By BadlyWiredLamp (@badly_wired)

Introduction

In Troubled Blood, Robin Ellacott doesn’t tell Cormoran Strike that she has purchased a deck of Aleister Crowley’s Thoth tarot.

Robin uses the cards twice as a “querent”. Once in Leamington Spa, after discussing Talbot’s notes with Strike, and the second time just before she is due to meet him on her birthday. In both instances, the cards chosen are described in detail and the interpretation of their meaning explained.

However, these details and the significance of the tarot is given only fleeting mention in the TV adaptation, replaced with an intriguing interaction between Robin and Strike in episode three, from 42.51 minutes, when Robin observes, “You got his tarot cards out”.

Whilst the purpose of the scene at first appears to be a humorous interlude which transforms into the televisual equivalent of slapping a “certain reader” with a wet swan, I now believe, after further examination, the one minute and twenty six second scene contains deliberate “hidden” meanings for book readers who might experience some frustration with the inevitable limitations of adaptations.

I hope to persuade you of this or at the very least entertain you along the way with quotes from the books, a few images, and a bit of tarot history.

Show, Don’t Tell 

The tarot scene takes place at the Agency office. Robin, who has just had an uncomfortable conversation with Saul Morris, heads into the inner office where Strike is sitting at his desk looking at Bill Talbot’s True Book.

Robin: “Hmm … I thought you thought that was junk?”

Strike:“You left it open … or did Baphomet do that?”

Strike pulls a funny face and Robin laughs. They discuss its contents.

They then have a brief but charged exchange about another of Bill Talbot’s investigative techniques, during which we also learn some Leda Lore, a rare moment of Adaptation Strike revealing personal information to Robin.

Robin: “You got his tarot cards out.”

Strike: “My mum used to do it every day, helped to make all her good decisions.”

Robin: “Go on then, you obviously know how.”

Strike picks up the deck of cards, and as he makes a decisive ‘tap’ with them on his desk, the bottommost card is revealed to us, but not to Strike or Robin. It’s The Wheel of Fortune, card 10 of the Major Arcana.

He then spreads the pack, face down, along his desk and tells Robin to “pick one”. This part of the scene is more akin to a magician’s trick rather than a tarot reading, evoking Samhain Athorn and Sam Barclay in Chapter 70 of TB.

“My – Dad – Gwilherm could do magic!”

“Aye, I know, I heard. That would make it easy fer you tae do magic, if yer dad could do it, eh?”

Robin selects a card, and, without revealing to Strike what it is, looks at her choice, The Lovers, Strike’s face looming in the background. 

She takes an inhalation of breath and replaces her card without comment, makes plans for the following day’s interview with Dennis Creed and exits, leaving Strike to examine the cards trying to find the one she picked. 

As he gathers the spread of cards, he cuts the deck and glances at the one revealed, the Nine of Wands.

Strike continues to shuffle through the pack, his right thumb securing and obscuring another card, which appears to be the Two of Wands, until he stops to look at the Ten of Cups, held in his left hand, his thumb again obscuring the figures on the card. 

Another fundamental change in the depiction of the tarot in the TV production is the choice of deck that’s used; it’s not Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth.

“Talbot’s breakdown manifested itself in a belief that he could solve the Bamborough case by occult means. In addition to astrology, he consulted Aleister Crowley’s Thoth tarot…” (Ch 29 TB)

Initially I thought there might be an aesthetic reason for not using this deck. The complex detail of the imagery contained in the cards, The Lovers in particular, might not convey what the screenwriter and director were aiming for during a few seconds of screentime, but that’s subjective speculation on my part!

An explanation for not using Crowley’s deck can be reasoned using the books. 

Strike telling Robin “my Mum used to do it every day” is evidenced in TB.

“Returning to the notebook, Strike recognised the Celtic cross layout of tarot cards from his youth. Leda fancied herself a reader of tarot; many times had he seen her lay out the cards in the very formation Talbot had sketched in the middle of the page. He had never, however, seen the cards given astrological meanings before, and wondered whether this, too, had been Talbot’s own invention.” (Ch 22) 

Leda had at least on one occasion shown an interest in astrology, “She loved all that shit. One of her best mates did my full horoscope for her when I was born.” (Ch 21 TB)

She would have been aware of Crowley via her second husband, “ … Whittaker … People took him for a hardcore goth or some ten-a-penny poseur – the necrophiliac lyrics, the Satanic Bible, Aleister Crowley, all that crap …” (Ch 22 Career of Evil (CoE)). Her “favourite band”, Blue Oyster Cult, used a stylised version of Crowley’s Thoth tarot for the cover of their 1976 album Agents of Fortune, all of which might lead us to assume she would be drawn to The Thoth deck.

However, as we read in Chapter 22 of TB, Strike hadn’t previously been aware of the practice of divining these tarot cards for astrological meaning or The Thoth having an “astrological dimension” before researching Talbot’s choice of deck, and there’s no recognition of the cards by him, which leads me to believe that he hadn’t seen Leda use the Thoth deck.

Strike’s revelation, “My mum used to do it every day, helped make all her good decisions”, to Robin is likely to cause those who have read all of the Strike and Ellacott novels to recollect the occasions Strike has reminisced about his childhood with Leda, and to possibly be more aware than the casual viewer that Strike is being ironic. This line in combination with a quote from Chapter 44 of TB foreshadows events in book seven, The Running Grave.

“He fell asleep thinking about the spurious groupings of astrology, and dreamed of Leda, laying out her tarot cards in the Norfolk commune of long ago.” (Ch 44, TB).

A Bit of History

The possible reasons why the deck depicted in the adaptation was used provides more interest than why The Thoth wasn’t. 

It’s the Rider Waite Smith (RWS) deck, one of the most popular since its publication in 1909, and with an estimated 100 million copies sold, it’s likely to be recognised by the show’s viewers.

When Strike spreads the deck, the iconic blue and white roses and lilies design on the reverse of the cards is revealed; the roses representing the earthly realm, the lilies the spiritual, the combination suggesting balance between them.

The two flowers are well known to Strike and Ellacott readers.

“He liked her hair beneath the crown of Yorkshire roses” (Prologue, Lethal White (LW))

“He felt her again in his arms on the stairs, breathed in the scent of white roses and of the perfume that hung around the office when Robin was at her desk …” (Ch 14 LW)

“He purchased stargazer lilies at the first florist he could find … he’d chosen them for their size and powerful fragrance … these looked impressive … large and yet reassuringly impersonal … safety in their very boldness.” (Ch 13 TB)

The blue and white design was the original for the first batch of cards that were printed toward the end of 1909; subsequent print runs saw it changed to a “cracked mud” pattern. The roses and lilies were not reinstated until 1971, the same year Crowley’s Thoth tarot was published for the general public and three years before Strike was born. 

Arthur Edward Waite, (1857-1942), creator of the RWS deck, was an autodidact, an occultist and esoteric historian, self aware that he was a mediocre novelist and poet.  He was a member of the Isis-Urana Temple of the Hermetic Golden Dawn, and founder of one of its offshoots, the Independent and Rectified Rite of the Golden Dawn and of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. He was a grudging but highly regarded and decorated Freemason, who devoted his life to the collection of rites and rituals from various mystical traditions, convinced that these would allow to him create his own all encompassing system that would reveal humanity’s path to enlightenment through the development of the inner self.

To this end, as many travellers of the esoteric path before Waite had done, he devised a tarot deck for those who were uninitiated in the ‘Mysteries’. The deck would include Christian mysticism, alchemy, the rites of the Golden Dawn (disguised), astrology, Qabalah and 19th century Egyptomania and draw on the work of occult historians such as Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), and Qabbalist’s like Gerard ‘Papus’ Encausse, (1865-1917) who attributed Hebrew numbers to the Major and Minor Arcana cards.  Levi, who believed the tarot had been used by the biblical Magi, was so convinced in the fundamental and awesome power of the many and varied images included on the cards that he declared:

“An imprisoned person with no other book than the tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence.” (p394 Ritual of Transcendental Magic (1964)).

Waite had a – possibly magically – inspired decision to employ fellow Golden Dawn member Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith, (1878-1951) to illustrate the 78 cards of his new deck. Waite was aware that whilst Pamela enjoyed the theatricality of the Golden Dawn rituals, her passion was for art, storytelling, creating miniature theatres and playing the part of a fortune teller, so he would be able to dictate how he wanted the trump cards to appear without, he believed, her undue influence.

“The one she lacked was an interest in the meaning of it. With visionaries it is often so … they see gods and fairies so vividly that they are completely absorbed in the beauty of the bright forms they see. It never occurs to them to ask ‘what does it mean?” (p27 Pamela Colman Smith and Madge Gill)

Waite, whilst guiding her as to what the Major Arcana should depict, gave her free reign for the ‘pip’ cards. Pamela’s creation of what appears to be a story for each card gives them the potential to be easily understood by the novice reader. Whilst there are fundamental archetypes and symbols which underpin every card that have been maintained throughout centuries of influence by various esoteric acolytes, the artistic styles of the creators have the potential to unlock further meanings and guide readers and querents onto unique paths of questions and answers.

Pamela was a Londoner with an American mother and a father whose job took them to Jamaica, where she learnt her storytelling skills. Her mother’s death whilst Pamela was still a teenager led her to be ‘adopted’ by the actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928), who gave her the nickname ‘Pixie’, and with whom she toured as part of Henry Irving’s (1838-1905) Lyceum theatre group. With them, a natural talent as an artist flourished as she designed and painted costumes and sets, and learnt about characterisation and creating scenes. She later attended the Pratt Institute for Design in Brooklyn, New York. 

Her influences were 19th century Japanese ukiyo-e, and the illustrations of Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) and Walter Crane (1845-1915), the latter creating the artwork for Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, the source for TBs epigraphs, in the last years of the 1800s.

Pixie’s career as an artist and illustrator would see her produce posters and pamphlets for the Red Cross and the Women’s Suffrage movement in the UK, though, as with the RWS tarot, for which she was paid ‘very little cash’, she never earned great sums of money and was in debt when she died. The last decades of her life were spent in Cornwall, first at Parc Garland on The Lizard and then Bude, which could be another, lovely, reason for the TV production choosing the RWS deck.

‘And you’re a Nancarrow on your mum’s side,’ Polworth told Jack, who was greatly enjoying Polworth’s approval. ‘So that makes you a Cornishman, born and bred.’ (Ch 44 TB)

“ … years ago, years and years, I was just a girl, and I went to see a proper gypsy fortune teller. They used to camp up the road. I thought she’d tell me lots of nice things. You expect them to, don’t you? You’ve paid your money. D’you know what she said?’ 

Strike shook his head. ‘ 

“You’ll never have children.” Just like that. Straight out.’ 

‘Well, she got that wrong, didn’t she?’ said Strike. Tears started again in Joan’s bleached eyes. 

Why had he never said these things before, Strike asked himself.” (Ch 31 TB)

The RWS tarot would be the first deck since the late 15th century to depict full scenes on all seventy-eight cards. Black and white photographs of the only other deck to do so previously, the Sola Busca, were acquired by the British Museum, where Pixie viewed and made sketches of them, and was obviously inspired. 

The Sola Busca deck is from an era before creative historians such as Antoine Court de Gebelin (1725-1784), a freemason and author of The Primeval World, Analysed and Compared to The Modern World (1784) decided that the tarot images contained the arcane remnants of the knowledge of Egyptian priests who had synthesised centuries of information into symbols and images and drawn them onto large pieces of wood. This theory partly derived from him observing a card game using ‘tarrochi’ which contained twenty-two highly decorated trump cards in which Gebelin believed he recognised “Egyptian symbols”. The theory was almost entirely invented by Gebelin, with no evidence to support it.

This experience may be familiar for some readers of the Strike novels, though having a serendipitous moment and finding a new way to interpret an image allowed Robin to untangle a clue in TB.

“Robin … was looking down at the Pictionary board where Martin had tried to draw ‘Icarus’. Nobody had guessed it. They’d thought Icarus was a bug hovering over a flower. But something about the picture held Robin fixated …The flower that looked like a sun. The sun that looked like a flower.” (Ch 30 TB)

‘It occurred to me over Christmas that what people thought might’ve been a flower painted on the side could have been a sun,’ she said. ‘You know. The planet.’ 

‘It’s technically a st—’ 

‘Sod off, I know it’s a star.’

‘There was a wholefoods shop in Clerkenwell in 1974 whose logo was a sun …’

‘Bloody hell, Robin,’ said Strike, as the rain battered the window behind him …‘This is excellent work.” (Ch 32 TB)

Arthur Waite included a booklet to aid in interpreting his tarot, though he was inhibited by the requirement not to reveal any Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn secrets and so the guide to each card is limited. What he wanted was for the reader and querent of the cards to look at and meditate on each image, to let Pamela’s images provoke the imagination and only then refer to “keywords” he provided to unlock further meaning.

I’m not a proficient tarot reader, I just enjoy looking at the pretty pictures and thinking about Strike quotes, so that’s the basis of how I approached the cards shown in the adaptation.

Will the Arrow Point My Way?

As Strike picks up the deck, the card the audience is able to see, which neither Robin or Strike can, is The Wheel of Fortune, card ten of the Major Arcana.

The symbolism of the wheel of fortune can be found in ancient Roman and Greek mythology and philosophy, with the goddess Fortunae/Typhe, often depicted blindfold, spinning the wheel of life, upon which are kings and beggars and those in between, all at the mercy of the supposedly random nature of good and bad periods of fortune.

The fickle nature of fortune continued to be a popular theme in the Post Classical era, exemplarised by the Roman senator, translator and historian Anicius Boethius. After bringing corruption amongst his fellow senators to public attention, he was imprisoned in 523AD, during which time he wrote De Consolatione Philosophiae, (The Consolatione of Philosophy). This work contains his conversations with a personification of philosophy considering how wealth, fame, and power are ephemeral and that only happiness created by the mind and achieving high moral standards can be long lasting.

We’re introduced to Robin Ellacott, Charlotte Campbell, Cormoran Strike and, obliquely, Eric Wardle and Peter Gillespie in part one of The Cuckoo’s Calling, with an epigraph from Boethius’s Consolatione hinting at the events about to develop and the current, and previous status of the characters.

“Nam in omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii, fuisse felicem” –

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.”

The idea is revisited in the epilogue of CC: “Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune …”; and in Chapter five of The Silkworm (SW) we have: “Strike had not been able to guard against warm feelings for Robin, who had stuck by him when he was at his lowest ebb, and helped him turn his fortunes around” alluding to the constantly turning wheel.

In the Epigraph for Chapter 60 of TB, Edmund Spencer challenges Boethius’s idea that the transitory nature of fortune can be controlled through selfless behavior and good morals: “Fortune, the foe of famous cheuisance Seldome (said Guyon) yields to virtue aide, but in her way throwes mischief and mischaunce, Whereby her course is stopt, and passage staid”. This may refer to Strike and Robin ruminating on events in Chapter 58, but when Robin is thinking about Charlotte in this chapter, (“An image of Charlotte hung permanently in Robin’s head these days, like a shadowy portrait she’d never wanted hung. The picture had acquired shape and form in the four years since they’d passed on the stairs in the Denmark Street office …”) I’m also reminded that the “virtuous” event that started the “mischief” and “mischaunce” between Strike, Charlotte, Robin and Matthew was Robin arriving early to her temporary job and deciding to “go up early and and show herself keen for a job that did not matter in the slightest.” (Ch 1:1 CC)

However, when the card for the Wheel of Fortune is drawn, the querent should be advised that here it is, “the Tarot symbol for cause and consequence which enables us to be certain of reaping what we have sown” and “Every effect is the consequence of preceding causes”, (Foster Case p123 &121) and whilst Strike is consistently cynical about the arcane and esoteric, as evidenced in several of the books:

“… Robin began to laugh. ‘Did you just pull that out of your backside, or is it real?’ ‘Of course it’s not fucking real,’ said Strike. ‘None of it is real, is it?’” (Ch 21 TB)

“Given that he wasn’t talking to Robin, who was familiar with his views on fortune telling, Strike decided not to debate whether it was possible to use an oracle properly” (Ch 28 The Running Grave), 

he unwittingly understands the significance of the Wheel of Fortune tarot card.

“He’d had enough experience of both kinds of misfortune to know that there was a vast difference between feeling yourself a victim of random strokes of fate and having to accept that your troubles had been brought about by your own folly. He’d been warned by Ilsa that Bijou was mouthy and indiscreet, and what had he done? Fucked her a second time.” (Ch 43 TRG)

Perhaps at this point his subconscious returned to his final confessional interview with Janie Beattie.

“ ‘Actions ‘ave consequences’, said Janice, her cheeks still burning. ‘Men need to learn that, and take some responsibility. Women ‘ave to’, she said, as the police siren grew ever louder.” (Ch 71 TB)

Whilst my “need to know the causes of things”, sparked by the realisation that one of the Wheel of Fortune card shown in the TV adaptation could have been chosen because it was significant to several of the Strike and Ellacott books, I hope many of you reading already recognised the brief and incredibly satisfying connection to the scene that follows Strike, Robin and the tarot cards: Strike interviewing Dennis Creed.

“ … a quiet member of the mailroom staff at Fleetwood Electric, who astonished his colleagues when, on a works night out, he donned the coat of a female co worker to imitate Kay Starr. ‘ There was little Dennis, belting out “Wheel of Fortune” in Jenny’s coat’, an anonymous workmate told the press after Creed’s arrest. ‘It made some of the older men uncomfortable. A couple of them thought he was, you know, queer, after. But the younger ones, we all cheered him like anything. He came out of his shell a bit after that’.” (Ch 8 TB)

Because of this connecting quote I believe the cards whose images were revealed are a  deliberate inclusion in the adaptation, and there’s a delicious irony to that inclusion.

“On the surface, Creed had been far saner than Bill Talbot. Creed had left no half-crazed scribblings behind him to explain his thought processes; he’d never plotted the course of asteroids to guide him … Not for Creed the belief in signs and symbols, a secret language decipherable only by initiates, a refuge in mystery and magic. Dennis Creed had been a meticulous planner, a genius of misdirection … “ (Ch 53 TB)

Stick’s Stick

The second card Strike reveals as he looks through the deck after Robin’s departure depicts a tall dark man with sleeves rolled up, a bandage/blindfold wrapped around his head, clasping a tall staff or wand; it’s Stick leaning on his stick. 

“Stick” is Strike’s sister Lucy’s nickname for her brother which we first hear in CC and which she consistently uses throughout the series of books and in the TV adaptation. 

“Is Gillespie still on your back for repayment?’

‘No.’

‘Because you know what Stick’ – the childhood nickname boded ill; she was trying to soften him up – ‘I’ve been looking into this and you could apply to the British Legion …” (Ch 2:8 CC)

As yet we don’t have a reason why she uses ‘Stick’, but the image on the Nine of Wands combined with AE Waite’s keywords: “Strong Opponent – Strength in Opposition” (Waite 1909), suggests Strike as a physical tool of protection, a stick, a staff.

“The truth was that he’d always been responsible for some woman: for Lucy, as they grew up together in squalor and chaos; for Leda, who lurched from lover to lover, and whom he had sometimes had to physically protect as a teenager.” (Ch 22 TB)

Strike, when he has pushed his injured leg to its limits, has to resort to using a stick in several of the books. His collapsable cane bought at a Boots chemist in The Silkworm, at the suggestion of Robin, is utilised in Lethal White, Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart, with Strike’s sometimes imperfect memory attributing the purchase to Robin.

“Strike’s gaze moved unconsciously to the drawer where he kept the collapsible walking stick Robin had once bought him, when his amputated leg had been giving him so much trouble he’d barely been able to walk.” (Ch 29 IBH)

“He did, however, decide to take the collapsible walking stick Robin had bought him, before making his way carefully downstairs.” (Ch 48 IBH)

Perhaps the occasions where Robin was his literal as well as metaphorical stick combine to influence his recollection.

“‘Haven’t you got a stick or something?’ 

‘Wish I had,’ he said through numb lips … ‘We can get one,’ said Robin. ‘Chemists sometimes sell them. We’ll find one.’ And then, after another momentary hesitation, she said: ‘Lean on me.’ 

‘I’m too heavy.’ 

‘To balance. Use me like a stick. Do it,’ she said firmly. He put his arm around her shoulders and they made their way slowly over the bridge and paused beside the exit.” (Ch 25 SW)

“For all his determination to keep her at arm’s length, they had literally leaned on each other. He could remember exactly what it felt like to have his arm around her waist as they had meandered towards Hazlitt’s Hotel.” (Ch 40 CoE)

“Not sure I’m going to be able to make it back to the car, Robin,’ said Strike, who wasn’t putting weight on his prosthesis. ‘In retrospect, the digging might’ve . . . might’ve been a mistake.’ Wordlessly, Robin took his arm and placed it over her shoulders. He didn’t resist. Together they moved slowly off across the grass.” (Ch 67 LW)

In TB, Strike and Robin are physically separated as Strike attends to Aunt Joan whilst continuing to lean on Robin to run the Agency. He must eschew the qualities that sustained him though his childhood and army career, and provide emotional support.

“Strike missed the absence of an overriding objective, in pursuit of which he could shelve his sadness … Dark humour and stoicism would be considered unfeeling by the kindly neighbours who wanted him to share and show his pain. Craving diversionary action, Strike was instead expected to provide small talk and homely acts of consideration.” (Ch 31 TB)

Looking beyond the man leaning on his stick, we can see eight more wands/sticks, arranged as a palisade, creating a barrier between the man and what appears to be a barren landscape. The man seems tired – his sleeves rolled up, a weary expression – has he been erecting the barrier or has it taken a great deal of strength and effort to remove one of the sticks, opening a passage to somewhere potentially hostile and unknown?

As we know Strike is a great advocate of barriers with regard to his personal life and emotions, between himself and those he believes might have the power to remove a stick from his palisade.

“ … this far and no further. A distance must be maintained. Barriers must remain in place … The sapphire on Robin’s third finger had been a bonus, then: a safeguard and a full stop. In preventing the possibility of anything more, it set him free to… what? Rely on her? Befriend her? Allow barriers to become imperceptibly eroded, so that as he looked back it occurred to him that they had each shared personal information that hardly anybody else knew.” (Ch 49 CoE)

This trait does not go unnoticed by the woman who stands on the other side of his perimeter.

“ … he was her best friend. This admission, held at bay for so long, caused an almost painful twist in Robin’s heart, not least because she knew it would be impossible ever to tell Strike so. She could just imagine him lumbering away from her like a startled bison at such a naked statement of affection, redoubling the barriers he liked to erect if ever they got too close to each other.” (Ch 45 TB)

Whilst the broader definition of the the Nine of Wands, determination and resilience in the expectation of difficulties and changes (Kaplan 1980), can easily describe Strike in all of the books since and including CC, it’s also found in an almost verbatim quote in a letter that Dennis Creed sends to Brian Tucker.

“Resilience in the face of adversity is one of my own defining characteristics.” (Ch 51 TB)

A more grotesque comparison in the books would be difficult to find.

Waite’s keywords for this card include “Breaking through barriers into a new reality” which we’re definitely shown in the TV adaptation, with Strike singing her a song in Skegness, surprising her on her birthday, revealing to her that she’s his “best friend”, and telling Robin she looks “beautiful”, with the latter revelation “breaking through barriers into a new reality” at the speed of sound.

However we know that the wand/stick can be swiftly replaced in the palisade.

“Barriers that had come down over their five years working together seem to have been re-erected” (Ch 2 IBH)

Happily Ever After

I’m more than willing to admit the next two cards we see Strike look at or touch as he shuffles through the deck are possibly in view only because Tom Burke liked the look of them.

These cards are the Two of Wands and the Ten of Cups. In the former, a nobleman, wand/staff in his left hand, looks out over a landscape from high battlements. There is the security of the land at his back and the potential of travel on the ships in the harbour to unknown places. He holds the world in his right hand and a second wand is nearby if he should need it. Waite interprets it as having the power to make decisions to bring about new, positive opportunities.  More broadly it signifies the time to set ambitious goals is at hand; the querent should stop doubting and make a move.

“If only she could come inside his head and see what was there, Strike thought, she’d understand that she occupied a unique place in his thoughts and in his affections. He felt he owed her that information, but was afraid that saying it might move this conversation into territory from which it would be difficult to retreat …All or nothing. See what happens. Except that the stakes involved would be the highest of his life … he felt as though he stood on a small platform, ready to swing out into the unknown.” (Ch 58 TB)

The last card finds Strike/the querent with their cups running over. It’s a bountiful scene; a couple stand with an arm around each other, the other extended to greet a rainbow arranged over their home. Beside them, two children play.

Waites keywords here are “Friendship, Family, Satisfaction”; it’s a “happily ever after” situation where “gifts of the heart are shared with others”.

In Chapter 58 of Troubled Blood, Strike tells Robin he doesn’t want children.

“Robin laughed. 

‘What’s funny?’ 

‘I give a whole soul-searching speech on the subject and you’re just: no.’ 

‘I shouldn’t be here, should I?’ said Strike, out of the darkness. ‘I’m an accident. I’m not inclined to perpetuate the mistake.’ 

There was a pause, then Robin said, with asperity, ‘Strike, that’s just bloody self-indulgent.’” (Ch 58 TB)

At the beginning of the book, Strike tells Dave Polworth, who has just informed him that “She’ll [Robin] want kids” that “She won’t be getting kids with me. I don’t want them. Anyway, the older I get, the less I think I’m the marrying kind” (Ch 1 TB) and there’s much speculation as to whether this is the ultimate happy ending for Strike and Robin. 

I prefer what Strike does give her in Chapter 58; revelations about his childhood, unburdening himself of the part he played in Charlotte Campbell’s suicide attempt and, “My best mate … is you”.

The interpretation of the Ten of Cups also links nicely with the cards Robin lays down before she sets off to meet Strike on her birthday, ‘Peace’, ‘The Woman Satisfied’ and ‘harmony of the male and female’.

A Succession of Lovers

The card “picked” by Robin is The Lovers, card six of the Major Arcana. However it isn’t card six of the Rider Waite Smith deck.

Though the card is shown with the distinctive blue and white design on the reverse as she holds it up for us to see, it depicts two figures in blue and green. “She was looking particularly sexy in that blue dress, which he’d never seen before.” (Ch 63 TB)  A man and a woman, side by side, in the top left hand corner, and, obscured by her thumb, what appears to be a cupid-like figure on a cloud.

This image I believe was created specifically for this production and harks back to the beginning of tarot history, when the decks were highly decorated cards used for a game of trumps rather than for divinatory purposes.

It could not be more different than Pamela Colman’s card of The Lovers, which depicts naked Adam and Eve-like figures, Eve standing next to a Tree of Knowledge, Adam in front of the Tree of Life, above them an angelic figure, possibly Raphael. This card from the RWS deck has the keywords “Love, Desire, Eroticism”. Adam is looking at Eve and Eve is looking at the angelic figure. There is a decision, a choice to be made, which might mean a sacrifice. 

Traditionally The Lovers card depicted three figures, often a young man with two women, the choice aspect made more obvious.

In the adaptation’s card, the figures depicted have a medieval style, especially in the woman’s Escoffion headdress, and are very similar to The Marriage card from the 15th century Sforza deck, which was commissioned by The Duke of Milan to commemorate the marriage of his daughter Bianca to Francesco Sforza. On this card they stand beneath a canopy, facing each other holding hands, a sign their union has been officiated. Above them a blind Cupid has no need of his bow and arrow.

The man and the woman stand close together, side by side looking out at the viewer, his left hand next to his weapon, her right hand at her waist, whilst his right and her left hand are hidden, maybe linked behind their backs; we’re left to decide.

Robin’s thumb is partly covering the cupid/angelic figure on its radiating cloud, so we can’t tell which of the figures is being targeted by an arrow. Perhaps he’s too late as one or other of the figures has made their choice or perhaps there was no choice to be made.

Marriage is a running theme in the Strike and Ellacott books, with Robin and Matthew’s wedding forthcoming, then postponed, the nuptials interrupted, vows betrayed and the union becoming dissolved in Troubled Blood. Does Robin see herself defined by marriage in the way Strike does?

“He had only ever known her engaged or else bereft at the demise of her engagement and therefore saw her as the kind of woman who was destined for marriage.” (Ch 40 CoE)

Does Robin view her business partnership with Strike in the same vein?

“Robin was now a partner in the firm … For the first time, Strike was brought up against the hard fact that if they ever parted ways, a legal and financial tangle would engulf him. It would, in fact, be akin to a divorce …He didn’t want to split from Robin.” (Ch 62 TB) 

The Sforza deck originates from a time when marriages in aristocratic families were political unions, supposedly loveless. “Actually, my mother always hoped we’d marry.” (Ch 23 SW) There was widespread yearning for depictions of romantic courtly love as defined in stories such as that of Lancelot and Guinevere, the ‘rules’ of which were set by the 12th century author Andreas Capellanus in De Arte Honeste Amandi / The Art of Courtly Love. 

Capellanus declared “… love cannot extend its sway over a married couple. Lovers bestow all they have on each other freely, and without the compulsion of any consideration of necessity, whereas married partners are forced to comply with each other’s desires as an obligation, and under no circumstance to refuse their persons to each other … true jealousy cannot be found between them, yet without it true love cannot exist, as the norm of Love himself attests in these words: ‘He who is not jealous cannot love.’” (p157 Capellanus 1993)

My thoughts immediately went to Matthew Cunliffe. “Matthew must have told his old friend that she, Robin, had been sleeping with someone else (which meant Strike, of course, of whom Matthew had been perennially jealous and suspicious from the moment Robin had gone to work for him)” (Ch 24 TB), then also to Charlotte Campbell, “Charlotte had never allowed anything as mundane as his birthday to interfere with her own whims and moods. On Strike’s twenty-seventh, when she’d been going through one of her intermittent phases of either rampant jealousy, or rage at his refusal to give up the army … she’d thrown his wrapped gift out of a third-floor window in front of him.” ( Ch 21 TB)  “‘She doesn’t like Robin,” said Pat, looking up at him, her dark eyes shrewd behind the lenses of her reading glasses. ‘Jealous.’ (Ch 55 TRG)

The artistic nod to courtly love represented in the card used in the TV adaptation can also be seen as an allusion to the epigraphs of Troubled Blood. In Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen, The Redcross Knight’s love for Lady Una is expressed through chivalrous behaviour and the Squire of Dames fails to find more than three chaste women to refuse his amorous advances. Spencer drew inspiration from the Arthurian legends and Italian court, whilst critiquing their superficiality and lack of profundity when compared with the Christian ideal of love.

To add to this, the dubious literary output of Carl Oakden also refers to courtly love. We can only guess at its content though no doubt he focuses on the terrible toll that chaste love and daring feats of masculinity takes from men’s carnal needs and bank balance. 

“Robin glanced down the list of books beneath the author biography. The covers were cheap and amateurish. All featured pictures of women in various slightly pornified costumes and poses. A scantily dressed blonde wearing a crown was sitting on a throne for From Courtly Love to Family Courts, A History of Gynocentrism …” (Ch 39 TB)

Strike himself is accused of patronage by Robin in the aftermath of her visit to Niccolo Ricci, believing he sees her as needing to be saved.

“The truth is, you’re happy to take risks you don’t want me to take. I don’t know whether it’s lack of confidence in me, or chivalry, or one dressed up as the other—” (Ch 62 TB)

In Conclusion

I think the production of Troubled Blood played a clever trick on both the casual viewer of the Strike adaptations and the avid readers of the books. In a brief glimpse on screen The Lovers card, by name and by nature, creates the idea that it depicts Strike and Robin. We automatically think of love and romance, an idea that Robin hides and Strike must detect, ignoring other cards that may be more insightful to him as he looks for the one she “picked”. 

I hope that’s the case and it’s not just me allowing myself to pass “through the house of bollocks”.

 

Bibliography

Capellanus, Andreas, Translated by Walsh P.G. (1982), On Love, 1993 Edition, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd

Carr-Goom, Philip & Heygate, Richard (2009) The Book of English Magic, 2014 Edition, London:Hodder

Forshaw, Peter, (2024) Occult: Decoding The Visual Culture of Mysticism, Magic and Divination, London:Thames and Hudson

Foster Case, Paul, (1947) The Tarot: A Key to The Wisdom of the Ages, New York: Macoy Publishing Company

Gettings, Fred (1973) Tarot: How to Read the Future, 1993 Edition, London:Hamlyn

Gilbert, Bro R.A. (1986) The Masonic Career of A.E.Waite, freemasonry.bcy.ca

Greer, Mary. K (1995) Women of The Golden Dawn, Rebels and Priestesses, Park St Press:Rochester, Vermont

Hall, Manly. P (1928) The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 38th Edition, New York:Penguin

Hopkins, Andrea (1994) The Book of Courtly Love, London: Harper Collins

Innes, Brian, King, Francis & Powell, Neil (1989) Fate and Fortune, London: Macdonald & Co Ltd

Kaplan, Stuart. R, (1972) The Classical Tarot, 2nd Edition, New York:US Games System

Levi, Eliphas, (1896) The Ritual of Transcendental Magic, 1964 Edition, London: Rider and Company

Miles, Andrea. J (2023) Pamela Colman Smith & Madge Gill, Astrology and Second Sight, Aller: Green Magic

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