The Waste Land and Tarot Cards [Possible Spoilers]

Fallen London
1

It took me an embarrassingly long time, but I finally realized a week or so ago that most of the dream storyline names (i.e. “Burial of the Dead”, “What the Thunder Said”, etc.) are from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land”. (That’s an HTML link in the poem name, for those who’d like to see for themselves.) In a way, so is Madame Shoshana and her non-Tarot Tarot cards-- I believe one blurb on the right sidebar mentions the Gibbet and the Blacksmith, neither of which are in the traditional deck; though the character in the poem is Madame Sosostris, who has non-Tarot Tarot cards like the drowned Phoenician Sailor and Belladonna, the Lady of the Rock.

The Tarot thing wouldn’t have poked me so hard, but the other day someone posted a thread about a card called the Tower of Sun and Moon, or something similar. It’s the one that gets you a paid room at the Royal Bethlehem Hotel. The Tower, the Sun, and the Moon are three cards that are in the traditional deck.

The Unreal City, the poem’s themes of the living-who-are-dead and life through death, references to London and it’s various areas (and the Thames), and the Tarot. I’m not sure where these ideas lead, and it’s possible I’m just poking at things that go nowhere. Anyone else have thoughts on these?
edited by RageBox Alice on 3/10/2012

2

I can definitively see that the poem was a likely inspiration. The main question is, how far does the inspiration go?

Glancing through the poem, I can see other possible lines, such as the talks of playing chess, which speak to not only the dream, but also what many of us do on our boat rides. Perhaps I am only seeing things because I look though

3

it’s entirely possible we’re both reading a lot into it. just because the poem inspired some things, it doesn’t follow that the writers were sitting there pouring through it for things to link to.

Ah well. It’s still one of my favorite poems ever, and it made me happy when I finally made the connection. Now I"m only left wondering why there aren’t any Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland references, given the fact that London seems to have fallen down a very big rabbit hole.