August 7, 2022
Crazy quilt . . .
In putting together today’s note, I started with a list of links that at seemed to have nothing in common. Then I thought of patching them in a “crazy quilt” pattern—like this glorious example created by Edna Force Davis in Fairfax County, Virginia, 1897:
Quilts like this were intended to use up odd-shaped bits of fabric, and salvage scraps of embroidery, so they have a very different look than the very regular patterns found in most quilts. But the name “crazy” isn’t a comment on the mental state of the quilters! It’s borrowed from the spontaneous patterns that form on certain types of pottery—referred to as “crackling” or “crazing.”
Which led me to think about the way Tarot cards form spontaneous patterns in a reading.
And the way odds and ends of information sometimes come together in the space of one post. Today, I have three items to offer, all of which are related to Tarot in a somewhat tenuous way. Take them for what you will!
Ed Yong’s recently published book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us reveals the “sensory bubble” that limits human perception of our physical reality. (Here’s a short review.) It’s a fascinating tour of the ways in which other species experience their environment—but it’s also a reminder that there are many more sources of information about reality than we are trained to recognize. In my view, the practice of Tarot divination can expand our awareness to take in a bit more of the “immense world.”
Someone may already have created animations for the Tarot trumps, and I just don’t know about it. But whenever I think about the idea, I wish we had versions of the cards rendered in the style of Lotte Reiniger. Beginning in the 1920s and 30s, she created path-breaking films that combine techniques of Chinese paper-cutting, silhouette puppetry, and stop-motion animation. You can see examples of her work here—and you may already have observed her influence in the visually stunning “Tale of the Three Brothers,” from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.
Today my email brought a link to a 2017 New York Times story titled The Trickster’s Art. There’s nothing in it explicitly about Tarot, but there is a fascinating analysis of “trickster” motifs and influences in modern African-American art. And thinking about the cultural connections of Trickster and Magician led me to Chinese-American artist Jia Sung, and Trickster’s Journey, “a reinterpretation of the major arcana, drawing from the 16th-century Chinese classic Journey to the West and Tang dynasty aesthetics, to tell the story of the Monkey King’s path to enlightenment.”
See you tomorrow. C