Re: BEER: Ch. 8—SCrying

[Robin Landseadel]

Fantastic. Thank you. I painted a Temperance card myself, it is the  
single card in the deck that speaks to me the most.


On Nov 10, 2013, at 3:54 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

>
> A female Tarot deck which fits perfectly into the BE context is  
> Suzanne Treister's Hexen Tarot 2.0:
>
> http://ensemble.va.com.au/Treister/HEXEN2/TAROT_COL/HEXEN_2_TAROT.html
>
> (Treister's take on the Tarot is artistic; the deck is of limited  
> use for actually spiritual purposes.)
>
> Do note that the Archer in DeepArcher is also Sagittarius which is  
> related to the Tarot trump card
> "Temperance" (Waite) bzw "Art" (Crowley)!
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_%28Tarot_card%29
>
> "Temperance is almost invariably depicted as a person pouring liquid  
> from one receptacle into another. Historically, this was a standard  
> symbol of the virtue temperance <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_%28virtue%29 
> >, one of the cardinal virtues <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues 
> >, representing the dilution <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ 
> dilution> of wine <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine> with water. In  
> many decks, the person is a winged person <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person 
> >/angel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel>, usually female or  
> androgynous, and stands with one foot on water and one foot on land.
>
> In addition to its literal meaning of temperance or moderation, the  
> Temperance card is often interpreted as symbolizing the blending or  
> synthesis of opposites. An influential tradition originating with  
> the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn 
> > associates Temperance with the astrological sign <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_sign 
> > Sagittarius <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_%28astrology%29 
> >. It is also commonly associated with the letter *ס* (Samekh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samek 
> h>) in the Hebrew alphabet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet 
> >."
>
> Interesting in the Pynchon context is also this reference to the  
> world of the dead, which makes me think not only of those people in  
> BE who search in DeepArcher for a virtual cemetery but also of  
> Vineland's thanatoids and the zombies of Inherent Vice:
>
> "In some traditions, Temperance does the judging. In those schools,  
> the cups in Temperance’s hands are the functional equivalent of  
> scales, and Temperance, like Maat <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
> Maat>, an Egyptian goddess of wisdom, judges the soul’s worth  
> before passing it on to the beasts of the underworld <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld 
> >. In some stories, Maat both judges the souls against a feather and  
> protects the scale from being tipped by Set <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_%28mythology%29 
> >. If the soul is heavier than a feather, it will be fed to the  
> eater of souls.
>
> In other traditions, Temperance is the remixing of life, accepting  
> the dead <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead> into the underworld,  
> into the blessed lands, and deciding what to send back into the  
> fray. Every atom in our bodies has passed through thousands of  
> forms, and will pass through thousands more. Temperance reminds us  
> of our connection to the greater forces."
>
> The alchemical character of the card ('Solve et coagula' - dissolve  
> and combine) is emphasized in the Crowley/Harris deck; on the Tree  
> of Life the path associated with Temperance/Art leads from Yesod to  
> Tiphareth (which has, at least for Crowley, tantric implications).
>
> In Suzanne Treister's deck the Temperance card refers to the Arpanet:
>
> http://ensemble.va.com.au/Treister/HEXEN2/TAROT_COL/TAROT_Temp_Arpanet.html
>
> No mystical reason for this, I guess, but it makes the reader think  
> of Inherent Vice. The question arises in which relation IV's Arpanet  
> and BE's DeepArcher do stand to each other in Pynchon's poetic  
> universe.
>
> Not sure all these things add up to anything coherent, but the  
> continuity of female graphic design from Tarot decks to websites,  
> that the novel evokes, certainly has to have some meaning.

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l