Someone else’s present and my ultimate unknowing..

 

 The Tarot (some background) #2

Once upon a time, a friend of mine thought that he had a cursed pack of Tarot cards and he asked me if I could help him to dispose of them, one card at a time. Simply throwing them away or burning them was not gonna cut it for him, so I agreed to meet up and divide the deck. He told me the best way to break the hex would be to shuffle and then deal out the pack between us and then for each of us to relocate every card separately from one another, somehow, out there in the world. This was to be done in a deliberate and mindful manner as possible and 4 months later, just before New Years Eve, my half was gone. I was 17 years old then, about to turn 18 and it all sounded like a cool idea at the time.

The Tarot cards were Alister Crowley's Book of Thoth (above). A visually striking deck, layered with dense symbolism and beautifully painted by Lady Frieda Harris and published in 1944. I had possession of half, which was around 39 cards and between September and December I found places for them in my world to be discovered by others. At times I felt like a reverse pickpocket as I slipped them into the coat pockets of strangers on the streets. I hid a few in library books here and there and put one inside a Bible on the pulpit in a church. I put the Death card into a bottle and threw it into the sea. I stuck the Hermit up in a phone box next to the call girl cards. I gave the Ace of Wands to a child to run and show their parents and I attached The Chariot card to the collar of a dog on fetch. I left The Sun at the top of a monkey puzzle tree in my local park, where I used to sit and read. These are just a few examples that I remember as I write this.

Looking back on this experience I now consider it a kind of esoteric introduction to an awareness of my own perception with an attention that I cannot remember ever giving to it before. It was a practical lesson in aligning (or assigning) the universal symbols of the tarot with that of my own psyche and in turn with the world around me, before pot and psychedelics entered the scene, making everything all about them. Maybe it was because of the hex, but I took the task seriously and I carefully considered each card before committing it to someone else’s present and my ultimate unknowing.