Tarot On Fri, 28 May 2004, Greg Ulmer wrote: The binary in any case is not Miami Vice-Virtue but Miami Fortune-Virtue. We discussed during the FRE Sitdown the possibility of using an updated Tarot structure to articulate Miautre as chora (categorical image). Querent netizens could query Miautre in this way using the spreads and intuitive assumptions of Tarot as interface metaphor to discover Problems B Us (the policy dilemmas outside are the personal dilemmas inside writ large). The Major Arcana In this Miautre Tarot is Revelle (zero, Fool position) on the journey quest of individuation "encountering" the denizens of the zone, organized in a rationalized sequence, not corresponding to the traditional sequence of the Tarot (1 = Magician through 21 = World) but precisely according to the actuality of entities found in Miami and Myami (geographical and mediated). Frank the taxi-artist, Simon Lubin impounded trader, Winston Murdoch engineer... but also Crockett and Tubbs... and here we need to brainstorm a bit, to add the media figures who haunt the PRESENT of the zone -- Versace for example? Fidel Castro? that is, who are the archetypes setting the default moods? The point of the design is to be faithful not to the original Tarot but to update it to reflect the trumps governing contemporary values/topics. Recalling that literate topics are best understood now under the term "values" (Kenneth Burke). Minor Arcana The four suits translate into the four registers of the popcycle. Again the design updates the Tarot symbols to reflect our own categories of the mystory. Nor is there any need to respect the exact number of units -- 14 cards -- structuring the suits. The point rather is to structure the register as a delimited number of units, just enough to cover the full process or unfolding of the discourse represented by the suit. The function of the Minor Arcana is to supply the historical propensity of things, as treated in Part Three (Oracle) of the book (MIAMI VIRTUE). Thus, in each case, the suit covers the PAST leading up to the FRE pschogeographic (choral) drift to measure (map) Miami. Family (Cups) = Revelle's father, big game hunter + Skeeversville childhood, "back of beyond." Entertainment (Wands) = the Western story and its evolution into hardboiled hero and film noir. "Naked City" noir docu-fiction. The invention of the femme fatale (Salome). History (Swords) = the Frontier myth, Cavalry - Indians, Teddy Roosevelt, US foreign policy, the Industrial City, including the invention of jazz. Career (Pentacles) = the wisdom tradition (ataraxy), phronesis (practical wisdom), background for modern critical theory state of mind that takes the chiffonier (ragpicker) as the prototype of the modern hero: Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, et al. PRINCIPLE OF ATTRACTION This Miautre Tarot is an interface for a database of information documenting the full range of river reality. This documentation fills out the "meaning" of the "card" dealt into the spread selected by the querent. Miautre chora then is at once a whole (gathers the topics into a mood) and an articulated process (the Tarot narratives). This individual chora may in turn be gathered into a global Cha-Ching (KaChing), connecting a sequence of city-grams into a hexagrammatology of transnational syncretic wisdom. Each city chora may be queried individually as a Tarot, or globally as an I Ching. prospectively glue Here is the whole deck of Tarot. These scans were downloaded from www.learntarot.com. You can read detailed explinations of each card at http://www.learntarot.com/cards.htm. Major Arcana Wands Cups Swords Pentacles Back to Divination Relays.