AtDTDA (7) 186. 1-19

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Robin:

>Page 186 offers up a quick little demonstration of Tarot cards, here
>being used as a fortune telling deck. Most readers would place the
>"Hanged Man" as the 12th trump, though a few might place the
>Fool [0] card at the start of the Major Arcana.  Lew's fortune
>seems a very good one. In addition to other things, the "Hanged Man"
>card indicates escaping from a slippery and dangerous situation.
>186, 11 "A strange, though not all that strange, deck of cards".

Note that the "Hanged Man" also turns up in Slothrop's Tarot (GR, 738), and 
that this is prefigured in the scene in the Mittelwerke where Slothrop 
descends to Stollen 41 by cable and briefly turns into the Hanged Man:

"suddenly the motor cuts off and he's falling like a rock. [...] With about 
ten feet to go the Pfc. puts on the brakes. Maniacal laughter from above and 
behind. The cable, brought up taut, sings under Slothrop's hand till he 
loses his grip on it, falls, and is carried gently upside down and hanging 
by the foot" (GR, 306)

Evidently an important card for Pynchon, or at least for his characters.

>That would be the "Rider-Waite" Tarot deck, the most common platform
>for a Tarot card reading, a version that has become the "default deck".
>
>186, 14: Miss Coleman Smith, designer of the Rider-Waite Deck:

A rare error by our beloved infallible author, or simply a matter of poetic 
licence? At any rate, the reference to the Rider-Waite Deck is an 
anachronism. The reference to the Galveston Hurricane on p. 188 places the 
scene in the year 1900, yet the Rider-Waite Deck wasn't published until 
1909.
(O-or wait: is it the reference to the Rider-Waite Deck which is the "real" 
one, making the reference to the Galveston Hurricane the *real* anachronism 
here? Umm...)

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