In the late fifteenth century the people who frequented the taverns of Florence played a card game known as tarots. They used seventy-eight cards; fifty-six of these were arranged in four suits that reflected the different classes of society (coins for the merchants, cups for the clergy, swords for the nobles, and staves for the peasants), and the rest, apparently used as trump cards, depicted figures and concepts familiar to a medieval audience.
Eventually the trumps disappeared, the suits were renamed, and one of the original face cards (the knight) was dismissed from service. Most of us have been playing with this abbreviated descendant of the Florentine tarot since we were children, and our games of chance have not been too different from those condemned by straight-laced Italian theologians.
Sometime in the Renaissance (our first evidence dates from 1480) the different cards were given associations that permitted them to be used for fortune telling. Some of these associations would be obvious enough. For instance, let cups (our hearts) stand for love, and swords (our spades) stand for war. Others might seem highly arbitrary, and it was only to be expected that there would be as many systems of interpretation as there were fortune tellers.
Then, in the late 1700s, a Parisian barber who told fortunes under the name of Etteilla noted that, just as the Hebrew alphabet had twenty-two letters, the old tarot decks had twenty-two trumps. With only this slim basis of a numerical coincidence to go on, he developed the theory that the tarot was a ciphered initiation into the mysteries of the Cabala, the esoteric teaching of Jewish writers who had thought of the Hebrew alphabet as the key to God's manifestation in the world.
There was, however, some precedent for such a fanciful understanding. The scholarly Count de Gebelin, who had come across the use of the tarot for fortune telling in the seaport of Marseilles, had already attempted to explain the trumps as copies of temple paintings that were once studied by students for the Egyptian priesthood. Etteilla's association of the tarot with the Cabala only extended the legend of de Gebilin's "Book of Thoth": after all, had not Moses learned the lore of Egypt, and had not the Gypsies, the greatest experts in cartomancy, once claimed to be refugees from "Little Egypt"? It seemed entirely reasonable to conclude that the Gypsy tarot and the Cabala both came from the same ancient source.
Eventually the English secret society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn took over the tarot as an intrinsic part of its own training in the art of sorcery. Occultist historian A.E. Waite, who headed one of the rival groups left over from the dissolution of the original Golden Dawn, furthered the use of the tarot by designing a new deck that included pictures for the suit cards, the so-called minor arcana. While somewhat deficient aesthetically, this Waite (or Rider) deck is still the one most widely used in the United States, and I will use this set of images in the interpretations that follow.
We may use the tarot as a meditation device in a number of ways. If we work just with the twenty-two cards that make up the major arcana, we can work our way through the sequence of images as a spiritual journey. With the minor arcana we have images that can represent the individual or those close to her.
In general, swords may stand for a cold logic and consequently for controversy. The cards in this suit tend to have a more negative feeling; they suggest the alienation that results when the cutting power of the mind is used selfishly. Think here of the airy characters of Hamlet and Daedalus--even of Joyce's Stephen Dedalus.
Wands also suggest force but in a more positive manner. There is the continuing idea of growth even if accompanied with struggle. Here is the world of Prometheus, the field of action for the adventurers and the investors, all those fiery souls who take risks and may find themselves burned.
Cups have always suggested the things of the heart, the flow of our emotions and also our spiritual leanings. Here we are in the world of the knight in shining armor, whether Sir Galahad or Don Quixote.
With pentacles we find Everyman, who believes only in what he sees. There is here the idea of propserity, whether material or spiritual, and I have often taken pentacles to indicate the pursuit of magic just as I identify cups with mysticism.
The pages in each of these suits may be taken to represent a person's basic temperament, the knights his style of activity, the queens his developed personality, and the kings his status. The ace sums up the entire mood of the suit, and the cards from two to ten represent the progression from uncertain beginnings to completed activity. Twos reflect ambiguity, threes a temporary resolution, fours a situation where things are "squared away," fives a period of crisis, sixes a balance of sorts, sevens a time of waiting, eights a time of renewed activity, nines the results of this activity, and tens a final outcome.
0. The Fool
In the early tarot games the Fool was left unnumbered, the original wild card (the role played by its descendant, the Joker, today). Think of it as representing all about ourselves that is non-linear. This can mean with a simple failure to look where we're going or it can mean the beautiful spontaneity thatis the goal of Taoism and Zen. The Fool is the perpetual innocent, the one become again as a little child. He is Thoreau at Walden Pond, the figure in the Beatles' song "The Fool on the Hill," the Christ as understood and emulated by Francis of Assisi and Ramakrishna. In a spread this card can suggest the breakthrough of enlightenment, possibly the advantage of a paradoxical reading of the surrounding cards. Read negatively it can suggest a blind unconcern for consequences.
1. The Magician
Meet the juggler, the master of illusion, the ruler of the world of maya. This is Hermes, the messenger of the gods and at the same time the patron saint of thieves, the one who gave men writing and thus a new form of magic. The bliss of the Fool gives way to the laughter of the Trickster. The Magician suggests the power to create--or dispel--illusion, control over all the elements, the wisdom of the linear as compared with the non-linear transcendence of the Fool. Read negatively this card suggests deception, particularly on a cosmic scale.
2. The High Priestess
Here is the Great Mother, the mistress of the mysteries, the one true queen of all witches. The shakti of the Magician, she represents the world of the occult, particularly in its religious aspects. Like Isis or Kali, she can be formidable as well as loving, and her card can be both a solicitation and a warning against too ready a surrender to the dark side of the mind.
3. The Empress
The High Priestess is cosmic energy seen spiritually; the Empress is this same energy seen in its material manifestation. Here is the Queen of the May, the Lady Bountiful. this card representes fertility in all forms, particularly the richness of the anima repressed by too great a concern with the purely intellectual. It may stand for a male querent's mother or wife while the female querent may see in it her own maternity, literal or symbolic.
4. The Emperor
Consort of the Empress, this is the man of the world, the one who lives by law and order. The Emperor may represent rationality, authority, mastery. Read negatively it may also represent rationality, authority, mastery. Read negatively it may also represent arbitrary power or a preoccupation with his own way of seeing things that may threaten the querent with the fate of King Lear.
5. The Hierophant
This is the card of spiritual authority, whether it is used wisely or not. Old decks identified this card as the Pope and used the bawdy legend of Pope Joan to identify the card we call the high Priestess as the Popess. The Hierophant demands submission, the surrender of faith. Read negatively there can be a warning against dogmatism parallel to the warning expressed by the Emperor.
6. The Lovers
The solitary figures ofthe previous cards give way to a pair that might be taken to represent the conjunction of opposites sought by the old alchemists. Seen as Romeo and Juliet, the Lovers can be a symbol of harmony or it can also be a warning against overly romanticizing a situation.
7. The Chariot
Hail Caesar! This is the card of victory, in one sense a deepened vision of the synthesis of opposites seen in the Lovers and in another an even stronger caution against a confusion of gestures with reality.
8. Strength
Early decks pictured Hercules and continued the theme of victory seen in the Chariot. The Waite deck softens the image to celebrate the supremacy of an inner rather than an outer strength. We might also see in it the tale of Beauty and the Beast, an overcoming of the possible deceptions of the last two cards.
9. The Hermit
Diogenes is searching for an honest man. The Hermit is the magician concealed, Odin disguised as a wanderer, Merlin awaiting his Arthur. It is the card of insight but it can also suggest withdrawal and alienation, a waiting for Godot.
10. The Wheel of Fortune
Here is the cosmic Las Vegas. Think of the song taken from Ecclesiastes, "To every thing there is a season/ Turn, turn, turn." The Wheel of Fortune is the card of fate, the symbol of unpredictable change, just as ambiguous as the hermit in what it may mean.
11. Justice
The Greeks talked about fate but as an expression of cosmic justice. We have here a symbol of the law of karma or retribution, the signal of the time when what is said in private will be shouted from the house tops. Justice is the card of Watergate, a reminder that for the one who has stepped into magic's world there are no longer accidents but opportunities.
12. The Hanged Man
Even if the theme of the car, following Justice as it does, is punishment, the hanged Manis an odd sort of criminal. He is beatific rather thn beaten, a symbol of the one whio is attaining his liberation from the wheel of life. He is Christ on the Tree of Life, Odin suspended from Yggdrasil. He is any one of us enduring the trials of mortal living as a preparation for a new mode of existence.
13. Death
Shiva dances, the grim reaper comes, the Hanged man at last realizes his transcendence. Take this as a card of symbolic rather than literal death, a card indicating a severe transition. Old distinctions are seen as completely irrelevant and new possibilities emerge.
14. Temperance
Once again there is the call to balance, to the Greek demand for "nothing too much." The lovers held a chalice between them, but here an angel--one of the Watchers--pours from one chalice to another. Thhinnk of the mixture of water and wine, especially as it appeared in the old Christian liturgies as a symbol of the interplay of the divine and the human. The one who has died and been transformed realizes, like the Zen monk, that with the experience of enlightenment the mountains and rivers remain mountains and rivers.
15. The Devil
The Lord of Darkness or Chaos is the symbol of the loss of balance. We find the Lovers again, but now they are in chains because of their responses to the world of appearances. The Devil too is karma, an expression of evil only in the sense that we create our own hell by our willful self-deception.
16. The Tower
Earthly hopes are blasted and we are reminded that pride, symbolized by the tower of Babel, goes before a fall. This is the most baleful card of the tarot yet it too can be read quite positively. Think of the Buddhist image of the thunderbolt standing for enlightenment.
17. The Star
"I wish I may/ I wish I might/ Have the wish/ I wish tonight." After the smoke clears and we look up from the rubble of the Tower we find a bright hope. The Star symbolizes our expectations whether they be realized or not. It also symbolizes our transcendental natures as in the concept of the Shekinah, the scattered sparks of divinity.
18. The Moon
From earliest times the changing moon has symbolized psychic realities. We might see in it a reminder that a left-handed consciousness reflects the energy of the collective unconscious. This is the planet of the High Priestess, but the presence of night creatures stands as a warning against self-deception.
19. The Sun
We move from the Moon to the true source of energy, from the realm of Isis to that of Horus. This is the card of fulfillment, material as well as spiritual. It symbolizes a new dawn, perhaps even a second childhood in the sense of renewed youthfulness. If the Moon might be seen as a call to contemplation, we are here reminded to make hay while the sun shines.
20. Judgment
Even if at first this awesome card terrifies us, we should see in it the message of a new heaven and a new earth. "Gabriel, come blow your horn." In a reading its message is the need for a ruthless self-examination, a facing up to the symbolism of the Death card.
21. The World
Step right up to the Greatest Show in the Cosmos, the adventure of consciousness. What was first suggested by the Magician has now reached its full realization. We see the realm of maya for what it is, the opportunity to reach the full integration of our psychic and physical capabilities. With this card we complete the cycle of the Major Arcana only to begin again with the card that knows no number, the Fool.
The Ace of Wands
This is the card of beginnings in the sense of the seed or the spark. It is the symbol of assertion and of great expectations. It also suggests the idea of masculinity, what the Chinese called yang. Negatively it warns the querent against biting off more than he can chew.
The Two of Wands
A well-dressed man holding a globe looks out to sea. This is the card that suggests the use of influence, an investment of energy, risk-taking in general.
The Three of Wands
The investor watches his ships come in. Here is the suggestion of strength or an enterprise successfully underway.
The Four of Wands
A celebration is about to begin. The risks have proven worthwhile and it is now possible to enjoy the results. Negatively it is counting the chickens before the eggs are hatched.
The Five of Wands
Some youths are engaged in mock combat. This is the card of competition, the test of wills.
The Six of Wands
A man rides in triumph. Competition has paid off and it is a time to savor victory.
The Seven of Wands
A man is fending off his adversaries. There is stubborn courage in the face of opposition.
The Eight of Wands
Parallel staves are flying through the air. This card suggests the idea of rapid movement, a time when things are coming to an end.
The Nine of Wands
A man with a bandaged head stands ready for a new assault. There are obstacles and frustrations.
The Ten of Wands
A man bears off ten staves. The result of activity has been a load almost too heavy to bear. There is a suggestion of oppression, even of cruelty.
The Page of Wands
This card suggests someone with great physical appeal, although the danger might be that there is show but no substance.
The Knight of Wands
Here is the Aries type, someone quick to act. There is also a suggestion of travel.
The Queen of Wands
We meet the Leo personality, one who must be in control of every situation and consequently can be overly demanding.
The King of Wands
The king is the lordly Sagittarian, the master of what he surveys but always in need of new challenges.
The Ace of Cups
This card represents yin, the feminine priinciple in the universe. It suggests intuitiveness, joy, fertility. Negatively there is the idea of a life guided too much by the emotions.
The Two of Cups
A man and a woman exchange cups. This is a card that suggests harmony, lovemaking, psychic health.
The Three of Cups
Three women raise their cups on high. We have here the theme of abundance and good cheer. If taken negatively the querent is warned against dissipation.
The Four of Cups
A seated figure is offered a new cup. there is a suggestion of satiety, a fulfillment of basic emotional needs that makes new interests possible.
The Five of Cups
A man is looking at cups that have been knocked over. We are warned of disappointments, the realization of our limitations.
The Six of Cups
Two children are at play in the garden. This is the card of happiness, especially as it deals with the innocent pleasures of childhood. Negatively it is a warning against living in the past.
The Seven of Cups
A figure is offered a vision of cups. Whether this is read as a card of promise or a card of illusion, it is a reminder that hard choices must be made.
The Eight of Cups
A figure turns his back on a stack of cups. The success achieved has not been enough. It is now time for a change of life.
The Nine of Cups
A man sits smugly beneath an arch of cups. Emotional needs appear to have been completely satisfied.
The Ten of Cups
A family rejoices beneath a rainbow of cups. This is the card indicating that all one's wishes have been fulfilled. The difference between this and the previous card is that the happiness is no longer solitary but shared.
The Page of Cups
Meet the dreamer. This is the card of the romantic with the suggestion of both high aspirations and self-centeredness.
The Knight of Cups
The knight is the Cancerian, someone skilled in the arts and in the manipulation of feelings. Read negatively this card warns the querent against being betrayed by his emotions.
The Queen of Cups
The lady is a Scorpio, someone with a great depth of feeling but possibly unreliable.
The King of Cups
This card symbolizes the Piscean, one who feels deeply but is likely to be caught up in deception.
The Ace of Swords
The sword stands for the conquering power of the mind. It is double-edged, a clue to the fact that it is quite possible for its possessor to be too smart for his own good.
The Two of Swords
A blindfolded figure sits with crossed swords. This is the card of indecision or of ambiguity.
The Three of Swords
A heart is pierced with swords. The image is that of anxiety, possibly of mental illness.
The Four of Swords
The scene is the catafalque of a knight, the place where one might spend the night in a vigil. There is a suspension of activity in favor of contemplation.
The Five of Swords
A man picks up the weapons of his defeated adversaries. This card suggests the position of having been disarmed and left vulnerable.
The Six of Swords
Two huddled figures are ferried away from shore. It is a time of transition when one finds that his head is no longer in the same place.
The Seven of Swords
A figure is stealing away with the weapons of his sleeping adversaries. This card suggests either a loss of one's critical ability or a reliance on strategy.
The Eight of Swords
A bound and blindfolded figure is hemmed in by swords. There is the idea of restriction, perhaps of criticism. The querent may have the feeling that his hands are tied and that he sees no way out of his problems.
The Nine of Swords
A weeping figure is sitting up in bed. This is one of the few really negative cards in the tarot. It suggests suffering, the realization of loss, despair.
The Ten of Swords
A figure pierced with swords lies prone on the ground. Also a completely negative card, it suggests total ruin.
The Page of Swords
This card represents someone who is either sharp witted with the potential of being either a good diplomat or a good spy.
The Knight of Swords
The knight is a Gemini, someone who is quite mercurial and altogether too ready to act before thinking. He needs to stir things up to keep from being bored, a trait that can mark him as a born troublemaker.
The Queen of Swords
Here we have the Libra with a perception that has perhaps been sharpened by loss. Read negatively, this card is a warning against mental cruelty.
The King of Swords
This is the card of the emotionally cool Aquarian, someone born to sit in judgment over others, but also someone who must watch out for a tendency to fanaticism.
The Ace of Pentacles
This is above all others the card of opportunity for either material or psychic gain.
The Two of Pentacles
A juggler balances two pentacles. Involved here is the juggling of impressions that can be an indication of a change about to take place.
The Three of Pentacles
A supervised craftsman carves a pentacle. This is the card of rewarding work, especially work that is done at the direction of another.
The Four of Pentacles
A man sits holding on to a pentacle. Labor done for another has led to wealth for oneself. There is a caution against becoming miserly with what has been earned.
The Five of Pentacles
A pair of unfortunates pass by a lighted window. This is the card of worry or of loss, perhaps a consequence of the limited vision suggested by the card before.
The Six of Pentacles
A figure dispenses alms. True prosperity is the ability to share with those in need.
The Seven of Pentacles
A farmer rests on his hoe. This is the time of waiting, a reminder that patience is a virtue.
The Eight of Pentacles
The craftsman is at his bench. No longer needing supervision, the figure in the card suggests the skilled artisan, the person who is both industrious and self-reliant.
The Nine of Pentacles
A matron is at ease in her garden. Here we have a symbol of security, the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of labor.
The Ten of Pentacles
A patriarch surveys his family and his estate. Even more than the card before there is the idea of wealth and the achievement of a good life, especially the blessing of seeing one's children's children.
The Page of Pentacles
Here we find the person who is open, studious and generous. Read negatively, this may be a warning against spreading oneself too thin.
The Knight of Pentacles
This is the Taurus personality, one who is dependable even if not particularly imaginative. He is someone who must beware of timidity.
The Queen of Pentacles
Meet the orderly Virgo, well able to get things done but perhaps too aloof and too dependent on exterior signs of success.
The King of Pentacles
The king is the Capricorn, the pillar of society. He may, however, be too stolid, possibly too open to manipulation.