Monday Notes (11.7.22)
Serendipity strikes twice . . . .
Hello, everyone. I’m still behind in terms of time, but am still determined to accomplish a lot before the Tarot Year ends. And of course this month, 11/22, is especially inspiring.
To start off with, I’m fulfilling my promise to connect competitive international figure skating with Tarot!
I’ve been watching figure skating for many years—and if some of you don’t think it’s a sport, let me put it to you this way: Imagine performing every physical feat involved in pro basketball, but doing it all on a slippery ice-covered surface. And imagine that when you jump up to put the ball in the basket, you have to revolve your whole body three times, land on one foot in a precisely determined direction, run the length of the court while performing several acrobatic maneuvers, and jump again. All the while being judged down to the second decimal point on each and every movement.
I could go on with a lot more detail! But if you’ve never watched competitive skating, at least have a look. The next good chance will be this Sunday, November 13, when NBC airs a summary presentation of the ISU Grand Prix: England competition from 4 PM to 6 PM Eastern time. This is the fourth (following America, Canada, and France) in a series of six preliminary contests, leading up to a confrontation among the top-scoring skaters.
And in case you get hooked, I’ll provide some useful links in my next post.
Meanwhile, though, here’s the Tarot connection I promised. It begins with stories about two skaters who caught my attention this year: Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Daisuke Takahashi. Both skated in singles competition at one time, retired for different reasons, and eventually returned to the sport in partnered disciplines.
Stellato-Dudek had a promising run in junior competition, but a series of hip injuries kept her from gaining momentum as a senior, and she stopped skating competitively.
That was in the year 2000.
She went on to have a successful career, but her life felt incomplete. And in 2016 she attended a workshop that included this reflective exercise: “Describe something you would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail.”
"I immediately said, 'I would win an Olympic gold medal,'" Stellato-Dudeck recalled. "I was in disbelief of what I had just said. I thought that I had moved on with my life; it had been 16 years. I didn't know that that was still in there."
So she literally got her old skates out of the closet and went to a public rink to see if her skating skills had survived a 16-year hiatus. Turned out they had—and she decided to visit her old coach to talk about getting back into the sport. By “chance,” there was another visitor at the rink: Mitch Moyer, Senior Director for Athlete High Performance at U.S. Figure Skating.
Moyer surprised her with a suggestion to consider pairs skating.
"It was very serendipitous that he was there," Stellato-Dudek said of that day and seeing Moyer in Florida. "This second time around, I had decided not to pass on any suggestion, any opportunity. I decided I wanted to take any opportunity. And that's exactly what I did."
Fast-forward through six years of hard work with two different partners, and Deanna Stellato-Dudek just became the oldest person ever to win gold at a Grand Prix event.
She’s 39—which is almost twice the average age of top competitors. And this is just the latest in a series of successes on the ice.
Of course I’m going to point out the “serendipity” factor, which I think of as a visible indicator of a much deeper order. Confidence in the existence of that order is essential (in my view) to the true practice of divination.
I’m also going to point out the never-too-late lesson. “Passion has no age limit,” according to Stellato-Dudek, who talks more about her personal story in this interview.
But I’m also going to highlight another aspect: embracing change. That theme recurs in the similar story of how Japanese skater Daisuke Takahashi retired as a singles skater and returned to build a new career in ice dance. (Pairs skating and ice dance are similar in that there are two partners, but the disciplines focus on different skills.)
Takahashi is just three years younger than Stellato-Dudek, so he’s also among the oldest skaters still competing. But his first career was much longer, and his retirement much shorter. As a top competitor in Japan—where figure skating is a national obsession comparable to football in America—Takahashi won bronze at the 2010 Olympics, and became the first Asian man to win a World title.
After failing to medal at the 2014 Olympics, and facing an onslaught of ambitious youngsters, he decided to retire. But just four years later, he returned to the ice in a partnership role—and soon began to see some success. As it turned out, his essential love of skating could be pursued in more than one way.
So here’s the other divination connection I’d like to offer. If you feel you’ve reached a point of comfort with Tarot, branch out. Get a crystal ball and practice scrying. Get a pendulum and try some dowsing. Study the I Ching, cast runes, have a go at geomancy.
Just something to think about.
Now for the second appearance of serendipity, which almost always takes a hand once I start writing an EP post. I couldn’t resist looking for a skating-themed Tarot deck, but wasn’t surprised not to find one. Seems like a stretch!
However. By page 3 of the results, Google’s trusty search engine had moved on (quite logically) from figure skating to ice rink. And that brought me to a long article about Niki de Saint-Phalle, creator of the famous Tarot Garden. It seems her mother had occasionally taken young Niki to the “ice rink” in Central Park.
I skimmed through the story in a growing state of amazement. Read it for yourself in the New Yorker—but be forewarned: it is harrowing. I had never given any real thought to Saint-Phalle’s life, or her other art work, so this detailed account really took me by surprise.
I’ll reduce it down to a few facts.
She grew up in a severely dysfunctional environment. Two younger siblings committed suicide as adults, and Niki was hospitalized for psychiatric care more than once.
She was wildly careless of other people, including her own children, and put her personal passions—whether romantic or aesthetic—above everything else.
She rejected any social norms and attempted to explode them through her art, as well as her behavior.
As I took in these revelations, I became intensely curious about her attraction to Tarot.
The Garden was not just a creative experiment, but a monumental project, costing millions of dollars and years of her life. I can see, from my brief introduction to her character, why she wanted to make something really big, really difficult, and really different. But . . . how (and why) did Tarot become the subject?
I haven’t had time to find that out, if indeed there’s an answer to be had. But while looking for a quick glimpse into her thinking about Tarot, I discovered this graphic novel based on her life.
A thoughtful review in The Comics Journal provides a flavor of the work—which begins each chapter with a Niki-themed Tarot trump. Here’s Chapter 1:
And on a somewhat less disturbing note, Chapter 4:
I’m still pondering all this, and will let you know if I learn more about how Tarot came into her life and inspired her most famous work. But in the meantime, you can watch a video of Rachel Pollack discussing her own engagement with Niki and the Tarot Garden project.
I’ll let you know very soon about my plan for the closing weeks of 2022. C