Tarot Cards & Stamps

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

"Much of the revelation was to come through the stamp collection ..."
 (The Crying of Lot 49, p. 29. Picador UK 1979: London)

"The scene itself must be read as a card: what is to come." (GR, p. 724)
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These here are loose associations on Pynchon's version of
the 'Pictorial Turn':

Both graphic representations of a binding kind, stamps and Tarot cards
have certain things in common. The same is different, though.

Tarot Cards (espec. major arcana): Sacred authority; complex symbolism;
energized meditation; ritual magic as secret communication; eternity.

Stamps: Mundane authority; (usually) simple symbolism; leisure time
activity (collecting stamps); usage of legal stamps as open communication;
history/herstory.

Yet to counterfeit stamps is somehow like heresy, nicht wahr?

Now think of Hermes, who was not only the Divine Postman in the Greek
pantheon, but also gave his name to the Hermetic Arts which includes Tarot.

With Pynchon's most recent one in the back of our minds we could perhaps
also say that stamps and Tarot cards do stand in a relation of Bilocation.
And then there's the Tibetian seal/sigil [!] on AtD's cover ...


kfl
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"There are problems with levels, and with Judgment, in the Tarot sense ..."
(GR, p. 152)