Day 1 - Saturday, ruled by Saturn: Obstacles and Blockades
Card: 7 of Spades - The Adventures of Robin Hood
Having enjoyed it as a boy,
Robin Hood - with its stunning Technicolor - is still a fun watch. Even the baddies, Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains, are enjoyable. Errol Flynn was something of a Robin Hood in real life - not that he robbed from the rich to give to the poor, but as a roustabout, gad-about, and cavalier rogue. Flynn used his celebrity and charm to have his hedonistic way, mostly with women, and when legal proceedings were undertaken against him, fans and the media rallied to his support. Olivia de Havilland was taken by Flynn's charisma, but refused to be yet another of the playboy's conquests.
The story of Robin Hood goes way back. Anthony Munday, Shakespeare's sometime amanuensis, wrote a couple plays about Robin, turning him into a dispossessed Earl. Robin lives rough in the forest, something I used to fantasize doing myself as a boy. Perhaps, with today's allocation of
blockades, the suggestion is such boyish, heroic flights of fancy are detrimental and need to be jettisoned. I have always been taken by the image of Robin's arrow splitting his competitor's arrow down the middle, standing as it does as a metaphor for the near-miraculous and the heretofore unconceived. Maybe, then, this card implies a daring and audacity is needed to overcome seemingly immovable
obstacles.
What this card does indicate with some certainty is the exigency of combating problems in a roundabout manner rather than head-on. That is, unless - like the 2nd arrow in the bullseye - the manner is so head-on it's ground-breaking. Creative solutions, even if far-fetched and ultimately unworkable, nevertheless do provide life with some ludic colour.
Day 2 - Sunday, ruled by the Sun: Inspiration and Goals
Card: 8 of Batons - Saboteur
At first glance, this may seem like a strange card to pick for
Goals - in fact, I considered throwing it back and picking another card, but that would be cheating. Having learned his craft in Germany and honed it in England, this is Hitchcock's first truly American film, insofar as it has an entirely American cast. Being something of an unknown quality, and what with it being wartime, Hitchcock's budget for
Saboteur was relatively very small. As a result, Hitchcock had to improvise, using less known actors and filming on recycled sets. Because the censors were uptight about the theme of domestic espionage, scenes depicting this were cut to no more than 5 seconds at a time, with the result that it actually intensifies the threat. In short, the limitations imposed actually made for a more interesting film, and the artful dodges Hitchcock had to employ forced him to come up with creative solutions.
In the service of entertainment,
Saboteur nevertheless concerns itself with 2 things I am naturally drawn to - things being other than they seem and fascist tendencies in America. In a sense, these 2 themes are interwoven. When Robert Cummings' character reveals that a high-class dinner party is being hosted by closet Nazis, he is totally ignored. Cummings looks like a saboteur and everyone thinks he is so he must be bad, while the Nazis are well-dressed and well-spoken so must be good. I find it interesting and laudatory that Hitchcock chose, just as the American involvement in WWII was beginning, to focus on the home-grown Nazis in our midst rather than the enemy far away in Europe and Asia.
Saboteur's ending sees Hitchcock recycle an idea he had used a couple times before and would use again, namely: a dramatic finale on an iconic monument. The scene in which the real saboteur plummets to his death from the Statue of Liberty called for some innovative camera work. This is what I find
Inspirational here, and could be called a
Goal - adeptness with the medium, such that modifications and inventions can be made on the fly which actually improve the naturalness and flow of the creation; using what has worked before in a new way, but before it becomes a stale formula; and all the while staying true to realities in modern society and life generally, no matter how unpleasant or unwelcome such honesty may be.
Day 3 - Monday, ruled by the Moon: Dreams and Fears
Card: 3 of Cups - Bringing Up Baby
Another slightly odd card for the day's allocation. Cary Grant plays a nebbish paleontologist about to be married when he comes across Katherine Hepburn, a rich free-spirited young woman who falls for Grant and proceeds to turn his world upside down. The "baby" of the title is a leopard which has been gifted to Hepburn by her brother which, like a lot of things about
Bringing Up Baby, makes little sense. Hepburn's role in the film was tailored to her personality and Grant had just filmed the classic screwball comedy
The Awful Truth, which also featured Skippy, the dog who played Asta in the
Thin Man series. The film was a flop upon initial release, but it has since become a classic of the era.
Bringing Up Baby has a wild, free-wheeling style. Production was delayed because Grant and Hepburn kept breaking out in laughter. On a personal level, I used to watch this film now and then with an early girlfriend of mine. When I began seeing a woman who was unnaturally jealous, she overheard at the video store (remember those?) that I had a late fee for
Bringing Up Baby and, my new girlfriend not knowing the film, assumed it was - I don't know - some kind of idyll about marriage and raising a family and, such was her spite, ridiculed me based on her assumption. As it happens, given today's allocation, the film and card do represent a partnership it seems to me - an unusual one; one which occurs accidentally and at first appears unlikely - perhaps even
unlikable. The course which the
Dream was expected to go has taken a left turn. That turn is misunderstood and dismissed at first, but its value comes to be recognized as an exemplar of its kind. As for
Fears, the wildcat or "baby" is a metaphor for the unknown depths of emotion within us, the possible unleashing of irrational chaos, and the fear of fear itself. How all this may pan out today I have no idea, but I will be attuned to anything strange or possibly antic. I will also look out for anything supposedly tame and controllable which may in fact be a very real threat.
Day 4 - Tuesday, ruled by Mars: Conflicts and Challenges
Card: 10 of Coin - The Wizard of Oz
Curiously, when I pulled yesterday's card, I wondered to myself when
The Wizard of Oz card would appear. This morning, as I awoke and lay for a while in bed, my sleep and dreams had led me to a place where I experienced a deep, intuitive understanding of the contingency of everything. How everything is created within a context, suggesting there is no absolute truth, was real from the ground up in me. So when I pulled the
Wizard of Oz card this morning, I wasn't exactly surprised.
There are of course, within the film, many
conflicts - Dorothy, feeling unseen, runs away from home, only to become totally lost in what turns out to be a fevered dream. The falsehood of Oz and the wickedness of the witch are of course further challenges, but at core what Dorothy and her 3 friends struggle with are conflicts they have with themselves. They feel a grievous lacking between the outside world and where it is they find themselves within.
This is the ultimate card of the minor suits. All the elements which have come before exist within this card - they are represented by each character's symbolic objective: a brain, a heart, a home, the nerve. These are seen again on the ultimate card of the majors, The World, where they are in their respective 4 corners and 4 suit colours. What this all suggests then, to me today is, though there indeed be conflicts, they exist within a framework which both creates the challenge and its solution. Just as the characters actually possess what they mistakingly believe they lack, and the conflicts they face become the process by which they evoke and reify what they thought lacking, so there is no absolute right and wrong, no final judgment, no totally real and totally make-believe, since everything moves from one thing to another in a great flux which, when stepped back from, is in actuality a dream.
Day 5 - Wednesday, ruled by Mercury: Interactions and Change
Card: The Empress III The Press
Today, rather than work on my garage conversion project, my mother and I have plans to go downtown together for lunch and some pre-Christmas window shopping. My mother has been struggling with medical issues for years now, from needing 2 knee replacements to an auto-immune disorder and sleepless nights. I am hoping today she and I can break away from our daily routines and spend some time out and about. As she so rarely gets out, I want to do what I can to make this outing enjoyable for her.
The GAHT Empress card emulates the cover of a Hollywood magazine, stressing the Press' involvement in making stars and starlets. The Press was not as powerful of course as the studios and their moguls [
cf. The Emperor card], but they were instrumental nonetheless, especially in matters of hearsay and scandal. The word May on the mock magazine indicates its month of publication, but more it suggests what could happen and what the Empress will be permitted to be. Marion Davies, her back to us, looks at her reflection in the mirror - a mirror not unlike the evil queen's "mirror, mirror, on the wall" from Snow White (
cf. 7 of Cups) - and in it, Miss Davies has changed into Cleopatra. The famous beauty of the Nile, Cleopatra ruled her once great Egypt but, try as she may, couldn't maneuver the male-saturated political landscape of the Roman Empire. Even the name Cleopatra, meaning "the glory of her father", suggests male proximity and gaze. Miss Davies was for many years the mistress of the media tycoon, William Randolph Hearst. Columnist Louella Parsons worked for Hearst, and the film
Citizen Kane is based on Hearst's life - Rosebud being Hearst's euphemism (eu-feminism?) for Davies' private part. Davies was a decent actress in her own right, but with Hearst' meddling in her career, she became trapped in his idea of her. Welles' allegorical depiction of her as a no-talent further degraded her public stature.
I will just note here that Marion was the name of my girlfriend's mother, who died far too young from a rare disease, the complication of an auto-immune disorder.
The Empress card is the 3rd major arcanum; Cleopatra was entangled with Caesar and Marc Anthony; The Press - here figure-headed by the would-be priestess Louella Parsons - was intermediary between matinée idols and the masses; and I am the only child in a nuclear family. Although the card offers a half million dollars for a child's photo, I will try to refrain from making this day about me. Instead, like
Queen For A Day, I will try to make it about my mother.
Day 6 - Thursday, ruled by Jupiter: Power and Influences
Card: 4 of Cups - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Gee, here's another card I almost immediately threw back. But then, my natural tendency would always be to throw it back, as I can't stand Danny Kaye or the film. But then, the films that represent the golden age of Hollywood aren't all films that I enjoy, any more than I relate to every card in the tarot. As it happens, I have always liked the 4 of Cups, with its ambiguity in the RWS between a character so lost under a tree in meditation that he doesn't see what is being offered him and a character so satiated with 3 cups that he is reluctant to take on a fourth. Here, Kaye has had his legs knocked out from under him by the arrival of Virginia Mayo - the 3 sets of female legs below Kaye couldn't keep him from collapsing under the weight of Mayo's fourth set. I'm sure there's some old joke about
holding the mayo - here, Kaye is held
by the mayo. Kaye has caught her like a cold, or a giant catchers mitt.
The card is based on a film poster from the time - a kind of variation on yesterday's card which was based on the cover of a gossip magazine from the era. As yesterday's card - insofar as it concerned me - concerned my mother, here in
Mitty the two mother figures are overbearing and bothersome. The card itself openly proffers a couple posers:
What kind of dreams do you have? &
Are you a Mitty? The fantasy aspect of the film and its Technicolor are undermined by the card's stark white background, its flat-out text, and its blunt marketing graphics. As with sitting through
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, this card demands one have a strong imagination just to endure it.
With today's allocation of
Power and
Influence, the obvious suggestion seems to be on the underlying force of fabrication and inventiveness. While knocking him for a loop, Mayo eventually compels Kaye to stand up for himself. Kaye, so used to dreaming, can hardly believe his own eyes. In a sense, then, this card suggests dreams becoming a reality and - through inner strength and direction - reality becoming fun, colourful, and a cleaned slate, rather than a nightmare of resignation and defeat.
Day 7 - Friday, ruled by Venus: Love and Attraction
Card: 8 of Cups - Flying Down To RIo
The 3rd cup card this week, and it could hardly be more clear - I need to jet south for a get-away of sun and gaiety, dancing as I go on the wings of the plane that takes me. Oddly, this happened just a month ago in the interior of B.C. - a musician fell to his death while wing-walking for a video he was making. So maybe I should get my kicks in a more subdued manner - stumble down to the local Taco Bell in taps and tails, say, or evening dress.
Things Latin American were popular off-and-on during the 30s and 40s, as this film and others like it attest. Considered the female Rudolph Valentino, being Ramon Navarro's cousin, and what with everyone flying down to Dolores Del Rio, I wonder what she had to be dolorous about? Perhaps it was being Orson Welles' older lover for a few years, notably while he was down in Rio as a goodwill ambassador filming its carnival and couldn't be reached for weeks on end. It was while awol there that the studio reshot and recut the ending to
The Magnificent Ambersons, and Welles saw that famous Life Magazine photograph of Rita Hayworth and said: "I'm going to marry that woman" - thereby reshooting and recutting the ending Dolores had planned for her and Orson.
Flying Down To Rio was an example of the song and dance offered to the public from the depths of The Great Depression. With today's allocation of
Love and
Attraction, I see it as an allusion to my girlfriend's flight here in 2 weeks - while Saanich is no Rio, I look forward to her arrival to add some colour to the dull of winter and mitigate the encumbrances of Christmas. Seen on the card in dark silhouette is the reason for the season - Christ the Redeemer - the 7th of the 7 modern wonders of the world. The card does potentially have its dark side - the wife of one of the film's stars, for instance, was killed during the making of the film when a probably drunk John Huston ran her down with his car. An admonition perhaps to neither insist on too much direction nor too little, and certainly never to drink and drive.
Odd - I was just reminded of, some 20 years back, returning from Mexico to Texas during a lightning storm. At night, there were more flashes of light than there was darkness. My girlfriend of the time (a Scorpio) and I were sleeping rough in Amistad National Park and, during the storm, the lightning illuminated thousands of scorpions scuttling over the ground. In the morning, we literally outran the storm as it and we drove eastward - against government advisories and common sense - from Del Rio to Houston.
On a larger scale, the new NAFTA agreement was signed today in Argentina. This, just as GM - recently given a 125 million dollar tax break by the US government and which last year made 5 billion in profits - announced it is laying off 14,000 employees in the US and Canada. Jobs which are, effectively, flying down to Rio.
.
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. 
This lesson will never reach my mind, I'm afraid. There are some battles I should do but I prefer to lose and avoid conflict. And that's probably not going to change. But this combination of the Victory card on a Mars day should give me some self confidence. I'm probably much better equipped than I think for the battles that wait for me... 
The message of the Queen of Wands is clear: it's not enough to be loving, caring, baking and listening wife, I have to be the passionate wife, too.... another reminder from this deck, and another one that I can attend to on the spot 
