Wands And Swords, Pentangles And Cups

W.B. Yeats believed that he was able to physically enter the occult sphere. For him, the ordinary world would fade away, and he would walk and talk in a spiritual realm that he believed truly existed around and outside the physical world. The way he entered this world was through symbols, and so for him, a symbol was not just a poetic divergence—eyes like water, a mouth like a rose—it was an entry point into another realm, a realm he actually went to, where he mingled with ghosts and spirits, one of whom was a Renaissance geographer named Leo Africanus. Yeats and Africanus would often communicate by letter, with Yeats writing questions, and Africanus answering them, in writing, through Yeats’s hand. Yeats also liked the tarot, during the time when the tarot was still somewhat secret. He was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and after studying for three years, he lay down in a tomb in a basement in London, where he died a symbolic death and was reborn and given the name Demon Est Deu Inversus—“The Devil Is an Inverted God.” It isn’t only Yeats. T.S. Eliot attended séances and used tarot in his work, most notably in The Waste Land. While the clairvoyant in The Waste Land is maybe a fake, the symbology of the tarot is quite clearly at play in Eliot’s mind. It was also at play in Kafka’s, who, according to Jean Leavitt, used many symbols from the tarot in Amerika. The list goes on and on. James Merrill used to write poems with a Ouija board. He and his boyfriend would put their hands on it together. What we are saying is that the notion of art as a meeting place of the physical and spiritual realms has a sturdy provenance, but it has in recent years died some kind of a death and gone the way of the New Age aisle. Where are our crazed mystics, conversing with Ouspensky over tea? Where are our bearded poets, communicating through the weather with Jesus? Oh, we know. They’re at MFA programs. They’re down in the basement of Furnald, emailing a guy who’s up in his office eating a muffin. They’re at n+1 parties, screaming “Whatever’s cold!” at the bartender. Anyway, OK, so we asked the novelists Rivka Galchen and Gary Shteyngart if they’d let tarot reader Gwendolyn Colman give them readings about their next books, and they agreed. These readings happened via telephone. Rivka Galchen is a writer and a doctor. She got her MD from Mount Sinai, where she focused on psychiatry. Her father was a meteorologist, and her mother a programmer at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in 2008 and is about a man who recognizes (or comes to believe), all at once, that the woman to whom he is married is not in fact his wife. Rivka: Hi.
Gwendolyn: I’m supposed to give you a reading on your next book. I don’t even get to see the cards, but I guess you can see the cards.
I see the cards, yes. I’ll just tell you what they say. But if you could just contemplate in a calm, open way, on the idea of having another book. I’ll just shuffle the cards. [pause] OK. First thing I see is a lot of the color of the sky, and the color of the sky is inside a person. It’s like a macrocosm of the outside world inside a person, and the person doesn’t know it yet and has to discover this. I like that.
I’m getting this image of the person with their head inside a box, and all the good stuff is below the box, in their heart. They just have to find this out. So that’s the first thing that comes up. I’m getting the name Karen. Karen?
Yeah. And I see a little boy in pajamas. [laughs]
So there’s the start, the woman is a mother. She’s a very nurturing person, but there’s an abusive man in the picture, because the devil comes up and crosses her. And I see that there’s a drug-using teenager. I don’t know if that is her or another character. It may be that something in the distant past comes to fruition and influences the present. It says that this woman had such a deep longing for a man in her life that she closed her eyes a bit, so she could have a relationship. And it turned out to be a nightmare. There’s a hospital, there’s a clinic, there’s tests that are being done. She works, and she’s good at what she does, but because she took a lot of time out for being a mom, she’s also kind of at the beginning of her career, rather than at the end. So there’s this whole feeling that she has to hone her craft, she has to get good at what she does. And then, meanwhile, people are exploiting her. I think that the abuser is an alcoholic. She finds out that what she thought was going to be this real partnership turns out to be a bit of a nightmare and not at all what she wanted, but then, as she’s working, she gets really into her craft, and she becomes a part of something bigger. She’s able to get away from the people who exploit her, I think, and to take care of herself, and then, finally, to give back to the world. So that’s the path I see for that.

I don’t know if I understand exactly. I mean, I’ve sort of got really boring questions. Like, is it a short book or is it a long book?
Oh sure, OK, let’s ask that. OK, it’s a short book. And then, are there any supernatural elements?
Well, there’s the devil, and there’s karma. I’ll just pull three cards on that. I once saw a devil. I mean in reality. That is… How did you know that you saw a devil?
Because what we call the devil is actually just an elemental being. He just took the form of a devil because he overheard some priests talking. He heard them describing him, so he said, “Oh, that must be what I am. That must be who I am.” He was just an elemental nature spirit, but he was very powerful and very mischievous, and he liked to cause a lot of trouble, and he became the devil. OK, so I’m going to ask about the supernatural now. Oh, well you could definitely go that way. If so, there are two young men involved in that story line. One young man is a drug abuser, but as he grows older, he splits into two people. One who’s a drug abuser and one who’s able to be in the world and function in the world. Then there comes this kind of loneliness, and a short stay in a mental hospital, where he tries to analyze the situation, which doesn’t really help. He has to find another way to deal with it, and I guess that leads him to the relationship with the mother. That’s what I get. I’m wondering how long will it take me. Will it be finished in a year?
The cards say that you are very, very smart and you can easily write it in one year. Oh, that’s good. [laughs]
They say that writing the ending, you’ll really have fun. And they say to spend time outside in the summer and stuff. That’s good. Can they tell me what I should do with my free time?
OK, let’s do a reading about your free time. As I shuffle, you can just relax and contemplate your free time, and I’ll ask about that. Oh, I can see the cover of your book. You can see the cover of it?
This woman. You don’t see her whole body, but from the neck down she has, like, sky inside of her. Blue sky. And I also can see clouds or something, but blue sky. And from the neck up there’s like this big black and brown box that is against her head or has her head in it. Huh. Does the book end up being like a comedy or a tragedy? Which way does it lean more?
Ah. I didn’t see any comedy cards in it. I’ll ask. It seems more of a tragedy. If you did a comedy, then you would have to have an authority figure that you would make fun of in the book, and the woman, or the drug user, would overcome their fear of him. That would be how it would work. I feel the book has a kind of ecstatic religious-vision element to it. I have to tell you there’s a really strong Catholic element. Oh! That’s my favorite religion, even though it’s not mine.
Well, that’s what I’m getting. That’s why I think I’m getting that image of the devil guy listening to that priest and becoming the devil. OK… free time. Free time. [pause] Oh. Yeah, these cards really like you. They’re saying you have really good intuition. They also say that that’s how you need to be working, by paying a lot more attention to your own intuition and less to other people. They also say you need to do something that works with your energy. You have a lot of energy and you need to do some kind of exercise, otherwise it’s not going to work out. And they say that around you right now there are some really bad influences. Like what?
Well, somebody’s lying to you, and someone’s causing you a lot of worry. There’s a lot of negativity, a whole lot, and the reason why you’re vulnerable to that is because you’re not listening to yourself enough. There are all these good people also, but you’re getting sucked in by people who are only going to give you difficulties. It’s like you feel guilty, like you have to say yes to them, or do what they want, or feel sorry for them, instead of listening to yourself. These cards are saying, “Come on! Listen to yourself.” It’s dumb not to, and they said you’re too wise for that. They also say that it’s almost like you have a fear of success, and when you feel like something might be working and it might become very successful, you might do something to get really distracted and let other people take you off track. It also says that there’s one guy who really cares about you, and he’s really sweet. So stick with him. Well, that’s nice.
Yeah, and then it says that you can be very successful, just don’t jinx yourself. Anything else? Um, no. I believe that’s it.
OK. Good. Nice talking to you. After the reading, we checked in with Rivka to see what she thought… Vice: So, Rivka, what can you tell us about your novel-in-progress?
Rivka: I get very antsy when talking about it for fear that when I hear things come out of my mouth, I’ll get nauseated and/or plain old just lose interest entirely. Very weak way to be, but avoids some pain. I’m no fan of pain. That evasion aside, I do think I know what I’m curious about, which is sort of what the novel is rising up out of, if not strictly what it’s about. Some sort of charlatanism that runs so deep as to become its own kind of sincerity. This played out in the field of ecstatic religious visions. This being sort of scary, like the sublime in an H.P. Lovecraft story or something. The world revealing itself as terrifyingly larger than we go through life thinking of it as. And also sillier. The temptation to see code in everything, and then you decode, and it’s like that recent Coen brothers movie, where Jefferson Airplane lyrics present themselves as the solution, as the wisdom. And maybe they are, who knows? Sounds good to me. I’d also like to hear a bit about how you work. Do you do a certain number of hours, pages, or words a day? Slowly or quickly? Riddled with anxiety or brimming with confidence?
In terms of work habits, in order to get anything down on paper that I’ll like, I have to trick myself into thinking that I’m essentially just copying something that I admire, and then, since I’m basically a failure at the imitation, some sort of something emerges, by accident, that, very occasionally, I think, yum, we’ll leave that there. For a while at least. I try to get some words on paper every day, not so much for the novel, but so that I don’t feel awful and like I just cheated myself in cards or something. What parts of what Gwen said resonated in terms of your work or life?
I got the strong sense that she thought I should pay very little attention to my mind, to whatever was going on in there, and that seemed just right. Do you believe in the tarot, divination, and/or psychic seeing?
Well, I kind of think that we broadcast our deepest inner innernesses all the time, without our knowing it, and anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen can see more deeply into a person than that selfsame person can. I really do believe that. Like I remember once I was sitting on a bench and this stranger called out to me, “Those suitors. They’ll get you every time.” And well, I was feeling heartbroken. Then he said, “But what are they going to do when they go to Miami?” Which of course made no sense to me. Then I realized: Oh, he didn’t say “suitors,” he said “Sooners.” I was wearing an Oklahoma Sooners t-shirt. Hmm. So that’s maybe not the very best example of someone seeing into my heart. But don’t you often feel like you meet someone and somehow you know if their parents are divorced, whether they play soccer, their likely favorite brand of yogurt, and all this before anything’s been said? I feel like tarot, divination, psychic seeing—those are just the far end of the spectrum of people who really know how to read other people. Mostly it’s too painful to see into everyone’s hearts, so sometimes I feel bad for people so capable of empathy. Those mirror-neuron-heavy monkeys—poor things! Gary Shteyngart was born in Communist Russia, in what was then known as Leningrad. His father was an engineer at the Lomo camera factory, and his mother was a pianist. He moved to New York City in 1979, but it was not until he was 14 that he shed his Russian accent. His novels include The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan. Gary: Hi, Gwen.
Gwen: Hi, Gary, how are you? Good, thank you. How are you?
Fine, thanks. So we’re going to ask the cards about your next book. I’m just going to ask you to contemplate that book while I shuffle. [pause] I’m getting a good feeling it’s going to be a success. Well, good.
Yeah, and I see there’s a bit of a nostalgia to it, and there’s a beautiful woman who’s a little bit too needy. Too needy?
Too needy. It’s a very emotional book. It does not get sentimental or soppy, but there’s some very beautiful and emotional stuff. There’s some mental illness, too, and there’s a choice to be made about staying or going. There’s a lot of pain in the past, but the future is good, and the relationship… [laughs] It’s a little racy. Aha! [laughs] Really?
It’s a little racy. There’s a three-way. A three-way?
There’s another woman involved. This is my book, not my life, right?
No, this is the book. There’s a developing friendship, there’s a marriage of some kind. There’s a period of attempts at reflection. Then there’s this really surprise ending, and that pulls it all together. So that’s what this reading says. You may ask any questions you like.

Could you tell me more about the mental illness?
The mental illness has a basis in a particular incident of being very hurt. It has something to do with other women. Not so much that the other women are involved with the man, but that the other women have betrayed this person. The other thing about this illness is that it has come from very deep despair that seemed to come from a bottomless pit at the time, but then what happened was that the person completely surrendered and gave into it and gave up hope. That turned out to be the best thing to do, because hope was just chasing ephemeral images that had no substance. It was just cranked up and not genuine. So giving that up also caused the person to absolutely give up everything that wasn’t authentic. He gives up everything that isn’t authentic?
That’s right. Once things just sort of gave in and gave up and surrendered, they thought this was going to be the end. They thought they weren’t going to be able to go on, but actually, it created all this space and openness for something else to happen. So that’s what I can say about the mental illness. OK. So, the neediness. Does that get resolved in some way? You said a beautiful woman who’s a little too needy.
Yeah, which gets resolved by… Well, the person goes through all the things I just said. So it’s like a journey type of story. And you said there are three people. In other words, there’s a male and a female character in the book, and probably there’s another character, a female character who’s in competition somehow with one of them?
What I’m getting is the woman is more concerned about the friend betraying them than the man. That affects her more, and may have happened before the relationship with the guy. But there is a three-way in it also. Um, and then the other thing is learning how to have a friendship instead of just objectifying the other person and having them be what you don’t have. You know, there’s a lot of inner play between material and spiritual. And then there’s a surprise ending because of a question that hasn’t been asked. Do you get a sense of where the setting of this book would be?
Oh! I could ask that question. Do you have any settings in mind? Yeah. I keep going back and forth between European and New York settings.
OK, let’s try each of those. First, I’ll try Europe. Hmm. Let me tell you, if you do it in Europe, there’s a lot of conflict in the beginning. It might be hard to work the conflict in with the cultural context. And then it also says if you do have it in Europe, there should be something that happens in the ruins of those old towers and walled cities. That’s the image that comes up. It kind of affects that atmosphere. The other thing about it, theme-wise, it says, is something about people who think they’re on top and think they have everything and have control and are exploiting control, they lose their power. Hmm. Interesting.
Okay. I’ll try New York. [pause] It says New York works well with the feminine themes of this book. There is a school or institute, and there is also this feeling of being a world center. There’s a lot of mystery in the beginning, too, with the whole “feminine wisdom/mystery” thing. Not bad. Are parents going to be a part of this drama for the main character?
I’ll ask. [pause] Ah, they say the way the parents come in is they die suddenly. [laughs] OK. I’ll keep that in mind.
There’s a lot of love but they die suddenly. Then there’s this issue about the family home. Inheritance of the family home is part of it. Actually, you know that has another picture of a tower in it. That works better in Europe. The parents dying in a plane crash, then inheriting this place that has ruins on it and stuff. Are there any sort of immigrant things? People crossing the ocean back and forth?
Well, with that one if you do Europe, definitely. New York, I don’t know. I’ll look to see. Hmm. New York is more workplaces and developing courage and dealing with a lot of passion, disappointment, and love. Good. Let’s see if I have any other questions about the book. No, I’m starting to get a nice picture about it. Thank you. Can I ask a nonbook question? If I buy a country home should I buy on the east side of the river or the west side of the river?
East side. East side?
Well, what it says about that is that it’s OK. There’s a lot of travel back and forth across the river, but that’s OK because it puts you in the mood for travel. It makes you really want to go to Europe. It is more difficult, I think, for work. Not the work itself, but finding publishers and finding paths. OK. West side now. OK. Two come together. Will there be another man involved in this? No. I don’t think so. Not yet. Just my girlfriend.
Hmm. Well it says to keep your eyes open. It says you might get ripped off. I’d say the first one is better. East is better. That’s very helpful. And I agree. I think there’s a man trying to rip me off at the bank. And now, a wee postmortem with Gary. Vice: Tell us, Gary, do you put any stock in fortune-telling?
Gary: Before I published Absurdistan, I saw a famous fortuneteller in Rome (I used to live above her, she communicates with UFOs quite well) who told me the book would be an international success and that I would one day die in Egypt. I’ve been avoiding Egypt like the plague. Did anything that Gwen have to say strike a nerve with you?
What interested me was that she told me not to buy an upstate house on the west side of the Hudson, only on the east. I was about to buy on the west when, several days after my fortune, the house was discovered to have huge septic problems. It was literally a shitty house. So do I believe in fortune-tellers? Not really. But that was delicious advice. Can you tell me a little about your upcoming book and your work habits?
I just finished a book that’s a love story between two immigrants set in a slightly futuristic New York that is about to collapse. It’s a world where books barely exist and people’s personality, sustainability, and fuckability are constantly judged by a small, pebblelike machine worn around the neck. It’s set, I don’t know, next Tuesday? I write in bed, occasionally getting up to eat a brown-rice cracker or use the facilities. I write from 11 to 4. It’s difficult work.