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| Two of Swords, a Tarot Image © by Ruth Zachary |
I
sometimes take on a Fortune Teller Persona around Halloween, and because it is
that time of year, I was reading about the Tarot cards, to be more familiar
with card meanings.
When
reading the cards, people often lay the cards out in various spreads or arrangements.
The spread suggested for use with the Waite deck (1910) was named the Celtic
Spread, that started with a Celtic cross, used for answering a specific
question. A
variation on this ten-card spread was a
layout suggested by Dorothy Riddle, a clinical psychologist from Arizona, which
was arranged in a clockwise spiral from the center outward.
Different
spreads often use different numbers of cards, which are interpreted according
to the way the spreads are arranged. In most variations each position in the
lay-out has a particular meaning, such as one position represents the person asking
the question, and other positions
represent the past, present and future influences affecting the question. Some
spreads use all of the cards, but other spreads use only a small number of
cards.
Essentially
the order of the cards, which vary according to the order of the shuffling of
the deck and the associated meanings, including position in the spread, seem to
tell a story. Different authors ascribe different interpretations to each of
the cards, and art imagery of different tarot decks suggest multiple
associations by readers of these decks. The story or interpretations told are
likely to be highly individual and different in the final picture than any
other person’s “reading.”
Using
cards to reveal a plot of a story, would not be much different than a “reading,”
for the purpose of fortune telling.
This
suggested actually using tarot cards to work as a framework for storytelling. The
number of cards used could be arbitrary. Major Arcana cards (22) could
represent main character archetypes, and (16) court cards could represent minor
characters. The story telling “spread” would determine plot elements, such as introduction
of antagonists, or allies, miscellaneous characters, describing a character,
the backstory of a character, the situation at the beginning, the order of
events through time. The (40) Minor Arcana suite cards could represent plot
elements, situational occurrences, facilitating the development of the story
and its outcome.
To try it
out, I started a spread of 40 or so cards, arbitrarily to end when the
World card appeared.
There
were many ups and downs of fortune for the main character, a woman, and periods
implying struggle, and a period of prosperity, which could make an interesting plot. Near the end, a number
of cards with negative connotations appeared, such as the Tower card, the Devil
card and the Death card. This would imply the story would be a tragedy, or
perhaps a murder. The story could be
divided into sections, according to periods of good fortune and periods of
struggle. The main character or Narrator could foreshadow the outcome in the
beginning, and develop the story to its tragic end.
I invite other writers to try some form of this method of story plotting. I might
consider other aspects of Tarot readings that would create a feasible fictional
story plot. Such a story would certainly be more unique than some plotting
formulas promoted for screen plays and short novels in how- to books. If I find
one that works better than my first attempt, I might actually try to develop
such a story, and share the method in this blog in the future.
This Writing and the Image above are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary. The Two of Swords illustration was Published in the author's book of Poetry, Spirit Walks Among Us - Xlibris, 2012.
