Day 1 - Saturday, ruled by Saturn: Obstacles and Blockades
Card: 2 of Spades - Jezebel
When head-strong Antebellum Jezebel, played by Bette Davis, petulantly wears a red dress to the ball rather than the prescribed white for an unmarried woman, Dixie labels her a doxy and her would-be beau throws her over for a nice girl. When said beau, played to a milksop T by Henry Fonda, contracts Yellow Fever, it is not his nice girl wife who will risk her life to serve as nursemaid for him on a quarantined island of convalescents and slaves, but the dauntless Davis. This sacrifice is the core meaning of the 2 of Spades card - a crucible wherein the compassionate one has been overwhelmed and it is the tough as nails one who can and must give.
At the time, Davis desperately wanted to play Scarlet O'Hara in
Gone With The Wind, and a majority of the theatre-going public agreed, but producer David O. Selznick never seriously considered her. Jezebel then, with her similarity to Scarlet - and Hawthorne's
Scarlet Letter for that matter - was something of a concession for Davis. What she and director William Wyler did with it was create one of Hollywood's quintessential feminist films.
With today's allocation, the message I take away from this card is shame as a self-imposed
obstacle. Petty issues, such as the colour of clothing, are hardly cardinal sins. Rather than seeing red and responding like an angered bull, one must have the courage of one's convictions - even if they are their own confinement, at least they are one's own. With my lover in a few months moving in with me here (our own quarantined island), sacrifices will have to be made by both her and I. At some of those sacrifices my male pride chafes, I see red flags when really they are white ones. I keep suspecting cliché female proscriptions to my good ol' boy bachelorhood, only to be shown time and again that I am confined by my own clichéd notions. Like Homer Simpson, when he goes back to college and insists the liberal good-natured dean is a parochial stuffed-shirt. So afraid of catching scarlet fever, the blue-blooded Fonda is cut down by yellow-bellied fever. Like a true blockhead, he blocks his own aid. In the end, however, he's saved by the belle.
Day 2 - Sunday, ruled by the Sun: Inspiration and Goals
Card: Strength XI Serials
As a boy, I used to watch serials on TV -
Rocket Man was on before school,
Flash Gordon was on late at night, and
Tarzan was on weekends. Being short and uncomplicated, they were ideal for the attention span of kids and pandered to the heroic ambitions of boys. By and large, plot is one of the least interesting aspects of movies; far more engrossing is setting, costumes, props, cutting, the odd things people on screen sometimes say, and the simple reality of humans moving around with agency and motivation on celluloid. Serials have this in spades.
During the golden age of Hollywood, serials were used as a way to supplement a studio's income and the entertainment experience of movie-goers. My father still talks nostalgically of standing in line Saturday mornings outside the movie theatre, and then again Saturday afternoon, waiting to see films geared specifically to him and his peers - serials and their cousin, the B-movie. The narrative of these films were always optimistic - good prevailed over evil, crime didn't pay, and nothing was impossible. In this way, serials offer hope, underscoring fortitude, ardor, and raw moxie. On the shadow side, they suggest mindless consumerism, exploitation, indoctrination, and the mainstream domestication of the imagination.
With today's allocation of
Inspiration, I take the Strength card to be a reminder of the simple things which captivated me as a child. Serials are fun and ephemeral, and somewhere in the serious business of growing up, I lost a little of my elan and spontaneity. Strength is one of my birth cards, and 11 reminds me of my partner's birthdate (11:11), suggesting a focus on newness, vivacity, and receptivity. At the moment I am not working on any one, over-riding project, which can cause in me a sense of fecklessness. Instead of indulging that feeling, my
Goal over the next week before my partner leaves is to engage in whatever comes up in the moment, not insist on things or stick with them doggedly but rather enjoy and celebrate them as they happen and move on to the next.
Day 3 - Monday, ruled by the Moon: Dreams and Fears
Card: 7 of Batons - The Lost Weekend
Billy Wilder made
The Lost Weekend in part to convey to Raymond Chandler - Billy's co-writer on
Double Indemnity - the absurdity and seriousness of the mystery writer's alcoholism. Many people who saw the film thought its depiction of an alcoholic was ludicrous, so ignorant were the majority of people to the reality of such dependencies. For the servicemen returning home from WWII, however, many of whom suffered from some form of undiagnosed PTSD, the uses and abuses of alcohol were common and well-known.
Today's allocation of
Dreams have turned into a nightmare. Things imagined become chimeras, things endeavored and worked at fall apart and rot.
Fear is something one runs from, but it originates from within. On a personal level, I have been contemplating how things will be after my partner leaves town on Saturday - will I revert back to some of my wanton ways? Can I be a little decadent, now and then - prudently imprudent, if you will - without causing too much damage to my welfare or losing control?
Day 4 - Tuesday, ruled by Mars: Conflicts and Challenges
Card: 4 of Coins - Leave Her To Heaven
I thought this was the card I was going to pull. Of course, there are only 3 cards left so the chances were fairly good. The film represented here is 1945's
Leave Her To Heaven, its title taken from the advice of Hamlet's father concerning Hamlet's mother. The film's lead is Ellen, played by Gene Tierney, a character who - like Tierney - was born into a wealthy family and suffered from mental illness. Ellen, who has a father complex, marries the novelist Richard Hartland, played by an anemic Cornel Wilde, because he resembles her father. Pathologically jealous of anyone her husband cares for, Ellen orchestrates the drowning of Richard's handicapped brother, throws herself down a staircase to induce a miscarriage, and commits suicide in order to frame her own sister for murder.
Without exaggerating, I was in a long-term relationship with a woman who was almost as pathological and destructive as Ellen. It not only affected my life in countless ways but aggrieved my current partner of many years and the first few years of our courtship. Some of my naivete and faith in humanity was sacrificed like Richard's handicapped little brother.
Leave Her To Heaven is a somewhat unusual film for its time - an exposé of mental illness made in the last year of WWII, shot in a saturated and very modern looking Technicolor, yet filmed in the manner of a Film Noir complete with courtroom finale. I have been thinking lately about the stories we tell ourselves, how we excuse away and intentionally misrepresent certain people and things, both good and bad. I myself have struggled with mental illness, as has my partner and my friends and - truth be told - everyone to some degree, whether they know &/or admit it or not, but the real-life anguish Gene Tierney endured reminds me of no one so much as my mother and her struggles with mental illness.
Today's allocation of
Conflict suggests the biological tyranny of the psyche, echoed in the name of the island home in
Leave Her To Heaven, "Back of the Moon", a direct reference to the subconscious and dark side of ourselves. The feeling that all men are islands, divorced from the main, that we are drowning disabled figures, that we are being manipulated and deceived by others and the false narratives we invent for ourselves - these are some of the things challenging me lately and always. The sometimes antic concern with what is real and what illusion (or delusion), as if I could ever really know or do much about it anyway - like the haunted Hamlet, pulled down into the very madness he entertains, when he should be leaving her, him, and all of it, to Heaven.
Day 5 - Wednesday, ruled by Mercury: Interactions and Change
Card: Knight of Spades - Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy began her career in silents, playing an exotic vamp. Her features were just ambiguous enough for Hollywood to cast her repeatedly as some kind of unspecified Asian. In the 30s, she became associated with light comedy, and became the perfect partner on-screen for William Powell (
cf. Knight of Coin), co-starring with him 22 times, including 6
Thin Man films.
When Americans entered WWII, Myrna quit Hollywood and devoted herself to the war effort. So influential and outspoken was she about Hitler, her name appeared on his personal blacklist. In later years she acted only occasionally, notably in
The Best Years of Our Lives (
cf. 5 of Cups). She also kept up her involvement in progressive causes, such as racial equality in the movie industry and a seat on the National Commission for UNESCO. One of the hardest working actors of her era, Loy is often overlooked and her particular skill undervalued. Never a moth to the limelight nor covetous of wealth and property, her philosophy can be summed up by her own words: "Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and becoming."
With today's allocation, Loy's card seems to suggest that
change can come gradually, without drama and attention-seeking but through steadfast perseverance. Loy was never temperamental or demanding as an actor, yet fought loyally for the causes she believed in, such as housing rights in the 60s against then-Governor Ronald Reagan. She is a model of hard work and the pragmatic approach of advancement by degrees. It may be my mood today, but Loy reminds me of my partner who is with me at the moment but set to return to her home in Winnipeg in 3 days - she too works away earnestly without ado, both at her creative interests and the causes she believes in. She is also, by Hollywood standards, ethnically ambiguous.
The downside to this kind of quiet dedication is it can easily be undervalued and taken for granted - an admonition, then, of a mistake to be mindful not to make.
Day 6 - Thursday, ruled by Jupiter: Power and Influences
Card: Queen of Coin - Katharine Hepburn
There was a time when Kate Hepburn was my favourite actress - i was a boy with a pronounced inclination toward tomboys and a not very keen appreciation of nuance. Many people hate Kate, and there's little doubt she was patrician, strident, and egotistical. In a way, what made her unlikable are the same qualities which make her mannish; in a man I find them intolerable, perhaps because they are so chronic in men, whereas in a woman such as Hepburn they come across as coping mechanisms, atypical qualities providing contrast in middle-America-minded Hollywood, and attributes she honed and used to her advantage. Hepburn didn't indulge in platitudes or beating around the bush. She was also fiercely loyal.
Repeatedly defamed as box-office poison, Hepburn was incredibly pro-active, buying the rights to plays and tailoring the lead role to fit her persona. She was deliberate in her private affairs, maintaining an intimate, lifelong association with Spencer Tracy (
cf. King of Coin) which was just discreet enough to not cause outrage and just indiscreet enough to run interference. As a girl, she put on plays and donated the gate to help the Navajo people, a civic-mindedness which saw her involved with progressive politics throughout her life.
Hepburn clearly embodies today's allocation of
Power. While Hepburn was compassionate and nurturing despite her rather cold public persona, she was not the maternal type sometimes associated with the RWS Queen of Pentacles. Rather, her character stresses the practical, straightforward, down to earth qualities of that queen, suggesting a life of calm, balance, agency, longevity, and mindfulness. Curiously, perhaps, Hepburn has often reminded me of 2 people in my life - the first was my great-grandmother, who lived to 98 and whose character was distinctly Victorian; the second was a gay writer friend whose manner was arch, his lifestyle spartan, and who died recently at age 87. Both these people have influenced me and both, as a matter of fact, made me sole inheritors of their respective estates.
In a broader sense, while some of the aspects of this card are plainly abrasive, maybe they imply I tend to be too passive, too wishy-washy. Perhaps the aggressive qualities in men I find unsavoury I could find tolerable through the female side of myself; a balance, as it were, between the astringent cutting-to-the-quick quality of a Katharine Hepburn, say, and the Catholic alcoholic dependencies of a Spencer Tracy.
Thus ends my Daily readings with The Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot deck. It's been fun, enlightening, and a little challenging at times. I will endeavor to stay mindful of many of the readings done here as I go forward into 2019.
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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. 
