Six of Pentacles

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Meaning: Generosity, ability to receive help

Depiction: In their room at The Spouter Inn, Queequeg has two piles of silver on the table, and pushes one toward Ishmael, who looks surprised and grateful. Six gold doubloons hang on the wall in the background.

Text: Chapter 10 - A Bosom Friend
He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers’ pockets. I let them stay.

Comments: Without a doubt, Queequeg is the most generous character in the book, which this passage clearly demonstrates. In contrast, Captain Ahab's monomania doesn't allow for magnanimity, though he has moments of kindness and empathy, as shown in his interactions with Starbuck and Pip.

Knight of Cups

Meaning: A love prospect, and even a proposal.

Depiction: Just as described in the book, Queequeg presses his forehead to Ishmael's and embraces him. They stand behind a table with one cup on it.

Text: Chapter 10- A Bosom Friend
He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be.

Crude 5-minute sketch that I am sure I will regret sharing; it gives the general idea.

And here's Matt Kish's version of this scene, from Moby Dick in Pictures (2011). A little different than the way I imagined it, as Queequeg and Ishmael are at arm's length. 

Comments: I have a lot to say about this one.  Some critics have expressed incredulity that Melville openly included a homoerotic friendship  in Moby Dick at a time when homosexual identity was not recognized, and homosexual behavior was subject to criminal penalties.  Yet he found a way to do it.  He wrote long passages demonstrating how Queequeg is completely alien in all ways to Ishmael: from the other side of the world, from a different culture and race, of an unfamiliar pagan religion, of what seem to him outlandish and peculiar habits (freezing in prayer for long periods, shaving with his harpoon, hiding under the bed to put his shoes on, etc). Queequeg's easy physical intimacy with Ishmael is passed off to the mainstream Victorian reader as just part and parcel of his "odd" foreign ways. Indeed, Ishmael admits that he would be wary of such advances from a fellow white Christian American, say, Bulkington:

In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply. (Ch. 10)

I credit this perspective to my reading of Emma Rantatolo's masters thesis:  "A Cosy, loving pair"?- The Elusion of Definitions of Queequeg and Ishmael's Relationship in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (2018).

Nine of Cups

Meaning: Happiness
Depiction: Queequeg and Ishmael sit on a bench before a table at the Spouter Inn, a fire burning in the fireplace behind them. Queequeg has been turning the pages of a book but looks quizzically over at Ishmael, who sits near him, his arms wrapped around his knees.  Ishmael looks back at Queequeg, smiling. Nine cups are lined up on the mantel above the fireplace.

Text:  Chapter 10, A Bosom Friend

As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. 

Comments: I really try to vary these cards in terms of chapters and characters... but when these satisfaction and happiness cards come up, I return to the early days of Ishmael and Queequeg, who have the most positive mutual relationship of any characters in the book. Stubb claims to take everything as a joke, but there's a maliciousness to him which makes his humor seem rather passive-aggressive rather than borne from happiness and contentment.

Two of Cups

Meaning: Close bond between two people, equal partnership (Labryrinthos)

Depiction:  As part of the whale-processing scheme, Ishmael on the ship is tethered to Queequeg who is in the ocean on the back of a dead whale, holding on to a hook in the whale which is chained to the ship. There is a cup balanced on the bulwark next to Ishmael, and one on top of the whale next to Queequeg.

Text: Chapter 72 - The Monkey-Rope

Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.

Comments:  In the book scene, we also have Daggoo and Tashtego hanging off the side of the ship, keeping the sharks away from Queequeg and the dead whale  with their spades. I am omitting them from this card to keep the emphasis on the dyad of Queequeg and Ishmael. Queequeg is also described as wearing "the Highland costume- a shirt and socks." (And apparently he wore it well, as an admiring Ishmael makes sure to note, "in which to my eyes at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage.") This is how he should be depicted, though socks would surely become soaked and abrasive to one standing on the back of a slippery whale.

Ace of Cups

Meaning: The awakening of new feelings (Labyrinthos); deep feelings and intimacy (Learn Tarot).

Depiction: Instead of one hand holding the cup, we see a number of hands reaching into the cup and two in the center (from Queequeg and Ishmael) grasping each other. The hands are a variety of skin tones representing the ethnic diversity of the Pequod crew.   As with the RWS card, there are five streams of liquid pouring out of the sides of the cup. These are said to represent the five senses. (Wikipedia)

Text: Chapter 94 - A Squeeze of the Hand
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Another take on this scene, from the American Renaissance Tarot.

Comments: This scene was an obvious choice for this card, given the feeling of universal love that envelops  Ishmael when engaged in this task. In the unlikely event that anyone who is reading this  hasn't read Moby Dick,  the "sperm" referred to here is spermaceti from the head of the sperm whale, though no doubt Melville intended the double meaning.

Video: A Squeeze of the Hand by Dave Malloy from the play Moby Dick: A Musical Reckoning

Knight of Wands

 

Meaning: Passion, desire, ambition. The call to action that began with the Page of Wands goes further to implementation with this card.

Depiction: Embarking on the first stage of his  seaward journey, Ishmael with Queequeg is now aboard the Moss, bound from New Bedford to Nantucket via the Acushnet River. as described in the text below. Queequeg holds his harpoon. (In terms of the original RWS card, the knight's horse is the ship).

Text: Chapter 13 - Wheelbarrow
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

View of New Bedford from the Acushnet River

Comments: Ishmael and Queequeg are turning up a lot in this suit, as they will in the suit of Cups.

Four of Wands

 

Meaning: Freedom, creativity, and domestic happiness.

Depiction: On a calm day, Queequeg and Ishmael weave a rope sword mat together on the quarterdeck, Ishmael sitting and Queequeg standing beside him. Four harpoons lean against the bulwark behind them.

Text: Chapter 47- The Mat-Maker
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. 

Comments:  Although Ishmael indulges in the grand fantasy that he and Queequeg are weaving fate at the Loom of Time, really they haven't been captains of their own destiny since they boarded the Pequod.  This small moment together is probably the most domestic they get the entire time they're at sea.

The American Renaissance Tarot version of this card is Chapter 94 - A Squeeze of the Hand! An interesting choice and the way it is portrayed is true to the spirit of the card meaning.

V. The Lovers

Meaning:  Love and relationships, decisions

Depiction: Queequeg and Ishmael in their bed at the Spouter Inn, facing each other, deep in intimate conversation. Behind their bed is a window through which we see the stormy sea, and from that the distant form of a leaping whale. As whaling is what brings these two men together, the image of the whale here stands in for the angel in the original RWS card, who is meant to be the priest who unites the two figures in marriage. And indeed, they are "henceforth" declared married by Queequeg in Chapter 10, and described as "wedded" again in Chapter 72 (The Monkey-Rope).

My husband decided to illustrate this card. He was aiming at depicting a rather dreamlike state rather than the bed at the Spouter Inn. Also, doesn't Ishmael look like Kris Kristofferson here?  

Illustration from Moby Dick, Rockwell Kent, 1930

Text: Chapter 10- A Bosom Friend;  and Chapter 11- Nightgown

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.

Illustration by David Peloquin, date unknown.

Comments:  There is a perennial debate about whether Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship was meant to be romantic or simply deep, non-erotic kinship. In a tarot reading, this card could be either, especially since not all persons seeking a reading are in a love relationship or looking for romance.  However,  there is no shortage of textual and biographical information to suggest that Melville really did intend to imply a physical as well as intellectual relationship between these characters- the love he longed for, but dared not express, at least not openly.

From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle. Ch. 13- Wheelbarrow/Moby Dick (2011) Starz-Encore