Time Machines
A brief reflection on magical objects.
So, I showed this guy the contents of my magical toybox. Perhaps that was a mistake, but he did identify himself as an empath – sensitive to vibrations sort of thing, and feeling relaxed after the interview we’d just done – I was curious to see what he’d make of the contents.
He was immediately drawn to the tarot decks. I have three: Smith-Waite, Harris-Crowley, and Brother R.B.B’s Sexual Tarot – he’d never come across that one before and was intrigued. Apparently, there was some esoteric significance that that I had three tarot decks. He had a lot to say about the Sexual Tarot and by extension, my relationship to sexuality, gender, personhood. And that’s when the wheels started to come off for me. I listened to his lengthy explanation of what he thought was significant for me in possessing this deck. That’s all very well, I said, but that’s not why I keep these cards. I keep them because Richard – the artist -was a friend and mentor, and he’s dead now. They remind me of him, they evoke memory. I was there when he drew some of these. I don’t do readings with them. I don’t “study the symbolism”. I handle them and I’m back there with him, listening to him. Sometimes confused, often enthralled, occasionally dozing off if we were in his garden on a hot day. I remember the times when he’d visit me at work, walking into the NHS unit brandishing a huge magical staff. It is a memory tinged with sadness. He was there to pick up his wife, who was suffering from depression. It still makes me smile though, as the other members of staff were clearly intrigued by my relationship to this strange old man, but were too polite to say anything.
If they are anything, the cards are a time machine. Backwards, forwards, sideways. Slippages.
Looking through the items in the toybox, I realize that this is exactly what I value in them. They are events and memories made actual.Touchable. Some of them can have esoteric symbolism applied to them, although for me that would be rather like trowelling on the Maybelline. All the objects, be they made, given, found, or bought, have this quality of immediately bringing forth visceral memories. Wonder, joy, grief, pain, loss, or just stealing a kiss in the dark. For me, that’s where magic dwells.
“These are entangled tales. Each is diffractively threaded through and entangled with the other.”
Karen Barad.
