Tarot Haiku

[Pen]

The New Liminal Tarot

1) Death: Do not be afraid -
2) The Star: Her light pours upon our Earth.
3)The Queen of Cups: Look beneath the waves...

[Pen]

Old English Tarot

1) The Hierophant: We are on our knees
2)10 of Batons: Divided, undivided.
3) Queen of Coins: Sadly she looks on.

[Pen]

Old English Tarot

1) 7 of Batons: Walking with the Wind,
2) Queen of Swords: The Queen's sword raised and ready.
3) King of Cups: Then rest, peace, a cup of wine.

[Pen]

Old English Tarot

1) 4 of Swords: Restoring the Three
2) 2of Swords: Calm, silence, all conflict stilled
3) Knave of Batons: Now the message comes...

[Pen]

Old English Tarot

1) Justice: Without emotion
2) 6 of Coins: The scales are filled and balanced.
3) The Moon: Perhaps I'm dreaming...

Written before I saw today's card - The Dreamer, from the Lonely Dreamer Tarot

[Pen]

The Crystal Tarots

1) The Star: Be calm, concentrate
2) 2 of Pentacles: Each will balance the other
3) Judgement: Welcome the Vortex...

[Parzival]

Here is a triple Tarot Haiku for the three-card set Star-Moon-Sun:

Hope, Star- in- the- heart,
Fantasy, O Moon balloon,
Sunflowers golden.

Not just Bethlehem,
Not just Buddha in full moon,
All are sunflowers.

In this covid gloom
Hope, imagination, light
Hide in the World.

[dodalisque]

1) The Star: Be calm, concentrate
2) 2 of Pentacles: Each will balance the other
3) Judgement: Welcome the Vortex...

This is for the same 3 cards from The Crystal Tarot: Star - 2 of Pentacles - Judgement

When we spill rainbows
Our reflection in the pool
Sounds a hunting horn

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote:
This is for the same 3 cards from The Crystal Tarot: Star - 2 of Pentacles - Judgement

When we spill rainbows
Our reflection in the pool
Sounds a hunting horn

Beautiful...

I've always believed that tarot haikus are readings, or messages, and can relate to all three of these - mine, Parzival's, and yours. Read together they feel like a special truth and subtle guidance for where I am now. Thank you.

[dodalisque]

THE TAROT OF SEVENFOLD MYSTERY (by Robert Place, 2012)

Judgement (XX) / King of Wands / 4 of Cups

The street musician
Heckled by a passerby
Does not move an inch

[Pen]

The Crystal Tarot

1) Temperance: With pattern she pours,
2) Queen of Wands: Her wand a flaming flower -
3) 7 of Pentacles: Sun-warmed creation

[dodalisque]

The Tarot of Sevenfold Mystery

Lady (Page) of Cups / 4 of Wands / Lady (Page) of Wands

She won an Oscar
But the media frenzy
Quickly fizzled out

[Pen]

So that's why the Lady looks so lost and forlorn in #3...

[dodalisque]

The Tarot of Sevenfold Mystery

2 of Coins / 6 of swords / The Star

Eternal hunger
Is the force that propels me
Out among the stars

[dodalisque]

So that's why the Lady looks so lost and forlorn in #3...

The four flames in the middle card looked to me like flashlight bulbs and then the table with the candle immediately took on the appearance of a podium onstage. I'm finding it lots of fun, and very challenging, to go through all these contortions, while sticking to the 5-7-5 syllable count, just in order to finally arrive at a very banal statement. I tried to inject a bit more "poetry" into the next one that I just posted today. When the Star card popped up I was determined to work the word "astral" into it but haven't had any luck so far. "Astral body"? "Astral travel"? "Astral journey"?

Eventually I guess it would be wise to use the "-" punctuation to separate the final punchline from the two lines above it. Most of the haiku I have seen seem to get their power from the juxtaposition of two separate images or ideas, but what seems to be coming out instead is a single complete sentence, sounding almost offhand like a simple observation. Very limited though. I suppose the poetry is in the connection between the card image and the simple language. Japanese haiku don't generally have a lot of abstract language in them, do they. The Japanese seem to be pride themselves on being able to avoid symbols of any sort and just present objects or events. But I'm not sure if that's possible in English. Almost every word in our language seems to carry metaphorical implications. The only way to achieve this seems to be to try to avoid as much as possible the Golden Dawn occult meanings associated with each card and simply look at them as visual images. Picking the right deck is also a difficult task. Some decks just don't seem to be suitable for haiku for some reason. I tried it with The Banksy Tarot, to try to make deliberately hard-edged haiku, and the results were ridiculous.

Do you know the poet Samuel Menashe? He writes some beautiful nano-poems. These 10 examples below are entire poems:

1) A pot poured out
Fulfills its spout

2) Life is immense
I said to her
Stirred some way
I could not say -
It is minute
She replied -
How we laughed
Though I had sighed

3) Do not scrutinise
A secret wound -
Avert your eyes -
Nothing's to be done
Where darkness lies
No light can come

4) I lie in snows
Drifted so high
No one knows
Where I lie

5) To open
Spokes slide
Upon a pole
Inside
The parasol

6) My angels are dark
They are slaves in the market
But I see how beautiful they are

7) Crow I scorn you
Caw everywhere
You'll not subdue
This blue air

8) Looking across
The water we are
Startled by a star -
It is not dark yet
The sun has just set

Looking across
The water we are
Alone as that star
That startled us,
And as far

9) At a standstill
That statue
Of my solitude
Has found its niche
In this kitchen
Where I do not eat
Where the bathtub stands
Upon cat feet -
I did not advance
I cannot retreat

10) It is the sun that makes us smile
It is the sun and spring has come
Soon it will reach Norway
Her wooden villages wet
Laughter in each rivulet

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote; When the Star card popped up I was determined to work the word "astral" into it but haven't had any luck so far. "Astral body"? "Astral travel"? "Astral journey"?

The simplicity of 'Out among the stars' - seems in keeping with the foregoing lines - I do like it.

I've never come across Samuel Menashe - his poems feel like the distilled truth of his everyday life. It seems that truth (or perceived truth) is a requisite for the acceptance of poetry - somehow I was (almost) always drawn to write story poems with small personal truths concealed somewhere therein - it felt safer that way.

[dodalisque]

I was (almost) always drawn to write story poems with small personal truths concealed somewhere therein - it felt safer that way.

I like the story poem idea. Concealing personal truths seems essential somehow. "Everyone knows that the holding back is what creates pressure" - Robert Frost. And concealment universalises the experience described in the poem, so that other people reading the poem don't feel superfluous. You want it to be a poem rather than a page from your diary. It's also like chuckling to yourself over a private joke that is too complex to explain to anyone else. Explaining a joke always kills it.

On a slightly different topic I wonder if we can ever write anything or do anything that doesn't project some kind of complex personal information. Even the breakfast cereal we prefer says something about who we are. I think that must be how fortune-telling and clairvoyance works - we are intuitively picking up a bunch of information about someone without consciously registering it. The information is always THERE in some form but being "a sensitive" - like a dog's sense of smell or hearing - means being just that. The usual dismissal of psychics as being self-deluding frauds with their head in the clouds making plausible guesses is missing the point. In a sense, all tarot readings are "cold readings", though I object to the term. The information is there - ghosts and spirits are there - just as surely as the table in front of you is there - but not everyone is sensitive enough to pick up on it. Telepathy is picking up on subtle signals too.

I'm putting forward a very materialistic definition of clairvoyance, I suppose. The tools of science are not yet subtle enough to duplicate the sophistication of human sensitivity in many ways. I mean, science didn't even recognise ultra-violet light until 1801. We are tuned to infinitely higher frequencies than that. Reading tarot cards for someone while facing them across a table is far too difficult for a computer to manage. Long distance readings for strangers is way beyond their capability but we humans can do it. Wait a minute, how did I get onto this? I think we probably need to carry this sort of conversation into PMs. I don't want to clutter up the tarot haiku section with this kind of blather. But I'm so glad you introduced me to tarot haiku. Funny what stuff comes up when we impose such tight enabling restrictions. Love that phrase. I'll try to keep my comments in this thread to specific poems and lines in future. I'm looking forward to seeing what other decks you have in your collection, though the Crystal Tarot seems perfect.

[Joan Marie]

Wait a minute, how did I get onto this? I think we probably need to carry this sort of conversation into PMs. I don't want to clutter up the tarot haiku section with this kind of blather.

Or you could just open a thread in the tarot haiku section. Here is the main heading link:
viewforum.php?f=184

Or just continue it here. I'm sure no one minds.

I understand if you want to carry this beautiful conversation to PMs but it would be wonderful to see it here in the forum.

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote: ↑Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:51 pm
Wait a minute, how did I get onto this? I think we probably need to carry this sort of conversation into PMs. I don't want to clutter up the tarot haiku section with this kind of blather.

I'm sure you're incapable of blather - I always enjoy your thoughtful posts.

Here's a new haiku - I'll change decks for the next one.

The Crystal Tarot

1) The High Priestess: Lost in a vision
2) 2 of Cups: Of Sun and Moon, two as one
3) 3 of Pentacles: And now there are three...

[dodalisque]

1) The High Priestess: Lost in a vision
2) 2 of Cups: Of Sun and Moon, two as one
3) 3 of Pentacles: And now there are three...

Lovely. The last line is so simple and so mysterious, which seems like a fitting end for a poem beginning with the High Priestess. I suppose it means something like: now the 3 of us have become one. Or "And now" could imply that, over time, there has been a change and that the vision of unity has dissolved so that speaker, sun and moon are experienced as separate entities again. Or, to really stretch it, the 3 could be the Christian Trinity or the Three-Person Godhead of the Hindus (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva). That is to say, "And now", like a door opening, the vision of the unity of sun and moon expands and moves to an even higher dimension. The nice thing about poetry is that all 3 interpretations of the line remain possible - we don't have to choose one or the other. I'm not sure what you had in mind when you wrote it. I find my most interesting lines show up when I don't care what they mean and just let the sound determine what I put down. If it sounds nice its bound to mean something good. Poetry starts to be more like music then. I guess I'm thinking of a verse in that James Taylor song "I Feel Fine":

It isn't what she's got to say
Of how she thinks or where she's been
To me the words are nice the way they sound
I like to hear them best that way
It doesn't much matter what they mean
She mostly says them just to calm me down

[dodalisque]

So that's why the Lady looks so lost and forlorn in #3...

I wonder what the deck creator Robert Place had in mind with this image. I usually think of Wands as energy or sexuality. In the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) Page of Wands card the young man is holding a wand that is bigger than he is. He has more energy than he knows what to do with. The woman's cheeks on the Lady card are flushed, suggesting, what?, that she's blushing or overheated. Her hand is awfully close to the flame - in danger of "getting her fingers burned"? I suppose we are all too close to the flame when we are teenagers. The green dress perhaps is meant to symbolise the greenness of growing things, "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower" (Dylan Thomas).

[Pen]

1) The High Priestess: Lost in a vision
2) 2 of Cups: Of Sun and Moon, two as one
3) 3 of Pentacles: And now there are three...

Lovely. The last line is so simple and so mysterious, which seems like a fitting end for a poem beginning with the High Priestess. I suppose it means something like: now the 3 of us have become one. Or "And now" could imply that, over time, there has been a change and that the vision of unity has dissolved so that speaker, sun and moon are experienced as separate entities again. Or, to really stretch it, the 3 could be the Christian Trinity or the Three-Person Godhead of the Hindus (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva). That is to say, "And now", like a door opening, the vision of the unity of sun and moon expands and moves to an even higher dimension. The nice thing about poetry is that all 3 interpretations of the line remain possible - we don't have to choose one or the other. I'm not sure what you had in mind when you wrote it. I find my most interesting lines show up when I don't care what they mean and just let the sound determine what I put down. If it sounds nice its bound to mean something good. Poetry starts to be more like music then. I guess I'm thinking of a verse in that James Taylor song "I Feel Fine":

It isn't what she's got to say
Of how she thinks or where she's been
To me the words are nice the way they sound
I like to hear them best that way
It doesn't much matter what they mean
She mostly says them just to calm me down

Your musings on the meaning of this haiku are so fascinating that I'm tempted to remain silent and leave it open to interpretation. I'll just say that I draw the cards and write each line singly (without seeing the next until the line is written), so the first is a sort of key that begins to unlock inspiration; the second sheds a little more light on the first and the third (hopefully) comes to some sort of conclusion (or maybe just a clue) as to the meaning. The most noticeable thing on the Priestess card was, for me, the red book, which really stood out (mostly the books on this card are coloured to blend in rather than pop out). It looked as though she had been reading, looked up and suddenly saw something, but her eyes seem so unfocused that I felt it must be a dream image or a vision. Sun and Moon together remind me of alchemical engravings and the spiritual process, and then there's the two cups...

I know what you mean about the sounds of words - I love subtle echoes in poems - not necessarily rhymes - but haiku can be tricky in this regard. Lyricists are poets too, and they have the extra dimension of music and rhythm to lead the dance. Dylan always seemed to speak directly to the heart (at least in his earlier days), and Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel and so many others. In the words of the song, Those were the days, my friend...

[Pen]

So that's why the Lady looks so lost and forlorn in #3...

I wonder what the deck creator Robert Place had in mind with this image. I usually think of Wands as energy or sexuality. In the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) Page of Wands card the young man is holding a wand that is bigger than he is. He has more energy than he knows what to do with. The woman's cheeks on the Lady card are flushed, suggesting, what?, that she's blushing or overheated. Her hand is awfully close to the flame - in danger of "getting her fingers burned"? I suppose we are all too close to the flame when we are teenagers. The green dress perhaps is meant to symbolise the greenness of growing things, "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower" (Dylan Thomas).

I had to google The Sevenfold Mystery, which is apparently based on Plato's theory of the three parts of the soul.

And from Goodreads:

His (Robert Place's) work expresses the Renaissance ideal that physical beauty and spiritual beauty are linked in one continuum that can lead to the mystical experience of beauty itself, as a timeless, underlying reality. Plato described this reality as a radiant light that is the true food of the soul. He said that this light is made of the true essence of Virtue, a higher quality of virtue, beyond mere codes of behavior.

Perhaps it depends on who The Lady represents in this tarot - I suppose she's the Lady of Wands rather than the the Queen. For curiosity's sake we'd need a guidebook to know what Robert Place intended, but the images work as visual clues anyway - better not to know everything as far as haiku is concerned.

[dodalisque]

I know what you mean about the sounds of words - I love subtle echoes in poems - not necessarily rhymes - but haiku can be tricky in this regard. Lyricists are poets too, and they have the extra dimension of music and rhythm to lead the dance. Dylan always seemed to speak directly to the heart (at least in his earlier days), and Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel and so many others. In the words of the song, Those were the days, my friend...

Oh, man, you should check out the poems of Kay Ryan. Sort of a cross between Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Niels Bohr, the physicist behind quantum theory! Every word in her little poems seem to rhyme with every other word. The whole thing is held together by an intricate network of connected sounds, like the inside of a watch. And she's funny and brilliant too. She's in her 80s now. She was America's poet laureate for two years a while back. Since the love of her life died - another woman she lived with in California for most of her life - she has written some astonishing poems about grief but she is the least gloomy poet I can think of.

Funny the way the unconscious works...I've just remembered that when she was deciding whether or not to dedicate her life to poetry she cycled across the US with only a deck of tarot cards for company. She knew nothing about tarot but liked the pictures and set herself a discipline of writing one poem a day about one card per day. It's exactly the kind of thing we're doing with Tarot Haiku in fact. Of course that meant she got to write lots of different poems about the same card now and again. Towards the end of her trip she flopped down to the ground after getting to the top of a particularly challenging peak and realised she had come to the moment of decision. In her head she asked the question, "Should I become a poet or not?" And immediately she heard a voice in her head say quite distinctly, "Well, do you enjoy it?" And she said out loud, "Well, yes I do." And then she rolled around on the floor laughing and yelling. The decision had been made. "I do" is how you sign the deal in a wedding, isn't it.

Leonard Cohen of course is a genius. I bumped into him once, quite literally, in a library in Ottawa back in the 80s. I dropped my books and I was really annoyed until I saw who it was and then I felt happy as a lark. Who else in the rock business has spiritual liberation as his main subject matter. His later stuff, post 10 New Songs, is better than the early ones IMHO. Because the money is in the music industry, all the really talented poets in the world write songs now. The best writers write mystery novels or science fiction or TV scripts. Only academics write poems nowadays. Except Kay Ryan of course. Dylan has always been a blind spot for me, though of course some lines and songs are fantastic and overcome my suspicion that his lyrics are "potentially half-baked" as Larkin once said about him at the peak of his fame. Nobel Prize? Yer 'avin a laff.

I would add Neil Young, Nick Drake, Loudon Wainwright, John Prine, and Gillian Welch to the troubadour list, but of course it goes without saying (ahem) that the greatest songwriter who ever lived is (roll of drums) Townes van Zandt. He is the Erik Satie to Dylan's Beethoven. There must be dozens of great new songwriters out there now but I haven't heard any of them. The lyrics seem inconsequential to me. But that just proves we're getting old. Music is a young person's game. The music that was around when we were young simply reminds us what it felt like to be young. (I don't really believe that, by the way. I really think that the kids have forgotten how to write melodies and have nothing interesting to say, but I'd never say it out loud.)

[dodalisque]

I really think that the kids have forgotten how to write melodies and have nothing interesting to say, but I'd never say it out loud.

What it is, is that musical genres always sound boringly similar until you really take the time to study them and listen to a lot of it. Making the fine distinctions between different artists is when you start to appreciate the differences within the genre and hone your aesthetic taste, find out where your taste situates itself with in the field. All Bach sounds like the same tune to me because I've never really listened to it. All Rap I also reject with infuriated indifference. Only the young really have the time and necessary concentration to devote to listening to enough music to make a serious appraisal of it. I'm sure there are some amazing geniuses playing Rap out there but I'm deaf to it. It takes a lot of time and effort to tune into the zeitgeist.