Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath. Volume I. The Major Arcana and the First 22 Poems of Plath's Ariel

It has never been a secret that Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes dabbled in the occult and mysticism. Plath wrote of tarot cards, Ouija boards, astrology, crystal gazing, and much more. Hughes’ work has been widely explored in this light, yet in the fifty years since Plath’s death, no one thought to approach her work in this way.

In Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, volume one, author Julia Gordon-Bramer aligns Plath’s great poetry collection, Ariel, with the tarot and Qabalah opening it up to entirely new―and quite obvious meanings.

--Understand Plath’s Jewish imagery references the Qabalah (Kabbalah/Cabala), ancient Jewish mysticism --Understand how Plath’s Holocaust, color, and chemical imagery connects to Jungian alchemy and shamanism --Understand Plath’s concern for African-American, Native American, Women’s, and even LGBT’s civil rights, as well as her fear of the Cold War and nuclear annihilation and how she wove these themes into Ariel --Appreciate the historical, scientific, and artistic correspondences that support Plath’s themes and thus “cast a spell” on the reader, resonating on all levels of consciousness to explain Sylvia Plath’s timelessness

This is volume one of Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, exploring the first 22 poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition, from “Morning Song” through to “The Courage of Shutting-Up,” as they reflect the tarot deck’s major arcana cards.