Lisa Stardust on the influence of tarot and imagination
according to smithsonian magazineSylvia Plath used the Tarot de Marseille deck, which her husband Ted Hughes had gifted her on her 24th birthday in 1956. It is believed that he also used the Rider-Waite deck. The original Tarot de Marseille cards were auctioned at Sotheby’s and gifted to Courtney Love, who shared a post of her own Tarot illustrations from Plath’s cards. Upon encountering the infamous social media post, I began to develop my own humble understanding of Plath’s work, drawing on my degree in literature and as a Tarot reader.
First of all, it is important to know that Tarot cards have a system of imagery, which is left open to interpretation. Yes, there are specific guidelines in the original sense, but the reader’s relationship with the card paints the canvas.
In Plath’s case, she literally references The Hanged Man in her poem “The Hanging Man”, which describes someone hanging in the air whose world is turned upside down. Many scholars have said that the poem deals with an “unsympathetic” world and her inability to fit into the status quo as a woman due to her resistance and ambivalence towards playing the role of a housewife in the 1960s.
I read these texts as Plath explored the division she felt between tradition and the loss of her heritage through an existentialist lens using the Tarot.
The Hanged Man in the Rider-Waite deck is depicted as a man hanging upside down, representing someone who feels trapped and unsure of himself, which is evident in the imagery of his words. “The nights slipped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid:/ A world of bald white days in a shadowless socket. A vulture boredom caught me in this tree.: If I were me, I would do what I did”
References to The Fool abound in his work “Morning Song”, although some argue that The Magician and The Star also correspond to the poem. Personally I believe that several things can be true at the same time, so I support all theories. The logic of The Magician stems from the opening line: “Love moves you like a thick gold watch,” referring to the Magician’s ability to transform words into objects and materialism into something else.
The star represents hope and holds a positive connotation, which seems true to the optimism that the poem lends to the beginning of the journey of motherhood, which Plath views with mixed emotions: “I am no longer your mother / From the cloud that distilled a mirror to reflect its slow efforts / In the hand of the wind.” Although she believes that having a child would serve as a mirror to her mother, she is hesitant in her approach to motherhood because of the impact it would have on her career. The end of the poem depicts the stars being swallowed by the dawn, indicating the end of his ability to craft his writing career: “Whitens and swallows your dull stars. And now you try / Your handful of notes; / The clear notes rise like balloons.” As we know, Plath continued to write poetry after the birth of her child in 1960, and indeed her creativity flourished, but her ambivalence about starting a family amid a burgeoning career is understandable.
Even though The Fool has forward momentum like Plath’s, that momentum can lead to hesitation – one step in the wrong direction, and The Fool falls off a cliff.
“Thalidomide” can be read in conjunction with The Lover’s Tarot card. Both the card and the poem talk about the impact of comparisons and judgments. Lovers are defined by their struggle to make choices based on opposite sides of a coin, and “Thalidomide” emphasizes the fine line between love and hate. Plath writes, “Of blood-absences. / All night I work as a carpenter. / A place for the thing I’ve been given, / A love. / Of two wet eyes and a scream. / White spit / of indifference! / Black fruits turn and fall.” As the grass is always greener with The Lovers, “Thalidomide” reconciles the notion of the desire to protect and abandon due to “indifference” and the mercurial effect of desire for two diverging disparate paths in life, similar to the fig tree in “The Bell Jar”. In the iconic poem, the tree’s “crotch” represents her frustration at becoming a parent, and each fig represents her potential as it falls and decays in different areas.
The Devil Tarot card and Plath’s “Death and Company” are intertwined. In The Devil, two people are chained together and The Devil is presiding over them. The keys to the handcuffs are on the floor, forcing us to ask why they remain restrained, if they could break free at any moment: “Two virtues ride, by horse, by serpent, / To grind our knives and scissors: / Lantern-jawed reason, squat common sense, / Courtships with doctors of all kinds, / One, housewives and shopkeepers” This shows that it is we who choose to become or remain part of these conditions. Are.
Once again, Plath is addressing the question of why we torment ourselves for the things we want and achieve. Not sure what the answer is, she asks the reader to look at the tarot cards to determine whether it is best to stay or run away, to find resolution to doubts about what one has worked so hard to achieve. The answer is subjective, the tarot and poetry are left up to interpretation. Think of both as a canvas with words and images in broad strokes. However, I feel like that’s what he meant.
The Devil and the Lovers reflected the conflicts about being a woman in the 1960s, which had a direct impact on Plath’s emotional landscape. The prostitute and Madonna complex is present throughout her work, as a form of independence versus dependence, as well as maternal instinct and the fear of losing herself in another human being who is dependent on her (Plath’s daughter). She expresses in her poetry that the isolation is eating away at her and denying her freedom. The duality then and now exists, which is why Plath’s work has longevity, and the tarot is still a powerful form of divination because both speak to the soul.
The inclusion of metaphysics brought understanding to Plath’s life, as did the Tarot. Each card highlights a part of her pain, frustrations, and criticisms of society, helping to express her feelings. Many times I have also done the same. For Plath, as for all who find solace and wisdom in the Tarot, the cards are expressions of the words we cannot express.
