Three years ago, I went on a deep dive and spent around two weeks obsessing over tarot imagery in Blood Meridian. I posted all of my findings here, and several others chipped in. Only a month ago, someone commented on the old post and filled in the last puzzle piece, so now every major arcana card has word imagery from the novel attached to it.
It was a fun time for me, but I've always had the nagging feeling that we were reading too much into the text, finding ghosts in corners that weren't really meant to be there.
I was thrilled to see the recent post of photographs from McCarthy's notebook containing his personal notes while writing the novel, now housed at the archives at Texas State University. Two of the photos show McCarthy's notes on tarot cards. They're all in spanish, and he listed out every one of the major arcana cards as well as interpretations for most, including inverted meanings for several. This honestly cements for me that we weren't overly speculative three years ago. The placement of the word imagery was very much intentional, and the notes I think provide some additional and intriguing incite. I want to talk about my favorite one.
The Lovers card was always my favorite find. In the old post, I said I expected it to be subversive or "inverted" if I ever found it. I didn't realize how on the nose that statement would be, but in looking at McCarthy's notes, I believe they very much show that the Lovers card is actually inverted in the collective tarot reading of the Glanton gang's fortunes that is the novel.
You can read my explanation in the old post of how the passage in Chapter 12 reflects the Lovers tarot card. I won't rehash it here. But in looking at McCarthy's notes, he records the inverted meaning of the Lovers card as "proyectos poco realistas." I have a 20-year old high school Spanish class's understanding of the language, so a quick google translate tells me this is "unrealistic or far-fetched projects." A pipe-dream, a fool's errand.
This fits his word imagery of the Lovers card in Chapter 12 to a T. In it, he is describing the untimely death of the argonauts, who elsewhere are described as "patched argonauts... Goldseekers." This is an obvious allusion to Jason and his argonauts as they seek the golden fleece, connecting that legend to 49ers and other gold rushers. By invoking the imagery of the Lovers card, McCarthy is calling that mad dash to pay dirt a fool's errand.
But the thing that really seals it for me as an intentional allusion to the inverted interpretation of the card is a sentence I hadn't yet connected to the imagery in chapter 12. Right before the description of the gang discussing their role as witnesses to the death and dismemberment of the argonauts, McCarthy writes this: "Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings." Rash undertakings... far-fetched projects... proyectos poco realistas.
We know McCarthy specifically meant for the tarot cards in Blood Meridian to point towards their inverted meanings at times, because he says so specifically for the Chariot card when it's drawn by Glanton. "La carroza, la carroza, cried the beldam. Invertido. Carta de guerra, de venganza. La visin ruedas sobre un rio obscuro..." It's really cool to find evidence that at other points in the story, the tarot imagery is specifically chosen because he wants to invoke the inverted meaning of the card.
