Hold onto what’s yours, here comes… Identity Theft!

I’ve been meaning to do this card for quite some time. But all this talk of National ID cards and the “data body” lead me to create finally the Identity Theft card.

In this card, we see a man with outstretched arms. Above him a masked bandit (Antonio Banderas as Zorro) is sucking the digital identity out of the man. Bits of binary code and a sort of aura or soul float up out of the man, to be swallowed by the dastardly thief. The man stands upon the monument made of credit cards, which indicates how the foundation of his personality has rested up until now upon corporate institutions and the social status which they provide him.

In one sense, this is a card of fear. Identity Theft has become a tremendously large issue. But guess who mainly has been promoting it as an issue: corporations. And why do they do this? So they can sell you products to allay the fears and insure against the very things they use to freak you out with. Did they create the problem? Unlikely. Crime has been around forever, but they are figuring out ways to capitalize on it.

This card doesn’t really have a direct equivalent in the traditional tarot deck. The closest I’ve been able to come is the Judgement card. In this card, we see many people rising from their graves, with their arms outstretched as an angel of Judgement blows the last trump. This card stands for (in part):

finding absolution; feeling cleansed and refreshed; releasing guilts and sorrows; forgiving yourself and others; atoning for past mistakes; unburdening yourself; feeling sins washed away

In some sense, I think the Identity Theft card can take on these meanings as well. I considered for a while whether or not it would be possible to ever commit identity theft against yourself. If you could, this would be the easiest target to get away with. Just imagine how easy it would be to imitate yourself. You already know all your PIN numbers, and other important bits of information. This conundrum reminds me of that Rupert Holmes song, “Escape” (more commonly known as the Pina Colada Song). In this song, a man decides to take out a newspaper personal ad, so he can cheat on his wife. When he meets the woman who responded to the ad, it turns out to be his wife. It’s all ironic and shit. The point I’m trying to make though is that this card doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. It doesn’t need to support the modern mythology of fear. In some way, you could consider this card as giving your personality a “reboot”. You get to hit the off/on switch and start over again with a clean slate.

Also in this card, we see a weird dude with a beard dressed up as the Batman villain, “The Riddler.” The Riddler was sort of a trickster, and got off on leaving Batman a trail of clues as part of a game. His phantom presence is a reminder that this card also has a sort of “joke” element to it - a game. He points up to the masked bandit, and he says, “What? This guy? He’s just playing a practical joke on you.” Sort of the cosmic equivalent of prank phone-calling somebody, or sending the pizza guy with 10 pizzas over to your confused best friend’s house to get back at him. The Riddler is also a reference to the concept of “secret identities” which is obliquely tied to the Identity Theft card (especially if combined with the Secret Society card). That also reminds me. I chose Zorro as the thief because he’s sort of an ambiguous bad guy. It’s only the authorities who think he’s bad. To the regular people, he’s a sort of protector or savior. Insofaras he is able to teach us about the negative fixation with the “data body” he can also be our savior by severing our connection from it. Another good pop culture reference for this card, though not explicitly mentioned is that shitty Sandra Bullock movie from 1995, The Net - it’s one of the first places where the concept of identity theft really entered the mainstream.

The other way you could read this card is that the bandit is actually blowing, rather than sucking… (er, excuse my sloppy word choice). But you could look at it instead of him stealing the guy’s electronic soul, he is forcing the guy to have an electronic soul. He’s like the Word breathing life into his data body, which is in turn supported by the credit cards. The idea here would be the thief-as-god, and that the gift of the thief is not a gift at all, but a chain, binding you into a system. Or it could be simple and positive: having new life breathed into you.

[Go here for more info on the pop culture tarot]