TAROT:ISLAND OF THE COLOUR BLIND

More about TAROT:ISLAND OF THE COLOUR BLIND

We were inside the makara by nine, with a folding chair, a tray of developer, and no clear idea which end of the animal we’d entered. The entire body of the thing that looked like a thing that looked like an octopus before the sucker less tentacles was one enormous eye. The makara’s eye was a lens. Inside, in the dark, we had ourselves a camera obscura and a fine view of Seville, upside down.

El Silencio came through just after midnight. The black hoods drifted across the wall like a row of steeples somebody had cut loose. On the negative they came out white. An American beside me took one look and said, “I know those men.”

He was already halfway out of his chair. I asked him to sit down until we could see what street they were on.

Upright

Saturn gets six eyes. The mystic gets a third. Our fellow has one, and when this card comes up upright, one is plenty. There’s room in it for every colour in the procession, including the small blue flame at the base of a candle.

Pure consciousness, if you catch it in the act, is liable to recognise itself anywhere. In a man under a hood. In the woman who has to sweep the wax off the street in the morning. In the beetle swimming grimly across your developing tray. Fish him out. You can finish the reading when he’s got his legs under him.

Reversed

Now the lens is a peephole. You’ve seen a white hood on a negative and supplied an entire history before the print is dry. There’s a version of race blindness that works the same way. You declare you see everybody alike, then sail right past what happened to the person standing in front of you. It’s a marvellous arrangement for the fellow who gets to do all the declaring.

Give the print another minute in the tray. There’s a man at the back of the procession with his hood off, rubbing his eyes. You can see him now. He still can’t see you.

The question

What did I see, and what did I supply in the dark?