Literary Tarot
The Making Light website has an interesting thread up, inviting participants to lay out a Tarot-style spread for a well-known person—living, dead, or fictional—using books, movies, and/or other creative works in place of the Tarot cards. Although we are invited to employ any Tarot layout we want, it’s clear that all participants will use a Celtic Cross layout; it’s a popular layout, it’s what Abi Sutherland used for his examples, and, above all, it’s at hand, requiring no one to go look up other variants.
The only rule is not to be boring. It proved so compelling an exercise that I blew my my writing time budget on it, so that’s what you get here today.
I’m afraid I made an obvious, and therefore boring, choice of subject, but I hope the theme makes up for it. As someone who has never accomplished any meaningful thing on his own, and little given to introspection, I thought a list of self-help titles would be appreciated, especially since they don’t tax the intellect quite as much as actual literature does. I took all these titles from Amazon.com; I cut several subtitles in the interests of brevity and humor.
Card 1: This covers him, defining the situation in which he finds himself—The Logic of Failure
Card 2: This crosses him, defining obstacles with which he must contend—You Don’t Have to Learn Everything the Hard Way
Card 3: This crowns him, representing the best possible outcome from the situation—Enforcing International Law
Card 4: This is beneath him, the foundation of the situation, which the querent has embraced and made his own—Laws of the Jungle
Card 5: This is behind him, his past activity: More Scames from the Great Beyond!: How to Make Even More Money Off the Creationism, Evolution, Environmentalism, Fringe Politics, Weird Science, the Occult, and Other Strange Beliefs
Card 6: This is before him: What Color is Your Parachute?
Card 7: The significator, the querent or subject himself—The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children
Card 8: His house, the (social) environment in which he operates and which made him what he is—Self Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life
Card 9: His hopes and fears—Burying the Secret
Card 10: Culmination, the final conclusion of the subject under consideration—The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need: Repress Your Anger, Think Negatively, Be a Good Blamer, and Throttle Your Inner Child.
You don’t need any hints, do you?