I Cannot Find the Hanged Man: Tarot Cards in Fantastic Fiction

Abstract

In 1909, the occult publishing firm Rider and Son issued a pack of Tarot cards created by the artist Pamela Coleman Smith and the writer Arthur Edward Waite, both members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This new Tarot linked a divination device that originated in the eighteenth century with current esoteric ideas. T. S. Eliot’s use of the cards in The Waste Land fixed the image of Tarot as the embodiment of a mystical quest, and, as the most available Tarot in the twentieth century, the Rider Pack provided an enduring set of images and meanings for Tarot mythology, which continues to influence speculative fiction and to create new interactive storytelling memes through Tarot readings.

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Notes

1 This influential Tarot pack is identified by various combinations of the names of its publisher, creator, and illustrator. This article uses the term Rider Pack.

2 Waite’s The Holy Grail, Its Legends and Symbolism (1933) was published earlier under the title The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal (1909).

3 The Dark Tower official website: www.stephenking.com/darktower/.

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Notes on contributors

Juliette Wood

Juliette Wood studied Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania and conducted further research in Celtic studies at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and at Linacre College, Oxford. She has written extensively on the Holy Grail, medieval Welsh literature, and folklore. She is a past president of The Folklore Society and currently teaches courses at Cardiff University on Arthurian literature, Celtic mythology, Gothic literature, and medievalism in contemporary culture.