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Sunday, March 15, 2009

Tarot, Maxi Pads, and Animal Sacrifice

Richelle Hawks has a great piece on commercials and advertising, on Binnall of America in her Medusa's Ladder column:Strange Days, Indeed: Notes on Identity and the Super Bowl Commercials And when I read this I just had to find out more:
"I found a magazine ad of an Always maxipad slapped on a tarot card."

If that isn't esoterica I don't know what is. It's teeming with esoteric symbolism.

I found the image; it appears on The Tarot Channel blog. Of course there isn't really a Tarot card called "The Protector" but here's what Tarot Channel says about the number II assigned to the ad card:
I'm thinking that the ad creators had to have some knowledge of Tarot because "The Protector" is assigned Roman numeral II, The High Priestess (who is, of course, associated with the moon).


And in a bit of synchronicity, my Trickster's Realm column for Binnall of America is also about commercials and advertising. Conspiracies and Cannibalism: Animals and Advertising.I didn't know Richelle's column was about commercials until she told me the other day; after I had been working on mine. I avoided reading her column until I sent mine off to Tim Binnall.

Richelle's is up now, mine will be up sometime tomorrow. And be sure to read all the great columns over there as well.

2 comments:

richelle said...

Damn--I was in such a fog when I sent the column off; I mentioned to Tim there was an image I was wanting to use in addition to the videos, and then I couldn't even recall what it was, let alone start looking for it.
Is it not odd? I found it as I was browsing through a Woman's Day or Redbook mag or something, waiting for a doctor's appointment, and was a bit stunned. It has appropriated the look of the Rider-Waite deck, and used the ambiguous numeral of ||, whatever that means. Perhaps the blogger you mentioned got it as right as can be, but it's interesting that the streamlined-ness of it are visually faily a maxipad in itself. Also--it could be mistaken easily for the number eleven, and the eleventh tarot card is Justice. Looking at the background, it most resembles tarot card number I, The Magiciain. But, it is actually the second card in the deck, because the Fool is O. So, using || fits on several levels...

richelle said...

How strange. I just looked at the image you posted, and the Roman numerals appear to be normal: II.
I'm pretty sure in the paper ad I saw, they were just ambiguous lines: ||. I will dig it out (yes, I took it from the waiting room..but I will be returning it...so it's kind of like borrowing...)