Page of Pentacles

Meaning: Energy, passion, progress and adventure.

Depiction: Tashtego sings out, having spotted a whale, standing high  at the top of the mast,  leaning forward with his hand outstretched as described in the text. There is a doubloon in his pointing hand.

Text: Chapter 47 - The Mat-Maker
High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming.

“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”

Comments: Finally a Tashtego solo card! This scene stood out to me when I thought about the meaning of the card.

Three of Pentacles

Meaning: The coming together of different kinds of knowledge in order to build something together (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Under a night sky, the three harpooners Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg are stoking the fires of the try-works while supervised by Stubb. In the background, at the helm of the ship, Ishmael has the tiller turned backwards (sternwards) as he gazes, mesmerized, at the flames. There is a doubloon figure  etched on each of the three try-pots.

Text: Chapter 96 - The Try-Works
Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet.

***
Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship’s stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and very probably capsizing her.

Comments: This is a good chapter for showcasing the different roles for the crew as they work together.  Except Ishmael, whose job is apparently losing himself in reveries, as usual.

Three of Cups

Meaning: Groups coming together to focus on a common emotional goal. (Wikipedia)

Depiction: The three harpooneers Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg drinking a measure of grog out of the "goblet end" of their harpoon barbs, as an oath to kill Moby Dick.

Text: Chapter 36 - The Quarter-Deck

Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him.

“Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!” Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.

“Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat’s bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss.

Comments:  Another scene that goes so  wonderfully well with this card meaning. As described in the book, the three harpooneers are flanked by the three mates and ringed by the other sailors; Ahab is near them pouring their drinks. However, this card will show only the three harpooneers for the sake of clarity, though it can show the anonymous backs of other sailors facing them.

Ten of Wands

 

Meaning: Responsibilities, and a burden.

Depiction: Dough-Boy, the steward, hands piled high with dishes,  nervously serves the three harpooneers (Daggoo, Tashtego, and Queequeg) as they regard him laughingly. The ten harpoons of the suit lean against the wall behind the table.

Text: Chapter 34- The Cabin Table.
Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise.

Comments: My first thought was that this card would depict Fleece the cook, as he's a tired old man with bad knees, unappreciated by the crew and mocked by Stubb. But again, the visual presentation issue crops up - the scene of Doughboy actually serving the table and putting up with sailors who give him a hard time creates a more graphic idea of a burden.

Three of Wands

  

Meaning: Action and adventure, traveling.

Depiction: Finally, Moby Dick is spotted. Ahab is at the main mast, Tashtego below him at the top gallant mast, Moby Dick a  pale hump in the water before them. The top of  three harpoons are visible at the bottom of the card.

Text: Chapter 133- The Chase- First Day
Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian’s head was almost on a level with Ahab’s heel. From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air.

Rockwell Kent, Man at Mast (1929)

Comments: The plans initiated in the Two of Wands are now progressing. The crew pledged to kill Moby Dick in Chapter 36, and the official pursuit of the white whale begins nearly 100 chapters later.

For Three of Wands, American Renaissance Tarot uses this scene from  Ch. 36- The Quarter-Deck, depicting the three mates with their lances as well as Ahab,

Two of Wands

  
Meaning: New plans, partnership and influence.

Depiction: The crew of the Pequod watches on the quarterdeck as Ahab nails the doubloon to the mast. The two representative harpoons are held by Daggoo and Tashtego.

Text: Chapter 36 - The Quarter-Deck
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”

“Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.

Could it be...Modern Ahab?

Comments: This choice of scene makes sense as it's the exact moment when Ahab sells the crew on his quest to kill Moby Dick, crystallizing his plan and the direction of the book.

III. The Empress

 

Meaning: Creativity, resources, fertility

Depiction: Queequeg, swimming underwater , pulls Tashtego out  from below the submerged whale's head through the hole he has cut. He has his sword in one hand, his other hand is dragging Tashtego out by the hair (ouch, but that's how it's written), Tashtego's head, emerging from the whale.

Text: Chapter 78, Cistern and Bucket
Why, diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way—head foremost.

Frank Stella, Cistern and Buckets (1990)

Comments: This scene, with its express metaphor of midwifery, is perfect for the Empress. Queequeg, always the initiator, uses his creativity to rescue and symbolically rebirth Tashtego after his near-drowning inside the  head of the whale. 

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