Cartomancy

When I was writing The Mirror's Edge, I did a bit of research on tarot cards, including famous (or infamous) decks such as the Rider-Waite or Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck. Boy, there's a ton of reading out there if you want to get into the iconography and symbolism of tarot, a subject that's been plumbed by everyone from Carl Jung to Timothy Leary. My personal experience with tarot is limited (never had a reading, never wanted one), but the symbology fascinates me. My favorite card is probably the Fool. Typically the Fool is seen on a precipice, dancing on the edge, unafraid. He's the Jester, the "wild card." He's Heath Ledger's Joker. Reckless, creative, living in the moment, but also hedonistic, Dionysian, and unpredictable. He's the party animal. His number is zero. He's an idiot, a dunce, or he just may be the wisest man in the room. HR Giger's amazing and disturbing (would it be anything else?) tarot deck is now sadly out-of-print. He depicts the Fool getting a lap dance, wearing headphones, with a shotgun in his mouth. Beyond him lies the precipice. If you're looking for tarot-influenced fiction, Tim Powers' brilliant, genre-blending novel, Last Call, uses intricate tarot imagery to decode a world of crime, violence, occult magic, and high-stakes poker. As Cuba Gooding Jr's dad tried to tell us, "Everybody plays the fool sometimes . . ."