The latest addition to my contemporary pop culture based tarot set is called “Sawbones“.

Sawbones is the “healer” who only makes you feel worse. His name comes from an old-fashioned slang word meaning surgeon or physician. He’s sort of like a mad scientist, except more dangerous because people respect him more, and he thinks he’s doing some good. Behind him is a wall of phony credentials, and his lab is filled with weird arcane concoctions. He’s only recently come out of the Dark Ages, but pretends to know everything. But when you have a problem, mostly his solutions amount to pumping you full of drugs and poisons, and cutting you open with his jagged little saw. He’s spattered with blood not because he’s such a hard worker, but because he’s careless and unaware. He’s so motivated by money that he’s become blind to it, and it’s taken over his very identity: $AWBONE$. He may indeed be able to offer you some help, but not unless you or your insurance company are able to pay through the nose for it.

As far as pop culture references, Sawbones is also the doctor who performs back-alley surgeries: fixing the Joker’s face after his accident at the Axis Chemical plant. He is the doctor in horror films who cuts people up and sews them back together in new configurations, just for the sheer thrill of “science.” He could also be the scientist who grew a human ear on the back of a mouse, or who splices human genes into rice, or works on mind-control technology - but only for “medical applications”. He blunders forward in the name of progress without fully considering the nefarious implications of his work.