Day 1 - Saturday, ruled by Saturn: Obstacles and Blockades
Card: The Chariot VII The Studio System
At the foot of what looks to be the opposite of the pearly gates lies a doubled-bodied dog with the head of Shirley Temple. This may be an allusion to Cerberus, guarding his temple, but the image is also directly taken from a Salvador Dali painting called
Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time. Above Miss Temple's head in place of a halo hovers a pale purple bat, recalling Mae West and Dali from The High Priestess card. Dali's involvement in Hollywood was brief - he created the paranoic dream sequence for Hitchcock's
Spellbound. These suggestions of image & idol, dream & nightmare, amnesia and identity, immortality & the underworld, a gilded age and a gilded cage, is wrapped up in the paternalistic package of all Hollywood has to offer as a red carpet for the Ego.
To the left and right of the black and white gated staircase stands a woman. Her pose is ambiguous - seductive? panic-stricken? obstructing one's exit? The object behind her is also ambiguous - a door? a tombstone? Two stone tablets, like The Decalogue, proclaiming a New Law? Oddly, like the doubled dog, she is a reflection of herself - or, if she is two people, neither have an identity of their own. Before a large billboard spotlighting the utopic playland of Hollywood sits a fleshy pink love seat, a satirical reference to the Casting Couch. The root of the word chariot cognates with both chair and car; here, the rose-coloured couch could be both a throne and a star vehicle. The framework at the top of this vehicle seems to be a cube made of black bars, as if a cage, a display case for an exhibit at an exotic zoo. The Studio System allowed for creativity and streamlined production, but also imposed strict boundaries on what those productions were, how they were created, and by whom.
With today's allocation of
Obstacles and
Blockades, I could easily see this card as admonishing the authoritarianism of the Ego. More, it seems to be suggesting rigid formulas for ways of acting may be full of sound and fury but are, ultimately, a self-imposed trap signifying nothing. The couch implies not only that selling one's self short results in a kind of perdition - moral and material - but warns against the dangers of getting too comfortable in the expectation of who at core I am. Self-imposed limitations of character, bolstered by a highly successful and hegemonic system, takes on the mantle of agency and in so doing becomes very profitable, but - as an obstacle to the soul -
what shall it profit a man?
Day 2 - Sunday, ruled by the Sun: Inspiration and Goals
Card: Ace of Spades
Each of the 4 suits in the GAHT represent 2 of the main 8 movie studios during the golden age of Hollywood. The central studio of the Spades suit is Warner Brothers, the most proletariate, the most FDR friendly, and the most anti-Nazi of the studios. The secondary studio represented is Columbia Pictures, a poverty-row company much maligned by the public and the other studios until the films of Frank Capra leant it prestige.
The film symbolizing the Spades suit is
The Maltese Falcon, the directorial debut of John Huston from a Dashiell Hammett novel starring Humphrey Bogart as gumshoe Sam Spade. With today's allocation of
Goals, the eponymous falcon statuette stands as a red herring - or McGuffin in Hitchcock's parlance - an object lusted after, fought for, "the stuff that dreams are made of", yet worthless in and of itself. Of course, these delusions - as the poet Cavafy said of Ithaka - "gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out." While such materialistic objectives have never interested let alone motivated me, the suit of Spades undercurrent of private & eagle-eyed truth has been both a personal inspiration and goal of sorts. Spades is the suit of thought, of discernment, of calling a spade a spade. Its element is air, which is why the Ace here features the fishes of the sky, birds - a personal totem and
inspiration of mine.
I just took a small break from writing this and opened a book of interviews with Leonard Cohen -
JW: Is love a delusion?
LC: I see everything as a delusion. Love is the reality.
[Laughs]
JW: Dorothy Parker remarked, "Love is like quicksilver in the hand... Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away."
LC: Blake said something similar, "He who binds himself to a joy doth the winged thing destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives forever in Eternity's sunrise."
These lines of Blake reflect something of the symbolic meaning birds [and fishes] hold for me... the mercurial aspect of life, grace, and the muse, both ephemeral and everlasting, always revolving and so always evolving.
Day 3 - Monday, ruled by the Moon: Dreams and Fears
Card: 3 of Batons - My Man Godfrey
My Man Godfrey is about a "forgotten man", fallen on hard times during the Great Depression. He becomes inveigled into a family of rich eccentrics and proves himself, a one-time hobo, to be responsible, industrious, and honorable. Which is more than can be said for the family. The film's director, Gregory La Cava, a drinking buddy of W.C. Fileds' and something of an eccentric himself, insisted William Powell play the part of Godfrey. William Powell, for his part, would only agree to be in the film if his ex-wife, Carol Lombard, was cast as his co-star. Lombard was a natural comedienne, and
Godfrey kicked-off a successful run of memorable roles in screwball comedies for the actress until her untimely death at age 33.
The 3 of Batons is a colourful card, suggesting a richness of possibility. Powell's Godfrey is a serious man, direct of purpose. This makes him an obvious foil to Lombard - a relationship rather similar to their characters in real life, where the couple's disparities of temperament didn't compliment so much as clash. Carole Lombard - the future Queen of Hollywood - appears more times than any other actor in The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot (3 of Batons, the Queen of Cups, The Lovers, Death, and The Moon). Here, the dapper Powell carries Lombard on his back; he also holds 3 batons - the control rods which manipulate a marionette. Lombard's head and body are at an awkward angle, suggesting a kind of ecstasy, or perhaps foreshadowing her splain body in the plane wreck which will take her life.
As for today's allocation of
Dreams, the 3 of Batons represents the successful manipulation of a seemingly disenfranchised situation, the compliment of fantastical and common-sense ideas, and conscientious smarts carrying the day. On the
Fear side, this card intimates that things in real life are not so pat, that class distinctions do divide society, and that one can all too easily slip into fantasy rather than face the world's realities.
Day 4 - Tuesday, ruled by Mars: Conflicts and Challenges
Card: 4 of Spades - Lost Horizon
Being tired from a night of revelry before, I went to bed early last night and ended up sleeping for 11 hours. My sleep, however, was restless - I was half awake with dream-tainted images co-mingled with somewhat neurotic thoughts. Much of my agitation centered around thoughts of death and who would get stuck dealing with not so much my belongings when I die but with my paintings, writings, and music. Death has been on my mind for some time now, in part because I'm about to turn 50, but also because a writer friend of mine died in India recently and I was responsible for dealing with his writings and artwork.
The GAHT 4 of Spades card corresponds to the R/W card in which a knight lays recumbent in a church, either in a state of repose or possibly dead. In
Lost Horizon, Ronald Coleman plays a writer who - attempting to escape civil war in China by plane - crash lands with a small group in the Himalayas. There they discover Shangri-la, a utopia where no one grows old and everyone lives in peace. Granted, this oriental oasis looks a lot like Palm Springs and its inhabitants spend their time repasting and reading, only to be no more mentally astute than the dim-witted Jane Wyatt, but despite this typically unimaginative American vision runs a curious vein of socialism - one significantly excised in subsequent releases of the film. At the time,
Lost Horizon had the biggest budget of any movie and it exceeded that budget by 30 percent. Frank Capra shot a huge amount of film and ended up with a rough-cut running time of 6 hours - the popular director had single-handedly established Columbia Pictures credibility, but with this dream project he seemed to be living in his own fantasy land.
It took years, but
Lost Horizon eventually made back its financial losses and has become a classic of the genre. Within the film's narrative, the conflicts of the 1930s are given a reprieve in the idyllic Shangri-la; those unaccustomed to this tranquility, however, bring with them the germs of discontent. Along with "better the devil you know", the question arises: as painful as the
challenges of a chaotic world may be, are they not perhaps preferable to a human animal bred on and for
conflict than is benign satiation and contented docility? Quietude can seem for some a prison, just as serenity of this sort can seem a version of death. These suggestions are underscored by the word "lastest" on the card and "notable cast" being misread as "not able cast". Colman himself doesn't know whether to go or stay - a conflict facing me: whether or not to turn my back on old ways which are harmful and embrace a benevolent equanimity. The latter option necessitates an acceptance of death, and challenges what it means to be alive.
Day 5 - Wednesday, ruled by Mercury: Interactions and Change
Card: The Hanged Man XII The Writer
Many famous writers worked for Hollywood - Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, S.J. Perelman, Raymond Chandler, Aldous Huxley, Nathaniel West - and many other famous writers' works were adapted to film - Hemmingway, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, The Bible - and, of course, many more far less famous writers slogged away inventing plots and dialogue for the film industry. And almost all of them down the line, to a man, was an alcoholic.
Of the major players in a film's production, the Hollywood scriptwriter was the most maligned and poorly treated. This, mixed with a certain intelligence needed for the job, meant they became organized early on into a guild and were seen as a trouble-making threat by the right-wing studio producers. For any writer of integrity, their natural inclination and the objective of the studio moguls was always at odds. During HUAC's red-baiting and Hollywood's blacklisting, a disproportion of those targeted were writers. Here, on the GAHT Hanged Man card, a noose forms a dangling light bulb - screenwriters were the ideas men of film-making; they made up a film's backbone and spine. The reliance on alcohol and nicotine as stimulants was an occupational hazard. Feeling disrespected, over-powered, and underpaid was a reality for the Hollywood writer, which - in an industry overflowing with falseness and ego - undermined their own self-worth.
The implications, then, of today's allocation of
Interactions suggests that a relationship has been turned upside down, that powers have gotten top-heavy and lost their true authority, with the result that the strings they pull are tangled and threaten to strangle those involved. This reflects a dynamic I have been struggling with for some time with my father, notably in the last couple of months as we work together on a construction project. A number of times it has occurred to me that the relationship we had when I was a boy - with me as the incompetent and no doubt frustrating helpmate on such construction projects - has totally reversed; sometimes I think the frustration I now feel is my father and fate's revenge. This change is made more complex by the emotional aspect - this isn't a boy learning the ropes, but rather an old man on the ropes, fighting his own loss of agency. This, in turn, puts me in an awkward position - that of keeping my cool on the one hand and staying empathetic, but also being the bearer of a bad news the hearer refuses to hear. However it happens - a careful unraveling or a hatchet to the Gordian Knot - this is a situation which needs righting.
Day 6 - Thursday, ruled by Jupiter: Power and Influences
Card: 4 of Batons - Ninotchka
The first time I saw
Ninotchka, it was 20 years ago in Berlin. I was living in an artists' commune, 40 miles east of the city, and sometimes for a change a friend and I would drive to town for the day, play a game of pool, grab a Turkish shawarma, and catch a film at the Institute for Film in Potsdamerplatz. With very little money, in the depths of winter, living in the former DDR, laughing along with Garbo was a delightful and much-needed reprieve from a somewhat humourless time in my life.
Ernst Lubitsch, a German émigré to America, was one of the first directors recognized by moviegoers. The term which has been ascribed to his films, "the Lubitsch Touch", can be hard to define, in part because that's the essence of the touch - subtlety, ellipsis, innuendo, and a carefully chosen minor detail which alludes to the verboten. In the film, 3 Soviet representatives visit Paris on a diplomatic mission and while there, become beguiled by the luxuries of the City of Lights - a comical echo of my own sojourns to Berlin. In a curious coincidence, one of the diplomats - the delightful Felix Bressart - is the spitting image of my future grand-father-in-law, who after the war was himself stationed in Berlin. Back in Paris: Garbo, the hard-headed Communist ideologue, is sent to fetch the wayward diplomats but falls herself for the paper-thin lothario, Melvyn Douglas. Like many films, the ending is forced and uninteresting, but until then and along the way, it exhibits wit and charm.
Ninotchka and the 4 of Batons represent artistry, elegance, culture, and the finer achievements of civilization. It also suggests the idea of home and, with its immigrant director and all-immigrant cast, the idea of finding one's rightful place in the world. These 2 themes surely reflect today's allocation of
Power and
Influence. On the darker side, there is indeed a dark side to civilization and the pursuit of material gain which
Ninotchka entirely ignores. Laughter, distraction, and personal passions are necessary for a fully experienced life, but they can be undermined and deprived people by the very power structure
Ninotchka champions as the one it ridicules. Notably, when everything becomes an escape and surface diversion from the greed and injustice transpiring in places film crews fear to tread.
Day 7 - Friday, ruled by Venus: Love and Attraction
Card: Knaves of Cups - Laurel and Hardy
I think it's fair to say my love-life can be accurately summarized by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The slapstick aspect of the duo's relationship is especially apt. Stan's finger stuck in the lightning bolt of RKO's insignia is curiously suggestive.
Here, Stan and Ollie are saps at sea, unable-bodied seamen aboard their risible relationship. Of the two comedians, Stan was the serious one, writing out the duo's scripts in detail while Ollie spent much of his time playing golf. Like most children, I loved Laurel & Hardy as a youngster. As a young man, while acting as nurse to an ex-girlfriend of mine who was recuperating from a serious accident, she and I watched all of Laurel & Hardy's films - from the silent shorts to full-length talkies. One of the things I was most struck by was something which had actually haunted me since originally seeing their films as a boy - namely, the strange, surreal, and sometimes macabre places their comedic imaginations led them. At the conclusion of
The Bohemian Girl, for instance, the duo are subjected to a torture chamber, the result being Ollie is stretched out to a height of 8 feet while Stan has been crushed down to about 27 inches. Sometimes they play quite believable toddlers. At other times, they dress as women and play each other's wives. The image on this card comes from their film
Our Relations, which features a recurring routine wherein Stan & Oliver are as cruel as possible to their long-suffering foil, James Finlayson. At one point, Stan rips open Finlayson's shirt and lights his chest hairs on fire.
I mentioned yesterday my relationship lately with my father. As it happened, we argued and I personally had a bad day. I was completely humourless, like Garbo in the first half of
Ninotchka. When I was a boy, watching Laurel & Hardy, Oliver always reminded me of my father. I recognize that Venus rules romantic relationships, but looked at more broadly, the Knaves of Cups could as accurately symbolize my relationship with my father. The fact of the matter is, despite how bad things get, the relationship between Stan & Laurel remains strong and intact. Indeed, in some ways, the worse things get around them - which of course is mostly of their own making - the closer the two of them become.
Circling back to the eerie quality of Laurel & Hardy - I was for years tormented by nightmarish images from one particular film of theirs called
Babes In Toyland, aka
March of the Wooden Soldiers. The film is set in Toyland, where all the Mother Goose characters live. There is a scene involving Bogeymen, a well, and the evil Silas Barnaby from the
There was a Crooked Man nursery rhyme which even now, thinking of it, gives me the creeps. When I told my father about it as a grown man, he told me he had seen it as a boy and been plagued with nightmares by it in exactly the same way as me.
.
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.