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The Hypnotic Tarot — Part I: The Suits

I have quite an inter­est in the Tarot, large­ly from a sym­bol­ic and pos­si­bly even a Jun­gian per­spec­tive and cer­tain­ly from an artis­tic stand­point. As an art col­lec­tor, I have sev­er­al pieces of art that are based on the Tarot, includ­ing “The Star” by Frank Kel­ly Freas 1 that is one of the “stars” of my entire collection.

I also know that it is com­mon for Tarot enthu­si­asts to cre­ate their own Tarot deck: doing so not only per­son­al­izes it, it deep­ens the con­nec­tion with the Tarot sym­bol­o­gy and imagery for the indi­vid­ual. There­fore, its only nat­ur­al to com­bine this inter­est with my inter­est in hyp­no­sis to want to cre­ate the Hyp­not­ic Tarot deck. Of course, one caveat: every­thing sur­round­ing the Tarot is open (and quite fer­vent­ly) to dis­cus­sion and argu­ment, from the his­to­ry of the Tarot to the indi­vid­ual mean­ings of each sym­bol. What fol­lows is my own inter­pre­ta­tion which has about as much (or as lit­tle) valid­i­ty as any one else’s.

This first part will dis­cuss the basic ele­ments of the Tarot, the suits and their accom­pa­ny­ing sym­bols. The Suits order the Minor Arcana, the 52 cards that even­tu­al­ly became the play­ing cards in use today. The Suits and their sym­bols also appear reg­u­lar­ly in the Major Arcana. Sub­se­quent parts will cov­er the Major Arcana and the indi­vid­ual Suits of the Minor Arcana.

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Its … Hoopnotic!

It goes around and around and around, like a hypnotic spiral. Its the hula hoop, the 50+ year old children's toy that is now the latest craze. And one person…
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“Hypnotic Poison” by Dior

A puz­zling har­mo­ny born out of the fusion of four con­trast­ing olfac­tive facets:the bit­ing and intox­i­cat­ing note of bit­ter almond and carvi, the more opu­lent and pre­cious note of jas­mine Sam­bac, the bewitch­ing and mys­te­ri­ous note of moss and Jacaran­da tree, and the hyp­not­ic and sen­su­ous note of vanil­la and musk.

“Hyp­not­ic Poi­son” by Chris­t­ian Dior is the name of a fra­grance whose main attrac­tion (like “Hyp­no­tique”) is the not-so-sub­tle sug­ges­tion of hyp­not­ic pow­er and con­trol over men. That is accen­tu­at­ed by the descrip­tion of the blend of fra­grances described above: ‘intox­i­cat­ing’, ‘bewitch­ing’, ‘mys­te­ri­ous’, and ‘hyp­not­ic’, all words designed to fur­ther empha­size the mes­mer­iz­ing appeal.

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“Hypnotique” by Max Factor

For the women born to enchant men. Max Fac­tor’s Hyp­no­tique … the new fra­grance that’s cap­tured the very essence of wom­an’s pow­er over men. Cool­ly and with great ele­gance Hyp­no­tique attracts … holds … per­suades … and then! Any­thing can hap­pen! (Adver­tis­ing copy from the first mag­a­zine ad.)

Descrip­tion: All cos­met­ics, includ­ing fra­grances, are designed in part to attract and focus atten­tion on the wear­er. Some fra­grances are just a lit­tle more bla­tant about it. Fra­grances with names like “Spell­bound”, “Hyp­nose”, “Mes­mer­ize” or “Hyp­not­ic Poi­son”  bla­tant­ly sug­gest the pow­er of com­mand­ing and con­trol­ling men (although Avon’s “Mes­mer­ize”, which was orig­i­nal­ly a wom­an’s fra­grance, is now being more direct­ly mar­ket­ed toward men, strange­ly enough.) Even fra­grances not so named are fre­quent­ly adver­tised using hyp­not­ic ter­mi­nol­o­gy and imagery.

But one of the ear­li­est and cer­tain­ly one of the most bla­tant of the hyp­not­ic cos­met­ics was “Hyp­no­tique” by Max Fac­tor. Released in the late 1950’s, the hyp­not­ic imagery was very notice­able in the mag­a­zine ads:

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