“Talisman” Under the Tarotscope

AUTHOR’S NOTE: It’s been a while since I last did a text-and-card pastiche. This one presented a good opportunity for some tarot “mind-stretching.”

I’ve always been impressed by the contemplative mood of the Guess Who song “Talisman,” a mystical bit of New-Age sentiment replete with semi-loopy Burton Cummings/Randy Bachman lyrics offset by supple, meditative acoustic guitar and piano instrumentation (in particular the piano coda). The refrain “Talisman grace my hand” is a perfect narrative vignette for the Ace of Pentacles. It was entirely accidental, but all of the images remind me of a cocktail glass with the Ace as the sunken “cherry” garnish, the reward after a decidedly mixed “dive to the bottom.” We could also speculate that it’s “holding the ball” in each case.

Not all of the matches are ideal, but all are at least serviceable and some are perfect even though I put my own spin on a few of them. (For example, the only instance of “artificial flower” I could find in the RWS deck where the card didn’t have a more pertinent use was in the reversed 6 of Cups, and I had to enlist the “angel” motif to stand in for “feather,” but the Devil with its hand raised in seeming denial of progress was an excellent cautionary card for “not slackening the rope.”) Although it’s not my normal practice, I used reversal to indicate either the antithesis of the upright meaning or a misalignment of its influence. I tried to avoid using any card twice, but the Sun was an essential element in two of the tableaux. (All cards are from the Waite-Smith Centennial Edition, copyright of US Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT.)

Trinket worn with colors matching saddened eyes
Has lost its magic touch
People from a distant hill
Have crossed an ever-stretching sea of sand
Artificial flowers cannot die
For life within them is illusion

(Chorus)
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand

Figures made of pedigrees
Control the non-existent soul of John Smith
Walk the creature let it run
But slacken not the rope to which it’s bound
Ships in bottles cannot sail
And neither can a tombstone kill a feather

(Chorus)
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand

Kings are nothing more without the glory
And the wealth behind their thinking
Let me feel the choice of seeing
Dawn or setting sun before I die
Myriads of painted faces
Rush behind the eye of the uncertain

(Chorus)
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand

(Spoken interlude)
Let me live only to do
And let me do only to live
My steel image comes with the sun
And that’s where it slumbers now

(Chorus)
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.org on June 13, 2025.