Sometimes I think I put out a cross between Gollum and Belle vibes because of how much I consume learning. You could have just stuck with Belle.
The pandemic rekindled my flame for quiet time, huddled in my room beneath my security blanket with hoards of my precious books, reading everything under the sun…until the euphoric collision of the little grey cells catapults my need to share what I’ve just stumbled upon and rushes me to the nearest rooftop. Look isn’t it amazinggg.
I imagine my boss’s perspective when I’m tasked with random topics of research is a much more creepy, odd and yet evil giddy scurry. GAMES?! Again with Gollum? Nobody likes it.
A lot of the creative story work I do is influenced by real life. A point that I could wax poetically about as it relates to our general views on history, but that’s another story.
My adoration for these rabbit holes of information digging knows no bounds. It’s a treasure hunt, constantly surprising me with new nuggets that make believing everything is connected isn’t as far fetched as it might seem. You’re gonna tell us about one, aren’t you?
Apparently, the tarot is somewhat connected to drag queens. In another life, I was a drag queen. Is it socially acceptable to say that?
A work project introduced us to a woman who shared a memory of her mother’s personal deck of tarot cards, an intriguing item that was vehemently kept out of her grubby toddler hands. But why? As a child, her mother’s Austrian family gave refuge to many Jewish and Romani people (widely known as gypsies) fleeing Nazi persecution and death during World War II. I can’t get away from this history. Among them, a group of Romani women taught her mother how to read tarot cards.
“She was told she had ‘the gift’. I bet she kept her cards away from me because she was afraid I had it too.”
This is a dangling carrot of story gold plucked from a ripe field begging to be sown for the imagination garden. So many questions. Wait…how did they keep everyone safe from Hans Landa?
There’s really no storytelling without character backstory. So, I was ready to dive into this task. Same thing I do every day, try and take ov…wait, wrong reference.
I suspect most associate the tarot with fortune-tellers and Renaissance fairs, divination, and the occult. The palm and all-seeing eye neon signs. Settings with crystal balls and wisps of incense in the air…
…And bridge? Hah! No, really. I’m not kidding.
Historians believe the illustrated cards date back to late 14th or early 15th century northern Italy. Ah, there’s the Renaissance tie-in (ie. also known as the Age of Discovery, think DaVinci, Descartes, Shakespeare, Martin Luther, the Inquisition). Specifically to a popular trick-taking parlor game played by aristocrats called tarocchi. You can play online.
Aristocratic families commissioned custom, artist-made decks and hosted fancy tournaments. Place your bets! Then, things got a little heady. HAH! That’s a joke about the Age of Reason (ie. Enlightenment, logic and evidence, think Mozart, Issac Newton, Freemasonry, American and French Revolutions). This period chunked the magic-y tarot into the shadows but a fascination with ancient mysteries, esoteric philosophies, and ideologies would sweep the imagination of Europeans once again post-Enlightenment.
French scholar and writer, Antoine Court De Gébelin, in the 1770s claimed tarot was rooted in the Book of Thoth, a holy book written by Egyptian priests which, yes, includes the Book of the Dead made famous by beloved actor Brendan Fraser and the 1999 movie The Mummy. What can I say? I am a librarian. (Kidding.)
European intellectuals were caught up in the romance of the two being related and promoted the idea that the tarot symbols were of Egyptian origin. Gébelin also wrote about how to use the cards to forecast and predict geopolitics. Remind me to pick up a copy. Another book released around the same time proclaimed that the Romani were thought to be descendants of Egyptians, shortened to “the ’Gyptians” then to “the ‘Gypsies.” Cause Europeans at the time apparently got lazy. They also equated the Romani with witches and sorcerers, accusing them of engaging in black magic and dealing with the Devil. So…there’s that.
When it was later discovered that the Rosetta Stone included a translation of Egyptian hieroglyph in ancient Greek, the ties that bound the tarot and Romani were cemented in the public eye.
Needless to say, there’s no actual evidence that links the Romani people to the tarot.
Tarot has plenty of sour history, church involvement, card burning, wrongly accused, false convictions, displaced credit, cultural appropriation, charlatans, etc. that I’m not getting into here. A story for another post, but this Humanities and Philosophical Doctorate has already dug into it for us (in case you want to scratch that tarot history itch). So, exactly how did you get from the Romani to drag queens?
You can imagine my surprise when months after this rabbit hole while reading a book on Ru Paul’s Drag Race Cover girl put the bass in your walk?! queer history called Legendary Children, mention of the Romani people struck me as the last thing I thought I’d be reading between words like “butch,” “femme,” and “zhuzh”.
The very existence of those words in the mainstream vocabulary today comes from a codified language called Polari that was derived from Cant (or Pedlar’s French), Italian, Romani, Yiddish, Shelta, and Cockney rhyming slang largely spoken by working-class Brits, traveling performers, carnival workers, criminals, prostitutes, and later sea merchants and sailors.
Fabulosa! writer, Peter Baker, shares that some have traced use of Polari back to molly clubs of that pesky heady period I mentioned above when homosexuality was a death sentence thanks to the I’m Henry the 8th I am Buggary Act. In the dungeon you must wait, til the…wait…it’s jungle, not dungeon, buggar. Baker goes on to suggest that one-way British gay men likely picked up the language was from being in jail.
And so, as LGBTQ folks navigated a world that continued to criminalize their lifestyle, Polari became a part of gay culture allowing them to discreetly express their love and communicate with one another about their lives, relationships, etc. And our larger-than-life belles of the ball, Queens of drag not only incorporated Polari into their acts, they also “christened” themselves with Camp Names like The Black Widow, Scotch Flo or Lana Turner, a tradition older than Momma Ru herself.
Most say that Polari went out of vogue when British Parliament decriminalized homosexuality in 1967. While that might be true, words like “dudds,” “booze,” “bevvy,” “divvy", “frock,” “cruise”, “doobies,” and more have become a mainstay of everyday lingo that’s not going anywhere. We wants it, we needs it! Damnit, more Gollum!?
“Don’t be a drag, just be a queen.”
See you Friday! TTFN ~ Angelica
*It’s worth watching this TEDx talk to get a better understanding of Romani discrimination.