Card suits

[Celluloidholes]

I've picked out that each playing card suit is mentioned at least once in GAOG lyrically, or somehow in some form of imagery .

Hearts are mentioned in (S)AIN't and ♠️.
Spades are in the bloody chorus of ♠️.
Diamonds are in (S)AIN't and used in a MM logo at the time.
Clubs are in Ka-boom Ka-boom and maybe (just maybe) a reference to Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse (I doubt it, please don't penalize me).

Playing card suits are a part of GAOG, yeah okay whatever.
I've been looking into tarot recently and I stumbled across someone saying how you could use playing cards for a reading. Tarot was a part of the last era, and it could be likely that the view of cards changed when going into GAOG and when the playing card suits are mentioned it's talking about tarot ideas and cards.

Does anybody have any thoughts?

[Delyla]

I like this. Yes, tarot does play a role in mm's art. Im glad you pointed this out, because i mever thought of it that way.
Cups=hearts
Wands=clubs
Pentacles=diamonds
Swords=spades
But there is no major arcana. Correct me if im wrong please.
How does this imagery translate ?

[Enname]

This is from the very little I know about tarot reading and the even less I know about reading playing cards as tarot.

From what I can find, the correspondences between the suits are as follows:

Cups - Hearts - Emotions, feelings and relationships
Swords - Spades - Thinking and communication
Pentacles - Diamonds - praticalities, material world
Wands - Clubs - Creativity, action

Except, the Holy Wood cards are all major arcana/trump cards. Which are the ones missing when you are using playing cards for tarot, apart from the Fool who is always the Fool. So I suppose if you wanted to go out on a very thin limb, you could hypothesise that each album provides a part of a separate acarna. Only there is no mention of numbered cards in Golden Age of the Grotesque, which makes it really hard to create tarot correspondences because that is where much of the depth comes in - a King of Clubs means more than simply Clubs. But! We may be saved, because it is also worth noting that Eat Me, Drink Me spends a lot of time drawing from Alice in Wonderland*, which is chock full of playing card references - indeed half the characters are playing cards (2, 5, and 7 of Spades for example). Numbered cards even! Not that any of them get mentioned in the album other than the Red Queen, but nevertheless, they are there.

And just because I can and it amuses me, the tarot reading of the three cards Alice sticks in the rose pots to save them are:

Spades:

2 - New insights, realizations
5 - Discord, dishonor, hollow victory
7 - Lying, deceitfulness, theft, irresponsibility

Having said all of this, there is of course a lot of inherent symbolism in card suits even without mystical tarot readings - anything from social structures (different parts of the social structure), to culture (gambling and Weimar hedonism, the game that is the music industry), to emotion, to chance and gambling, to numerical symbolism. Any of them would be a way of reading the particular songs they are associated with.

*and Nabokov, who is also full of playing cards.

[mr.svperstar13]

Interesting thread, indeed. Adds a layer to GAOG I never thought of.

[Nemoris Inferioris]

I know for a fact that Manson named Spade after the image of a Heart with a dagger stabbed through it and turned upside down. Also connects with Doppelherz.

And the "Leader of the Club" is definitely a nudge to the Mickey Mouse Club. "Shrugged off my mouse ears..." :|

But I do find the Card Suit connections interesting. Also note that they also appear in other album lyrics as well. "Suicide King", "AIDS of Space (Ace Of Spades)" etc.

[TMC]

Diamonds are in (S)AIN't and used in a MM logo at the time.

Also in ♠️ "I'm a diamond that is tired of all the faces I've acquired".

[Celluloidholes]

Dammit I forgot it was major arcana cards in Holy Wood. Thanks for pointing it out.

They are in so many places I can't pick them out right here and now.