariot
14 The Tower
15 Justice
16 The Devil
17 The Hermit
18 Time (Temperance)
19 The Wheel of Fortune
20 Death
21 Strength
22 The Hanged Man
If you want to see more of the novel, quite a lot of it is available in the Google Books preview.
But let’s get back to Gresham—whose story is both fascinating and cautionary. Here’s the abbreviated version:
Interest in communism led Gresham to volunteer as a medic in the Spanish Civil War. There he met a former carnival worker and began work on Nightmare Alley.
He returned to America in 1939, ill and disillusioned. After recovering from a nervous breakdown, he married poet Joy Davidman in 1942—his third marriage. Then, while working for a true crime magazine, he finished and published Nightmare Alley.
The book and film provided financial success, but Gresham continued to drink heavily, and had a series of affairs. Eventually he divorced Davidman, began a seemingly happy marriage with her cousin, and joined Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the meantime, Davidman (a secular Jew) had traveled to England, where she met Christian apologist C. S. Lewis—author of the Narnia Chronicles. They began a relationship that lasted until her death in 1960, and was dramatized in the play Shadowlands.
After having been diagnosed with cancer and incipient blindness, Gresham took his own life in 1962. Ever a spiritual seeker, he had by then developed an interest in Zen Buddhism, and he wrote to Davidman (with whom he remained friends) that “Life seems to be an imperishable divine ferment, the Ego simply a working tool which is discarded when blunt.”
But that description of Gresham’s life leaves out so much that is worth attention—especially from the Tarot perspective. In 1949, he wrote a very intelligent introduction for a new edition of Charles Williams’ Tarot-themed Christian fantasy, The Greater Trumps. Gresham gives his personal interpretation of each Major Arcana card, and offers ideas about the history and mysteries of Tarot.
I liked these two passages very much:
The Tarot is not a mnemonic device for a set doctrine, it would seem, but a
philosophical slide-rule on which the individual can work out
his own metaphysical and religious equations.
and . . .
The comparison of any card with any other generates ideas . . . . The mind is allowed to wander over [a spread], making associations, drawing parallels and inferences, until at last a new conception is born of understanding.
It is a strenuous pastime.
I highly recommend reading Gresham’s entire introduction, which is available for free. And I learned about it from “Tarot in Gresham’s Nightmare Alley,” a thoughtful blog post by writer and critic K. A. Laity.
That’s also where I learned that the Criterion Collection recently issued a remastered DVD of the 1947 film version of Nightmare Alley—which comes with its own Tarot deck! The card designs reflect characters and themes from the film, as you can see from the cover:
The original film of Nightmare Alley became a “cult classic” of the noir genre—and since Guillermo del Toro is a “cult favorite” director, his remake was highly anticipated. But I suspect that GDT’s interest in Tarot is little known to most of his fans
As it turns out, del Toro’s mother was a long-time Tarot enthusiast, and he eventually took an interest in the subject. In fact, he wrote an introduction to the guidebook that accompanies Tarot del Toro, a deck “inspired by the world of Guillermo del Toro.”
Here’s my favorite quote:
The archetypes locked in the Tarot are pliable, multi-valent; they mutate according to the card laid beside them. . . . An unexpected turn is always one card away and, in that, the Tarot is like life itself.
And here’s a look at the deck:
There you have the record of a long trip I hadn’t expected to take. I’m not a noir fan, knew nothing about Gresham, and little about del Toro. But I’m very glad to have found out about their insightful approaches to Tarot.
Back to the present—and thanks for reading! Look for the return of alchemy on Tuesday. C