Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Neil Peter Christy

Quote by Neil Peter Christy

“I never knew revenge could be beautiful,” Max said. “It will be.” Ryan smiled and raised his glass, “Worthy of its place in poetry books and art galleries.”

Quote by Neil Peter Christy

Work

Head Lion

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Neil Peter Christy

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Neil Peter Christy. more

You May Also Like

“I sigh, peering out of the window. We’re far out of central London now and I scan the streets, trying to get my bearings. We’re getting nearer to Julian’s resting place. I recognise an old police station, converted into cheap flats. This part of London feels darker than Mayfair. It’s as though the streetlights don’t shine as brightly. Cheaper models, not as many. I like it. Every time I come here, on a certain level, I relax. It almost feels more like home than Mayfair. Mayfair is who I want to be, Hayes is who I am. My veins are the dark streets, pulsing with traffic. There’s wreckage all around: craterous potholes, crumpled railings, abandoned cars, derelict homes. Nothing’s ever repaired. It’s all broken. The poverty’s inescapable. The air perpetually stinks.”

“Since Mother's death, Father sees a sneeze as one step from pneumonia. I would rather die than confess a symptom. I don't like this new side of Father. This Father is weak, afraid, constantly worrying. I dare not encourage those fears. Instead, I nod or shake my head, keeping interchange sparse, waiting for a subject more suited to the dignified Father I remember. And I know he's in there.”

“He told them he regretted that he had missed an early opportunity to invest in Nintendo in the 1970's. "They were just a playing-card company," Watanabe-san said, with a self-deprecating laugh. "Hanafuda. For aunties and little children, you know?" Nintendo's most successful product before they made Donkey Kong was, indeed, a deck of hanafuda playing cards. "What's hanafuda?" Sam asked. "Plastic cards. Quite small and thick, with flowers and scenes of nature," Watanabe-san said. "Oh!" Sam said. "I know these! I used to play them with my grandmother, but we didn't call them hanafuda. I think the game we played was called Stop-Go?" "Yes," Watanabe-san said. "In Japan, the game most people play with hanafuda is called Koi Koi, which means..." "Come come," Marx filled in.”

“For all its modern glamour and for everything else that the Tarot has become, it had a fairly humble origin; it began as a simple pack of playing cards. No matter what use the Tarot is put to today, from psychological insight to divination to collectible folk art, it began and remains a card game. Trying to understand the Tarot without knowledge of this fact would be like trying to perform surgery without any knowledge of anatomy. In both cases, we end up with a mangled product.”

“Flower’s evidentiary gymnastics beautifully illustrate the primary point I wish to make, which is that almost all of the Tarot’s acquired meaning has been derived from a foundation that has been shown to be lacking in both substance and truth. Furthermore, this pseudo-history has been promulgated ad infinitum from the late 18th century to the present day.”

“Although Etteilla receives little credit in popular literature today, he can credited with many ‘firsts’': he was certainly the first to popularise fortune-telling with playing cards , the first to promote card reading as a professional activity and the first to publish books on the subject. He also was the first to use a pseudonym as a constant pen-name, initiating a tradition which was to flourish among XIX-oentury esoteric writers, as the following chapters will abundantly demonstrate. Thanks to Etteilla, Court de Gébelin's theory about the 'Egyptian' origin of the Tarot had a wider diffusion and fortune-telling with Tarot cards became popular. He was the first. too, to attempt to incorporate Tarot cards into a system of magical theory: his example, though not his means of doing so, was to be followed by others whose infuence has persisted longer. Last but not least, he can be credited too with the invention of the very word cartomancie, or rather of its forerunner, ‘cartonomancie', which appeared in his writings from 1782. Amazingly, one of his disciples was about to publish a book on 'cartomancie' in 1789 (the first occurrence of such a word in a European language), but as the book is now lost we only know it from Etteilla's very critical review, rejecting this quite new and ‘illogical’ word to which he opposed his ‘better’ cartonomancie. Nevertheless, cartomancie took hold and its use spread. In 1803, it entered de Wailly’s French dictionary, and from these it has found its way into alnost all European languages, Jean-Baptiste Alliette died on 12 December 1791. He was only 53, which is, even in the XVIII century, a rather young age at which to die, We unfortunately know nothing of what he died of. Etteilla was a fascinating character and deserves more than giving his name to a strange Tarot pack. There is something touching in the man, who was sincere and passionate, generous and enlightened (in all the meanings of the word in the late XVIII century.”