The Lover as Morality Play
AUTHOR’S NOTE: It struck me today that the image of the four characters on the Tarot de Marseille “Lover” card might be viewed as a composite of the first six cards that precede it in the series of trumps. If we lay out those cards according to the scene in the Lover, we have the visual storyboard for a theatrical vehicle akin to a Medieval morality play. Warning: My thoughts take an odd turn into musical minutiae, but I think my premise remains valid.
The women are represented by the Popesse as the more prim-and-proper of the pair (who looks like she is appealing to the rather cynical Fool and Magician to rescue her from the lustful Emperor) and the Empress as the alluring vamp (who has her roving eye on the Charioteer), while the Emperor (who gazes meaningfully toward the aloof Popesse while both women ignore him) vacillates between the two, trying to decide where to place his fealty when neither seems interested, and the Pope looms over the tableau, ready to bestow his blessing on whichever choice the Emperor makes. (For some inexplicable reason, the Pope in this role reminds me of a line from the Bob Dylan song Desolation Row:* “The Phantom of the Opera/In a perfect image of a priest.”) The Fool as the director and the Magician as the stage manager stand off to one side and observe.
While the overall mood between the characters seems to be one of disengagement, I carried the Dylanesque motif a little further. Perhaps the Emperor is Dylan’s “Casanova,” being punished (by the Pope) “for going to Desolation Row,” while the women are (obliquely) “spoon feeding (him) to get him to feel more assured,” and the Magician is “killing him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words.” For his part, the Pope will have to content himself with shouting at his acolytes since the two well-fed women won’t do as “skinny girls” and they certainly aren’t going to “get out of there.” The Fool stands ready to interject a little farce when things get bogged down in sentimentality. How the imagination can run wild with this stuff! (For the record, I’ve posted quite a few previous tarot-to-poetry mash-ups elsewhere in this blog.)
Here are symbolized the mythological Moon (Popesse), Mercury (Magician), Venus (Empress) and Mars (Emperor), all of them imbued with the prosaic, earthy values of Taurus (Pope), and the Fool serving as the on-site agent for the producer (Sun). This gives us all the astrological ingredients for a romantic melodrama of classical proportions. My money would be on Venus (III) and Mars (IV) hooking up, dumping the prude (II) that the Emperor has grown weary of romancing, jumping into the Chariot (VII, the sum of III and IV) after the nuptials have been administered by the cleric and riding off into the sunset, with Mercury (I) narrating their exit and the Pope (V) grinning slyly as he waves them off the stage. The Fool (unnumbered) walks away with the box-office take in that sack, while the feral theater critics “rip him a new one.”
*Pertinent lyrics from the song:
Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get outta here if you don’t know
Casanova is just being punished
For going to Desolation Row”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 15, 2023.
