Brian Diemert
Brescia College

Few poems have been as thoroughly explicated as T. S. Eliot The Waste Land, which from
its publication with Eliot's notes by Liveright seemed fated to a life of commentary. After
more than seventy-five years, lines and images continue to provoke exegetical comment. The
final lines of the Madame Sosostris section of "The Burial of the Dead" (ll. 43-59) are a case
in point: "If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:/ One must
be so careful these days" (ll. 57-59). ¹

As is well known, Eliot acknowledged the source of the name Sosostris to be Aldous
Huxley novel Crome Yellow ( 1921 ) wherein the decidedly unreligious Mr. Scogan dresses
as "Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana" for a Bank Holiday charity fair held at Chrome. ²
Since Scogan is a man dressed as a woman, Sosostris in Eliot's poem has been read as a
sexually ambiguous character who, for most commentators, ³ represents a debased religion or
a parodic distortion of genuine prophets such as the Sibyl of Cumae or Tiresias. ⁴ The whole
Sosostris episode, in turn, is seen to reflect the degenerate spirituality of the Waste Land's
inhabitants, while the Tarot pack's cards offer symbolic resonances that are felt throughout
the poem, and so render -- given the meanings of the cards found in Sosostris's
reading -- Eliot's claim that he is "not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack

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