M&D CH. 17 - Splitting Timelines, Possibility Reducing to Certainty, Disembodied but Sentient Ears

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Am 19.02.2018 um 02:41 schrieb Smoke Teff:


p. 176


“Fortune’s wheel is on the Rise or Fall where’er we go, but nowhere
does it turn quite as furiously as here, upon this unhappy
Mountain-Top in the Sea.”



Continuing this novel’s move of attaching supernatural/mythic power to
particular parts of the earth. Here, perhaps the maelstrom-like
demiurgical center of Fortune, luck, the randomness and volatility of
the human world.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_Fortune_(Tarot_card)<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_Fortune_%28Tarot_card%29>
http://www.egreenway.com/tarot/T210.htm

I love this Pynchon & Tarot thing, I really do ...

The wheel of wheels, so to speak ...


           WHEEL AND--WOA!

    The Great Wheel of Samsara.
    The Wheel of the Law [Dhamma].
    The Wheel of the Taro.
    The Wheel of the Heavens.
    The Wheel of Life.
    All these Wheels be one; yet of all these the Wheel of
      the TARO alone avails thee consciously.
    Meditate long and broad and deep, O man, upon this
      Wheel, revolving it in thy mind
    Be this thy task, to see how each card springs
      necessarily from each other card, even in due order
      from The Fool unto The Ten of Coins.
    Then, when thou know'st the Wheel of Destiny
      complete, mayst thou perceive THAT Will which
      moved it first.  [There is no first or last.}
    And lo! thou art past through the Abyss.

   (Aleister Crowley: The Book of Lies, chapter 78)

The spelling Taro (instead of Tarot) refers - just switch the letters! - to the Latin word rota which means --- wheel. [ http://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/33720/rota-rotae]

On 2/2/15 I wrote ("Tarot in Bleeding Edge"):

> "Even though its creators claim not to Do Metaphysical, that option in DeepArcher remains open, alongside more secular explanations ..." (p. 427)

M & D has 78 chapters, the Tarot has 78 cards. In GR, more precisely in its last part, Pynchon first uses the Tarot for his artistic purposes. Very probably --- "Check out Ishmael Reed. He knows more about it than you'll ever find here."  (p. 588) --- inspired by Mumbo Jumbo. Pynchon takes up the theme explicitly again in AtD, where he draws a more conventional picture of the Tarot than in GR. And while in GR the reference is clearly A.E. Waite, it has been argued here by Alice that AtD's Nickolas Nookshaft is actually a portrait of A. Crowley. Sounds plausible enough to me. As far as I know, there is no academic study on Pynchon's use of Tarot. What interests me today is the Tarot's shadowy half-presence in Bleeding Edge.

The word "Tarot" - please correct me if I'm wrong! - appears in the novel only once. "'I designed it [DeepArcher]. Like that chick who did the tarot deck. Awesome and don't forget hip,' half, but only half, ironic" (p. 86). Why the Tarot mention here? Now, no matter whether Cassidy is referring to Pamela "Pixie" Colman Smith (who did the Waite Tarot) or to Lady Frieda Harris (who did the Crowley Tarot), the passage hints at the fact that women often contribute graphic design to projects. I don't think this is about feminist critique (à la 'women are only allowed to do the graphics but not the thing itself'), since Cassidy places herself in that tradition with pride.  Another meaning of the passage might be that Pynchon wants to draw a parallel between the outbreak of modern occultism and the emergence of the Internet and its culture ... <

In the case of the Wheel of Fortune the associated aspect of the Divine is female and gets personified in Goddesses like Lakshmi or Fortuna ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshmi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortuna


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