I have always thought that as far as eras go, the late 60s – 70s are my favorite. Especially in heavy rock, there was so much innovation happening, and everybody was fucking high and dancing naked (in my imagination). So these Hawkwind tarot cards from the November 1971 issue of International Times aren’t really a surprising find, but they’re pretty fucking cool. Before Lemmy changed the world of heavy music with Motörhead, he was being a psychedelic weirdo with Hawkwind, and making a set of acid trippin’ tarot cards for people to paste onto cardboard and cut out for their own personal readings (the actual instructions on the page). Dangerous Minds points out that when the tarot cards are ordered a certain way, they spell out the lyrics for two – at the time unreleased – Hawkwind tracks, “Born to Go” and “Infinity.” These two songs were not released until years after the lyrics appeared on the pages of International Times….ooohh spooky! There’s a pretty entertaining, wacked-out message to the readers in the upper right corner, which reads as follows:
“Great feelings of true love, earthlings. Welcome to this long playing event/happening/participation. A coming together of the people. The pop Apocalypse is coming. Hours of processing/collecting/performing information in an underground ecstasy message. The message is the mystery. The mystery is the rock form divine. The medium is dance, music, film, lights, jelly babies, mime, poetry, 3D events, playing together, reacting to situations together, worshiping the God Rock of your choice together. Custom moulded by Dr. Feelgood for you, we present the Total Rock Reality Live Fantasy.”
OOO-Kay…totally picking up what you’re laying down, guys. Check out this DIY Hawkwind tarot deck below…new party trick: print some out and read your friends!
