Keys of Cardboard
The whole idea that we can, by manipulating some pieces of cardboard, create knowledge where there was none previously raises such interesting questions—of knowledge, being, even morality—that I itched to address them.
I know, however, that my skills have rarely risen beyond the ability to pose the questions. A book, like this one, has a conclusion; it has a fixed end, which you are reading now. But I’ve heard of the tarot also being called a book. If so, it is an older style of book, a set of loose leafs “bound” in a case or box and taken out, one at a time, read, and put back in the same order. But when those leafs go out of order, as they do in the tarot or in a deck of playing cards or in the Lenormand, it’s hard to make an argument for any particular leaf being the beginning or end. Yes, we might begin with 1–Rider and end with 36–Cross; we might start with 0–The Fool and end with XXI–The World. But these orders are temporary, contingent. Once shuffled, any deck becomes a new book with a new order.
For me, then, to arrive at solid conclusions about cartomancy would be to impose order on something whose great power and virtue lies in its very disorder. Turn 36–Cross over, and under it again is 1–Rider. Look behind the wreath in which the hermaphrodite dances, and the fool is dangling his foot off a precipice.
We must, in studying these cardboard keys, always keep in mind that we begin where we end. We tread the same ground, in a different order. Cartomancy is waltzing with the concept of significance. For me to say what it all means would be arrogant.
So if you wish to use these keys to open doors in your mind, you must use them. You cannot merely read about them, any more than you can learn to play Bach by reading music theory alone. It will help to read the theory, but ultimately music—and cartomancy—is about the practice.