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PKD on TOE
Jul. 24th, 2006 10:22 amThis week's Theory of Everything is all about Philip K. Dick. Host Benjamin Walker gets a Ubik tattoo, and then phones someone else with a Ubik tattoo. Then PKD practices a speech for people who have Ubik tattoos.
Jul. 24th, 2006
Happy Squirrel
Jul. 24th, 2006 11:03 amZarf has finished all the trumps (major arcana) for his SVG tarot deck. PNG preview here.
Why don't I have any tarot-cardy icons? I guess because I'd have to pick one to start with.
Fact you may not have known about me: During my fifth and final year of college, and for a little ways after graduation, I was deeply involved in the cartomancy aspect of tarot, to the point where I believed that I experienced something mystical through it (and also to the point where, ten years later, I can still easily summon the word "cartomancy"). I was also under a tremendous amount of stress and confusion from various sources. No doubt these were linked, but I don't think the relationship of the two is merely symptomatic: screwing around with the cards helped me get through that rough time. Typical story of someone lonely employing religion, really.
I left it behind around the time I reconnected with friends, the people I think of as my Maine tribe, a couple of years after graduation. As things stabilized, I reëvaluated my spiritual standing and found that the woo-woo was no longer part of it. The deck I used for all that, a Robin Wood Tarot I bought from Silo Seven in Bangor, was repurposed for a while as a Zarcana/Gnostica deck, but I eventually retired it in favor of the Aquarian Tarot's far more mellow and game-appropriate imagery.
I still have it, though, up on my game shelf, in its original, beat-up box. I don't regret going through that period, though for a long while before now I was hesitant to admit to it. Learning the tradition of tarot and all its elemental symbolism was a lot of fun, and I still enjoy seeing it used as a source of fantastic stories. (And I have long held a solid association between the four core Volity Games folks -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prog, daerr, radiotelescope, jtroutman - and the four suit-elements. Though this sort of thinking was inspired as much by the comic The Invisibles as by anything else.)
Why don't I have any tarot-cardy icons? I guess because I'd have to pick one to start with.
Fact you may not have known about me: During my fifth and final year of college, and for a little ways after graduation, I was deeply involved in the cartomancy aspect of tarot, to the point where I believed that I experienced something mystical through it (and also to the point where, ten years later, I can still easily summon the word "cartomancy"). I was also under a tremendous amount of stress and confusion from various sources. No doubt these were linked, but I don't think the relationship of the two is merely symptomatic: screwing around with the cards helped me get through that rough time. Typical story of someone lonely employing religion, really.
I left it behind around the time I reconnected with friends, the people I think of as my Maine tribe, a couple of years after graduation. As things stabilized, I reëvaluated my spiritual standing and found that the woo-woo was no longer part of it. The deck I used for all that, a Robin Wood Tarot I bought from Silo Seven in Bangor, was repurposed for a while as a Zarcana/Gnostica deck, but I eventually retired it in favor of the Aquarian Tarot's far more mellow and game-appropriate imagery.
I still have it, though, up on my game shelf, in its original, beat-up box. I don't regret going through that period, though for a long while before now I was hesitant to admit to it. Learning the tradition of tarot and all its elemental symbolism was a lot of fun, and I still enjoy seeing it used as a source of fantastic stories. (And I have long held a solid association between the four core Volity Games folks -
prog, daerr, radiotelescope, jtroutman - and the four suit-elements. Though this sort of thinking was inspired as much by the comic The Invisibles as by anything else.)Robin Wood is currently producing, among many other things, clothes for your Second Life character. Includes Black Watch Plaid! This is actually really great.