Testing the Waters

With the toxification and acidification of the oceans and streams, the ”two waters” — to Breton: the stagnant ponds of finished dogmas and the rejuvenating waters of life — may not be today what they once were. Perhaps that´s why this adjustment of the 17th Star card of the Major Arcana presented itself to me in a dream from 2015. You may recall Breton´s poetic interpretation of the card in his Arcanum 17, where he seems to allude to Swiss occultist Oswald Wirth´s deck (Le Tarot, des lmagiers du Moyen Age, 1927), which shows the goddess pouring a ”burning liquid” into the stagnant pond, indicated by a smoke-puff. Breton´s designated modern name for this fiery or hereaclitean aspect of hope (which some decks exclude for this card) is ”erethism”, broadly referring to a heightened sensual excitibility but also to a neurological symptom derived from mercury poisoning: ”Mad Hatter disease”. (Accordingly (?), Alice in Wonderland is The ”Siren of Stars” in the surrealists´ Tarot / playing deck from 1941).