It was at Magus that we purchased our first set of Tarot cards, a crisp and aromatic Aquarian tarot, whose illustration and design were rivaled only by the Rider deck, maker of the famous playing cards.
But while the Aquarian tarot had as trump card the Fool (card zero), the Rider deck’s "home-page" card was the Magician (card one).
If the regular deck has a total of 52 cards, plus two jokers, the tarot has 78, 22 of which constitute the major ar-cana. The Magician and Fool are two of the cards in the major arcana, the others of which include the Lovers (VI), the Hanged Man (XII), the Moon (XVIII), and the Star (XVII).
Aside from the tarot, many other mind-boggling gadgets not for the faint-hearted were available at Magus, a-mong which was the original, unexpurgated Tibetan Book of the Dead, as well books on astrology, the Ouija board, astrology, plus assorted treatises on magic both black and white, with corresponding warnings and advisories.
It was at Magus where we also purchased, together with the tarot deck, a couple of books on the tarot itself – one a thin, rather rudimentary how-to manual on methods of divination with the use of the cards, the other a more comprehensive tome of related esoterica, the sole copy of which we remember having passed on to the magus of Duma-guete who would have made wiser use of it, or certainly understood it better.
The thin tarot manual has lately been difficult to trace in the haphazard family library, located in what is actually a converted kit-chen.
This sudden renewed interest in the tarot, which priceless Aquarian deck we are also trying to find in the apartment, has to do with the 17th anniversary of this newspaper. And, as mentioned earlier, the 17th arcanum in the tarot is the Star, which symbol we are trying our best to recall: Hope, insight, a glimmer of light at the end of a tunnel.
In the Aquarian tarot, the operative figure is a peacock-like bird, whose wings are not as showy. But the presence of the Star is indubitable, and its gleam in the distance may carry the secret of knives.
In the Rider deck – and here again we are relying on unreliable memory – the key illustration is a nude kneeling over a pool, and a finger’s touch on the surface reflects the pentagram of light hovering above.
In the major arcana, the Star comes between the Tower (XVI) and the Moon, or between a burning Babel and the pale glow of intuition.
What the Star itself signifies in the major arcana, especially when consulting the tarot on specific questions or concerns, depends mainly on its position in the layout of the cards: In the center of which is a cross, and to the right a straight line, as if delivering the keys to wisdom straightaway.
Of tarot readers I know a few, one of them the widow of the writer Freddie Salanga. In the patio of the now closed down Dreams Cafe along Escoda, Alice used to tell the future to anyone who was interested, while inside the folk house musicians from the deep south played well into the wee hours.
If one has an instruction manual, then it should be fairly easy to do – that is, consult the cards when hedging on certain courses of action, whether to be wishy or washy, and of course love and the ever shifting faces of mercy are a popular subject.
It is easy, however, to lump tarot card reading with other forms of divination, such as astrology, palm reading, even the cast of entrails or dregs that are made to float in a cauldron or cup. In this sense then such ancient arts could at the blink of an eye degenerate into a carnival attraction, complete with acrobats, jugglers, freak shows, and street corner magicians, not to mention the occasional horrific chain letter thrown in.
The Star’s 17th arcanum may also deal with as many ways how to read a newspaper, where to start and what is saved for last, the stories coming at you from cover to shining cover.
Just as Wallace Steven said that there are 13 ways of looking at a blackbird, and Paul Simon sang that there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there could very possibly be 17 ways to read The Star.
Watch that birdie! Slip in the back, Jack! The Magus bookshop we heard is no more, burned down either from an actual fire, or some stray conflagration that pervaded our simulations of a future imperfect.