Introduction to the exhibition |
BY FRANCO ARATO |
| published at Tarot 2000 Tarot exhibition
catalog to Palazzo Kursaal - Loano(SV) and Centro Civico G. Buranello - Genova (GE) - Italy - 2000 |
 |
 SEE
TAROT ORIGINS |
SEE
TAROT DEVELOPMENT |
| "Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant, / had a bad cold, nevertheless / is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, / with a wicked pack of cards. Here, she said, / is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor (those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) / Here is Belladonna, the Lady of Rocks, / the lady of situations". | |
| These lines were written in 1921 by Thomas
Stearns Eliot, the most famous clairvoyant of European desolation: a
poet can’t resist the fascination of tarot.Someone believes that in
tarot we can read a part of universal history and a fragment of our
destiny. We are allowed to raise some doubts: how can the macrocosms,
the bright body of stars, correspond to the opacity of our wrinkled
microcosms? But vulgus vult decipi, people loves to be deceived – and we are, with no exception, people. So lets pay a visit to an old (perhaps centenarian) wise clairvoyant, Madame Sosostris: her name has a taste of old Egypt, hasn’t it? Lets ask her which place the Alive one and the Dead one occupy in the Wheel of Fortune; whether the Reign of Plenty, where dung becomes gold without human sweat, is near; whether in the eternal braid of Transformation the Hanged man, who is now upside down, will see the world from the right side and the King of hearts, without his crown, will finally eat an hard-earned bread. I am afraid that Madame will answer without hesitation: and I am afraid she won’t say the truth. And yet, since we all walk in a circle and nobody knows where the circle begins, where the circle ends, an ounce of truth is perhaps buried in that ocean of lies. In a similar way fishermen do not know whether the intruder who rests in the shell will be a pearl some day: those pearls will be their eyes? |
|
| Franco Arato | ||
 |
||
 |
||
| see the video "Madame Sosostris" by Chris Paradis | ||
| Quick guide |  |
Tarot FAQ |
|
GO TO THE INTRODUCTION by D. F. GROSSO |
||
|
GO TO THE INTRODUCTION by M. F. POPIA |
||
 |
||
