Tarot cards as a plot generator
Someone asked in an online forum the other day how one could use Tarot cards as a plot generator for writing a story..
When I think of Tarot cards I usually think of Charles Williams and his novel The Greater Trumps, where Tarot cards are central to the plot and I've also used them in some of my own stories as plot devices, but this sounds like something different.
My immediate thought on reading that was to suggest that the person who was asking should read The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch, which is where I first heard of Tarot cards, and because I had no conception of them from the descriptions in the book, I went out and bought some to see what the book was about.
But using them as a plot generator is something else. How would you use them?
I thought one could shuffle them and lay them out in a line then look at the resulting line and see what story line it suggested. You could, like the schoolgirl in Iris Murdoch's book, give the individual cards whatever meanings occurred to you at the time. But most of them suggest the kind of forces and powers that influence our lives -- the Emperor and Empress represent civil authority, the Pope and Popess represent religious authority. and so on. The Kings and Queens of the lesser trumps could represent the civil authority of different countries or cities. The knights represent military power, the suits clubs (staves) and swords could represent militaristic imperialist powers, coins could represent international finance and capitalism and economic power, and so on.
And the Fool, for me at least, represents Christ, or that class of saints, more common in the East than in the West, known as Yurodivy or Fools for Christ -- for more on that, see my article Blessed are the foolish, foolish are the blessed.
One could have branching lines for sub-plots at various points along the main line, and extend the story to all kinds of places.
And nowadays, when everyone and his auntie seems to want design their own Tarot pack, there could be even more variety, though for myself, I prefer the traditional designs, like that of the Fool on the left. Though they are vaguely medieval (perhaps because that was when they were originally designed), there seems to be a timeless and universal quality about them, while most of the idiosyncratic designs seem to be somehow limited and constrained into the designer's point of view.
Some might be concerned that doing this could be a forbidden form of divination, but is it any more divination than a random number generator that starts a computer game? Because, it seems to me, what is being suggested here is a sort of computer game of the mind.
When I think of Tarot cards I usually think of Charles Williams and his novel The Greater Trumps, where Tarot cards are central to the plot and I've also used them in some of my own stories as plot devices, but this sounds like something different.
My immediate thought on reading that was to suggest that the person who was asking should read The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch, which is where I first heard of Tarot cards, and because I had no conception of them from the descriptions in the book, I went out and bought some to see what the book was about.
But using them as a plot generator is something else. How would you use them?
I thought one could shuffle them and lay them out in a line then look at the resulting line and see what story line it suggested. You could, like the schoolgirl in Iris Murdoch's book, give the individual cards whatever meanings occurred to you at the time. But most of them suggest the kind of forces and powers that influence our lives -- the Emperor and Empress represent civil authority, the Pope and Popess represent religious authority. and so on. The Kings and Queens of the lesser trumps could represent the civil authority of different countries or cities. The knights represent military power, the suits clubs (staves) and swords could represent militaristic imperialist powers, coins could represent international finance and capitalism and economic power, and so on.
And the Fool, for me at least, represents Christ, or that class of saints, more common in the East than in the West, known as Yurodivy or Fools for Christ -- for more on that, see my article Blessed are the foolish, foolish are the blessed.
One could have branching lines for sub-plots at various points along the main line, and extend the story to all kinds of places.
And nowadays, when everyone and his auntie seems to want design their own Tarot pack, there could be even more variety, though for myself, I prefer the traditional designs, like that of the Fool on the left. Though they are vaguely medieval (perhaps because that was when they were originally designed), there seems to be a timeless and universal quality about them, while most of the idiosyncratic designs seem to be somehow limited and constrained into the designer's point of view.
Some might be concerned that doing this could be a forbidden form of divination, but is it any more divination than a random number generator that starts a computer game? Because, it seems to me, what is being suggested here is a sort of computer game of the mind.