Tarot Motifs / Literature

• Piers Anthony:
  • Anthony used a lot of Tarot Motifs in his Cluster cycle. There were space ships that took the forms of the four suits.
  • Tarot cards and their history are also the central theme of his early Tarot trilogy.
• Harry Potter used Tarot symbolism a couple of times, most obviously in a the chapter called "The Lightning-Struck Tower" in which Dumbledore died and the Tarot divination seance done by Trelawney which Harry spied on. It's also arguable that Snape has been made intentionally in a Hanged Man figure with the image of his young self under the spell of Levicorpus — he certainly fits the meaning.
• Parodied with the Discworld Caroc deck, which includes cards such as The Importance Of Washing The Hands instead of Temperance. In Mort Princess Keli takes Death out of the pack three times in a row... without putting it back. This is a bad sign.
• One Wild Cards book features a variant with Rosa Loteria, an Ace whose powers depend on which card she draws out of a Mexican loteria deck.
• In Emma Bull's book Bone Dance, Tarot itself plays a large role, and the chapters are set up like an actual Tarot reading.
• At the end of The Gunslinger, the Man in Black tells Roland's future (and foreshadows the plots of the next two books) with a tarot deck.
• Used prominently, correctly and cleverly in Mercedes Lackey's Phoenix and Ashes as a training tool for the female protagonist, as she studies magic and wanders a dream world encountering special beings that masquerade as the tarot cards. Heavily implied to be something her mother arranged so that, if something happened, her daughter would still get the knowledge and experience she needed to control and use her fire magic.
• Last Call by Tim Powers runs on this (combined with a poker motif). The central conflict of the book is a contest to either become or remain The King, and probably every named character represents a card.
• The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny has decks of magical Tarot cards that the ruling family of Amber uses for communication and transportation. Each member of the family is represented by one of the "Trumps" (Major Arcana), and their card can be used both as a means of magically video-calling them, and, with their consent, a means of teleporting to their location (by reaching through and having them pull your hand). It is not made particularly explicit what, if any, specific Major Arcana each family member corresponds to, beyond the idea that Oberon is probably the Emperor, and it's also possible to make new cards for new family members, or to try very hard to connect to a family member using a regular face card from a poker deck as the receiving Trump.
  • There's a few full fledged Tarot decks made as merchandising for the series or the Tabletop RPG. Some people believe that the most gorgeous of them was the classical Marseille deck by Florence Magnin.
  • Motifs from the Major Arcana appear as imagery in the books as well. In one scene in the second book, Corwin finds a man hanging upside down from a tree, which references the Hanged Man, and at one point the protagonist Corwin has an image in his head of his family all chained to a giant water wheel, rising and falling in turn, which he explicitly calls an image of the Wheel of Fortune. Another image seen while traveling through Shadow had a crown in the air with a sword vertical through it, which is the traditional iconography of the Ace of Swords.
• In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Childermass has a deck of Marseilles cards that predicts a number of events, which all become clear in retrospect — and some earlier.
• Within the Gates of Ivory trilogy by Doris Egan, Theodora of Pyrene is hired by one of the aristocrats for her Tarot reading skill. It turns out that much of his business success is because his family possesses a magical deck which provides accurate (and immersive) predictions, but only works for one person at a time and it's chosen her.
• In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novels, tarot is an analogue to poker, with 40K imagery used for some of the major cards.
• In the Astra Militarum novel Cadian Blood, the regiment's sanctioned psyker, having read the cards, boldly asks to speak with the Space Marine librarian about "the Emperor's Tarot". This conversation leads to a general warning. The card imagery is all Warhammer 40,000.
• In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Blood Pact, Daur at one point plays with cards to pass time; some of the imagery is Warhammer 40000.
  • It would, incidentally, be difficult to get a deck that was consistent with all three novels without its being enormous.
• In Christie Golden's Ravenloft novel Vampire of the Mists, Jander Sunstar has the cards read for him. Death appears — the reader tells him it doesn't necessarily mean death, but he thinks it does. The Tower appears and she likes that considerably less. Then the Sun and she thinks it good news and he does not like it at all. (You see, he's a vampire.)
• In the first Circle of Three book, the Three of Cups is integral to convincing Kate to stay friends with Annie and Cooper and pursue magical studies with them. The plot of the fourth novel revolves around Annie's new-found talent with the Tarot.
• In The Eagle Has Landed, by Jack Higgins, the Nazi officers being sent to assassinate Winston Churchill are given a Tarot reading at one point. One draws Death, and is told that it's possibly a good omen; when the commander's card is drawn, the psychic immediately puts it back in the deck without showing him and lies that it was Strength (it was actually The Hanged Man). Guess which one of them lives.
• In the Thieves' World setting, the Tarot-like deck is used by S'Danzo fortune-tellers and once in a while a complex reading becomes plot-relevant.
• Samuel R. Delany's Nova is a science fiction novel that includes a running theme of Tarot readings and imagery amid the cyborgs and starships. One curious thing is that a Romany character states that his people consider the Tarot to be utter BS, and a scholar is astonished by this: how could anyone intelligent not believe in Tarot?
• Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series uses tarot imagery with an interesting twist. The "Deck of Dragons" is organized into Houses based on a certain theme (Light, Death, Shadow ect.) with a smattering of Unaligned which correlate strongly to the Major Arcana with such concepts as chance, wisdom, and authority. The twist is that these cards often represent actual characters from the series and that who embodies each card is subject to change based on events in the books (for example when certain characters die they then take positions in the House of Death). So the Deck not only can be used to predict the future but to also describe the present state of supernatural politics.
• The Darksword Trilogy has a clear equivalent in the form of "Tarok" cards. Joram is represented by the King of Swords card; Simkin by the Fool.
• In Dune Messiah, we're occasionally given details of a new tarot deck that was recently issued and uses symbolism based on Paul's reign as emperor. This actually turns out to be a plot point; the deck was issued by a conspiracy against Paul, since the sheer number of people attempting to read the future (albeit ineptly) creates a constant prescient static which causes Paul to ignore any signs of static he gets around the conspiracy (prescients have trouble seeing things around other prescients).
• In the New Jedi Order, Droma, a member of the space-faring Ryn species that are hated and reviled for their Gypsy-like ways, successfully reads Han Solo's fortune using the sabacc deck. Its cards seem to be a combination of Tarot's Arcana with a few fey elements thrown in (the Queen of Air and Darkness, for example, the ruler of the Unseelie Court in Dungeons & Dragons), all of it given a Star Wars flavor.
• Charles Williams wrote several modern fantasy novels, including The Greater Trumps, which is all about Tarot — specifically the One True Original Tarot Deck, the only one that can really tell fortunes (and control the elements), and the magical self-playing chess-like collection of images linked to the deck.
• In Valerie Worth's novel Gypsy Gold, Bella reads Miranda's fortune using these cards.
• Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths features the Sibylline. Though obviously analogous to the Tarot, the trumps include such cards as the Parliament of Bees, the Two-Handed Engine, the Hermaphrodite, and the Heart of Light. Minor arcana are sometimes used in readings.
• Ru Emerson's The Princess of Flames makes use of a fantasy version; the title is one of the cards.
• Lani Diane Rich's The Fortune Quilt repeatedly uses the phrase "Towered" as a reference to having one's entire life trashed and having to start over again. (It also features a psychic quilt designer.)
• Several Stravaganza books involve one of the characters making a tarot reading, the meaning of which becomes clear by the end. Notably, the Talian decks have different suits with Elemental Motifs: Serpents which are linked to Earth, Salamanders linked to fire, Fishes linked to water, and Birds linked to air.
• In Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Isobel uses the tarot to tell fortunes at the titular circus. The Magician card frequently turns up in relation to Marco and Celia, two powerful magic-users locked in a high-stakes competition with the circus as their stage, and Isobel actually removes the Temperance card from her deck and stores it in a safe place in an effort to keep their warring forces from getting out of control. When she removes the card's protection in a fit of anger after learning that Marco is in love with Celia and not her, bad things happen.
• Greer Gilman's amazing Moonwise has Ariane and Sylvie doing Worldbuilding by laying out cards (handmade by Ariane, with woodcut illustrations) to create stories. In their worlds, the events we think of as fairytale or folklore actually happened, and the symbols on the cards reflect this. Elsewhere, the narrative mentions that Ariane is a packrat and that the huge pockets of her Badass Longcoat contain "packs of greasy tarot" among other things.
• Another richly intricate fantasy novel, Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament, has a deck that's been used by members of the Drinkwater family for generations. At one point August Drinkwater steals it and hands it over to the fairies in exchange for becoming sexually irresistable. He later regrets this, and demands to call off the deal and get the cards back. Upon their return, the cards work a little differently but are actually changed for the better.
• A Certain Magical Index: This seems to be a common factor amongst Golden Style magicians as they use the symbols and suits of the tarot to shape their magic.
  • Playing with Fire: The staff or wand suit.
  • Blow You Away: The sword suit.
  • Making a Splash: The cup or chalice suit.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: The coin suit.
• John Sandford's Kidd series of novels all feature tarot motifs in their titles.
• Each chapter in William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley begins with the image and description of a different tarot card of the Major Arcana, there are 22 chapters just as there are 22 cards. Each card relates in some way to the events contained within the chapter, for instance the chapter when Zeena first starts teaching Stan her mentalist act is represented by 'The High Priestess' card, symbolizing 'hidden knowledge, wisdom, female mystery and magic'.
• In Small Medium, Chase has an inherited Fortuna deck that is obviously a stylized Tarot deck, albeit customized to the setting, with "The Fool" instead being named "The Noob" and containing cards such as "The Elementalist" (signifying change, often traumatic) and "The Griefer" (senseless destruction) as well as slightly differenty minor arcana (the "Page of Warriors" appears early on, complete with a lampshading that they half expected the deck to be solely major arcana).
• Theodora, of The Gate of Ivory, is making her living at the beginning of the book doing tarot readings in the marketplace. Ran introduces her to the Ivoran version, which has very similar cards, and which she can use to not only read his future, but to project herself into events.

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