The World - "Videotape" by Radiohead

[Mainly speaks for itself. The videotape is a physical record of an earthly life -- much as Blake imagined the books of Urizen in his 1974 creation myth.]

When I'm at the pearly gates
This will be on my videotape, my videotape
Mephistopheles is just beneath
and he's reaching up to grab me

This is one for the good days
and i have it all here
In red, blue, green
Red, blue, green

You are my center
When i spin away
Out of control on videotape
On videotape
On videotape
On videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can't do it face to face
I'm talking to you after it's too late
From my videotape

No matter what happens now
I won't be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.

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Aesop's Fables - The World

(Click here for large version)

Wait, didn't I already post something about this very idea not long ago? Yep, which is why I was sorely tempted to assign the World card to an entirely different fable purely out of principle. I was going to run with this one, because the accompanying illustration was so much lovelier and tied in visually with a particularly famous version of the card.

But as much as I try to keep style and substance perfectly balanced, it's an unavoidable fact that the more humbly illustrated fable up above is perfectly on point in its message. The wisdom the man has attained by the end of his life echoes in what you've learned here at the end of your current phase.

Undergoing an intense journey of self-discovery reduces your fundamental elements to their purest form. Just as every stick in the bundle is its own unit, these disparate elements can remain separate even while joining together to create a whole, self-contained world. We only appreciate how true this is at certain rare moments in our lives, and the power of this revelation is what spurs us to set out into the world once more and conform reality to our desires, even as we conform our desires to reality in exchange.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The World

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The World - XXI

1. The outcome, result, or goal
2. Endurance and perseverance
3. Dominion or enslavement.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

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"The Free Man Never Thinks Of Escape."

The World is the final card in the series of Trumps, and it also sets the stage for the cycle to repeat all over again. Every great era in our lives provides us with a new chapter of history to draw from, new revelations that can be applied to whatever we choose next. It's so difficult for us to transform into what we'd like, and yet arriving at this point lets you look back and see the proof that change is possible. It's an all encompassing view of the world, and a temporary reprieve from bearing the weight it. In the Fool card, we see that beautiful weightlessness stirring into action and kicking off the next phase in our evolutionary journey.

Reading Jeanette Winterson's short novel Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles had me thinking about this a lot as spring began. Simultaneously fictional and plainly autobiographical, Winterson's retelling of the myth addresses the misery that we each feel as we bear ourselves up in (and beneath) the world. Always a fan of Greek mythology, I never really cared much for the Atlas story before, but the author's clear empathy for the character reminds of the significance waiting to be uncovered in the oldest tales. Here's a brief passage:

"The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.

"The more I did, the more I carried. Books, houses, lovers, lives, all piled up on my back, which has always been the strongest part of my body. I go to the gym. I can lift my own weight. I can lift my own weight. I can lift my own weight."

In looking for Atlas images to complement this card, I stumbled across another association that I wouldn't have otherwise thought to include: burlesque performer and former Miss Exotic World, Julie Atlas Muz. I once saw Muz perform at a gala benefit in Manhattan, and her fully nude performance -- lip-syncing Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law," first with her buttocks and then with her vagina -- sent the audience into paroxysms of amazement and discomfort. However, her repertoire includes a broad spectrum of other talents. I'm a huge fan of her balloon act, in which her dance partner is a giant orb that she eventually shimmies her entire body into. Observe (some nudity [but no lip-syncing] in the clip below):

I don't know whether the Atlas imagery is accidental or a deliberate play on her name. It's a sort of lyrically beautiful commentary on this card, however, when you compare it to the oppressive weight that Winterson describes in her fiction. Here we see a woman completely in her element, invoking the very essence of the anima mundi figure that we see on most World cards. Her enjoyment is ephemeral, but it's liberating to watch -- it fuels our sense of wonder, our optimism for a future where our current struggles will perhaps be more easily borne. As Winterson points out in the first chapter of Weight, "The free man never thinks of escape."

Previously On Arcanalogue: The World

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THE WORLD

When I wrote about The Magician, the very first card in the suit of Trumps, I was inspired by photography that made soap bubbles appear appear to be gigantic, swirling planetary vistas. The journey from that first card to the last card, The World, has allowed our perspective to evolve, and now we can see and appreciate our own world for what it really is, with all the illusions and games and artistic contrivances pared away.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts were able to take the very first photo of the Earth seen from space. We'd enjoyed partial and theoretical views of our planet before, but it was "Earthrise" -- which Galen Rowell called “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken” -- that finally showed us our own cosmic face. It was a thing that some weren't ready to accept, though for many this concrete image came at the perfect time, as the myriad countercultural movements that were forming had already begun to challenge humanity's concept of our place in the universe. (I'll always wonder whether Steve Brand's 1966 "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" campaign actually played a role in bringing it about...)

The journey that we take through the Tarot's Trump cards is a model of the path each human being walks through life, and possibly beyond. Arriving at the final card, one stands at the perfect point from which to observe all the elements of one's own universe in motion, to consider all of the experiences leading up to this point as having been a part of that complete picture. We are, each of us, utterly embroiled in the work of being alive, but occasionally a combination of virtue, discipline and fortune allow us to climb above the clouds and see it all as a visitor from another world might. How small it is, yet how brilliant! The World card is a graduation in that sense, a glimpse of both the past and the future without the trappings of appetite or ego.

The concept of macrocosm/microcosm has been explored in this blog when I posted about the four Nines -- what was true on a small scale was also true on a large scale. However impossible it seems at times, what you learn at your life's high points is still true, even when you're buried in worldly muck; the never-ending process of leading yourself back up the mountain is the essence of our life's work. Of course, once you reach the peak, traveling in any direction from that point will require you to climb down. Whether you consider this cycle to be inimical or enlightening, a clear view of your own role in it can't help but inspire you to evolve. [Via]

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