Extract from “Pistis Sophia: the Goddess Tarot” – Scheherazade (Seven of Cups)
20 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Goddess Tarot, Mythology, Tarot
The following is an excerpt from the completed chapter on the Seven of Cups – Scheherazade – from “Pistis Sophia: the Goddess Tarot” We chose Scheherazade for this card because of the intricate manner in which she weaves stories, fictions, and illusions in her night-time tale-telling, yet also for the way the stories teach the listener a great number of lessons. In fiction and illusion can sometimes be simple fantasy, yet there can also be truth. You never really know which it will be until then story’s conclusion, however…
Seven of Cups, "Pistis Sophia: the Goddess Tarot"
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The Arabian Nights contains stories that even today we are fond of from our earliest childhood, and that have been retold in many forms and in some cases put to film: Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp are a few examples. It is interesting to note, however, that the most popular tales are not in the original Arabic versions, but were instead added by Galland – possibly after hearing them from an Arabic storyteller. However, nearly all the tales from Nights, whether they have become popular in the West or not, maintain narratives and characters that are familiar to us and our collective imagination: the flight from death, magic going awry, promises made and broken, perilous quests, the temptation of the opposite sex, talking animals… The tales are works of fiction – illusions and fantasies – yet they contain within them clues to the secrets of life, death and the universe. They contain morals and lessons on how to be a better person, how to be compassionate, kind, witty, clever, and noble. They teach us how to be imaginative and think outside the box. Here in the Nights are the examples of the ability of mankind to perceive and imagine, to fascinate each other, to weave stories and visions; when we read these tales we can almost taste the exotic fruits, smell the incenses and sandalwood perfumes, hear the call of the songbirds and desert creatures, see in our mind’s eye the silks and architecture of the Arabia of the collective imagination. For the Nights is unlikely to tell us exact histories or factual presentations of the location and time period it is set in – this is not the duty of fiction. Burton sums up the purpose of the 1001 Arabian Nights in the very first page of his edition:
“Verily the works and words of those gone before us have become instances and examples to men of our modern day, that folk may view what admonishing chances befell other folk and may therefrom take warning; and that they may peruse the annals of antique peoples and all that hath betided them, and be thereby ruled and restrained:–Praise, therefore, be to Him who hath made the histories of the Past an admonition unto the Present! Now of such instances are the tales called “A Thousand Nights and a Night,” together with their far famed legends and wonders.”
(Burton, 2001, 1.)
Thus, even in fiction, dreams and illusions, truth can be found and utilized. As the English writer Oscar Wilde once said, “Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth”.
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It has been commented that the urge to tell stories comes directly from the realization that we are one day going to die, and that these fictions are our method of immortality:
“Human beings tell stories – in bars, in novels, in courtship, in genealogies – because we are finite biological creatures. We live in biological time, and we have beginnings, middles, and ends. Scheherazade keeps her own life going by telling other lives and deaths – and prolongs it long enough to bear the king three sons and extend both their lifelines into another generation”
(A.S. Byatt, in Burton 2001, xiv.)
The Nights has been praised for centuries not only for its engaging subject matter, but for the way in which the stories within it are told. Like dreams, the stories are within bigger stories within even bigger stories, and every story weaves into another. Byatt writes:
“The Nights is a maze, a web, a network, a river with infinite tributaries, a series of boxes within boxes, a bottomless pool. It turns endlessly on itself, a story about storytelling.”
(A.S. Byatt, in Burton, 2001, xiii.)
These dreams that we turn into stories for others to hear can engage us to the extent that we get lost in their labyrinthine plots and characterizations, and there is always a chance that somebody might become so enthralled with them that they lose the sense of their real life. However, when fiction and illusion, fantasy and dreams are engaged with positively, they provide our real life with fuel, inspiration, fun, and romance. Some of the most important inventions of the modern age were created after dreams and half-fantastical ideas. The greatest stories of our time come directly from the imagination.
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All quotes from Burton, Sir Richard F. The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. New York: Random House Inc., 2001.
