Tom Tarot or: A new research program for M & D

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

" ... long-practiced, all-out, contrary-to-fact, capital M Magic" (TRP)

"The dimensions of Belief are measured by the dimensions of unbelief"(SK)


* As I have emphasized one or two times before, Mason & Dixon has neither
77 nor 79 yet exactly 78 chapters, as if --- in case this isn't pure
chance --- its author wanted to hint at the Tarot (= R.O.T.A) whose
number of cards is, right now you got it, seventy-eight ...

Following this, an interesting research program might be to pair off
each and every Tarot card with a corresponding chapter of M & D ...

Sounds silly? Perhaps. Of course I cannot guarantee that your Pynchon
understanding will improve (though I believe so), but afterwards you
will know much more about the Tarot ...

>From AtD and GR (and also others: Aren't stamps lil' Tarot cards too?)
we know that Pynchon is deeply interested in these matters. Probably not
as an actual adept but as a writer who knows that sometimes a picture
tells more than mere words ever could ...

Let's focus on the 22 cards of the Major Arcana which can be considered
to be real entities on their own, opening up the gates to the paths on
the kabbalistic Tree of Life ...

My example is "The Hanged Man" (connecting Geburah and Hod), a card that
is refered to already in GR:

"The cable, brought up taut, sings under Slothrop's hand till he loses
his grip on it, falls and is carried gently and upside down and hanging
by the foot ..." (p. 306), and later: " ... to send you to the tube and
watch the seventh rerun of the Takeshi and Ichizo show, light a cigarette
and try to forget the whole thing)---to no clear happiness or redeeming
cataclysm. All his [Zoyd's, äh sorry, Slothrop's.kfl] hopeful cards are
reversed, most unhappily of all the Hanged Man, who is supposed to be
upside down to begin with, telling his secret hopes and fears...." (p.
738). Maybe the card was also in the background of Pynchon's mind when
he wrote the following sentence in AtD (p. 209): "For miles along the
trail, coming and going, every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from
it, each body in a different stage of pickover and decay, all the way
back to a number of sun-beaten skeletons of some considerable age". Yet
what chapter of "Mason & Dixon" might be relevant here?

Since Crowley's basic number of Magick is eleven, this is easy enough. Now
pick up M & D and go to chapter 11 where we find Mason at the hangings and
you can read on page 108 [!]: "Out upon Munden's Point stand a pair of Gallows
simplified to Penstrokes in the glare of this Ocean sky. A Visitor may lounge
in the Evening the Platform behind the Lines, and, as a Visitor to London may
gaze St. Paul's, regard these more sinister forms in the failing North Light,
--- perhaps being led to meditate upon Commerce...for Commerce without Slavery
is unthinkable, whilst Slavery must ever include, as an essential Term, the
Gallows, --- Slavery without the Gallows being as hollow and Waste a Proceeding,
as a Crusade without the Cross". See also the discussion Mason and the Lady
have on page 111 about the next victim's degree of erection. Crucifications,
hangings, ejaculations --- and there you go with a bunch full of mandrake ...

(Very true a-and pretty 'cool' statement about "Commerce", nicht wahr? Now
think about the fact that there are more slaves today than ever before on
the planet ... This is Dubai calling ...)

>From the fact that not only "cross" but also "crusade" is there (which makes
it impossible to understand the cross as an Egyptian ankh as which it is
pictured in the Crowley/Harris deck) as well as from GR we know that Pynchon,
as far as the Tarot is concerned, is following "Mr. A.E. Waite" (GR, p. 738).
So let's have a look at "The Pictural Key of the Tarot" (dtsch. Der geheime
Tarot-Schlüssel. München 1996: Heyne). Mentioning Elipha'Levi's interpretation
that the card is simply about the adept's duties s/he has to fulfil with
devotion, Waite names the two crosses the gallow and, differing, the legs do
build in his version, insists that the card is not about death yet about Life
and murmurs something on "the holy mystery of Resurrection" ...

Ok, folks, there are still 77 cards/chapters to pair off ---


KFL+

PS: A good American book on the Tarot which contains also some new picturing
of the Major Arcana is "Sex Magic, Tantra & Tarot" (Las Vegas 1996: New Falcon
Publications) by Christopher S. Hyatt and Lon Milo DuQuette.