Word: tarot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Primaries are the tarot cards of politics, but experts who try to read them in this roiled year are having problems of perception. The voters have been re-nominating incumbent Congressmen by the bushel while rejecting some other experienced officeholders out of hand. Last week's California primary was probably the most revealing so far. With gubernatorial races in both parties and an anticorruption referendum of unprecedented scope and complexity, Californians seemed to be saying that they are standoffish toward all candidates. At the same time, the voters are enthusiastic about fundamental political reform...
...four-suit deck is largely a Western convention: there are round Hindu cards with ten suits representing the ten incarnations of Vishnu, and some Persian decks had five-dancer, queen, soldier, king and lion (see opposite page, top left). In the classical fortuneteller's deck, the tarot, the suits were four: cups, swords, coins and batons. Each suit had 14 cards, with four court cards that included a knight. To this pack of 56 were added a further 22 divinatory images -the Tower, the Hanged Man, the Fool (who is the ancestor of the modern Joker...
...17th century, made for Orthodox Jews whose religious laws forbade them to touch pasteboard decks at Passover. Silk and cotton or plaited straw were inlaid into the cards to reproduce gay theatrical costumes in their original fabric, like the 17th century Pulcinello opposite. The superb min-chiate (or tarot) cards done in the 15th century by Bonifacio Bembo for Filippo Visconti, Duke of Milan, are so elaborate in their detailed painting, embossment and gilding that they could seldom, if ever, have been used...
...exhausting and massive novel, mind-fogging in its range and permutations, its display of knowledge and virtuosity-a metaphysical, phenomenological, technological Mad Comic. The author seems to have read and understood everything from quantum mechanics, probability theory and engineering manuals to the labels on bottles of 1920 Schloss Vollrads, Tarot cards and rock lyrics. This, and much more, Pynchon catalogues and tickles into fantasies so elaborately detailed that most of his readers will come away feeling illiterate in the terms of the 20th century...
...Luke, the winged man for Matthew, the winged lion for Mark, the eagle for John. The standard 13-card suits prevail, designated one through king, but every card is a "picture" card, decorated with a biblical quotation and a full-color Gospel scene that seems a cross between tarot cards and Peter Max art. From the ace of Luke to the king of John, the scenes tell a chronological story of Jesus' life. The king of Mark, for instance, is the Crucifixion. The jokers are "fools for Christ." A booklet accompanying the deck suggests variations on standard games...