I don’t want to go
Something tells me no
No, no, no
But traces in the sand
The lines inside my hand
Say go, go, go
Beware of a place
A smile on a bright shiny face
I’ll never return, how do you know?
Tarot woman
I don’t know…
No Ronnie James Dio? No Halloween. I mean it.
As such, I am saving Halloween by showcasing Tarot Woman today. So you’re welcome.
So while you’re prepping your heartfelt appreciation, allow me to shift gears a tad. And let’s talk about Rainbow, their classic 1976 album Rising, and Tarot Woman. Because this song kills on so many levels, it hardly abides the telling.
Except, and say it with me now: “Of course it does!”
Listen to the way those synths start swirling like a séance, as if Tony Carey were conjuring spirits straight from some interdimensional pinball machine. Then out of the fog comes a deep cosmic hum that only Ritchie Blackmore could turn into guitar thunder. And if your face wasn’t blown clean off, Ronnie James Dio steps out of the mist, sounding like prophecy itself made human.
Tarot Woman is the sound of the 1970s occult obsession turned melodic, bombastic, and wondrously beautiful. She’s the fortune-teller of your nightmares and your desires, the woman who reads your fate and smiles like she already knows you won’t like it.
Every verse feels like a warning: the cards are dealt, the candles flicker, and your destiny’s already got its boots on. And it’s ready to kick you square in the face!
Blackmore’s guitar slices across the sky like lightning over the moors. Dio sings as if he’s both the seeker and the doomed soul, and selling both of them with pious metal conviction. The whole thing pulses with that mix of fantasy and fatalism that Dio made holy – dragons and starfire and destiny – all wrapped in a sick, heavy groove.
When Blackmore’s solo hits, the Tarot Woman is hardly a person anymore. She’s a concept, an idea, a demon pulled from the collective unconscious. She’s the eternal pull toward mystery, temptation, and the seductive lie that maybe you can change your fate.
I mean, if you stare into the cards long enough.
And if you really think about it, Halloween thrives on that same energy. That of foreboding ritual, the thrill of pretending to peek behind the curtain while secretly hoping the prophecy’s wrong. Tarot Woman nails that ethos in abundance.
Damn, I love me some good ethos!
She can take you there
The entrance to the fair
My, my, my
Ride the carousel
And cast a magic spell
You can fly, fly…
