Tarot, Storytelling and Art
The Tarot has inspired writers as well as visual artists. Italo Calvino described the Tarot as a “machine for telling stories”, writing the novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies with plots and characters constructed through the Tarot. T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land uses only superficial descriptions of Tarot cards, a few of which are genuine. Random selections of Tarot cards have also been used to construct stories for writing exercises and writing games.
Tarot decks play a significant role in Roger Zelazny’s Amber fantasy series, where most major characters carry a magical deck of Tarot cards whose Trumps represent other characters (and enable communication with them) or locations. A Tarot deck inspired by the Amber series has been published.
Tarot cards also play a role in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. At the end of Book 1, The Gunslinger, Roland finally catches up to the Man in Black, who reads Roland’s future with a deck of Tarot cards in a golgotha: “Death. Yet not for you.”
From 1977 to 1980, Piers Anthony published the “Planet of Tarot” series, which included God of Tarot, Vision of Tarot and Faith of Tarot. On the planet Tarot, nightmares, visions and fantasies become real, and sometimes tangentially, sometimes on-target, the protagonist lives through myths and stories, e.g., the moment Jesus of Nazareth “dies” and accepts his spiritual journey as Christ the savior, related to Tarot cards.
In John Crowley’s novel Little, Big (1981), characters use a Tarot deck with non-standard major arcana (”the lesser trumps”) for divination.
Tim Powers’ 1992 novel Last Call depicts Tarot decks used for magic beyond just divination, particularly in a variant of poker, and alludes repeatedly to The Waste Land.
