Day 1 - Saturday, ruled by Saturn: Obstacles and Blockades
Card: King of Coin - Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy was a troubled and troublesome character. Many people admire his no-nonsense, everyman persona; personally, I find it dull and tiresome. Tracy always appears to me to be hungover, wanting not to be in some studio acting in some stupid movie but out somewhere getting drunk.
Of the GAHT's 16 Court cards, 5 of them show a large close-up of the actor's face in the background while in the foreground is a smaller version of themselves, suggesting a hidden aspect to their character, one part of or quite other than their famous on-screen persona. Here, the background close-up is of the younger, intense Tracy. The golden film strip on his head is part of MGM's logo - the Suit of Coin's studio - and forms a kind of crown for this king. The missing lion in the center circle creates a kind of void - a dark font from which creativity springs forth, or a black hole into which all things drain. Tracy's up-turned hair could suggest a rough-and-tumble attitude, capriciousness, the determination or obduracy of an ox. The standing foreground figure is the older Tracy, from the film
Bad Day At Black Rock. His real-life character, along with the part he plays here, is secure, upright, a little uptight, secretive, authoritative, and stands for authenticity. This, of course, was the role Tracy had carved for himself over the years, originally cooked-up by MGM bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, to save Tracy from his own excesses. Tracy was also a womanizer, whose attentions sometimes turned aggressive. Tracy's well-known secret 30-year liaison with Kate Hepburn was no doubt a strong friendship, but beyond that, it was likely a partnership in which Hepburn acted as nurse-maid to Tracy's benders and Tracy, in turn, provided a smoke-screen for Hepburn's sexuality. All the while, Tracy had a wife and handicapped son at home.
As for today's allocation of
Obstacles and
Blockades, I read the pitfalls of indulgence and sensuality, even if successfully kept covert and unscrutinized. I see the structures that be, working for their own ends, exploiting an individual's weaknesses while promulgating a facade of naturalness and strength. I see someone of some talent who, in an industry built around falsehoods, was greatly over-rated. I see a man who clung to the absurd precepts of an absurd religion,
absurdly, while the realities of life - like fidelity to family and facing misfortune, i.e.: his deaf child - went ignored. In short, this card indicates to me, today, to not just affect naturalism but to get real, for real.
Addendum: I had a very productive day - I was up early and made great headway with my garage construction project. This is space for my sweetheart to call her own, do her crafts and retreat to, for the sanity of us both - perhaps a little like Tarcy had with Hepburn. In the evening, I went to a soirée held at the Provincial Museum; I knew almost no one and felt out of place, so I entertained myself by studying the exhibits.
Day 2 - Sunday, ruled by the Sun: Inspiration and Goals
Card: The Moon XVIII The Starlet
Today I'm inspired simply by the pull being something other than another Court card.
The Moon is one of my favourite cards in any deck. Here, Esther Williams is caught at the apex of what could be a swan dive. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are on the right and left, in black and white, symbolizing good and bad perhaps. Certainly, Joan played the good girl on-screen and off, while Bette played the hard-nosed, the spoilt, the man-eater. Looks, of course, especially in Hollywood, are meant to be deceiving. In reality, they were both bitches - a play on the dogs of the RW Moon card. Holding the moon, although it could be a crystal ball, is Carole Lombard - what could be the dead Carole Lombard, as some traditions hold that human souls travel to the moon after death.
Perhaps it follows as day the night that my inspirations are oblique and so my goals are too. Inspiration comes from many divergent places, but in essence, it is always transfigured by a "moonlight requisition" - that is to say, reflected as through a prism in a deep core on which the sun only in the most refracted of senses ever shines. As we deal with the dark by sleeping it off, the moon is the sun's dream. Meanwhile, we stumble around awhile the faintly-lit deep core, as below so above. As real as anything else, the issue and its derivation are often intangible - indeed, it may be the more intangible they are the
more real, regardless of how many rocks Samuel Johnson kicks over.
On the surface, like stones skipped on the water, the deep core of everything flickers as on a silver screen. When sight misleads or simply fails, the cold and the scents and the baying hounds compel one to feel in another sense. Everything's still there with the light off - one can desire to obtain wealth and fame and all the many ego-centric fungibles, but one can also access and be held by something quite else.
Addendum: In the morning I attended the annual library book sale, but it was probably the worst such sale yet. The day was sunny but cold as I worked at renovating my garage. Where the day before everything had gone smoothly and worked just right, everything today went a little wrong and was difficult.
Day 3 - Monday, ruled by the Moon: Dreams and Fears
Card: Death XIII
After a night of whooping it up, the Death card doesn't come as such a surprise. The
Why We FIght series alluded to on the card suggests the
Dream aspect of today's allocation, along with the movies
To Be Or Not To Be and
The Great Dictator - the dream of victory over authoritarian tyranny on the one hand, and addressing actual issues of the day in the popular medium of film on the other. The
Fear aspect seems fairly self-explanatory. Fascism is on the rise around the world, and with Trump as its poster-boy it's surfacing in the form of White Nationalism and the Alt-Right in the United States. Leslie Howard was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by the Nazis as he returned from a diplomatic mission to Spain, while Carole Lombard - seen yesterday holding The Moon - crashed in a plane sabotaged by the Nazis as she returned from a tour to raise money for the American war effort. The Nazis were a death cult whose bloodlust and hunger for power entranced a nation. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre, a possible metaphor for some of the insanity assailing Trump's America.
On a personal level, the Death card often indicates great change. With my girlfriend coming to live with me in the spring, and my building an area for her to partly live and work, great change is certainly afoot. Hopefully, there will be no actual deaths, and my construction efforts will not result in my entire house here collapsing to the ground.
Addendum: Well, everything and everyone is still standing. Of course, when
To Be Or Not To Be and
The Great Dictator were made, the full extent of Hitler's murderous destruction was not known. If deadly realities are indeed unseen but afoot, I hope I will find myself in a position to rebuild, with the aid of a Marshall Plan rather than a Treaty of Versailles.
Day 4 - Tuesday, ruled by Mars: Conflicts and Challenges
Card: 5 of Cups - The Best Years Of Our Lives
The Best Years Of Our Lives is a film about the difficulties of settling back into normal life after the traumatic experience of war. The men returning have been scarred, both outwardly and in. The suburban picket fences, malt shops, and apple pie they fought to preserve now, upon their return, feel alien to them, distant, and superficial. The men's families and friends have gone through difficult times and changes too, and they are uncertain how to relate to or comfort their returning soldiers.
On the top half of the card, Dana Andrews has his back to us. He looks out the dirty nose window of a scuppered bomber in a mass graveyard of decommissioned WWII aircraft, not seeing what is before him but rather what is behind. Something awkwardly held onto smolders below. The card's number hovers above him, like V for Victory, but it may as well be a wedge or a knife in the back for how victory feels to this veteran.
With today's allocation of
Conflicts and
Challenges, the admonition here is to be honest about the gravity of past events and losses, but to also make a turn-about and face the realities at hand and before us. In an odd twist, the real-life war veteran and amputee Harold Russell, although an unprofessional actor, won 2 Academy Awards for the same role - the only person in history to do so. With the money he made in Hollywood, Russell returned to university and graduated with a business degree. When, in later years, his wife needed money for an operation, Russell sold his Oscar. What all this indicates to me is the imperative to roll with the punches, face your misfortunes head on, be resourceful for the future, and don't allow sentimentality and hollow plaudits to defeat practical necessities on the ground.
Addendum: Today saw a lot of hard work. I had planned to go to town, but was up with the first light and worked into the night on the construction project here, capitalizing on the good weather before a week of rain arrives. Not only was the work strenuous, but I felt tired all day. If and when the rains come, maybe I'll be able to enjoy some R&R.
Day 5 - Wednesday, ruled by Mercury: Interactions and Change
Card: 9 of Coin - The Women
This card in the RWS deck shows an elegant woman holding a trained bird of prey. Here, Joan Crawford holds a smaller version of herself. Around her neck are feathers, and
The Women, after all, is a chick-flick. Birds are messengers from the four corners of mother earth, but Joan here seems to be telling mother earth a thing or two.
With a cast made up entirely of women,
The Women's tagline is "It's all about men!!!" And, sadly, this is basically the case. As far as
Interactions go, the film concerns itself not only with how women evaluate themselves in relation to men but also how they conceive of and interact with each other. The
Change today's allocation underscores concerns, for me personally, my girlfriend's impending plans to move in with me here. Along with my father - who lives with my mother on the same property as me - I have been busy this week undertaking a project of transforming the garage into a living space for my new roomie. Her presence will mean a change in the dynamic around here, in a number of ways, including an added female presence which my mother is looking forward to. That said, relations between women - as
The Women bears witness - are not always untroubled. Miss Crawford has at times reminded me of my mother and, being my mother's son, I should perhaps stay mindful of the fledgling adjustments to the nest and their ramifications. For the record, my mother is a Cancer, a la crawfish, and my girlfriend is a Scorpio, sometimes associated with the eagle.
Normally understood, the penultimate card of Coin indicates abundance, maturity, discipline, and self-sufficiency. Sometimes it can indicate luxury, reflected in
The Women's lavish fashion show filmed in colour and included for its own sake. I hope this card indicates these things for the women in my life.
Addendum: Not much to report. I saw my mother earlier in the day - she was on the phone to a friend of hers suffering from dementia. The rest of the day I worked on the garage conversion.
Day 6 - Thursday, ruled by Jupiter: Power and Influences
Card: The Hierophant V WIll Hays & The Production Code
Will Hays was a right-wing ringer brought in by the studios to make it look like they were seriously tackling moral degeneracy. Although Hays had no real power, Hollywood nevertheless voluntarily followed what became known as the Hays Code for 3 decades. The result was that which had been somewhat salacious in its way became so only suggestively, through allusion. An example which comes to mind, albeit outside Hollywood, was when Franco's censors demanded the ending to Bunuel's
Viridiana be changed. The original ending saw the young male lead entering the bedroom of his cousin, the erstwhile nun Viridiana, as the camera fades out. Bunuel's forced change saw Viridiana and her cousin playing a 3-way game of cards with the maid in the final scene, suggesting a ménage à trois.
The Hierophant card of the GAHT is divided in half, suggesting perhaps the dual aspect of life - black & white, authority & servitude, good & evil, man & woman. Hays, something of a blockhead, has a square all to himself, resting above and overseeing a frame from the blockbuster
It Happened One Night below. A blanket bifurcates the room to assure nothing untoward can transpire between Colbert and Gable. Colbert is dressed in men's pajamas, beginning a long tradition of women wearing a male article of clothing - usually a shirt - in the boudoir. Hollywood, of course, never dealt honestly with the realities of life on earth. The Hays Code, then, didn't prevent Hollywood from becoming a mature art form, it just helped ensure it never would.
The power of the status quo is hegemonic - that is, both obvious and hidden. The arbiters of what is turn everything outside their paradigm into an aberration - homosexuality, miscegenation, sexuality itself, corruption, injustice, even the notion of an aesthetic dissatisfaction with the norm. Yesterday, struggling with a poorly designed tool, I said to my father: "It seems like someone made something once and, since then, it's just been remade over and over again without even the slightest modification." This could be a metaphor of organized religion. I'm a spirit of the law kind of guy, rather than letter. I feel the fact
that we do something is less important than
why, how, and
to what effect. That said, the universe does unfold in organized ways, if beyond humanity's capacity to fully understand. What's more, hierarchies abound in human society. I'll try to stay aware of them today, and rather than butt heads try to bend to their will, no matter how hazy, and hope for something new, something better - neither a deity nor a demon, but a dialectic.
Day 7 - Friday, ruled by Venus: Love and Attraction
Card: 9 of Batons - Sullivan's Travels
Sullivan's Travels is a kind of
Gulliver's Travels, itself a response to
Robinson Carusoe. In Swift's satire, the protagonist repeatedly meets different societies rather than being lost to society on an island as in Defoe's novel. In Preston Sturges' comedy, the successful Hollywood film-maker Sullivan cannot interface with society, try as he may. Sullivan, tired of fabricated hijinx, wants to get serious about life, but those who love him and rely on him - not to mention life itself - won't allow him to. When he does finally interface with real life, it's a cruel and oppressive intercourse. With today's allocation of
Love, this narrative could describe the plot outline of my love-life.
There's that old, terrible joke: "I'd like to spend a night on Veronica Lake." I must say, when I was a boy, I had a soft spot for Veronica Lake, mostly because of her voice, which was quite deep for a woman who measured 4' 11". She looked mismatched next to McCrea's Sullivan, who was 6' 4". The two were also mismatched by temperament - when McCrea was offered the lead role opposite her in
I Married A Witch, McCrea - keeping with the height motif - said: "Life's too short for two films with Veronica Lake". When McCrea meets the aspiring actress Lake in a diner, it's an allusion to the legend of Lana Turner being discovered in Schwab's Drug Store by director Mervyn LeRoy - a legend which is erroneous. McCrea, blamed for a murder he didn't commit, is incarcerated in a chain gang - note the ball and chain around his leg. All of these details, remember, relate to my love-life.
Like many Sturges films, the seemingly unsolvable predicament the twisting plot gets into is solved ingeniously with one final curveball. Here, McCrea is saved from a life sentence in jail by confessing to no less than the murder of himself.
In the bigger picture, one might do well to be leery about what one is attracted to. Sometimes pleasure, happiness, and freedom are, simply put, the antidote to anger, enmity, and alienation.
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And what about those who just want to have a Deck of the Week, Card of the Day reading? They can just jump in and leave the planetary lore away. 
There, I didn't get the hang of daily cards, I felt intimidated and the whole routine didn't sit with me yet. Now it does.