Writing with the Tarot
Dali's Deck, Plath's Hanging Man, and More
I bought Dali’s Tarot deck in 2020 and found it too disturbing to use. I picked it up again recently, and had a different experience. One of my pulls was the Ace of Cups.
I saw the cup, which many interpret as the Holy Grail, levitating in the sky. This was so powerful for me; I felt it in my body. It was a moment of recognition, not interpretation.
The figure with the boat below reminded me that out of the three times I’ve fallen in love, two have have been while I was traveling in Europe. I wasn’t looking for romantic love each time but it found me. I was in pursuit of my Holy Grail is writing and living outside of a capitalist grind.
Only after I read the guide book did I notice that the clouds behind the cup could be two faces approaching each other for a kiss. Alternatively they could be angel or butterfly wings. It’s possible that they are both. Dali, the magician, creates such optical illusions or hauntings throughout the deck.
It struck me this is a great lesson for creative writing. Nothing is unclear about this image. We don’t look at it and wonder: what is that? We look at it and come up with at least three interpretations. Perhaps you could come up with more! That’s productive ambiguity, not confusion or vagueness.
The fact that I didn’t see either faces or wings at all but was moved by the levitating cup is an equally valid experience. I still feel more called to writing than to romantic love. If it’s going to find me, it will probably be when I’m serving my true love, the muse. (Alternatively, maybe the card is calling me out on this and telling me to get in that metaphorical boat again and at least travel, if not date.)
In my upcoming Awaken Your Inner Word Witch class, we’ll write with the Tarot. Here’s three techniques:
Write from the margins. Explore the card from a new angle by writing about or from the point of view of an object or person in the background. In the case of Dali’s Ace of Cups, you could write from the point of view of the figure walking towards the boat, for example.
Write from the center. Sylvia Plath is one of many writers who used the Tarot for inspiration. Her poem “The Hanging One” risks focusing on the main figure but does so with aplomb. I say “risks” because the imagery may be so familiar to our readers that we as writers have to work harder to bring it alive.
Plath immediately creates action in a figure we associate with inaction by adding it in a narrative. Then she uses an active, surprising, visceral verb— “sizzled” — to the surreal imagery of this line: “I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.” Verbs tend to be the punchiest part of English language because they are active. Make sure that you are not simply transcribing what you see but bringing it alive. We tend to focus on the visual, but here she gives us a more kinesthetic verb with “sizzled” — it could appeal to our sense of touch or smell as well. Plath also uses color to create a painterly style with the “blue volts” contrasting with “A world of bald white days…” She doesn’t tell us what the card means but rather “shows” us a story unfolding through the imagery.
Do a spread for creativity. In her book The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life, Jessa Crispin offers spreads for finding inspiration, breaking through creative blocks, creating structure, and more. I highly recommend this book!
UPCOMING CLASSES
10/27 Awaken Your Inner Word Witch: A One Day Generative Creative Writing Class
10/29 Word Witch: Exploring the Strange Magic of Embodiment with Writers.com
11/10 The Haunted Muse: Trauma, Memory, Desire, and the Art of Ghosts
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