The fortuneteller: A portrait
Reading fortunes…
and embodying the appropriate, stereotypical image of the fortuneteller.
Reading cards occasions not only the delivery of a particular message, but also the thinking about what makes a fortuneteller. As far as I’m concerned, one becomes a fortuneteller because of desire. My theory is often corroborated not only by the simple correlation between epistemological desire – as in the desire to know what you don’t quite know – and passion for spying, but also by the portrayal of fortunetellers in popular culture. For instance, there’s no film or book out there that doesn’t suggest, albeit stereotypically, that the reason why a fortuneteller is good is because of her secret past.
What we also find in this suggestion is the idea that caliber is acquired through the intensity of an illicit love affair, rather than passion for money. But popular culture plays exactly on this tension between the fortuneteller’s secret love, and when that love is denied, her resentment now expressed as cynical greed. This latter image of the fortuneteller turned bad – implicitly because of this failed love led to love of money – is what makes movies that depict the reading of cards dynamic, since merely accepting a reader’s clear insight about a situation is unthinkable. Why? Because no one wants to hear the truth. Hidden secrets are much more entertaining.
As I was reading the cards for the passions of the heart, a line from Oscar Wilde came to my mind: ‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.’ With this literary memory in my head, I cast the cards.
A woman wanted to know if the great desire she experienced once upon a time, coming from a man she loved with equal intensity, was still as present for him as it was for her. This is a classic question that always excites me, as it gives me an occasion to ponder precisely on how a reader of caliber incorporates the truth in the cards into a style that’s cultivated against the background of her own desire, the same desire that made her a great reader. Here I have to admit that when I come across portrayals of any fortunetellers, the only thing I always want to know is this: who did she secretly love?
I could give myself as an example, but then as they say, a secret is a secret and it is to be told, not revealed, so let’s just look at my cards here instead, as I want to make a further point about portraits.
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Meanwhile…
there is my book depicting a portrait of the Goetic demon Andromalius. In it you’ll find cards, magic, possession and command. In other words, all the stuff that makes dedicated students of magic and cartomancy wonder: ‘who did she secretly love?’
