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

[Smoke Teff]

Appreciate it, Kai. Am realizing that the next bit of reading I need
to do to deepen my engagement with P is probably to do with the tarot.
On top of the ever-expanding march into history, science, etc.

"the Heavens wheel on, meantime."

(M&D 185)

On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 11:58 PM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> 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)
> 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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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l