Tarot As A Counseling Language

12/11/2020 Tarot as a Counseling Language
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Tarot Bibliography
(The Tarot section begins about halfway down the page)
Tarot Links
(Section L of Western Mystery Tradition Links)
Artist Credit: Excalibur, by Erulian (Karel Hamm)
Tarot as a Counseling Language:

Core Meanings of the Cards
© Bradford Hatcher, 2015 (Revised Mar 4, 2020)
Click Here for 359-page PDF Version
Index
Trumps Introduction Suits
Fool Tarot as a Language Wands
Magician Historical Notes and Timeline Cups
Priestess Correspondences Swords
Empress Component Ideas in the Minor Arcana Pentacles
Emperor Supplement, Bibliography, Study Links
Hierophant Court
Lovers King
https://www.hermetica.info/Tarot.htm#B 1/241
Chariot Wands Cups Swords Pentacles Queen

Strength Ace Ace Ace Ace Prince
Hermit 2 2 2 2 Princess
Wheel 3 3 3 3
Justice 4 4 4 4 Numbers
Hanged Man 5 5 5 5 Ace
Death 6 6 6 6 2
Temperance 7 7 7 7 3
Devil 8 8 8 8 4
Tower 9 9 9 9 5
Star 10 10 10 10 6
Moon Princess Princess Princess Princess 7
Sun Prince Prince Prince Prince 8
Judgment Queen Queen Queen Queen 9
World King King King King 10
Introduction
This book was written for a narrower range of readers than the much broader set of
Tarot aficionados. As the title suggests, this will attempt to re-envision the study in a way
that is specifically useful in counseling, and to better understand the core meanings of the
cards in these terms. Since effective counseling assumes something akin to agency or
self-directed behavior, the aspects of Tarot that concern fortune-telling or predicting the
future will be dropped from this study. But the goal here is more ambitious than that. The
Tarot, as a system of symbols or a symbolic language, has something to offer to an even
more rigorous skeptical inquiry, almost in an anthropological sense, and certainly in a
psychological one. It is a cognitive tool kit, and descriptive of an attitudinal skill set.
There is little in print that is dedicated to such an approach. The intended reader here is
an intelligent skeptic, with an unabridged set of critical thinking skills. This means that
there will also be other casualties in this analysis, such as ‘new age’ metaphysics and
fanciful misinterpretations of Jungian psychology. Number symbolism will remain, in
some detail, but numerology will be dismissed. Religious symbolism and iconography,
where not completely gratuitous, might be treated as symbolic of psychological processes
rather than analogs of metaphysical realities. However, it is sincerely hoped that enough
valuable information about the cards will be presented here that even readers pursuing
more conventional approaches, and especially those writing their own books on the
subject, can still come away from this thinking that their time here was well spent. One
should not, however, expect this to be an easy read, and one might suspect the author of
taking some delight in sending the reader to the dictionary. This is for the education, not
entertainment, barring the occasional bit of dark humor.
Such a purging of the field, done for the sake of readers with more rigorous intellectual
standards, may prove unpalatable to many, but this book is not written for market, or to
profit from the gullible. Ergo, you may have noticed already that this book will not try to
spare the sensitive feelings of the “true believer.” This is a technical term for someone
who has personally identified with a belief or set of beliefs, such that any challenge to
these beliefs, or mockery thereof, must be taken as a personal or existential threat, and
defended against at all costs, even at the cost of foregoing any new input. There are a lot
of these thin-skinned people studying Tarot. There are also a lot of relativists, who
believe that all perspectives are valid. Many cannot even be told that two plus two does
not equal five. It may be just as well that these people set this book down now. Even at
the expense of sounding arrogant or patronizing, I don’t intend to hesitate to call
something wrong. As an Aspie, tact is not a big priority. As a classical Cynic, I like my
parrhesia. And as a Nietzschean, I like my swordplay. Having waded through more than
150 books in preparing this text, I've seen far too much nonsense, and I feel no duty to
perpetuate any of that. I want to see the Tarot grow in respectability. I don’t want new age
cooties. I feel an obligation to the future of Tarot as an evolving, open-source culture.
The Tarot presented here is simply a system of symbols that makes up an interesting
language that is useful in talking about attitudes and mental states. The approach for our
purposes here is narrower than usual in a couple of ways, and sets aside a number of
associations and structural dimensions that might be thought peripheral, extraneous or
irrelevant. This might be done with a dismissive attitude. Many of these set-asides will
have allies and champions who regard them as absolutely essential. Among the offended
may be strict adherents to the Golden Dawn approach, to which this work adheres with at
least some degree of fidelity. This is because it is asserted here that this system contains
errors: not a lot of errors, but a few in important places. It may well be asked where the
qualifications are to make such corrections, or where the ancient authority lies. But this is
merely a reluctance on the part of the author to continue such errors under the watchful
eyes of skeptics, who are often armed with logic, and even common sense. It is important
to understand that actions taken here are for the purposes stated here, and there is no way
to stop anybody who wants to add any deletions back into their personal system.
It is also important to note that there will be ideas presented here, and mentioned in
matter-of-fact tones, that sound suspiciously like mystical or even religious experiences.
But skeptics ought not concern themselves overmuch, as these experiences are simply
part of the inherited human lebenswelt and even good scientists can be subject to having
them. No theories of objective reality will be constructed thereon. Wherever the word
psychic is used, it refers to the subjective mental world and not to the paranormal. No
mention will been made of how or whether the cards work. This will be left to the readers
or their querents. It would be nice to approach this subject with the same intellectual rigor
that is at last being seen in studies of Tarot history, at least as far as historical evidence
allows, but standards of scholarship must necessarily be different for history than for
meanings. Rigorous standards are simply not as applicable when the exercise is primarily
creative. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is the honest voice of the child who calls
out in mid-parade: “Why is the Emperor naked?”
Mary Greer identifies 21 reading styles or ways to read Tarot cards (21 Ways, p. 271).
Many of these are outside the purview of this book. Only a few of these approaches will
fit the language model that is being explored here. Others remain important, however, as
vehicles for subjective experience. In a reading, we want the cards to take us on journeys,
to take us as far as necessary from any idea of consensual, central, or core meanings to
get the information that we are looking for. In cultural studies and depth psychology we
want to explore the symbolisms and mythologies in all of the rich detail that can be
uncovered or extrapolated. The images of the cards, particularly those of the much older
images of the Trumps, offer us enriching travels through the imagination. In magick, we
want to invoke these cards and their meanings as entities and explore them from the
inside as experiences, out to the edges of where they can take us and even beyond the
known and expected. In pathworking, or imagining ourselves transitioning between
symbols on a diagram such as the Tree of Life, we can further enrich, detail and, texture
our metaphors. In meditation, we can make use of the cards as Tattwas or Kasinas. In
spellworking, analogs of cards may be burned, immersed, altered or buried as charms. If
superstitiously inclined, we can use them as talismans and amulets. We may bifurcate the
methods by contrasting magickal and intuitive with rational and analytic. One of the
primary distinctions in approaches concerns whether the meanings of the cards are
expanding or contracting, diversifying or narrowing. When we are simply allowing the
cards to take us places, by letting go of the mental reins, letting the symbols speak,
freeing the imagination, and reading intuitively or pathworking, the potential meanings
multiply. But even in the more expansive modes, consensually affirmed centers of
meaning will offer us a known place from which to begin the wider journey.
Some approaches will require hyperbolic exaggeration, going over the top and getting
carried away, all full of emotion and ecstasy. Magick seeks attainments, and mysticism,
first-hand experiences. In spellworking, there is a role for hyperbole in raising magical
energy through states of excitement. Meister Eckhart describes the invocation process
simply: “When the Soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front
of her and then steps into it.” Of course the common error subsequent to doing this is in
reifying the experience, thinking that first-hand experience is identical with objective
knowledge, that the discoveries made in experience are in fact dimensions of reality. We
mistake our interpretations for facts. And as humans, we tend to find exactly what we are
predisposed to find by our expectations and insecurities. But an idea common to both the
therapeutic and the intuitive approaches is that we can invoke our way into different
states of mind using different symbols, images, or cards, and into a variety of attitudes, as
though this array were some kind of cognitive tool kit or wardrobe. This aspect of the
approach here is not entirely analytic or rational, although it does call for a rationally
pragmatic notion of truth to assess the effect of the process. In counseling, this effect is
often a change in maladaptive behavior. It’s about what you do with the cards, not what
they tell you to do, or what they do to you, or what they say will be done unto you. A
word of caution, though, on spellcraft and the cards: each card has a wide range of
meanings, including those seen by readers who read reversals. If you are casting a spell
with a card, be sure to grasp the wider range of meanings. Magick loves irony, and irony
will find you. Be careful what you wish for.
In ceremonial magick there is a distinction between evocation and invocation. In both
cases, you’re calling some force. In evocation, that something stays outside of you, and is
confined to some area like a triangle, while you are protected by a magic circle. In
invocation, you bring the force inside you while you both remain within the circle. Tarot
cards should be understood in both of these ways as well. A card can be something
objective and outside of you, maybe doing something to you, or offering a problem to be
solved, or it can be internalized, as a personal experience or a skill to be used, or an
attitude to adopt. Or, in the case of Pip cards, a third option might be that you internalize
the number while the suit becomes your object or tool.
We will assume that you are not a never-ever level of beginner to the Tarot and that
you already know at least few basic things about the subject. If you are a novice, some
introductory reading is recommended first. This need not be book length. It can even be
something as basic as the main Wikipedia article. There are also a number of other links
to be found at my Hermetica site. Try browsing the first section for introductory material.
Before going too far beyond this Introduction, there is also a 35-page pdf Supplement to
this work. This contains a lot of excerpted material that is specific to working with the
symbolism of the Yijing or Book of Changes, but this symbolic system also has a lot in
common with Tarot and most of what is laid out here is also relevant to understanding the
cards. You may, without great consequence, skip or fail to understand any of the portions
that use the more technical Yijing terminology.
As for a general note on learning Tarot, we should note that beginner's books are a bad
idea, given the way people learn and unlearn. People have a tendency to learn and accept
things without a complete understanding of the implications of what it is they’re learning.
But once they believe the first thing they have read, they must then disbelieve the next
half-dozen things that contradict it. This is in part called the sunk cost fallacy, and in part
the fact that unlearning later is considerably more effort than learning in the first place,
and there’s also something of self-criticism in there that says they were foolish to allow
an error to come live in their heads. Now the error has a long-term lease. These are the
main reasons to build a basic knowledge of Tarot with the best materials we can find, and
avoid beginners’ books. We should challenge ourselves to do things well from the start,
since we will be living with the results and they will be proportionate in quality to the
effort invested. We don't want to build a real house on a Play Dough foundation. Start off
with shortcuts and books for the lazy and you build on a crap foundation. Finally, no
matter how creative you may want to get eventually, a solid foundation means taking
fairly conservative approaches at first. We should avoid anything too idiosyncratic.
There’s nothing wrong with artists expressing themselves and going nuts with the Tarot's
potential to inspire. But Tarot is a language, and you want to begin with a dialect that
most people understand, not one known to only a few, unless you want to live in some
distant province.
Prediction and Divination

One of the more radical changes in a counseling approach is the move away from
fortune-telling or predicting the future, and avoiding attempts to explain how the future
might be known, or what mysterious forces are translated into the mechanics of drawing
the cards. The assumption is that if counseling is to be effective, present directions in life
need to change. Free will, or agency, or self-directed behavior, is brought into play. This
also throws up a challenge to conventional wisdom by suggesting that no card should be
regarded as inherently good or bad. There aren’t any necessarily ‘positive’ or ‘negative’
outcomes or predictions, unless these words are understood without attached value
judgments. Each card represents a lesson to be learned, sometimes after we needed to
learn it, sometimes before. It is a positive skill to be used well or poorly. Sometimes what
we already know needs to be negated. The card becomes information to be employed,
perhaps in avoiding the very trouble that it might be a warning about. This might be
regarded as the difference between fortune-telling and divining. We might accept that
such an approach is still a form of divination if we can strip out the mumbo jumbo and
regard the process as penetrating and elucidating some of the hidden dynamics of
situations, activities of perception that are accomplished with nothing more supernatural
than your ordinary human mind.
I see divine as a verb, not as an adjective. We divine to penetrate and understand
appreciatively. Any atheist can still see an important place in life for a sense of
sacredness, reverence, and gratitude. For me, Tarot is a language about psychological
states, sort of a wardrobe of attitudes and approaches to life. Readings recommend tools
of understanding with which to approach your question. There is nothing supernatural
about it, but the natural is underestimated. Tarot simply uses native heuristics like
pareidolia to get us closer to the subliminal, to places in the mind where consciousness
can't go. In order to come up with the images. used like Rorschach-blots, to receive and
reflect our projections, the inventors of divination systems have created finite sets of
substitutes for seeing omens in the wild. We no longer have to wait to see lightning strike
the steeple of a church to get our omens.
Meanwhile, on the far side of the question of freedom, we might have the skeptics
raising their eyebrows and asking who here is really free to choose different courses for
their lives. It may be that, for most people most of the time, the exercise of real freedom
only happens on rare or special occasions, while the norm is almost fully predictable. We
might point to the effectiveness of human political propaganda, advertising, and religion
in herding the obedient and predictable masses at will, and with some degree of precision.
Simple manipulation of fears and insecurities is effective enough to bypass most people’s
version of rational thought, and it seems an easy job to plant those fears and insecurities.
This may be the challenge, in which case our divining here must concentrate on the rare
and special occasions. It’s the important decisions, when we are undergoing some stress
consequent to previous choices, when we are most likely to seek out better counsel and
acknowledge a need for better options. And it may be that the exposure in counseling to
alternative directions in life might lead to a person’s first true exercise of freedom of
choice.
Rosengarten suggests Tarot cards offer the ‘benefits of psychological insight and
depth, without the baggage of affiliation that invariably accompanies any single set of
beliefs… . Tarot operates on many levels of profound meaning from a purely non-
affiliated platform in the truest sense. Tarot makes accessible to awareness a full
spectrum of psychological and spiritual possibilities with little preference for its user’s
qualification or beliefs.’(p. 5). Importantly, with all due respect, this is only a pack of
cards. Querents might not get as defensive against a deck of cards as they might with a
friend or counselor. This makes it easier to open up subjects for further inquiry. There is a
sense of safety in this.
An Open Source Project

The lore of Tarot is full of mysteries and secrets. But we are at last permitted here to
divulge the greatest of these: Tarot is the continuing effort of a bunch of men and women
making stuff up, and then trying to find acceptance for the stuff they made up. Some stuff
sticks in the culture, some doesn’t, just like life in evolution. This confession was in no
way authorized by the Secret Chiefs of the Brotherhood of Light. Tarot is simply an open
source project, an ongoing effort that is several centuries old now. It has not descended to
us in degraded form from some golden age of original perfection. It is an evolving human
endeavor. For some reason, this mystery often appears to necessitate telling lies about its
origin, or its current redaction, particularly lies about its antiquity or authorship. It is
generous to think that many of these lies began as hunches that turned into delusions.
Perhaps Nietzsche explained this best: “At bottom, it has been an aesthetic taste that has
hindered man the most: it believed in the picturesque effect of truth. It demanded of the
man of knowledge that he should produce a powerful effect on the imagination.”
As we reach back through the known history of the cards, the designs get progressively
more primitive and the commentators more foolish or deluded. It appears that assorted
groups of noble families, enterprising artists, game makers and scholarly folk, versed in
more than one of the many schools of learning that were reawakening in the Renaissance,
decided to combine some ambient cultural symbols with resonant counterparts in Western
Gnostic philosophies and the newfangled cards recently imported from the Middle East
(which were themselves derived from Chinese cards), all in a book without a binding.
This had promise as a game, and this helped insure longevity, diffusion across cultures
and popularity. It is unknown how many cards were in the first decks, but over the years
two discrete decks emerged, the original gaming pack of 52 cards and the later fortune-
telling pack of 78 cards.
In a way, we are creating an artificial entity that is seemingly intelligent and moves
through time gaining wisdom as it goes. It is an attempt to flesh out a skeletal pattern of
organized meaning. It is not a static legacy. It crosses many cultural lines and integrates
other disciplines into itself. It grows by accretion. It evolves spontaneously until cultural
pressures are minimal to add something missing or eliminate something redundant, until
it attracts less desire to change it, and arrives at a wieldy number of pieces for the mind to
make use of. It will shed dead flesh now and then, and failed experiments. Sometimes a
scribe will put the right eye where the left ear should be. Often a monk will leave off the
genitals, or make them abnormally large. Given the ages involved, slips add up to slop
and the work stands in need of some major revision, or even radical surgery. Growth by
accretion has proven its value. Divergent thinking generates an excess of ideas until all of
the needed ideas are present. Then it is time to re-converge and synthesize, cut out and
leave behind the excess. Like evolution elsewhere, an experimental diversification is
followed by selection for the fitness of forms to their niches. What works best tends to
stay longest. This will be the spirit behind some of the negative thinking, the suggestions
for corrections and emendations, seen here. And in a few places we might note a greater
value in something that has at present been abandoned, such as an older version of one of
the Trumps. But we will generally want to study the system as it has evolved, or in the
same direction in which it has been evolving. And there is no reason to allow outmoded
ideas in Tarot to conflict with more modern ideas, particularly those of science. An open
source project must be capable of learning.
Core Meanings
There’s a dynamic tension in Tarot evolution that mirrors the evolution of life. People
are always coming up with new ideas that may or may not survive. The value in “doing
your own thing” parallels mutation. When that innovation is ignored or rejected by the
larger Tarot community, we get the equivalent of selection. Nobody wants to mate with
that mutant. We get some interesting art that way sometimes, but it goes no further as a
widely-used new deck. Lots of experiments get way too far out to be viable, mostly
because they don’t pay enough attention to the core elements that are at the heart of what
Tarot really is, or its basic genome. And every now and then we get major branchings,
like the Marseilles, Golden Dawn, the Smith Pips, or the Crowley deck. These are like
speciation events, where it becomes harder to share information between branches. We

have a few species now, almost enough for a zoo, but some can still interbreed.
Basho, the 17th century poet, sounding a bit like Rumi, once wrote “Do not seek to
follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.” When we don’t, we
move from having first-person experience to second and third person vicarious thrills.
This holds a warning for both Tarot readers and designers of new decks. Let’s say we’re
looking at one of Pixie’s Pip images. Most of the people who write the Tarot books
usually get their own reaction to the image, check it against a few others, and then write
their own interpretation of what the card means. There is some very general agreement
there, and a bunch of gray area. This accumulates into a body of accepted ideas, but most
of the lore is just from riffing off of Pixie’s pics. Very few seem to ask where Pixie was
getting her inspiration. What was she looking into, and how did that influence what she
tried to convey. Unless people go back to the same well she was drawing from, we get the
equivalent of the Chinese Whispers or Telephone game, where something is whispered
around the room and loses a bit of its original nature with each iteration. More of us
should be retuning to the well Pixie drew from, and a big part of this was an
understanding of what the number symbolized, what the suit meant, and how the two
combine to form a new meaning, a whole that's more than the sum of its parts. The exact
kind of flower in the background of the card, and what its color symbolizes, is a lot less
important than that.
Each of the 78 cards has a huge range of meanings. You might think of each one as
1/78 of the human experience. By itself, that’s too much information to be practical.
When divining, we narrow that down two times: first by fitting the card into a specific
position in a spread, and second, by asking it to focus its meanings on the specific
question we ask. It’s similar to doing research: we narrow the findings to the information
we need by learning to look in the right places, and by learning to ask better questions.
But this also suggests that we not start with too narrow a meaning for the individual
cards, such as making the mistake of having only one favorite keyword for each card.
Verbatim memory or memorizing is too specific and not effective or flexible enough
for reading. But we do need a gist memory or a gestalt, a sense of core meaning for each
of the cards that both experience and several keywords can help you develop. Gist
memory carries essential meanings rather than words or pictures, and yet can serve as a
trigger for words and pictures from elsewhere in the brain. Many pull their meanings
from the artist's pictures (and the artists personal symbolism), but this is closer to reading
the artist than reading the Tarot, so you want an artist who knows Tarot if you want to
really do Tarot. We can look for core meanings in four places for each card. There
remains a lot of work to be done here. The glosses of Tarot’s vocabulary are still very
fluid, and not at all standardized, and the language still has multiple dialects, some of
which are mutually incomprehensible.
1) Images. The first source is the dimension of the image or picture, what the sense of
it is, how it has evolved over the centuries, and in some places, where it perhaps should
not have changed so much. There is a danger in getting overly fussy here: the little stick
in his right hand has two branches because this symbolizes x, there are three bells on her
toes because this symbolizes y. An excessively detailed description is little more than a
detailed description of the Rorschach blot that is tickling our subconscious. We will not
sweat these details. Probably the majority of decks within the range being studied here
are inspired by the RWS designs, but most artists add their own details and flair. This
stuff should be saved for when you are desperately fishing for peripheral meanings during
a particular reading. The core will be in the overall impression, a picture that can be
adequately described in the space of a couple of sentences. We will be looking more at
the larger impressions, which may include figure, postures, and more universally seen
accessories. This work, then, is not a companion to one particular deck. This approach is
more useful with the Trumps because of their greater longevity and their evolutionary
history. Depictions of the Court have some longer history as well.
It is problematic to rely primarily on the pictures on modern Pips. With the exception
of a very old deck called the Sola-Busca Tarot, most Pip images began with Pamela
Colman-Smith sketching her impressions of what the Golden Dawn symbols might look
like if translated into lifelike vignettes. Most decks since, and most books interpreting
them, are derived from this effort, now just over a century old. Many authors do little else
but free-associate with their impressions of Smith’s work, riffing endlessly on, and often
in error, with no attention to or regard for the underlying symbolism of number and suit.
Smith’s work is brilliant, but the pictures still do not, or cannot, fully surround the core
meanings, and many are subject to serious misinterpretation. Payne-Towler has another
useful take on this issue: “Instead of being shown the formula that represents a certain
natural law operating at a certain stage of the cycle in a distinct elemental realm, the Tarot
reader encounters a cartoon of people enacting specific behavior and undergoing a
particular emotional experience. This overemphasizes the sense of self in the situation,
narrowing the possibilities of meaning and interpretation for that card.” At the same time,
attempts to return to the former direction by eliminating the vignettes, as with Crowley’s
deck, often become incomprehensibly abstract, or laden with inappropriate values from
the attached narratives.
People get overly fussy about minor details and don't prioritize the importance of the
symbols. Pixie's images have almost become canon, and it seems most deck artists feel
compelled to reproduce some version of what she did. There's rebellion in the ranks
against that, but not many other models to follow. That's just a work in progress, and lots
of artists are loving the challenge, often in pretty idiosyncratic ways. Waite clearly drove
most of the Trump imagery and his western religious imagery is obvious, offensive to
some, and just wrong in places. And he’s pompous and bombastic about it. He grasped
next to nothing about the Pips and how their meanings are formed. The rest of the deck
shows more of Pixie's creativity, at least beyond what she was able to glean from ideas
suggested in the ambient Golden Dawn culture. Unfortunately, several RWS images are
easily misinterpreted, which adds to the confusion. The energy of Eight expressing itself
through the suit of Cups is a thousand times more important than whether the hiker’s staff
is crooked or straight, or his cloak is yellow or brown. That’s mostly the artist instead of
Tarot, and your reaction to that is more of a reaction to the artist’s idea, not to the core
meaning of the card.
High resolution symbolic detail may easily tell us more about the idiosyncrasies of the
artist than about the meanings of the cards themselves, although this may still be useful in
contributing raw data to the pareidolia heuristic. There are plenty of books in print for
those who need to go this route, especially Graham, Esselmont, etc. for the RWS. But
only minimal or sufficient attention will be paid here to any of the images. Card
descriptions will generally not take more than a couple of sentences. In many cases these
will be preceded by the note (modified) or (modified slightly) just to note that some new
suggestions are about to be made. The intent is not to create a new deck or align with any
particular deck. Suggested modifications are meant to live only in the mind or add to the
mental gestalt more than the visual. The reader should simply be aware that many cards
have several options. Core meanings should remain independent of the picture and useful
with any deck. This particular attitude will have its detractors as it seems to assert a
supremacy of conceptualization over imagery, and many would call Tarot essentially non-
verbal and visual. Jorgensen asserts that it is “imaginative intensity which gives
experiential content to otherwise content-less words.” But who among us has not felt the
heat of Mt. Doom on our face, just from reading a book without pictures? Once again,
this approach is with specific respect to core meanings and linguistics.
2) Key Words. Each card represents an attempt to cover 1/78 of the human experience,
each one a fairly broad field in itself. We cannot expect single names and words to cover
this much terrain. It requires a number of terms even to surround the center of the
territory. Core meanings are broad compared to everyday words and their definitions.
Key words will be used a lot in the present work, but even though their number may be
expanded, their range of meanings will be narrowed somewhat from the aggregated
assignments of all the books in print. Narrowing may be seen as an attempt at defining
the cards, but it is not that. Rosengarten (p. 17) offers a too-narrow-minded criticism of
the process, calling such an attempt at standardization “abhorrent to the essential vitality
and versatility of this intuitive art.” This is view is taken to the extreme in Lewis Carroll’s
Looking-Glass, “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it
means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice,
‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said
Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.’” But Alice is right. Words and ideas
without some core level of consensual meaning will only render a language useless for
anything other than babbling to oneself or for having private experiences. Tarot is a
discipline that is shared by many others, and as such it needs at least some discipline,
some constraint and resolution, and an agreed upon place for two or more minds to meet.
A core meaning is not a collection of key words, but a gestalt that emerges as a
synergy from such a collection, like a sense of the gravitational attraction that holds those
key words together in their orbits and relationships. In turn, this gestalt becomes a well
for the intuition to draw from. If the Tarot is going to have any value as a language, one
which we might use to communicate with each other, its vocabulary is going to need
something to take the place of definition. Any useful language requires at least some
consensus and standardization or it loses all use. Such a consensus, by definition, also
needs to develop a following, which in turn suggests that we at least try to be traditional
wherever that makes sense. The nature of the cards themselves suggests that definition is
not what is called for. Their meanings cannot be circumscribed or delimited as the word
definition implies. While each card covers a sort of territory within the greater realm of
the experience of being human or alive, there is often considerable overlap, and often a
card will have an implication that is right in the middle of another card’s home territory.
For example, the Empress and the Queen of Pentacles have much in common. But you
don’t want to start out interpreting the Queen as a goddess or the Anima Mundi without
first looking at her simply as a set of human personality traits perhaps made manifest in a
flesh-and-blood, squeezable Earth Mama with potting soil under her fingernails. The
narrowing that we do in no way means that we cannot go back out to the edges and
margins of the meaning again. It merely starts us out on our quest somewhat closer to the
center instead of in a foreign land. The core is an anchor in the midst of a general vicinity
instead of the other side of the world. It also provide a more secure and reliable center for
more personal accretions and extrapolations. And, of course, the cards also need to retain
some ambiguity, stretchiness, even self-contradiction and paradox. A degree of vagueness
is necessary for pareidolia to function properly.
A large number of decks present a single key word as a title, printed on the face of the
card. While this practice might be attractive to a beginner, or otherwise one who thinks
that understanding the cards is a matter of memorization, it is more of a hindrance than a
help. While some of these names actually capture quite a bit of the range of a card's
meaning (Dominion for the 2 of Wands, Enterprise for the Three of Wands, and Valor for
the Seven of Wands), most titles don't even come close, and Crowley's Thoth deck is one
of the worst offenders, especially in the higher-numbered Pips.
Old ideas of meaning and meaningful communication have fallen into disfavor of late,
especially among the philosophers, academicians, deconstructionists and post-modernists.
Sophists all. Of course this shows in the sense they fail to make, in the ugliness of their
art and architecture, and in the nakedness of their emperors. We will just have to make
bold to suggest that these fads won’t last, and will never be regarded as classical ways of
thinking. We will continue the discussion of key words as sources of core meanings when
we get to the Language chapter and the section on Vocabulary.
3) A third source for core meanings will be referred to as the dimension of Component
Ideas. They are the more elemental or ‘atomic’ ideas that combine into the ‘molecules’ of
the 78 cards. These are more pronounced and obvious in the 56 Minor Arcana, the Court
cards and the Pips, where each card is a product of either a Court Dignitary or a Number,
together with a Suit. There are eighteen of these component dimensions in the Minors.
Even in the more straightforward Trumps there will be components that have been put
together to produce compound meanings. We will refer to this process here as
‘portmanteau’ analysis and the this will be discussed at some length in the Language
chapter in the Morphology section. This source is the least used and least understood of
the four discussed here. Very few authors discuss these components in more than passing
detail. It seems obvious to me that this dimension was well-used by Pamela Colman-
Smith as she designed her Minors, yet this seems to be seldom taken into account by
those describing her cards, or their clones. Most authors simply riff off her pictures.
Crowley, in his Book of Thoth, probably used this tool more than anyone else, and
showed its effectiveness in producing understanding.
4) A fourth source for core meanings is Correspondence, an expression of correlative

thought. Degraded versions are sometimes referred to as magical thinking or argument
from analogy. In this process, one system or extended analogy is overlaid onto another in
such a way that there is asserted a resonant connection between corresponding elements.
To stay on the more rational side of the spectrum, where correspondence is more creative
than troublesome, requires an understanding that correspondence means to resonate with,
and not is equal or equivalent to. The subject of Correspondences has its own chapter,
following Historical Notes and Timeline.
There are core meanings to each card, with a range of perspectives and implications
broader than the sum of their images, keywords, component ideas, and correspondences.
Many will assert the cards just mean whatever you want them to mean. This is just
relativistic bullshit, in line with the missteps of modern philosophy. But wide deviations
from the norms still appear. The Tarot is an evolving language and an evolving
consensus, but it does also takes some “wrong” turns and it’s up to new authors to
convince others that those turns were wrong. I might be working on trying to correct
some of Waite’s wrong turns, or common misinterpretations of Pixie’s pictures, and a
couple errors in Crowley’s correspondences, but those corrections have to propagate.
That requires an ability to reason to others in a field where reason isn't a top priority. We
do what we can, I guess.
Symbols and Archetypes

It might surprise many Tarot aficionados to hear that the cards are NOT archetypes in
any sense, and certainly not in the sense that Carl Jung used the term. In both the Tarot
and the Yijing, the ideas of Jung are tossed around very casually, and with little to no
comprehension. The main point, it seems, is in dropping a respected and famous name to
try to secure some credibility. It has also led to some well-selling books being published.
The collective unconscious might get the worst abuse, where new age writers might start
with these two honest words and have them transformed into ‘universal consciousness’
within a sentence or two. You can even encounter the phrase ‘the collective unconscious
of Western culture’ in the new age canon. “The unconscious is not a second personality
with organized and centralized functions, but in all probability a decentralized congeries
of psychic processes” (CW 9.1, p.278). Synchronicity gets its fair share of abuse as well,
having been made into some kind of universal metaphysical law instead of a special class
of coincidences. Here we are concerned with archetypes. Jung picked up an old word and
redefined it. We can find the original idea and similar versions in Plato, Philo Judaeus,
Irenaeus, the Corpus Hermetica, Dionysius the Areopagite and others. Earlier on, these
rarified notions belonged to a purer world and transcended the world of flesh. They were
thoughts in the mind of Deus or Zeus. Jung's definition of archetype found its original
roots in Platonic ideals, but he redeveloped the idea to mean something considerably
different. Those who run with the idea in Tarot seem to be stuck back at Plato. Jung’s
archetypes are cognitive processes, and not ideal precursors to things. They have a
primitive role in re-cognition.
Jung tried to clarify what he meant: “The term ‘archetype’ is often misunderstood as
meaning a certain definite mythological image or motif ... . on the contrary, [it is] an
inherited tendency [i.e., ability, potential] of the human mind to form representations of
mythological motifs - representations that vary a great deal without losing their basic
pattern... . This inherited tendency is instinctive, like the specific impulse of nest-
building, migration, etc. in birds. One finds these representation collectives practically
everywhere, characterized by the same or similar motifs. They cannot be assigned to any
particular time or region or race. They are without known origin, and they can reproduce
themselves even where transmission through migration must be ruled out.” (CW 18:
523). In all of Jung’s collected works, we only find one sentence that he wrote about
Tarot: “It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended
from the archetypes of transformation, a view that has been confirmed for me in a very
enlightening lecture by Professor Bernoulli.” (CW, 9.1, p.38). Distantly descended. In a
1933 lecture, which isn’t found in his collected works, he also noted that the images are
“symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents.” and
they are “sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature.” They are not in themselves
archetypes. We do not inherit the idea of a blasted tower, especially when we are born
into an indigenous nomadic tribe. The images may merely be common cultural elements,
although many do derive from deeper inherited universals.
Jung did pretty well here, considering how many years it would be before neuroscience
began to build some decent structure to support his ideas. A key word in Jung’s definition
is inherited. This means genetic, and this in turn means neural structure and function,
wetware cognitive processes, likely in combination with specific cocktails of endocrine
secretions and neurotransmitters. Neither are archetypes a purely human phenomenon.
They are also well-pronounced in primates and other social animals of high intelligence.
We are probably looking at distinct processing modules in the brain giving us inherited
neural predispositions to organize our memories of perceptions and behaviors around
specific needs that we have as biological entities belonging to families and social groups.
It is perfectly logical that evolution would select and preserve our ability to recognize
and catalog such characters as mothers, fathers, children, infants, siblings, alphas, allies,
cowards, explorers, caregivers, elders, sages, rebels, thieves, spouses, lovers, bullies,
heroes, sycophants, tricksters, challengers, fools, adoptees, cuckolds, and suckers; and
such behavioral categories as praise, dominance, treachery, alliance, apology, seduction,
flattery, deception, betrayal, obligation, gratitude, xenophobia, surrender, sacrifice,
submission, commiseration, grooming, reconciliation, etc. Together these make up the
apperceptive mass of our collective unconscious. As our lives progress, we will flesh out
these predilections with our cumulative experience into coherent role models and
behavioral protocols. Such archetyping is simple enough to encode genetically and also
avoid confusing the great apes, elephants and dolphins who also seem to be born with
them. Jung was pretty specific about these being universal across the species, and we
might guess that this is due to their roots in earlier versions of hominidae. Cultural
memes do not qualify. The Tower and the Devil cannot be archetypes if the San Bushmen
of the Kalahari don’t have them. They also don’t have tens or swords. Jungian archetypes
prepare or predispose us to perceive certain things, but ‘nihil est in intellectu quod non
ante fuerit in sensu,’ there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.
Leibnitz later added “nisi intellectus ipse,” except the intellect itself. Both archetyping
and the pareidolia heuristic would be parts of this original intellect. Ideas and ideals
themselves are not inherited and the archetypes are not determined with respect to their
final content. Their development is as idiosyncratic as their origin is universal.
The cards, accordingly, are symbols and symbolic clusters. They point their users to a
reality that is not known in full. Helpfully, Cirlot claims that the essence of a true symbol
“is its ability to express simultaneously the various aspects of the idea it represents.”
They are multidimensional by this definition. Unlike a sign, a symbol never fully
surrounds or defines the thing that it points to. Consequently, we are not going to be
describing exactly what the symbols mean. We are simply taking numerous verbal
snapshots from a number of different angles. The core meanings that we will be looking
for are narrower than the full scope of implied meanings, but also much broader than
linguistic definitions. And although the word may be difficult for the intuitive folk to use,
they are conceptual as well. Languages like the Tarot and Yijing attempt to organize the
dimensions of human experience into simple, diagrammable systems, such that these will
fit onto one page. Since new words cannot be added, the meanings must expand until
every experience can be pointed to by at least one card. But they don’t want to expand so
much that they do not locate specific territories or types of experience. Each card is a
lesser infinity, but it still has a locatable core.
The Cutting Room Floor

This section takes a quick look at some of the traditional dimensions of Tarot study
that will be left behind here, and why. Wildly idiosyncratic decks, more expressions of
artistic creativity than the fundamentals of Tarot, will not be considered here, even though
some new ideas for specific cards may be proposed in descriptions of card images. The
52-card deck won't be discussed, as this is a separate system. Various gimmick decks
won’t be discussed. Neither will oracle cards. We are only looking at decks that hover
around a common core language with a 78-word vocabulary. This will still range over a
wide territory, from the Marseilles deck, through the RWS, to the Thoth, and we will try
to see these as essentially the same system with some challenging variations in dialect.
Apophenia and Pareidolia

One important key to understanding the Tarot is in remembering that the cards, and
therefore their sequences, were meant to be shuffled, not kept in any fixed order, and that
they were meant to be readable as a coherent story no matter which order they happened
to fall into. We can make a story out of any sequence of images by filling in the blank
spaces between them. This property exploits two ancient processes of human cognition,
or heuristics, ways of interpreting, or distilling meaning from experience. Apophenia is
the experience or process of seeing patterns and connections in random or meaningless
data. Common examples include hearing voices in white noise or seeing our own images
projected onto dimensionless fields (ganzveld). Pareidolia is the experience or process
whereby a vague, essentially random, but potentially suggestive stimulus is perceived as
significant. This is often an image or sound. It is a subset of apophenia wherein there is at
least a hint of form or structure in the initial stimulus. Common examples include seeing
images in clouds, and the Man in the Moon. Aberrations of both processes are common
in such mental disorders as schizophrenia and religion. But they are also evolved
cognitive heuristics. They helped us to jump quickly to conclusions and actions long
before we had reason and language, and they are still very much with us. Sometimes they
still help us even better than reason and language. We might get the tiniest bit of an edge
when the movement we see in the grass is really the tiger we imagine and not just the
wind. Some skeptics have been known to harumph at this, and claim that these two
phenomena are what most undermines the Tarot's credibility. But there is no reason to
take this scornful a point of view, or apologize for it. The Tarot might instead be
celebrated as a way to make use of these ancient mental functions, which act much more
closely to the surface of the sub-conscious than reason and language can ever go.
The images that we connect with pareidolia might be snapshots in a dream sequence,
dates on a calendar, letters of the alphabet, or numbers on a list. We can always find a
way to make meaning where none really existed beforehand. We also have the ability to
make our little strings of freshly connected images sound plausible to others. If we have
the social magnetism, we can get our fellows to take our connections quite seriously, so
that these become adopted and built into the thinking processes of our followers. Still, we
need something that is better anchored, in something perhaps that science can see, if we
are going to call our fabricated stories fundamentally meaningful. There is also such a
thing as making too much meaning, seeing too much as being meaningfully connected.
One of the best known manifestations of this is in clinical paranoia, which is distinct from
the suspiciousness you feel when you aren’t good friends with pot. Here, the universe
gets all connected up in humanly meaningful ways, and there you are at the center of it,
receiving special blessings from the Creator of the Universe, or some kind of persecution.
All of those galaxies were placed up there in the sky just to light your way badly at night.
We shouldn’t connect or make assumptions like this any more than we really need to. The
astrologer might make a note here that there are no lines between the stars.
As with the Rorschach ink blots, we are able to begin and go quite a distance with just
a hint of form. What we perceive are the projections that we make on this. Without any
meanings, core or otherwise, the cards can at least serve us in this capacity. But we really
want to start with less vagueness and ambiguity than this. We want the ink blots to better
suggest your parents fighting, or trying to make you a new sister. The cards will stimulate
our unconscious projections, but if the cards each have their own, somewhat narrower
spectrum of meaning, they can then meet our projections halfway. Without some sort of
inherent form, we have no information, only imagination, when we are supposed to be
asking questions and getting at least a suggestion of answers. We therefore have reason to
abandon the idea that the point of the cards is simply to start us off an any direction our
hearts desire, unless of course we really are playing the Fool card.
Setting us up to work with pareidolia forces us to use our imagination and activate our
intuition. It force us to look at questions from new perspectives or points of view. And in
a way, this is like hitting a “page refresh” button.
Number Symbolism versus Numerology

It seems than many Tarot authors can see no difference between number symbolism
and numerology. But number symbolism is an observable fact. All around the world,
human cultures and sub-cultures have associations of meanings with certain numbers
taken as symbols. Further, there are separate symbols for cardinal numbers, which show
quantity, and ordinal numbers which order things in a set, showing their rank or position.
Both cardinal and ordinal numbers lend themselves to geometrical arrangements as well,
offering ways to view what they symbolize or signify in patterns. They can also divide
spectra of experience into set numbers of segments, as with scales in music. Many such
patterns and scales are also cross-correlated with other symbolic systems. The nominal
numbers, which merely name things, or arrange things temporarily in an ad hoc fashion,
do not show quantity or rank, or quality, nor do they carry any inherent meaning. The
number that you take from the machine to number your place in line is not meaningful in
itself unless you are excessively superstitious. When you lined up with your classmates in
alphabetical order, this did not tell anybody anything at all about your characteristics as a
student or your character as a person.
Numerology concerns nominal numbers. At the base of nearly every numerological
observation is a random number sequence, or an accident of arrival or assignment. Many
people suspect divine and profound meaning in the sequence of the letters of the
alphabet. This idea has been pronounced and influential in the WMT (Western Mystery
Tradition) with the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, and in Islam with the Arabic. The idea
that the sequence is meaningful has some of its beginnings in the belief that religious
texts were authored by none other than the Creator, who would have used the letters as
tools in pronouncing His Word, and who would never have kept a sloppy workbench.
Along with this, we can consider that some cultures, like the Jews, had no independent
method of writing numbers. Instead, like the Romans with their numerals, they used the
letters of their alphabet to cipher with until the Arabs brought us the ‘Arabic Numerals’
from India. They gave the value of One to the letter Aleph, Two to Beth, and so on in
alphabetical order. Then Yod through Tzaddi were given numbers 10 through 90, Qoph
through Tau, 100 through 400, and the Final forms 500 through 900. But if we assume
instead that the alphabet came down to us in random order, haphazardly through history,
via the Proto-Sinaitic and Phonecian alphabets, then it is not likely that the alphabet and
these numbers somehow became mystically fused in their divine essence by this rather
arbitrary later assignment. Meaning is an insertion after the fact into a random sequence.
A similar kind of original randomness also occurs in the basis of calendar dates. From
a geocentric point of view, there are a few real and measurable points in time, that do not
require any conceptual artifice or man-made geometry. These are the globe-encircling
dawn and sunset shadow lines, the phases of Luna, the solstices and equinoxes and their
midpoints in the annual solar cycle, and the great 25,868-year clock that is the precession
of the equinoxes. There are also time measurements based on frequencies of vibration in
matter and other physical laws. Beyond these we have the man-made calendars, which
are wholly unrelated to any of these phenomena. Starting points of clocks and calendars
are pinned instead to arbitrary moments in time. A date is just a day until a number is
assigned to it, but the day assigned to day one is an arbitrary selection. This is just some
human calendar maker's decision and it's almost certainly not of cosmic importance. We
add to the confusion by having months of random length. And these months are measured
in decimal days, which rely on the accident that humans evolved with ten fingers. So now
we have people telling us that we can add up the numbers of the letters of our names and
the numbers on our calendars, and then add these numbers together, and reduce this to a
single digit, and the result is supposed to be meaningful. We may have Papus to scold for
bringing this into the Tarot. But somebody else would have let it in by the time the new
age dawned.
The sequence of letters in an alphabet is merely the product or the bricolage of
millennia of people just making stuff up. There is no observable structural or phonetic
basis to the arrangement that bears a direct relationship to something meaningful. The
assignment of a day and month and year number to a particular day in history is an
arbitrary act unless there is some secure, original tie to a meaningful phenomenon related
to time itself, such as a solstice or equinox. Any numerology which uses alphabet
sequences or calendar dates constructs its entire edifice on top of arbitrary numbers and
random sequences. And it only compounds the silliness to then add these numbers
together and reduce them to single digits. It is not likely that any honestly gathered
empirical findings are going to discover a meaningful order in such a system. It is far
more likely that we will find a combination of pareidolia and cognitive bias pervading the
investigative process. The only place that we will find the numerology of the Hebrew
alphabet (called Gematria) to be truly meaningful is in deciphering Hebrew tracts
expounding on the properties of Hebrew words based on Gematria. The real meaning
ends there. The rest is imagination and the tricks that this can play.
Number symbolism is a different matter entirely. The study of the Ten Sephiroth of the
Kabbalah is number symbolism, not numerology. See the links here in Sections N and
especially O for more on number symbolism (with other sections you might find useful).
Gail Fairfield's Choice Centered Tarot has a good sense of the ten numbers, and Paul
Case's The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages has a useful section. But most Tarot
authors are either confused in these matters or don't address them at all. I also get into the
numbers in some depth below, and include Crowley’s elegant approach verbatim. No
system of number symbolism can be called universal, and several distinct systems exist:
the meaning-set of numerology, for example, or that of the Pythagoreans, or of Jewish
Hebrew Kabbalah. The Tarot has been developing its own for some centuries, in close
connection with the Western Mystery Tradition's (WMT’s) Qabalah and its elaboration of
the Kabbalah’s Sephiroth. This will be retained, while large portions of the remaining
WMT material is numerological and will be dropped from this study. Using the numbers
of the received Trump sequence to help derive their meanings is numerology rather than
number symbolism. So is using the structurally meaningless sequence of the Hebrew
alphabet to label or identify the 22 paths on the Tree of Life.
The Fool’s Journey

The numbered sequence of the 22 Trumps, which has generally stabilized now as Zero
through Twenty-One, with Strength preceding (and so switched with) Justice, is often
narrated as the journey of the Fool as a Hero on a quest for individuation and fulfillment,
a journey from ignorance to enlightenment. This story assumes that the sequence has an
overall, deep structural meaning. Others have seen meanings in a 0+7+7+7 arrangement,
where each set of seven trumps, in their given or received sequence, enters into a higher
order of development. Still others have been able to tell a plausible story from an 11+11
configuration. One of the great virtues of the Tarot, however, is that the cards can be
shuffled, and fall into any sequence, and still be made to tell an apparently meaningful
story by making use of basic human cognitive heuristics that date to our early evolution
as hominins. Our brains are structured to construct meaningful sequences out of even the
most disconnected events, on the chance that what we hit upon might have survival value.
This is also how we string together fairly random semi-conscious sequences of REM
states into meaningful dreams sequences without any conscious effort. We will need to
consider here that the development of the Trump sequence may simply have been based
on the way the cards first fell, or the order of floats in a Renaissance parade.
There is one element to the structural Trump sequence that has developed meaning
over the years, even though it may have started out as a half-arbitrary assignment. This is
the part-sequential, part-geometrical division of the 22 Trumps into sets of 3, 7 and 12,
based on the Kabbalistic ideas first set forth in the Sepher Yetzirah, circa 600 CE. This
parsing is not fundamental to there being 22 Trumps in all, but it has provided some very
useful contributions to the symbolism over the years by permitting the 22 Trumps to be
closely associated with various Scales of Three, the Seven Planets of early Astrology, and
the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac with their Twelve associated Houses. This is the only
analysis of the sequence of Trumps that will be explored here in any detail. The historical
influence that this has had in the ongoing development of Trump meanings is the only
real reason to pursue this inquiry. There is not an original connection that ties these ideas
together at their roots, except as we can find human universals in the scales of three,
seven and twelve. It should be noted before leaving the subject that the division of the
Hebrew alphabet into Mothers, Doubles and Simples, bears no relation or similarity at all
to the more global disciplines of phonetics and phonosymbolism.
The numbers One or Ace through Ten are clearly an expression of number symbolism,
and aren’t really used in this tradition in a numerological way. These will be explored at
some length in the Components section. Outside of this and the 3+7+12 set of scales,
numbers will not be used. A couple of items of accidental meaning have been stumbled
upon in the course of applying numerological sequences to the Trumps. Some have taken
root in the historical development of Trump meanings, or at least have significant insights
to offer, even if they are accidental. Most of these are taken from symbols associated with
the characters of the Hebrew alphabet (and its forerunners), as they appear when this
sequence is aligned with that of the Trumps. For example, Ayin, or Eye, as correlated
with the Devil card, has things to suggest about the limitations of our vision and the
things that we may be blind to. This also resonates with the theme of nearsightedness in
the resonant Yijing Gua. These will be explored as they appear for each card, but there is
no point in doing this systematically, since the system itself has no underlying meaning.
Pareidolia is sufficient to account for any insights discovered therein.
Over-Elaboration, Tautologies, and Mistaking Maps for Terrain

The human mind is a kind of terrain that as yet comes with no map that bears any
geographical likeness to the terrain itself. The map is symbolic, so in ways it must be
taken on its own terms, and because of this it can be a little too easy to get lost in the map
without continually referring back to the reality it is supposed to represent. This will be
repeated later: If a map of the psyche or symbolic language is to be useful in a real world,
the orienting and interpretive grids that it superimposes onto reality will continue to
hover pretty closely over that reality, instead of moving further away into multiple levels
of abstraction on abstraction. As simple as these systems are, the permutations within the
organizing system, which are separate from the individual symbols and ideas, can get
extremely complex. These are the maps that our sojourners get lost in, believing there is
more information there than in the contact with the world that the symbols are supposed
to point to. The abstraction itself becomes a distraction, often a mindless one. Zhuangzi
wrote: ‘To know when to stop is the highest attainment.’
Over-elaboration is a real problem in all of these symbolic languages. Newcomers and
old-timers alike will get fascinated by all of the permutations and extrapolations of the
structural system and wander away into ever-higher levels of remove, each thinking they
might be onto something big, but almost always moving ever further from the point of
having such a system in the first place. In logic, a tautology is a proposition that declares
itself true by definition, in a format that isn’t refutable. It is independent of verification or
refutation because it exists only in its own world. This is not a world you want to get lost
in, since it’s only a hall of mirrors. The adventure becomes a maze rather than a journey.
And where the map is in error, or is just an arbitrary depiction, all we really get is lost.
The Kabbalah in particular has been made vastly more complicated and fussy than it
needs to be. This is in part because adherents must keep going until they find all the
meaning in the Tanakh and the Torah, which in fact contains mostly borrowed stories and
myths, moralizings, vengeance fantasies and attempts to assert control over a froward and
stiff-necked people who would rather worship Baal. They might have to keep wandering
in that desert forever.
It's especially easy to get lost in over-elaborated systems in Yijing studies because the
superstructure is binary enumeration. People take off following the properties of binary
systems themselves, thinking that this must in fact be an exploration of the Yijing. This is
the source of the DNA nonsense. Actually, the Yijng was written at a time before there
was anything like yin-yang theory, and binary mathematics simply became an interpretive
overlay that Chinese culture would have no real grasp of for another two thousand years.
There were in fact structural elements and dimensions that were on the minds of the first
authors, but these were few in number and simple to understand. They can be understood
a little better with a binary overlay, but this does not make the mathematics fundamental
to the creation of the book or its interpretation. Nevertheless, since the Han Dynasty,
many centuries after the Yi was written, tens of thousands of volumes and lifetimes have
been dedicated to snipe hunts in the world of Xiangshu, or Image-and-Number, usually

leaving Yili, Meaning-and-Principle, the study of the meaning of the text, far behind.
The compulsion to go too far in extrapolating deductively from a simple cognitive
system has been as active in Astrology as anywhere else. The permutations of inventable
ideas exceed the scope of the human mind, as the great mounds of books on the subject
will attest. This mass of available conjecture presents an ominous challenge to the novice
and threatens to preclude an understanding of the simplicity of the basic system. While
the core of the system is rich enough in its symbolism to fill a long lifetime of study in
depth, and only one level or two abstracted from the human psyche, impatience still rules,
and students go wandering off into abstraction after abstraction, thinking there must be
more to it. The answer must be in the decans, or in the asteroids, or in progressions. This
approach may be called ‘a mile wide and an inch deep.’ Study time is far better spent in
staying put and digging deeper into the mother lode. This requires patience, and humility.
All this is not to deny that we can't milk these expansions and digressions for ideas, but
out in the farther fields of abstraction, this does rely more on pareidolia than any kind of
fundamental or structural relevance. It becomes a question of a triage of sorts, of where
best to spend our time. Someone who can give up the peripheral goose chases and snipe
hunts can still follow the occasional lead that someone else has brought back in their
otherwise empty sack.
Religion & Metaphysics

The ‘Devil’s Picture Book,’ as the Tarot was sometimes known, developed in an era
where the church was starting to lose its icy grip on culture. The Trumps arose shortly
before Martin Luther made his move. For a long time there was some give-and-take in
the Trump names and depictions, if not entirely to appease the Church, then at least to
escape its wrath. The Devil card and the lightning-struck House of God or Tower were
the last to join the deck. Gradually, most of the Christian iconography wandered away.
Today, in most decks, only one vestigial instance of pure Christian iconography survives,
in the Last Judgment card, depicting the angel Gabriel sounding his trumpet, and the dead
with their families arising from their coffins to greet their just rewards. It is time for this
image to go away too, because, to be blunt, the whole idea is childish and embarrassing.
Others have proposed worthwhile alternatives, Crowley with his Aeon card, depicting a
new era of will and decisiveness, and Robin Wood, depicting a Phoenix, in flames, and a
skyclad woman. Both are several steps more evolved, and are also in better resonance
with the Qabalistic attribution to Shin, the Hebrew Mother letter of Fire, and to Uranus,
stolen here from the Fool, a corrected Astrological attribution made later here. The title
Judgment, dropping the word Last, remains appropriate enough. It is also time to let go of
any residual idea that the Ace of Cups is the Holy Grail. Even vagina is a better fit than
that.
Many structural elements that organize the vocabularies of Kabbalah and Qabalah are
repeatedly likened to diagrams of the mind or body or garments of JHVH and Adam
Kadmon, who was made in this holy image. In the Yijing, the runaway Xiangshu or
numerological systems became anatomies in their own way, or metaphysical models of
the world and the patterns of circulation of its Qi and Jing. But the metaphysical
structures that we project onto the universe can often tell us a lot more about ourselves
than they tell us about the universe. Xenophanes suggested, “If oxen or horses or lions
had hands to draw with … they would make their gods’ bodies in the same shape as their
own.” We take up our own psychic contents and project them onto some imagined cosmic
mirror. As above, so below. In Qabalah’s Tree of Life, this is the face of the Abyss, where
Daath or Knowledge resides. Unknown to most, this is a reflective surface, and often all
we see is our own egos, and its insecurities, turned upside down or inside out. But we still
take these contents and set them on thrones in their assigned domains in the heavens and
see them as Archons and Aeons, hypostases, deities and divine forces. With the right
attitude, however, we can step back and take an anthropological approach and study these
images as we would any myth for what they can tell us about their psyche of origin.
Sometimes we may have to re-invert the images, so that first causes become final causes,
or ideas become derivatives of sense, or essences derived from existences. But while they
may be nothing but reflections of human character, they still have things to tell us about
this character.
Some elements of Kabbalah, those which have contributed to the development of card
meanings in the Occult Tarot's formative years, will be kept, while others which added
primarily to the complexity and confusion will be set aside. Notions of deity, even those
outlying the Judeo-Christian tradition, are unnecessary here, even though states of mind
that might otherwise be called religious, such as sacredness, reverence, forgiveness and
gratitude, are best kept as part of the core repertoire of human cognition and attitudes.
These do not require a deity. Rather than construct this on a platform of atheism, let's
merely assert that the Tarot can be understood in its core without reference or resort to
metaphysical or theological speculation. Here we are going to leave out the metaphysical
belief and conjecture as unnecessary, and not even imbued with all that much wisdom in
the first place. It can probably be asserted by now that the original point of religious and
metaphysical belief was always ethics, and that it has always failed pretty badly at this.
But the Tarot, too, can be seen as an ethic, and one that can survive being stripped of
metaphysics and religion. This leaves it free to advise, without dogma, on the finer points
of living a more optimized and self-directed life.
Tarot as a Language
The Language as System
Calling the Tarot a language is not using an analogy or metaphor. But Tarot does differ
from languages like English in several respects. Together with its close cousins, notably
Astrology, Qabalah, and Yijing, the vocabularies are tightly constrained and finite. They
are typically limited to a hundred essential words or less, distributed within just a handful
of categories or parts of speech. New words are rarely added, except when several are
admitted at once as part of a new dimension expressed within a pattern. The meanings of
words grow and expand by accretion of connotations, glosses, or key words. Unlike the
English language, which proceeds from having a word for each thing, whose phonemics
and morphology make little sense, whose logic is only dimly perceived through nearly
subliminal grammar and syntax, these systematic mini-languages exhibit a crystalline
patterning. All have superstructures that can be clearly diagrammed, with a clarity and
economy such that both the superstructure and the elements of vocabulary will all fit
nicely together on a single page or poster. Science develops the same sort of languages,
like the ever-evolving standard model of subatomic entities, or the much better known
periodic table of the elements. It is important that the whole system can be seen at a
glance and held in the mind as a single image. This feature helps get us past linearity and
permits a simultaneous access to all of the ideas involved, and this in turn is important
wherever a contrast or choice between elements is wanted. The overall structure is a map
to all of the parts at once.
These systems are abstract diagrams of the psychic or experiential world, attempts to
map the mind’s terra incognita in the distribution of its faculties and in its many layers.
They are attempts to increase the regions of the internal world that are available to both
perception and discussion. The discipline of psychology attempts the same. For all of its
pride about being the study of cognitive behavior, it has always seemed to forget that it
was itself a form of cognitive behavior, and ultimately a languaging behavior, a parsing
and a taxonomy of the human experience. Its results were inescapably entangled with
how it parsed the world into ideas and organized those ideas into systems and sub-
systems. It also built most of its database on disappointing human behavior, but that's
another subject. Despite its larger-scale incoherence, out of this we get useful little
language subsystems, such as lists of defense mechanisms and cognitive biases. We also
get classifications of psychological disorders that allow therapists to put the right pills
into the right mouths, and fill out insurance forms consistently, although this contributes
very little to long-term mental health solutions.
From the beginning, one of the primary functions of these languages was mnemonic.
When a user looked at an idea, the language did not permit him to overlook the other
members of its set. When a user forgot an idea, the other members of the set reminded
him what it was. When a user’s experience was too limited with one member of a set, the
rules that were implicit in the overall set allowed him to fill in some blanks and holes by
a process of interpolation. This was explicitly a real part of Tarot’s early history, as it was
associated with a mnemonic technique known as the art of memory, ars memoria or ars
memorativa. This process also uses finite numbers of elements parsed into manageable
sets, and spatially arranged to show interrelationships between sets and elements. The
individual items are imagines agentes, or instrumental images. The overall structure of
the Tarot is a just such a map to all of its parts, giving simultaneous access to multiple
concepts for purposes of comparison or choice. The Trumps were also a sort of memory
training in cultural literacy: they were some of the first literal flash cards.
A Catalogue of Attitudes
In a systematic way, the Tarot has evolved as an attempt to enumerate the dimensions
of experience with a finite vocabulary of symbols, in much the same way as chemistry
seeks to configure the world with its periodic table. Its elements function as gravitational
centers for orbiting meanings, or as organizational loci for sorting and filing experience
and retrieving it with better ease. The Tarot is a sort of filing cabinet for the memory and
open for the use of our imagination. And in therapy it can be used as a sort of ‘catalog of
attitudes,’ an assortment of cognitive tools arrayed before us as optional accessories. In
this context, freedom may be thought of as a function of the options that we are aware of,
and this array makes it easier for us to make an informed selection.
These languages will be treated here in large part as working cognitive frameworks or
models of the human psyche, attempts to lift this psyche out of its half-submerged state
and hold it up for examination, to help us to point to this and that, or help us to choose
between this and that optional state of mind. They both refer to and objectify subjective
human experiences and feelings. Like the subsystems of psychology, they will be useful
insofar as their insights can be applied to solving problems. This is frequently dependent
on the aptitude and real-world savvy of the user. The deck can be thought of as 78 general
types of experience, both states that we can feel ourselves occupying and states that we
can occupy on purpose when faced with different kinds of situations. They might be
objective lessons, some perhaps to be learned the hard way the first time around. If a
person has a difficult time learning, then the next occurrence may be difficult as well, but
if they are capable of learning, the experience or state can become a cognitive skill
instead. An approach to Tarot that sees the cards as cognitive skills, or a technology of
cognition, will make more sense for people who are able to learn from their experiences.
The Five of Cups suggests things that might be learned from experiences with loss and
ingratitude, the Five of Swords, things that can be learned from overconfidence and
betrayals of trust. Instead of thinking of the cards as predictions, we can try thinking of
them as skill sets to keep close at hand. We have all opened big boxes of parts that say
‘assembly required.’ To assemble this product you will need a tube of glue, a hammer, a
Phillips screwdriver, a medium-sized bandaid, and two glasses of wine. Our readings can
be taken like this. These are the perceptual and cognitive tools that you will want to have
close by. They are tools like psychological processes, attitudes, talents and cognitive
skills. In the inner world they are learned stratagems, in the outer world they are
experiences that are instructive of these stratagems. They are offered in a tidy array, like
tools laid out on a good work bench. For those who can get past having their fortune told
or future predicted, choices are offered that imply choices of outcome, and only failure to
learn predicts bad luck. The idea of positive and negative meanings and reactions to the
cards needs to be outgrown if the cards are to be useful aids to agency.
The 22 Trumps of the Occult Tarot are what the subcultures of the Western Mystery
Tradition came up with when pressed to identify the 22 most important things to know on
such a path. They are clusters of cultural ideas rather than archetypes, and flash-card
reminders of important elements of this subculture’s notion of literacy. They shifted
around quite a bit in the earlier years. Virtues came and went, or (like Prudence) simply
got assimilated into other images (in this case, the Hermit). Where we find that something
important is missing, it is up to us authors to find the best place to insert it, because it is
now against the system’s internal rules to keep adding new cards.
Vocabulary, Definition and Connotation

Some system vocabularies start out with a preset or fixed number of items. Scales are
the common example: divide the human experience into eight parts and see when you
get. Then check out what that other culture over there did with the same assignment, see
if the two solutions have anything in common, and then determine if that is instructive or
not, whether it speaks of cultural differences or human universals. Other vocabularies
evolve with no initial goal or end in sight. They may grow spontaneously until cultural
pressures to add a missing item, or delete a superfluous item, and this results in at least a
temporary stability. Then at some point they become fixed in number and even canonized
there. Our calendars were developed like this. So were the different alphabets from our
various cultures. The Trumps of the Tarot were yet another example, at least until the
card games of Tarot found a fixed and established use for exactly 22 cards. It appears to
have been a coincidence that this equaled the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Once the overall number found some stability, the meanings of the 22 individual Trumps,
and some of their sequences, got shifted, tweaked and juggled around until they too found
some stability. It is important to understand that the final ‘plan’ was not yet there at the
beginning of the process. The Trumps found their way to their current order and number
gradually, and even now things cannot be thought set in stone and proof against some
new paradigm yet to be discovered or invented.
The term vocabulary will be used here to refer to the complete deck of 78 cards. The
eighteen elements which constitute the component parts of the 56 Minor Arcana can be
referred to as morphemes, discussed below. As stated, the vocabulary of this language is
tightly constrained and finite. If there is to be any growth, barring the addition of a whole
new subsystem to the language, this will need to occur by addition to the meanings of the
individual words. Some of this accretion comes by way of associating, correlating or
nesting other finite symbolic systems. Because these systems are used in divination, the
universe of discourse for the languages we are discussing will be the full range of human
experience, since this must embrace all sorts of questions ranging from matters of the
heart to matters of leaky plumbing. While any gods out there might well disagree, from a
human perspective this is practically infinite. As such, the individual items of vocabulary
each have to do a whole lot of work or cover a very large territory of possible meanings,
vastly more than any English words. These are like biomes in ecology rather than nations
in political geography, in theory getting their organizing principles from characteristics
that preexist in the human mind. Even jumping between more conventional languages
like modern English and ancient Chinese produces interesting contrasts. The former has
dozens of times the number of words, the latter has many times the number of possible
meanings for each word. The former is more definitive and articulated, the latter more
connotative and poetic. This is even more pronounced when the vocabulary drops to less
than a hundred words. When a word or term carries many possible meanings it is called
polysemous, and the phenomenon, polysemy.
Polysemy is much more apparent in these limited languages, and potential meanings
for each of the cards can get pretty complicated. As with old Chinese, a word’s meanings
must be narrowed by the context in which it appears. In the Tarot, this narrowing is not
done until after we have a sense of the broader range of meanings of each card, and then
it happens in three ways: 1) we narrow the meaning by the question we ask, eliminating
associations that have no bearing on the problem at hand; 2) we narrow it further by the
named position in which a card falls in a spread, a process discussed under grammar,
below; and 3) we get tighter still within the context of the surrounding cards, which is
also a part of the grammar discussed below. And we may add a 4) when we watch the
reactions of a client for whom the cards are being read, reactions which guide the reader
to a still more personalized meaning. Of course we are also looking at our own emotions
in response or reaction to a card, sensing our own undercurrents. This is the intuitive part.
While there are reasons to have core meanings for each of the cards to get us started
somewhere close to the center of the mental or psychic territory that is the cards primary
domain, we don’t want to start out with too narrow an idea. We don’t want a definition.
But we also don’t want to begin our search three domains over or half a world away.
Word meanings develop over time a little like a tree, branching out and self-pruning.
Systematizers often take up this job of pruning. As with trees, vitality and longevity may
be strengthened, not weakened, by this process. The cards began with very general ideas.
In the Minor Arcana, they began with somebody’s wild ass guess as to what it meant
when component ideas like a number and a suit were put together. And many began only
with notes from divination records. In the Trumps, they began with a nexus of cultural
associations with the images and situations that were being represented. Whenever some
contributor thought of a new key word which was remotely close to the area defined by a
card's rough idea, the word attached itself to a growing body of associations. At some
point there get to be sufficient accretions to sort them for some common themes, common
denominators or clumping, and also to toss the more inane, extraneous or irrelevant
assignments, the non sequiturs. This process is rather like studying the holes in a target
made by a young archer to learn where he has been aiming; or like studying a bell curve
to find a mean. Along another line of analogy, it is like pruning a fruit tree back to its
most productive or fruitful branches. In this metaphor, note that it is fruitless to prune the
tree down to one branch, much less down to the root. We want to maintain some of the
learned diversity. Neither do we want to think we are defining a particular term. It has too
much work to do to be limited like that. The words we attach are not meant to define a
process any more than a person's name is meant to define the person. These names are
meant to summon the character to help out with the chores. In this case the characters are
psychological processes, attitudes, talents, and cognitive skills.
A Tarot card may be likened to a meaning magnet, or a neural net of associations, or a
heading in a thesaurus. They can function as mnemonic devices, or nets for fishing the
subliminal seas. When functioning at their best, a reader has only to look at a card in a
context to begin the flow of a steady stream of ideas, with a spontaneity and ease akin to
that of ordinary conversation. In fact, once core meanings or their gestalts or gists have
been grasped, most of the work with the cards is preconscious or subconscious, down
where a reader’s personal associations are interconnected. The development of
associations with each card is of course a personalized process. Some writers will assert
that it is perfectly appropriate for this to be entirely personal or idiosyncratic, and that the
cards should mean whatever a reader needs or wants them to mean. Of course this means
that a reader can no longer communicate with other readers in a common language and
that all their subsequent conversations with them become little more than dueling
monologues, and any ideas we have about meanings and meaningful communication get
deconstructed. These people can think what they want, but unless they are extremely
influential, they will eventually wind up speaking to themselves in a special language that
nobody else understands. They do not become part of the Tarot tradition or history. There
are uses and reasons for classical approaches, consensus, and traditions beyond simple
pressures to conformity, and these should be respected.
We get our card meanings first from written sources and contemporaries, and then
from our working notes and journals. Initially, we collect more ideas that we keep. Much
of the initial collection will be in the form of key words, hopefully gathered from a
number of sources instead of just one favorite book. We build on these, which makes it
important for a beginner who aspires to ever be more than a beginner to look for higher
quality sources. Typically when a reader looks at a page of key words for a card, their
meanings will be all over the place, and will often contradict each other. The intent in the
present work was to narrow this range of meanings into a smaller, tighter and relatively
coherent whole, and then fill in some of the remaining blanks, interpolating between
these narrower meanings. We wind up using both extrapolation and interpolation. In
extrapolation we estimate what things are like beyond the original range of cases, based
upon what we think the original range has taught us. We have to guess at what the rules
are that lie beyond the known. Interpolation produces estimates between two known
observations, as in finding word meanings between two known values. Two-point-six is
an interpolation between two and three. Extrapolation is subject to much more
uncertainty and a higher risk of producing meaningless results. Some key words will be
repeated in collections for a number of different cards. Sometimes it is wise to eliminate
the ideas that are just too general, but often these repeated words will have narrower
applications that are very specific to the core meaning of a card, meaning they should be
left in place with a note-to-self to look at a narrower gloss in a narrower context. In these
languages, when used in counseling, you might find frequent use of ideas like deferred
gratification, acceptance, adaptability, noble obligation, etc, all implied by several
different cards.
An effort was made here to find some consensus on the things that have long been said
about each particular card. Collecting the key words for use here, and this from a very
large number of sources, was a little like looking for an archery bullseye in a wall from
which the target had been removed, leaving only the holes to go by. There were clusters
of hits to be found, and within those clusters were holes never made but ones that might
have made sense. I tried to guess at what might have been the two innermost rings of the
targets and use these to locate core meanings. But I also confess to having cherry-picked
many of these hits according to some preconceived notions based on the constituent
elements of the cards like number and suit, or preferred correspondence attributions. This
was necessarily a creative process and not simply a statistical survey.
The Key Words sections here, a feature used throughout this work, will be a grab bag
of these collected ideas. The only order is alphabetical. It is not recommended that these
be memorized. Rather, the intent is to give the reader first a feel for the general meaning
of the larger idea, and then a gestalt that ties the cluster together and also implies further
meanings that infill the cluster or expand it only to round things out. The scope or breadth
of these ideas is considerably narrower than those found elsewhere, in order to develop
the gestalt more tightly around the core meaning. But within this narrower range there is
a denser collection of information than found elsewhere. If you are taking a day to study
each card (a highly recommended program) it might be a useful exercise to go through
this section slowly, out loud, and try to stretch your mind to make a connection between
each key word and the card or symbol in question. It is recommended to use more than
one source for this exercise, and hopefully three or more, and all of these should come
well-recommended by educated readers. It is critical for someone who wants to go
anywhere useful with Tarot to start with best sources available and not build on a
foundation that will soon need rebuilding. There is a lot of nonsense out there in print
because there is money to be made by writing for credulous and gullible people. It is
advised to avoid books with beginner in the title. Also, the word ‘master’ is not used by
real masters.
Morphology
Grammar is organized in two main dimensions: morphology and syntax. Morphology,
the first half, is the study of the inflected forms of words. The Fifty-Six Minor Arcana are
each a product of two factors, akin to molecular combinations of two atomic conceptions.
Depending on how they are grouped, they fall into two or four general classes. The two
classes are the Court cards and the Pip cards. The four are the Four Suits, each of which
is represented by the four members of the Court and the ten Numbers. Few authors have
truly analyzed the Minor Arcana from this perspective and many have simply abandoned
their study to focus on the more straightforward Trumps. The bulk of ideas on the subject
is the parroting of earlier writers' guesswork, or else making wild guesses at why Pamela
Colman-Smith drew the pictures that she did. To really understand the Minors, some
assembly is required. A grasp of the four Court, ten Numbers and four Suits is a must, but
so is a grasp of their role in combination. Marc Edmond Jones, an astrologer, made use of
the term portmanteau analysis, after Lewis Carroll’s use of the term and its subsequent
adoption in linguistics: “You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed
up into one word.”
In general, the Court and Numbers refer to the subjective aspects of experience, and
the Suits to the means or the approaches by which the subjects interact with the objective
world. In other words, the Court and Number portion of the cards tend to act as subject
and the suits as predicate. However, the entire event depicted by a card can occur in either
the inner or the outer world. Invocations and personal insights may stand as examples of
the inner world events, evocations and predicted situations of the outer world events. In
other words, and for example, on drawing the Seven of Swords, a reader may find
himself feeling like a seven wielding swords, or feeling like a seven encountering a
stimulating intellectual challenge, or faced with a Seven of Swords situation in a purely
objective encounter. It should be clear that a familiarity with the first of these will help
the reader with the second and third. Ultimately, each card is learned in its inner,
interactive and outer world meanings. Those who simply use the cards to predict their
futures tend to see these cards as solely objective encounters. This misses the opportunity
to examine the card as a subjective dynamic in order to get a better understanding of the
energies at play, to get a sense or feel of a situation as a first step in mastering it. At its
core, the Five of Wands suggests an assertive force with some of the characteristics of
Mars and Geburah acting through the element of Fire. Crowley explains, “The Five of
Wands is therefore a personality; the nature of this is summed up in the Tarot by calling it
Strife. This means that, if used passively in divination, one says, when it turns up, ‘There
is going to be a fight.’ If used actively, it means that the proper course of conduct is to
contend” (BOT 43). When viewing a card’s vignette, then, one might ask, ‘do you
identify with the character shown or see this objectively as a lesson?’ The therapeutic
approach to a card will often require taking command of the subjective view first.
Looking at the Eight of Swords, for example, may require taking the point of view of the
men who tied that poor seductress up and left her alone to meditate while they went about
their more pressing tasks. If that’s what the picture is showing to you.
The Court cards are personae. At bottom, they delineate sixteen general personality
types that are compounds of the four elements each with four aspects representing both
stages of maturity and characteristics akin to further elemental expression. The Pip cards
delineate forty classes of more objective situations and suggest personal strategies for
greeting them effectively. These will be explained in more detail in the Component Ideas
chapter below.
Even the relatively simpler or more elemental Trumps have portmanteau elements in
their construction. The 12 Trumps that are specifically associated with the signs of the
Zodiac and their associated Houses are also compounds of the tenses and genders of
quality and element. The Trumps associated with the Planets also carry implications of
the signs of the Zodiac where those planets have their dignities and their weaknesses.
Furthermore, the contributions of those correspondences from other systems that have
contributed significantly to the evolution of core meanings of each card may now be
considered as meanings embedded in the card in a portmanteau fashion. For example, the
Magician card now carries portmanteau implications from both the astrological planet
Mercury and the Qabalistic Sephira of Hod.
Syntax
Syntax is the other half of grammar and concerns the way words are put together into
sentences, paragraphs and other larger structures that generate compound meanings. In
general, the sentence in the Tarot begins with an individual card and the largest array of
meanings that it carries from all of the symbolic implications of its image, its key word
associations and the combination of its portmanteau elements. Next, this broad range of
meanings is narrowed by the question that is being asked of the system. Then we narrow
the meaning further by the constraints of the position that a card falls in within a larger
spread. Then we glean information from the context of the surrounding cards. Finally, we
track the reader’s and/or querent’s subjective reactions as clues and cues to where this
inquiry is going.
We should look for meta-structural patterns in a reading. Cards can have more meaning
when interconnected with other cards in their context, especially when they deal with
similar or related themes. Imbalances in component dimensions are often a useful clue to
the meaning of a reading. A strong predominance of a particular suit or the complete
absence of a suit might be taken as significant. There may be a dominance or absence of
Trumps that may be taken to indicate whether major forces are at play here or just lots of
little details. One of the ten numbers might show up three or four times. A predominance
or absence of a particular court persona may suggest levels of maturity or characteristics
of investigation, such as whether to approach a situation with humility or with a sense of
authority. A predominance of court cards might also suggest a lot of social activity.
Reversals
Methods of drawing the cards from the deck can very widely between readers. This is
personal preference. The biggest factor in selecting a method is determining whether or
not the cards will be read differently if they happen to come up reversed or upside down
in a spread. This is a significant component in many books and approaches. There are a
number of problematic issues with this aspect of interpretation that have led to reversals
and their interpretations being omitted in this present work. Reversed meanings will not
be outlined here. Rather, they can be subsumed under the understanding of core meanings
as broader spectra. In the first place, the method calls for a card to be viewed from two
opposite sides, frequently either a positive or a negative side. The position here is that we
should always be doing this anyway: we cannot really comprehend a card until we see it
simultaneously from multiple angles. This does, however, remove a lot of the certainty
that people want if they are predicting their future. The approach taken here is not that we
are telling our fortunes, but rather, we are examining our choices or options. Secondly,
among those who advocate the importance of reading reversals, very few will suggest a
method of beginning a shuffling of the deck with all of the cards upright, such that the
method of shuffling allows some of the cards to become reversed as if in response to the
question being asked. If this is going to be meaningful, the reader should find a way to
begin with all cards in the deck upright and somehow jumble them in the process of
shuffling them. They should also be restored between readings instead of accumulating
randomness from previous readings. Authors who do not think to discuss this issue have
not thought things through very well.
Mary Greer, in the Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, suggests that card meanings can
be modified in reverse aspect by being: blocked, resisted; projected; delayed, difficult,
unavailable; inner, unconscious, private; breaking through, overturning, refusing; be no
or not; excessive, over- or under-compensating; misused or misdirected; retried, retracted,
reviewed, reconsidered; or also understood in perspectives that are unconventional,
shamanic, or humorous. Bunning adds that a card might still be in the early stages of its
manifestation, or else past its prime and losing force and power, or blocked, restricted,
incomplete, inappropriate, being denied, or only present in appearance.
Reversals may also be understood as analogous to Retrogradation in Astrology. This is
an apparent backwards motion of planets through the Zodiac from the geocentric point of
view. Sol and Luna are never retrograde, Venus and Mars only rarely. This might be said
to turn a portion of a Planet's ‘output’ self-consciously inward, like a governor on an
engine, intensifying the experience, but proportionately diminishing efficiency unless the
information is put to effective use. Stationary planets are more reliably focused faculties.
It is also said that a planetary force may be weakened, delayed, or reversed. People who
are not comfortable with thinking often get very confused when Mercury goes retrograde.
This can be a major problem for people who believe in Astrology, but has little effect on
those who do not.
It's also important to note that those who dismiss or abandon reversals are also to some
extent abandoning the cards as fortune-telling devices. Reversal provide more specificity
in a reading, while reading without them sees the cards as providing more of a choice.
Many of the more negative or contrary meanings associated with reversals will still be
presented here for each card, but in a separate section section entitled "Warnings and
Reversals."
Paragraphs
While Astrology has a strict and unvarying paragraph structure in the natal horoscope,
which is sometimes seen with an overlay of currently transiting planets, the paragraph
structure in Tarot is extremely variable and is known as the Spread (sometimes called the
Layout). This is the particular pattern in which the cards are laid out in response to a
question or inquiry. The position of a card in a spread narrows its meaning down further,
into a more useful part of speech with a specific function in its paragraph. There is no set
or established pattern, although a few are commonly used. There are hundreds in print to
choose from, and you can just make up your own. Different spreads are like different
linguistic forms, like in poetry (haiku, limerick, sonnet), or interrogatives vs declaratives
in sentences. The only real rule is that you ought to know both the overall pattern and the
meaning of each of its positions before you ask a question and fill the spread with cards.
The question that is asked before laying out the cards might be likened to the Rising Sign
or Ascendant in Astrology. It sets the general theme or lens through which the reading is
viewed, such as whether we are looking at matters of the heart or plumbing repairs.
The Tarot cards have gathered most of their cultural and philosophical momentum as a
fortune-telling game or device, rather than as a vocabulary of psychological states. The
general method used in fortune-telling is to draw a number of cards from a deck, placing
each in a designated position within a preselected pattern. The meaning of each card is
then combined with the designated meaning of the position, in much the same way as a
Planet-in-a-Sign is combined with the meaning of a House in Astrology. In fact, the circle
of the twelve Houses is one of the spread patterns commonly used in Tarot. But the
fortune-telling and linguistic uses of the cards are not readily combined without doing
some serious surgery on the notion of fortune. The way one looks at the spread patterns
must change to accommodate an introduction of agency, creativity, choice and
responsibility into the picture. The positions denoting ‘the past’ become convergent
influences, and this includes what someone wants to make of their personal history.
Those places denoting ‘the future’ become emerging opportunities subject to the
consequences of our choices or decisions. Readings are done for the moment (although
according to the Yijing, this moment can be six days wide, even if not very long). The
other difference is that the readings become diagnostic of one's strengths and weak points
in the various ‘parts’ of the psyche. They no longer predict the future: they predicate the
predicaments of present potential. They will show where things are getting knotted up or
where opportunities lie hidden.
The process of doing a Tarot reading might go something like this: a) Choose a pattern
for the spread. Four are given below. Virtually any of the patterns and scales found in the
Western Mystery Tradition can be good ones to use (like the 5-pointed Solomon’s Seal,
the six-pointed Shield of David, etc), including the scale of one for a simple answer to a
simple question; b) Hold the deck quietly for several minutes while you are formulating a
specific question or simply meditating on the moment. Towards the end of this period,
flip through the deck, spending about a second looking at the face of each card.
Straighten the deck and place it face down. c) Cut once, shuffle once, cut once shuffle
once. d) Then, while holding the deck face down, draw out one card at a time. Wait until
the fingers themselves seem to be drawn unequivocally to a specific card. Before drawing
each card, recite the names or key words for the sequential position or part of the pattern
into which the card will be placed. Place each card in its position, still face down. e) Turn
all of the cards face up and read, or learn to read. It takes time to learn. Eventually a
stream of consciousness will make its presence known and start to make sense. It will be
of little use to try and identify or name this stream. These are four of the more commonly
used spreads:
The Tree of Life Spread can be a recommended pattern for a psychological or diagnostic
reading. It is not temporal. It looks at a querent's life synchronically and holistically. It
portrays only a single moment of time, so a question should specify whether this omen is
wrapping up a past situation, or diagramming a current state or event, or looking forward
to a specified time ahead.
1. The Crown, Saturn as Deep Time, Duration, Point of Destiny
2. Wisdom, Uranus, Path of Power, Direction in Life
3. Understanding, Neptune, Field of Options, Opening Up
4. Mercy, Jupiter, Self-Image, Identity, Individuation
5. Strength, Mars, Drive, Motivation, Personal Power
6. Harmony, Sol, Attention, Health, Brio
7. Victory, Venus, Affection, Acquisitiveness, Want
8. Splendor, Mercury, Cognition, Organization, Strategies
9. The Foundation, Luna, Mnemonics, Basis, Adaptability
10. The Kingdom, Gaia, Sensation, Material Situation
11. Daath, Saturn, The Ego, Knowledge, Cognitive Bias
The Horoscope Spread is based on the 12 Houses of Astrology. This too depicts a single
moment in time, so, as above, specify whether this omen is wrapping up a past situation
or diagramming a current state or event, or looking forward to a specified time ahead.
1. Self and its constitution
2. Wealth and valuation
3. Education and familiarity
4. Home and security
5. Vitality and expressiveness
6. Usefulness and aptitude
7. Encounter and relationship
8. Resources and access
9. Extrapolation and reaching
10. Objective awareness of self
11. Goals and implementation
12. Finitude and coping
The Celtic Cross Spread

Although this is an old and classic spread, and the pattern or shape is fairly consistent,
there is a lot of variety in which position has which name. There are always ten positions,
which generally cover the following. It is suggested to Google this and pick a version that
seems to make sense.
1. General environment, the atmosphere
2. Obstacles or contrary influences
3. Specific goals and highest ideals
4. Raw materials, momentum, tools
5. The current past, events resolved
6. The current future, coming attractions
7. Self's current posture or attitude
8. Resources within the home or family
9. Hopes and fears
10. What will come
The Magick Seven Spread

The shape of this diagram is the Magen David, the Shield of David, the six-pointed star
with the center occupied by the seventh or outcome card. The first three items form the
upright triangle. It doesn’t really matter which card goes where as long as the reader
knows which position has which name before the cards are pulled.
1. The Past
2. The Present
3. The Future
4. Energy Needed
5. Energy In The Air
6. Energy Opposed
7. The Outcome
Historical Notes and Timeline

A. E. Waite suggested that Tarot history is “largely of a negative kind … the issues are
cleared by the dissipation of reveries and gratuitous speculations expressed in terms of
certitude.” (p.7). We can now, of course, dissipate some of Mr. Waite’s own reveries and
speculations as well. To be perfectly honest, the first couple of centuries of conjecture on
Tarot history are largely either lies or delusions, or a fuzzy combination of the two. Many
lies and delusions became sincerely held beliefs. The several founders of the Occult Tarot
were largely interested in ceremonial magick, so their extreme exaltation of the medium
must have seemed quite appropriate to them, in order that this might carry them to the
heights of ecstasy that they sought. But the whole history of religious and metaphysical
soothsaying (meaning truth-telling) has always been fraught with hyperbole and blatant
untruths asserted without evidence. It was not just the Jews and Chinese who lied about
who wrote their holy books (the nice word is pseudepigraphy). P. Case makes a typical
assertion when he uses words like “others … should remember that we have very ancient
authority for these attributions.” (Oracle 45). Ancient authority is just stuff that somebody
made up a couple of centuries earlier. Thankfully, we now have had a sincere and fairly
reliable tradition of scholarship tracking the history of the playing cards, with authors
beginning well back into the 19th century. In the last several decades, some of this more
rigorous spirit has rubbed off on Tarot historians and a much better picture of real Tarot
history is now emerging. The annotated bibliography linked here has some praise for a
few of these studies.
The Tarot was a child conceived at an orgy at the end of the dark ages. We are not sure
who its real parents are. It seems to have developed as a spin-off of card games that used
the older 52-card deck, with a fifth suit added, called Trumps, and four Queens added to
an original royal court of twelve. This happened around 1440, although the deck didn’t
approach its present content until around 1550 for the Minor Arcana and 1600 for the
Trumps. The Tower and the Devil were late arrivals. The origins of the Tarot cards are
lost in the obscurity of the dark ages. The earliest western references to playing cards (not
Tarot) date from the 14th century. They first appeared in Spain, Switzerland, Italy,
France, Germany and the Balkans by way of North Africa and the Middle East, carried
by the Arabs. Credit or blame for the cards has been variously attributed to Jewish
Kabbalists, Renaissance Qabalists, Sufis, Gypsies, ancient Egyptians, ancient Chinese,
space aliens, ancient Atlanteans, Dervishes from Fez, Knights Templar, Albigensian
Heretics, Priests of Serapis, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Neoplatonists, Gnostics,
Alchemists, Hermeticists, Neopythagoreans, and others. Its mysterious origins are also
associated with medieval ars memorativa, the grail legend, lot books, and the early 15th
century costume parades by Italian nobles playing out themes in Petrarch’s I Trionfi
(penned from 1356-1374). All of the above schools (excepting the Atlanteans and space
aliens) could have some claim to being the locus of a root of Tarot. And rightly so. The
Tarot has sent roots into the mulch and compost of several ancient traditions, some more
influential than others.
It is only in the most indirect sense that we can say Tarot evolved out of Egyptian or
Alexandrian thought. The occult Tarot came late to the Western Mystery Tradition, but
the game of Tarot as a spin-off from the 52 card deck antedated the arrival of Kabbalah
and Hermeticism in Europe. Their influences were developed retroactively, as though
roots were put down into this older material. This is not the same as saying that the Tarot
is their direct descendant, evolution, or continuation. There is no doubt that Tarot picked
up and incorporated some ancient streams of esoteric vocabulary and the systems that
organized them, but this cannot honestly be called Tarot history unless the Tarot already
existed in some form. The Tarot is a growing event and an open-source project, with
many participants, all of whom are allowed to create. It is an original product of medieval
syncretism. Folks seem to want or need to believe that the Tarot started out finished and
perfected, way back in the past, then got broken and dusty, and now we're on the verge of
discovering the means to restore it to the original purity of its conception. They keep
looking for the original keys, designs and meanings. When they fail to find these in
history, they turn to misguided ideas of archetypes and Platonic forms that somehow
preexist the material. There is no evidence whatsoever to support these points of view.
The Tarot started out clumsily and awkwardly.
The Minor Arcana came first. The Mamluk cards, and perhaps other decks used in the
games of Naibs, came to Spain in the 14th century from the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
They carried three members of the court: Malik, Na'ib Malik, and Thani Na'ib (King,
Viceroy, and Deputy Viceroy). These became the King, Knight and Page. Being Arabic,
under Islamic law, they had no human images. The Europeans added the four Queens and
the depictions of the four noble personages. Arabs also brought the four suits: Jawkan,
Tuman, Suyat (or Sujuf) and Darahim (polo-sticks, cups, swords and coins). Elsewhere, a
Hindu deity, Ardhanarisvara, is depicted holding magical objects identical to the four
Tarot suits, but we have no such depictions going back to more ancient dates. The Four
Treasures of Ireland, being the Spear of Lug, the Cauldron of the Dagda, the Sword of
Light of Nuada, and the Stone of Fal also closely replicate the symbols of the suits, but
with no known historical connection. Can we now add Vikings to connect the British
Isles to the Mid-East? The evolving Trumps were added in Italy, beginning, we think,
with several decks originally prepared by Bonifacio Bembo's art studio for the noble
house of Visconti. According to Dummett, their used was first documented in 1442 at the
Court of Ferrara.
The superstructure of the Tarot was developed first. Once the fifth suit of trumps was
added to the 40 Pips and the Court expanded from 12 to 16 cards, not much change was
made to the metastructure. The meanings of the individual cards have taken a lot longer
to evolve than the skeletal form. In fact, this part of the process may still be in its early
stages. As mentioned in the Language section, the structure itself contributed much to the
evolution of the meanings of both the individual cards and the more elemental symbols
(Suit, Court and Number) out of which many meanings are made. It was not until the
occult revival of the late nineteenth century that this began to occur in earnest. Although
other streams of thought were involved, the central nexus of this revival was the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an eclectic, quasi-Rosicrucian network. Developing
a system of study and correspondences with the help of an earlier work, The Dogma and
Ritual of Transcendental Magic (1856) by Eliphas Levi, the Golden Dawn gave rise to
such noted commentators as Samuel Liddel Mathers, Arthur Edward Waite, Aleister
Crowley and Paul Foster Case, an American. Outside of this network, only a few authors
have made truly significant contributions to the field. Three early versions of this seminal
Golden Dawn system are found as Book T in the Equinox, Vol 1-8, Book T as published
by Israel Regardie, and in Introduction to the Golden Dawn Tarot by Robert Wang. This
is online. But outside of assigning the cards some useful titles for later use as key words,
Book T took the Golden Dawn down some pretty specious pathways. It introduced a
revived set of astrological decans as an algorithm for the whole of the minors. These do a
lot more confusing than enlightening. And it doesn’t seem like Pamela Colman-Smith
made much use of this book as inspiration for her deck.
For practical purposes, and so excluding the most prescient Sola-Busca Tarocchi, the
tradition of depicting the 40 Pip cards with vignettes from life and imagination, instead of
symbols arranged in geometric patterns, began in 1909 with Pamela Colman-Smith’s
artwork, developed to accompany the work of A. E. Waite. In a fairly short time, these
images have become almost canon, taken nearly as seriously as the images of the much
older Trumps, and the majority of the several decks emerging each year are variations on
the themes developed by Smith. The meanings associated with the Pip cards didn’t really
begin to develop in any coherent fashion until authors began trying to account for their
meanings in terms of Smith's images. Now, in fact, a majority of mass market writers
seem to look no farther than these images and riff endlessly on about them in developing
their associations. This is an error. While the Smith images are impressively insightful,
they still cannot carry the full implications of a card with its component dimensions of
number and suit, and they are also subject to incorrect interpretations. Crowley and his
minions are the most notable exceptions here, but these often involve the very opposite
challenge of being either too abstract or having too limited real-life associations to the
elemental symbols. They are also often overburdened with value judgments based on
extracurricular associations.
Tarot Timeline
(the Chinese and Kabbalistic entries are discussed later in this work).
105 CE, Han Dynasty China, Cai Lun invents paper.
6th Century, actual dates unknown. Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, foundational
document of Kabbalah, introduces the Ten Sephiroth, still unnamed, and the scale of 22
as 3+7+12.
618-907, Tang Dynasty China introduces paper currency, after which playing cards are
thought to be modeled. Cards with no clear resemblance to modern decks may have been
known in Korea and China perhaps as early as the 10th Century. Per Chatto, cards of
some kind were invented in China around 1120 CE, in the reign of Seun-Ho, for one of
the emperors concubines. Douglas questions this. Evolutions of this concept were
introduced into Europe through the Islamic world during the last quarter of the 14th
century. This may or may not have had important stops or branchings in India and Persia.
906-989, Five Dynasties, Chen Tuan produces the Wujitu.
1017-1073, Northern Song Dynasty, Zhou Dunyi produces the Taijitu.
1174, The Sepher Bahir or Book of Brightness, discusses the Sephiroth and speaks of a
tree, but without any clear description.
1248-1323, Joseph Gikatilla’s Sha’arei Ora or Portae Lucis (Gates of Light), refers to a
tree, describing three triads on central pillar. Translated later by Riccius into Latin (1516).
1332-1367, some references suggest that playing cards were in use in Spain and beyond
during these years. The 1332 reference (Taylor) asserts that King Alphonse of Leon and
Castille prohibited their use. This is questionable. 1367 is a better-attested prohibition in
Bern, Switzerland.
1360’s-1370’s, Mamluk Egyptian playing cards, with Islamic roots, introduced into Italy
through North Africa and perhaps Moorish Spain, a 52-card deck, with three court folk
(King, Emir, Wazir), but no human figures.
1370’s, playing cards are mentioned as being prohibited in Spain, France, and Italy.
1374, Petrarch’s I Trionfi, penned from 1356-1374, will become and an inspiration for
triumphal 15th century costume parades by Italian nobles.
1377, a Dominican friar named Johannes von Rheinfelden, writes “Tractatus de moribus
et disciplina humane conversationis.” Describes cards in a sermon. The date is suspect
and may be 1372 (Kaplan V.1).
1379, Covelluzo, a chronicler, describes a game of cards introduced into Viterbo, “which
came from the Saracens and was called Naibs” in Arabic.
15th Century, era of Triumph processions, of allegorical figures of virtues, costumes and
floats. Gertrude Moakley advances the theory that this underpins at least many of the
Trumps.
1419, Cristoforo Buondelmonti wrote of Egyptian hieroglyphica, sparking the European

interest in the mysteries of Egypt.
1430’s-1470’s, Bonifacio Bembo's art studio produced the earliest known Tarot decks.
1438, the Greeks come to Italy to patch up Christianity at the Council of Ferrara, bringing
some Kabbalistic materials.
1442, account books of D'Este court of Ferrara show a painter Sagramoro receiving
money for the production of four Trionfi (Triumph or Trump) playing card decks. Trumps
are created as 5th suit added to playing cards. Many writers assert incorrectly that the 52-
card deck evolved from the 78. Rather, four court cards and 22 trumps were added to the
52.
1440’s, Trionfi Tarot cards are created for the Italian Visconti family by Bonifacio
Bembo's art studio. The Visconti-Sforza tarot decks c.1450 may be the best known and
most influential on later card designs.
1440, a Platonic academy forms in Florence, dedicated to Neoplatonism, and also magia,
a Christianized magic.
1453 Constantinople is invaded by Turks, trapping Eastern Orthodox delegates in Italy,

and bringing the Corpus Hermeticum to Europe.
1460, Leonardo of Pistola, an Italian monk is exposed to the Corpus Hermeticum in

Macedonia, and brought a Greek manuscript to Italy, translated by Ficino in 1463.
1463-1494, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, brought Kabbalah into the Western Mystery
Tradition, but too late to be considered a Trump source.
1465-1470 Mantegna Arcana cards appear in Italy, a 50-card deck depicting essential
cultural memes. It’s structured in five ranks, designated by letters, expressed in ten steps,
expressed in numbers, ascribed to Botticelli and Baldini. May show an influence from
Lull and his 'ars combintoria.'
1487, the Mainz Fortune Telling Book uses the playing card deck, with no trumps.
1490, the first versions of the Marseilles stream of Tarot decks.
Late 15th Century, the Sola-Busca Tarocchi, shows the first full scenes on the Pip cards,
not done again until Smith in 1909, except that Giacomo Recchi, 1820, has figures that
appear on the Fours.
1500, The earliest list of the Major Arcana as we know it today is given in the Latin
Manuscript Sermones de Ludo Cumalis. (See Kaplan).
1510-1581, Guillaume Postel translates the Sepher Yetzirah, Bahir and Zohar (1552) into
Latin.
1516, the first known graphic illustration of the Tree of Life appears on the cover of Paul
Ricci's translation of Joseph Gikatilla’s Gates of Light, around the beginning of the Safed
school of Kabbalah.
1522–1570, Moses Cordovero (Remak) published a graphic version of the Tree of Life.
1527, First recorded use of cards in divination, 'when in Merlini Cocai's verse drama
Chaos del Triperuno, several nobles had their fortunes told with the cards.' (Kaplan
V3Pxiv).
1534-1572, Isaac Luria, the Ari, published a graphic version of the Tree of Life. Ari's
Tree of Life had paths that differed from Kircher’s, published later. Luria revived Gnostic
imagery in Kabbalistic terms.
1550, Minor Arcana are fairly standard (Dummett) except for the titles of Court nobility.
1600, The first sets of the Trumps with which we are now familiar. The Tower and the
Devil, the last to join, were not in any Bembo collection, while Faith, Hope and Charity
appeared in earlier decks.
1602-1680, Athanasius Kircher, per Moshe Idel, makes a linear assignment of letters to
paths on the Tree of Life, in accord with a known Jewish tradition, but differing from that
of the Ari and the Safed school of Kabbalah. Kircher published a depiction of the Tree of
Life for the Europeans in 1652, based upon a 1625 version by Philippe d'Aquin.
1636-1689, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, wrote Kabbalah Denudata.
1660-1665, the Marseilles stream of Tarot decks achieved more of a standard form after
Vivelle and Noblet Tarots are published. The most influential decks in the earlier days,
and the cards known to de Geblin.
1725-1784, Court de Geblin, 1781 Le Monde Primitif, V 8, section Le Jeu des Tarots,
first notes what he thinks is a strong Egyptian tone in Tarot. He is the first to attribute
Hebrew letters to the Trumps and first to use the term Book of Thoth.
1738-1791, Etellia, or Jean-Baptiste Alliette, in 1883, took the Egyptian Tarot association
over the top and popularized it.
1781, Comte de Mellet's essay “Study on the Tarots,” often included with de Geblin’s
work, is significant for his explicit linking of the individual trumps with the individual
Hebrew letters.
1767-1825, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet spearheaded a revival of Hebrew language studies,

influencing Levi and Papus. Also led a revival of Neo-Pythagoreanism.
1771-1839, Eusebe Salverte, 1829, wrote Des Sciences Occultes. Occult Sciences: The
Philosophy of Magic, Prodigies and Apparent Miracles, tr. into English 1846 by Anthony
Todd Thomson.
1783-1858, Samuel Weller Singer, an historian of card games, introduced the Arabic
origin theory.
1789, The first Tarot deck designed specifically for divination was Etteilla’s Grand
Etteilla Tarot, with predictions rather than titles in French and English. Predictions bear
only a little resemblance to modern meanings.
1804-1886, Jean Alexandre Vaillant, in 1857, contributed convincingly to the erroneous

association of the Tarot to the Gypsies, who were thought to be Egyptians.
1810-1875, Eliphas Levi, supported the Kabbalistic origin, popularized the Alef-Beth to
Trump connection first noticed by Court de Geblin, and established Tarot as a part of
Renaissance Hermeticism. He placed the Fool with Shin and the Magician with Aleph.
1811-1877, Paul Christian, associated the 22 Trumps with an ancient Egyptian wall of
initiation.
1848-1925, Willian Wynn Westcott, founded the Golden Dawn, obtained the 'Cypher
Manuscript' in 1886, which correlated letters to paths and formed a major cornerstone for
the Golden Dawn system.
1854-1918, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. 1888 Golden Dawn booklet The Tarot:
Its Occult Signification. Tied the Pips to the Decans and the Hebrew letter Aleph to the
Fool. Suggested that the 22 Trumps could be constructed, following their numerical
order, into what he called a "connected sentence,” leading eventually to the idea of the
Fool's Journey once the Fool was placed at the beginning of the sequence. Mathers and
the Golden Dawn popularized working from multiple magical or conceptual systems
(nested analogies) instead of single grimoires. Rituals were interdisciplinary and crossed
cultures.
1857-1942, Arthur E. Waite, published The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1909.
1860-1943, Oswald Wirth, 1927 The Tarot of the Magicians. Deck description, Egyptian
slant, trumps only, with original designs.
1860, the Fool joins the older 52-card deck as the Joker.
1861-1899, Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, in Le Serpent de la Genese (2 vols, 1891 &

1897). A French school, with a more mystical interpretation of the Tarot cards.
1865-1916, Papus (Gérard Encausse), 1892 The Tarot of the Bohemians, tries to develop
meanings for the Pips. Included numerology & reduction to single digits.
1875-1948, Aleister Crowley, writes extensively on Tarot from 1912, and throughout his
career, but doesn’t publish The Book of Thoth until 1944.
1878-1951, Pamela Colman Smith, the commissioned artist for Waite's Tarot deck, first
published by Rider in 1909. The Rider-Waite deck is referred to here as the Smith deck to
give credit where due.
1884-1954, Paul Foster Case, 1975 The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages. Case is
the first Taroist to cite Jung's collective unconscious.
1888, Golden Dawn founded.
1909. Pamela Colman-Smith introduces vignettes for the Pips, original except for the 3 of
Swords and the Ten of Wands (now Swords) from the Sola-Busca Tarocchi.
Correspondences
Correspondences, or the drawing of extended connections and correlations between
separate systems of ideas, are the second foundation in the way that systems of occult
linguistics and correlative thought are developed, following the initial cornerstones that
are found within an original system’s culture of origin. While they seldom demonstrate
exact equivalences, these systems inform each other and in this way co-evolve. This is
particularly relevant to the relationship between the Tarot and Hermetic Qabalah, which
evolved roughly concurrently but had no historical connection at their beginning. Both,
however, had put down roots into related cultural sources and therefore found it relatively
easy to develop some common ground. The co-evolutionary relationship between Tarot
and Astrology is also significant in an historical sense, although the best of this has come
to Tarot by way of Hermetic Qabalah. More recently, fabricated connections between the
Tarot and the Yijing or Book of Changes are now beginning to make contributions to our
understanding of Tarot, but it is incorrect to declare any significant historical influence,
with the possible exception of a Chinese origin to the Tree of Life diagram.
Correspondences might best be thought of as nested analogies, wherein one extended
system of ideas, or symbolic language, is overlaid onto another, so that the individual
parts seem to line up and can then be compared. This is frequently a stretch fit, since
most systems come with their own unique infrastructures, requiring a translation of the
super-structure as well as the component elements. And some will try to stretch the fit
even further, for example, by trying to compare five items from one set to eight from
another. The most useful point, hope, and purpose in doing such an exercise is to get two
formerly separate systems to communicate, to mutually inform each other with an
interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. We ask whether two particular symbols are each
referring in their own way to the same phenomenon, and if so, what can this different
perspective show us. So far in this description we are simply manipulating cognitive
models to obtain a desired effect in the enhancement, enrichment, and deepening of ideas.
Most practitioners in the mystic arts are not content to stop here and accept that this is all
we are doing. Central to much of the ‘magical’ thinking about correspondences is that
hidden connections underlie diverse phenomena that impress the mind with similar
qualities and associations. Or, to take things a step further, things with similar forms are
informed by same divine idea. In other words, they are suggesting something like fractal
self-similarity, or asserting an instance of the Hermetic maxim ‘as above, so below’

instead of simple analogy.
It is often assumed that these underlying connections exist in a layer of reality that lies
beneath the apparent, and that the discoveries we are making were there all along. This is
not always the case. Certainly, if I can correlate the number Five with the planet Mars,
the Sephiroth of Geburah or Severity, and the Yijing Bagua of Thunder, it is easy to see
that there is a common thread here in their kinetic energy or force, and, in the anatomy of
the psyche, with motive forces like muscle, emotions and drives. It is also significant that
so many analogies and systems of symbols include a representative from this dimension
of human experience. But there remains the question of the tangible reality of the
formerly hidden connection. It is often a little too easy to lock systems together by
assuming an underlying reality located in a Platonic world of ideas, instead of just noting
comparisons for what they can contribute to our experience without making elaborate
metaphysical assumptions. Still, we can hope that meaningful coincidences can lead us to
discoveries of human psychological universals which express themselves in similar ways
in different cultures.
Perhaps the single most important thing to remember about correspondence is that the
word means to co-respond, to respond together or to resonate with. It does not mean that
one thing is equal to or equivalent to another. We want to avoid conflating and confusing
Five with Mars, and Geburah, and Thunder. Here in the Tarot we should bear in mind that
Tzaddi is not the Star. These are simply ideas on loan from other systems. They are not
appropriations into a single mega-system. Like our library books, we take what we need
before we return them. Correspondences should never be equated. They are a call to look
for properties held in common, and this is for the sake of a mutual enrichment. There is a
big difference between correspondence, resonance, or yìng in Chinese, and the sameness,
identity or equality that is too often assumed. There is a big difference between Tipareth
and Sol, and between Yesod and Luna, and there was no historical connection during the
early years of Tarot. But if you take to studying the assignments, you are sure to expand
your understanding of both sides. And of course there are common meanings: Sol and
Tipareth each refer in their own way to the sentient center of our being, the synergy that
comes from the harmonies of life, and Luna's Priestess and Yesod to the plasticity, or the
fluid and sensitive chaos that allows us to emerge in the first place.
Eliphas Levi wrote that “Analogy was the sole dogma of the ancient magi. This dogma
may indeed be called ‘mediator,’ for it is half scientific, half hypothetical; half reason,
and half poetry.” (Key, p. 13). To him, there were three laws: the law of will, a subtler
but still material force; the law of astral light, a field or medium of energy that could
carry information; and the law of correspondence, being a natural or inherent
connectivity that allowed the nesting of analogies, not merely in mutually informative
ways, but also in ways that could be called upon. Ring one bell and any resonant partner
would also start to vibrate. The Golden Dawn later added the law of imagination, that
mental imagery could be impressed upon the astral if it was produced, sustained and
directed by the will. This fourth law completes the basic model of spellcraft. The function
of the correspondences or nested analogies in this process allows a practitioner to gather
psychic energy from a number of sources and stimuli. In ceremonial magick, for
example, the practitioner draws excitement from several sensory sources, bells and chants
for auditory, dance and gesture for kinesthetic, lights and diagrams for visual, incense and
perfumes for olfactory, and so on. By intention or design, these sources are all attuned to
the same ‘vibration.’ This is the basis of sympathetic magick, where sympathy means
much the same as resonance or correspondence. For Cornelius Agrippa, this was a
principle in all three forms of magic: natural, celestial (talismans bearing efficacious
images), and ceremonial or high magic (rising on the planes, pathworking, like shamanic
magic but with more articulated maps).
There are four large problems that we encounter in translational systems of correlative
thought. The first stems from a failure to understand this simple principle: if we are going
to draw complex lines of interconnection between two individual systems of symbols, the
effort is going to be a lot more successful if we first understand a little of both systems
individually. Then we can start knitting concepts together with some initial sense of the
meanings they might share. In researching this book, I encountered half a dozen recent
attempts to correlate the Tarot with the Book of Changes. But none were put together by
authors with a working knowledge of the Yijing, in any language, least of all in Chinese.
There were a couple of scattered but useful insights that I was able to make some use of
here, most notably a handful of Crowley’s, but for the most part the connections range
from spurious to laughable. Hot little sister Dui might be connected to Mars instead of the
far more obvious connection to Venus. The Mountain might be somehow be associated
with the Sun, yet the authors of these systems just can’t see the meaninglessness of their
links. The same thing has happened throughout the development of the Tarot, particularly
in connections made to Kabbalah, Qabalah and Astrology. And some of these errors even
follow upon confusions latent within their original systems. What I consider to be the
major missteps will be catalogued below.
The second problem with correspondences concerns our cognitive skill sets (heuristics)
known as pareidolia and apophenia, discussed briefly above. The Tarot is unique in that
the elements of its vocabulary, the individual cards, are normally shuffled before they are
used. They can appear in any of a practically infinite number of possible arrangements.
Importantly, a good reader can string together a coherent and meaningful story from any
of these sequences. For now, let’s just go ahead and call them random sequences because
this phenomenon will work when no question is asked of the oracle. Our minds evolved
this cognitive skill over millions of years as primates. We can connect just about any
given set of dots, though not always effortlessly, and sometimes with elaborate mental
contortions. The thing is, we cannot assume that, because we have just told an interesting
story, the random sequence of inspirational stimuli was inherently meaningful. And yet,
the stories we tell about the sequence of letters in our randomly evolved alphabets are
imagined to be discoveries about the inscrutable minds of our deities. In this we are far
too clever for our own good. We can fail to distinguish meanings which preexist from
those of our own ad hoc design.
The third problem is closely related to the over-elaboration and tautology discussed
earlier. If a symbolic language is to be useful in the real world, the interpretive grid that it
superimposes onto reality will continue to hover pretty closely over that reality, instead of
moving further away with multiple levels of abstraction on abstraction. And as simple as
these systems are, the permutations within the organizing system, that are separate from
the individual symbols and ideas, can get extremely complex. These are the maps that
sojourners get lost in, believing there is more information there than in the contact with
the world that the symbols are supposed to point to. The abstraction itself will become a
distraction, and often just a mindless one. Now, when two systems are put together for
comparison and correlation, it is often done by people caught up in the layers of both
abstract superstructures. Symbols are connected together without referring them each and
both back to the reality they are supposed to point to. Errors are easily compounded when
the reality check is abandoned for coincidence in loftier realms.
The fourth problem concerns the momentum that cumulative error develops in cultural
transmission. Take, for example, some popular author who has committed a particularly
egregious error in correlating a Trump card featuring a Lion with any other sign but Leo,
or one with a Scales with any other sign but Libra. Individual students build their base of
knowledge from the ground up like buildings, usually on a first-come, first-used basis,
using the known materials currently available. This is called bricolage, and this process is
often blameless because they are novices and cannot be assumed competent to avoid such
errors by using good judgment from experience. It will take a level of maturity to begin a
study with high standards. When the author of an erroneous system becomes influential,
students following such a system will innocently incorporate errors into their curriculum,
errors which are then almost permanently protected against unlearning by cognitive bias.
These students would need to almost go back and start over, sometimes having to replace
the very cornerstones of their structures. Over the centuries, identifiable streams of such
transmitted errors can be identified almost like genetic mutations. Cognitive bias
accounts for their persistence, and the most we can hope for is that awareness of such
processes will give us incentive to make the needed efforts at correction. There is a
surprisingly, even shockingly, wide range of variation in such simple and foundational
assignments of Suits to elements and Planets to the double letters. And not all of us have
the benefits of an obsessive-compulsive disorder that finds both embarrassment and

discomfort in this disgusting untidiness.
Kabbalah and Qabalah (gratuitous note: the accent is on the last syllable, 'lah)
Tarot has adopted ideas from the Kabbalah since Mathers and Levi, both directly and
by way of the Western Mystery Tradition's transformation of Kabbalah into the Western
European version that we refer to as Qabalah. Both the Kabbalah and the Qabalah came
late to Tarot. This does not mean that it had little impact on the Tarot as it has evolved.
But only portions of this contribution make adequate sense for our purposes here. The
Jewish Kabbalists don't much care for this WMT development, being inclined to keeping
the tradition ancient and pure throughout, as a long historical lineage that began with
Abraham. They will be the last to acknowledge Kabbalah’s relatively recent emergence in
medieval Europe, excepting the c. 6th century pamphlet known as the Sepher Yetzirah.
The original Kabbalah was fairly restricted to the Jewish community and guarded as
such. Despite having drawn heavily from global sources like Neoplatonism, Gnosticism,
and possibly even Song Dynasty Neo-confuciansm, it tries to insist of the purity of its
Jewish roots, and of course it lies a lot about its antiquity and authorship. Internally it
might be best understood as both a mystical side of Judaism, which accepts evolution and
reincarnation, and also an attempt to uncover every last bit of information hidden in the
Tanakh, the Jewish redaction of the Old Testament as written in Hebrew. Externally it
might be seen as an attempt to get this information whether it exists in source texts or not,
using unconstrained interpretive techniques. Besides interpreting the Tanakh and the two
Talmuds, the Kabbalah has several texts of its own, most notably the Sepher Yetzirah (c.
6th cent, Book of Formation), the Sepher Bahir (1174, the Book of Brightness), the
Sha’arei Ora (13th cent, Gates of Light, by Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla) and the
Sepher Zohar (13th cent, the Book of Splendor, by Moses de Leon). In the 1500s, after
the Jews were expelled from Spain, a major center of Kabbalistic learning arose in Safed
and produced such notable lights as Moses Cordovero (Remak, 1522–1570) and Isaac
Luria (the Ari, 1534-1572).
The Sepher Yetzirah initiated the structural metaphysics of the Kabbalah, introducing
the Ten Sephiroth, successive ciphers of the creation similar to the emanations of Plotinus
and the Archons and Aeons of the Gnosics. They remain unnamed and uncharacterized in
this work, which runs for only a few pages. Then the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew
alphabet are discussed as instruments of the creation and divided into three groups,
Mother, Double and Single letters. This threefold division is not based on any kind of
rational phonetic analysis or phonosymbolism. Aleph, Mem and Shin are the Mothers and
are universally correlated with Air, Water and Fire respectively. The Seven Double letters
are referred among other things to the Seven Planets of Jewish and Chaldean astrology.
These are not correlated one-on-one here, although many redactions attempted this in
later centuries, with almost no agreement as to which paired with what (See Kaplan, SY
178). Nobody seems to have tried to adopt the only accepted planetary sequence in
circulation at the time, the Ptolemaic order based on apparent duration of orbit. The
Golden Dawn adopted their own set of assignments, which also disagrees with all of the
others, including the Ptolemaic, but this has become too standardized in Tarot’s evolution
and has made far too many lasting contributions to Trump meanings and associations to
ever disentangle the two. That’s with one exception: the seven planets are placed in a
rational Ptolemaic order in their assignment to the Sephiroth. There is more agreement
with the Twelve Simple Letters, particularly as they are correlated with the Twelve Signs
of the Zodiac, in the straightforward, ‘found’ sequence of the alphabet, from He as Aries
to Qoph as Pisces.
The twenty-two letters of the alphabet have been assigned one-to-one correlations to
the twenty-two Trumps of the Tarot. Variations exist, but the dominant one by far is the
Golden Dawn’s. This is a straightforward assignment of Aleph to the Fool through Tau to
the World or Universe, with one switcheroo made so that Teth relates to Strength and
Leo, and Lamed to Justice and Libra. Each of the 22 letters has primary and associated
traditional symbols: Aleph is an Ox, Beth a house, Gimel a camel, etc. A lot of effort has
been expended trying to assert an inherent relevance between these ancient symbols and
the meanings of the Tarot Trumps, but for the most part this has only been an exercise in
pareidolia, imagining connections between randomly paired objects. This exercise has,
however, produced a handful of happy accidents that have made good contributions to the
developing Trump meanings. He as a window, for example, suggests that the self of Aries
and the First House is a unique point of view on the world.
If we wanted to assume that it was in fact the mind of JHVH that created the Hebrew
alphabet and then with it authored both the Tanakh and the world, then it might be more
plausible to assume that the sequence of the Hebrew letters was something more than
random. But most thinking folk are not equipped with this presumption, and might be
convinced of both the alphabet’s randomness and even of its inferiority as an alphabet
compared to a work of art like Sanskrit or the IPA. However, when we are asking why the
alphabet became a full blown numerology, we need to understand that before the Jews
adopted the Arabic numerals, all they had for numbers was an alphabetic notation. This
was closer to decimal and considerably more elaborate than Roman numerals. But it did
not lend, in a retroactive fashion, an inherent numerical meaning to the 22 letters of this
alphabet. If the sequence of the Proto-Sinaitic-Phonecian-Hebrew alphabets developed at
random, or as a simple bricolage, then all conceptual systems that rely on an assumption
that this sequence is inherently meaningful must be viewed with suspicion. In short, the
Hebrew alphabet’s numerical sequence is merely numerology, not number symbolism. Its
sequence remains random with regard to inherent meanings, and therefore all subsequent
systems of correspondences that are based on the numerical values of Hebrew letters
have no real semiotic or meaningful content. It is as though we assigned a letter of the
alphabet to 22 attendees of a class based on their order of arrival, and later had the
intuition that this alphabetical order of arrival told us things about the qualities of these
attendees as human beings. It just doesn’t work. We can still make up stories, however.
Twenty-two paths are said to connect the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life diagram. The
routes of these appeared along with the diagram itself, and after only a few attempts at
variation, settled into two alternatives, the Jewish and Hermetic. The Hermetic pattern,
credited to Kircher, is the better established and regarded as canon in the West, but it’s the
more problematic of the two. The assignment of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet
tried to follow the dictum 'and all are linked together' in SY Vi-6, but this attempt
completely ignored the very explicit description given in that same paragraph. It focused
instead on the linear, numerical sequence of the alphabet, so important in Gematria, but
sequentially random with respect to the alphabet's supposedly higher 3-7-12 arrangement,
which is supposed to be geometrical and not linear. The European Qabalists have used
this numerical sequence to assign the 22 Trumps to these 22 Paths, with no regard for
whether the meanings of the Paths had any meaningful connection with the meanings of
the Sephiroth that they connected. Because of this, the Golden Dawn ‘pathworking’
associations will be dismissed in this present work as nothing more than exercises in
pareidolia, with no more inherent meaning than any random reshuffling would produce.
This does not suggest that pathworking will offer up no valuable experience, only that it
is a bunch of hooey for pathworkers to suggest that you will blow fuses by exploring the
wrong or unauthorized connections and violating some ancient authority. That one has an
expected experience is not surprising. But this does not make the assignment correct. The
Jewish Kabbalists, notably Cordovero and Luria, arrived at entirely different assignments
of letters to the Tree, as well as a slightly different structure for the 22 connecting paths.
It is important to understand in this context that the system of paths that was adopted by
the Golden Dawn, together with its sequential assignment of the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, is not the primary system developed and preferred by the Jewish Kabbalists.
The Kabbalists insisted on holding somewhat truer to the Sepher Yetzirah's organization
of the 22 into scales of three, seven and twelve. and made use of the fact that the paths as
they drew them had 3 horizontal paths, seven vertical and twelve diagonal. So does the
somewhat different path arrangement of Western Qabalah. These show more respect for
geometries based on the 3-7-12 division of the alphabet, but still show little regard for
path meanings as being relevant to the connected individual Sephira meanings. See the
end pages of this appendix on Astrology for related diagrams.
To put this in slightly different terms (because it is important to the present study): we
can imagine ourselves traveling from any one Sephira to any other and having, on that
journey, the experience of any one of the Trumps. If this experience has been described to
us beforehand, or even just named, our experience will likely have something in common
with that of the person who described or named it. But this does not mean that the content
of that experience is inherent in the path between those Sephiroth. It has been imposed. In
order for meaning to inhere in that path, the experience would begin with an experience
of the meaning of the Sephira of origin, and conclude with an experience of the Sephira
that is our destination. The 22 pathways of the Golden Dawn system fail to do this. They
are simply, and rather mindlessly, based on an application of the numerological sequence
of the Hebrew alphabet, no more than an arbitrary system of nominal enumeration, with
an accidental sequence of letter order for its origin.
In short, with regard to the Hebrew alphabet and its relationship to the 22 Trumps, the
real essence of the Kabbalah’s contribution boils down to there being useable scales of
three, seven and twelve to be explored within the set of 22 trumps. A Trump study will
allow us to also examine related triads, heptads, duodecads. There may also be something
to explore in the ratio of 22/7, which has been associated with the mysterious number Pi
since Archimedes, who also knew that this was only an imperfect approximation.
The Tree of Life, or Otz Chayyim, is a diagram that consists fundamentally of the Ten
Sephiroth, Spheres or Ciphers, arranged in a geometrical pattern in the 16th century. This
pattern was first seen in 10th and 11th century China in the form of Chen Tuan’s Wujiu
and Zhou Dunti’s Taijitu. Unless this was a remarkable evolutionary convergence or
coincidence, the pattern would have come to Europe most likely by an Islamic route of
transmission, perhaps following some Mongolian dissemination. There was certainly
enough global communication by this time to permit such transmission. The Tree became
the primary vehicle for describing the sequential ontological process by which the Divine
created the World, a unique Jewish adaptation of Neoplatonic emanationism and Gnostic
creation theory. This purports to describe how the infinite unmanifest might have become
the finite manifest in ten stages of emanation. But it is not at all necessary to accept this
metaphysical theory to find this arrangement and its sequence interesting and useful. The
same sequence can also be seen in other fields, perhaps most strikingly describing the
self-organization of energy systems of increasing complexity at entropic energy
gradients. Furthermore, the sequence can be reversed to chart the ascent of the created
being 'back' into higher and simpler expressions of the divine. A strikingly precise
example of this can be found in the Ten Ox Herding Pictures of Zen lore, which parallel
and contribute to the Sephira meanings point by point.
The meanings of the Ten Sephiroth are absolutely indispensable to understanding the
number symbolism that was developed in the WMT and Qabalah, which coevolved with
our understanding of the forty Pip cards of the Tarot. These will be discussed at some
necessary length in a section below on the Ten Numbers.
If the Otz Chayyim was adapted from the Wujitu-Taijitu tradition, little modification
would have been required. The second sphere down in the Chinese version, a forerunner
of the Yin-Yang symbol, would have been teased apart to show Chokmah and Binah as
being separate. The Jews would have little use for the five central spheres being assigned
to the Chinese Wu Xing or Five Phases, so these would have been re-tagged with the
names of the Sephiroth Chesed through Hod. Beyond that, no imagination is required.
The Chinese diagrams even had a circle for Daath.
Daath, Knowledge, the false Sephira, warrants a mention here. It signifies the problems
of gnosis, point of view, and individual existence. It is located on the threshold of the
Abyss between Binah and Chesed, where the Gnostic Sophia hung her veil. It is more apt
to reflect what we want to see back to us than show us what the other side is like. It’s the
reason Buddha was an atheist: we see only what our finitude will allow us to see, or only
what our suffering wants for relief. At the same time it represents the ability to cross the
Abyss with our hearts still beating, if we can only get rid of most of our narcissism,
delusion, and egotism, and accept our limitations and finitude.
The Kabbalistic idea of the Four Worlds or Olamot (Olam singular) has made a small
contribution to our understanding of the Suits of the small cards. These are successive
layers of condensation of the divine light during creation, which parallel the movement of
the creative force moving down through the Sephiroth. Some believe that there are four
interconnected Trees, with the Ten Sephiroth expressed in each world prior to descent
into the next world down, making creation a forty-step process, rather than ten. While
this is a classic case of overelaboration in a tautological reality, or getting lost in the map,
it still offers a useful suggestion to look at each Sephira as it is expressed in each of four
Worlds, and therefore a Qabalistic perspective on each Number as expressed in each Suit.
The four Worlds are Atziluth (Emanation, Divine Will), Briah (Creation, Prima Materia),
Yetzirah (Formation, Law) and Assiah (Material and its Activities). These parallel the
Suits of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles, respectively, except for the fact that the
Olamot are regarded as significantly more hierarchical, with the world of Atziluth being
closer to Ein Sof, or the Unlimited, whereas the four Suits are closer to being regarded as
coequals.
Astrology
Parts of astrology are integral to Tarot, others are potentially useful, but only when
they work. But “to know when to stop is the highest attainment” (Zhuangzi), and few
seem to grasp why to do this, and concentrate on core dimensions instead of peripherals,
afterthoughts, extrapolations, anachronisms, and other apocrypha. I would guess about 75
percent of what you read on the subject in any non-selective collection of Tarot books is
loaded with unexamined nonsense. For me, that nonsense especially includes the Golden
Dawn's fascination with the 36 decans, which I see as distraction, accepted rather blindly
by those who aren’t well-versed in astrology.
In case it isn’t obvious by now, the approach taken here to Astrology is also linguistic
and does not assume that this discipline has or needs to have anything whatsoever to do
with the stars, or with any influence of the physical planets. As a language, however, it is
plenty interesting. Since the Symbols of Western Astrology are so important to
understanding Occult Tarot, this Primer may be downloaded as an html document for
easy reference. At the end are several reference diagrams that are pertinent to Astrology's
coevolutionary relationship to both Tarot and Kabbalah.
From the Primer: “It isn't our purpose here to praise, study, or belittle the efforts of
astrologers to justify this old tapestry as respectable science. Neither is whether, how, or
why astrology "works" of any concern, yet. This much we know: at least since history
began, some form of astrology more complex than the simple measurement of time and
season has accompanied every major civilization. During these millennia, human beings
have subjected themselves to complex, confusing, and unnatural forms of psychological
stress, leaving themselves in need of a way of looking at themselves (psychology) which
did not yet exist. The prototypical psychologist, then called shaman, wizard, or priest,
needed three things in order to deliver on his society's need for counseling: a) a science of
his own to understand the machinery of the mind and its interface with its ecosystem, b) a
simple language to use as a vehicle for delivering his observations, and 3) a powerful
mystique to instill credulity (a more pressing need than credibility) in the minds of those
in need of advice. Clearly, the most powerful and mysterious thing in the universe was
the universe. And he had ready-made divisions of the grand scheme in the systems
developed for timekeeping and agriculture. All he had to do was embed the notion "as
above, so below." These needs constituted and still describe the context of astrology's
youth. At least this was the need underlying the evolution of the system, even if it was
rarely, if ever, perceived as such until recently. The significant point is that astrology has
had thousands of years to adjust, adapt, or attune itself to our human needs, regardless of
its metaphysical accuracy. It is foremost a language constructed for the purpose of
guidance through times of doubt and stress. The credulous, however, continue to invest it
with a much grander reality and mystique. But rather than use these arguments to refute
astrology as science, the believer can still make use of the work here to further refine the
basic concepts of the discipline for the purposes of more specific or rigorous testing.
Once again, the compulsion to go too far in extrapolating deductively from a simple
cognitive system has been as active in astrology as anywhere else. We will attempt at
least a partial remedy here by presenting, as concisely as possible, definitions of
astrology's most fundamental concepts and operations. A thorough understanding of these
is sufficient both to interpret a chart and to use the symbols outside of astrology's purview
and contexts. Some aspects of both ancient and modern astrology won't be discussed
here. The system of 36 Decans, adopted by the Golden Dawn to add a more mysterious
patina of antiquity to its Occult Tarot, will be ignored as irrelevant, even to Tarot. We can
go so far as to call it silly and offend some believers. The decans and their rulers make no
sense at all as explanations for the meanings of the pips. If you can see them as
meaningful, more power to you and your knack for pareidolia, but they just look like
random nonsense to me. There is a far better alternative that's already built into the
Western Mystery Tradition, and that’s an association of Planets to Sephiroth, based of the
formula of the Hexagram and also used a lot by the Golden Dawn and Crowley. The suit
is simply the element the planet operates through. So the Seven of Swords would be
Venus in Air signs, or Netzach in Yetzirah (the strategy of getting something you want).
Progressions won't be discussed. Relative to other systems of correspondence,
particularly to the Jewish Kabbalah and the West's Qabalah, some innovations from the
Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley will be corrected, dropped, or otherwise altered.
These two knew next to nothing about Uranus and Neptune back then, which I give to
Chokmah and Binah respectively. Crowley's pairing of Saturn with Binah was just wrong.
(So was his pairing of the Bagua Dui with anyone other than Venus). See Appendix One
at the end.
Astrology is a language. The chart is a paragraph. A planet in a sign and a house is a
complete sentence, which is connected to other sentences in a paragraph by aspects.
Unlike English paragraphs, the sentences or clauses don't follow one another in a linear
sequence, but relate to each other reciprocally and simultaneously as a gestalt. A second
major difference between astrology and English is that its limited vocabulary of less than
a hundred words is defined connotatively instead of denotatively: the concepts evoke and
accrue meanings and key words around a core or key meaning which cannot be simply
described with a single word. The four major parts of speech (planet, sign, house and
aspect) and the rules for combining them constitute the language's grammar. This is not
analogy or metaphor. Some may argue that such a purely linguistic approach divorces the
"science" of astrology from the sky and places the responsibility and the purview of the
science purely within the human psyche. It perhaps even suggests that the science is an
invention and not a discovery. But there are no lines between the stars, and the sky is not
divided. There are no twos, threes, fours or twelves up there. They are not needed or
useful above - only below. The mesh of the net we have cast across the deep of the
cosmos can only be drawn around make-believe fish.
The Planets are the subjects of the sentences and clauses. It may help to view them as
verbs or gerunds instead of nouns. Ultimately, they are huge, complicated rocks in orbit
around our star, upon which we projected our gods. Even in the beginning, these gods
were part of ourselves, our "I" diffracted into a multiplicity of aspects. The planets in
astrology symbolically divide an entity into functional parts, kinds of personal identity,
dimensions of experience, potentials for action or modes of personal being (e.g. desiring,
empowering, incorporating, etc.), and to some, these are parts of the soul.
The Signs of the zodiac are akin to adverbs, or more specifically, intransitive adverbial
predicates. The twelve signs divide life's ways of behaving into twelve types or qualities
of behaving, much as matter may be said to burn, ooze, blow, blow up, be boring, etc. As
adverbs, they describe a planet-subject's propensities or preferences for ways to come
into play (affectively, cognitively, behaviorally, etc) its modus operandi. This is the
planet's how, its most comfortable means of expression, its recurrent character or its
favorite feeling.
The Houses are akin to prepositional phrases (specifically, transitive prepositional
predicates). These twelve divide life's objective realms into where's, twelve typical
classes of contexts (e.g) selfhood, home, relationship, vocation, etc.). As prepositional
predicates they describe a planet-subject's wont, propensity, or preference for certain
situations, contexts, issues or places to manifest. They tend to be its favorite outlet or
channel of expression. This does not mean that the planet will be successful in or adapt to
these realms, only that the issues will tend to recur.
Three tenses are embedded in the meanings of both the twelve signs and the twelve
houses. These are the three "qualities." Through the signs they are called cardinal, fixed
and mutable, and through the houses, angular, succedent and cadent. These do not equate
with our more familiar tenses of past, present and future except by a stretch fit. They are
compounds of both synchronic (same time, left, right, and center) and diachronic
(through time, past, present, and future) elements and are defined by a conglomerate of
notions. The first tense tends to concentrate on origins, the second on present states and
maintenance, and the third on changes wrought.
Four genders are also embedded in the meanings of both the signs and the houses.
There are the four classical elements of fire, earth, air and water (in the zodiac order) and
the four "Quadruplicities," unnamed, through the houses. Symbolic quadruplicities are
nearly universal across human cultures, although specific assignments may vary. Among
other things, these are Jung's four personality types, intuiting, sensing, thinking and
feeling, in the order above.
The planets, or parts of the self, operating through the energy of a sign, in the realm of
a house, form the complete but dependent clause of the paragraph. It still remains for us
to weave these together into a whole paragraph.
The Aspects are akin to conjunctions (specifically, hypotactic interdependent modes)
which work in both directions. They relate the dependent clauses one to the other,
simultaneously and reciprocally in specific ways (e.g. cooperates with, at cross purposes
to, etc.). Unaspected clauses should be viewed as paratactically conjoined (as by a
semicolon), not really independent, since self is not really split into parts. The aspects
thus describe the integration of experience within and among the various dimensions of
selfhood. They may refer, for instance, to the way the mind relates to the heart. If the
planets represent one's personal dynamics, then the aspects represent the biomechanics
operative prior to personal output.
The Ascendant or rising sign ties the entire grid of of houses and points to a separately
rotating wheel of the zodiac. This is astrology's equivalent of the theme sentence
introducing a paragraph. It sets an interpretive tone for the entire gestalt. It's the
equivalent of selecting and establishing a reference coordinate system in the language of
analytic geometry.
Lastly, the paragraph is peppered with assorted forms of punctuation, interjections,
modifiers, and complex logical loops. The most significant of these are discussed below
in the contexts of the parts of speech to which they most apply.
The action of the seven classical Planets are first represented in the Tarot by the seven
Trumps associated with the double letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the more recently
discovered Uranus and Neptune with two of the Mother letters. Uranus is often associated
with Air, Aleph and the Fool, but I wish to take a corrective action here and say this is a
silly attribution and fails to understand the more serious character of Uranus. It conflates
two very different kinds of unpredictability. This awakening, radical and revolutionary
character is better represented by Fire, Shin and Judgment, despite the fact that Uranus
was later given to Aquarius, an air sign. In making this change, we have bumped poor
Pluto out of the picture (the poor, pitiful, moon-sized thing returns in symbolic form
later). This leaves the Fool without an Astrological attribution, which might just suit him
and his lack of specificity.
Secondarily, the Planets are correlated to the ten Numbers of the Pip cards. This comes
by way of their association with the ten Sephiroth as overlain onto the Tree of Life.
Again, see the diagrams at the end of the primer. This overlay was made by the Golden
Dawn, and follows the Ptolemaic sequence up the Tree: Terra, Luna, Mercury, Venus,
Sol, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. This works extremely well for Malkuth, Yesod, Hod,
Netzach, Tipareth, Geburah and Chesed. However, contrary to Golden Dawn and
Crowleyan assertions, it falls apart utterly when we try to associate Saturn with Binah,
the Great Mother. It just doesn’t work, despite the mental gymnastics they do about
darkness. It just isn't right to darken the meaning of Binah so far in order to accommodate
an incorrect assignment to Saturn. I would submit that the resonance is much stronger
between Saturn and either Daath or Kether, depending on whether self is viewed from
within self or sub specie aeternitatis. Bear in mind that Saturn was, until recently, the last
of the Planets and so took on most of its meanings in relation to finitude, the ultimate
limits that the mortal being is subject to. Binah as Understanding and the Great Mother is
more liberating than that. There is a Saturn that is a reflection of our fears projected onto
the Abyss, which became Satan for some, and then there is the Saturn who is the Great
One of the Night of Time, Kronos, father of the Olympian gods. This bold reassignment
is further supported by the graphic hexagram used by the WMT, the six pointed star,
Magen David or of Shield of David, fit onto the Tree of Life, with the center being Sol
and Tiparerth and the bottom being Luna and Yesod. Saturn then falls squarely on the
sphere of Daath. This is shown graphically in the Numbers section below, and at the end
of the Primer.
Moving Saturn away from Binah leaves us able to accommodate a much more rational
assignment of the outer planet pair of Neptune and Uranus to the complementary spheres
Binah and Chokmah, Understanding and Wisdom, Infinity Complexity and Infinite
Order, Chaos and Cosmos, Field and Vector. This also accommodates a rational
development of Bagua correspondences with Kun and Qian, Accepting and Creating, as
discussed in the next section.
It should be noted here that the Planets, when viewed as agents or operatives in the
activities represented by the Pips, are not really the subjective experiences they are when
they appear as Trumps. The Pips are said to depict forces and circumstances, and are not
said to depict subjective states. They are more objectified forces, having the character of
the Planets, and they are narrowed even further in their scope by limitation to one of the
four Suits or Elements. This does, however, point out a way to better understand each of
the Pips by trying to subjectivize the experience. For example, one imagines being the
force that overturns three of the five cups, or being the owners of the eight swords who
tie that poor woman up.
The association of the Trumps to seven specific Planets in Astrology had limiting or
narrowing effects on the meaning of the Trumps as well. In the most obvious of these,
Jupiter was no longer the go-to association for the Emperor, Mars no longer for the
Chariot, Luna no longer for the Moon. These cards began to take on fresher meanings
that were more compatible with Aries, Cancer and Pisces respectively. At the same time,
the planetary assignments bring a subjectivity to some of the Trumps that otherwise
would only depict objective situations: Mars now adds a first person sense to the Tower,
Jupiter to the Wheel, Saturn to the Universe, and here, Uranus to Judgment.
If we were coming into this subject cold, it might seem reasonable to assume that if
there were a set of associations between the Trumps and the Signs of the Zodiac that one
would start looking for Leo in a card depicting a Lion, for Libra in a card depicting the
Scales, for Capricorn in a card depicting something Goatish, and for Aquarius in a card
depicting a Water Bearer. Were we to make this assumption, we could start looking for
systems of correspondences that concurred here, and begin dismissing authors who failed
to make such obvious connections as ‘not playing with a full deck.’ There is a shocking
amount of disagreement here, but there are systems which have hit upon all four of the
above, which give us a place to begin. The Golden Dawn sect took the insight and forced
the Trumps into a much better alignment with Astrological and Kabbalistic sequence by
reversing Strength and Justice in their earlier sequence.
There is an additional discovery here that isn’t often observed. As most may know, the
Signs of the Zodiac have a natural affinity with specific Houses, in a sequence from Aries
and the First House through Pisces and the Twelfth House. Now if you look closely at the
traditional key words that accompany descriptions of the twelve Trumps that are assigned
to the Zodiac, you will find that these words are actually encountered more frequently in
the descriptions of the Houses to which these Signs have their most natural affinity. The
Trumps that are now traditionally assigned to the Signs of the zodiac actually feel more
like animated versions of the natural Houses of those Signs. Compare, for example, key
words for the Moon card with those for Pisces and for the Twelfth House. But the Trumps
are not prepositional phrases in the language of the Tarot, like they are in Astrology. If we
are going to make use of this, we need to look at the Trumps as subjects. Consequently,
we might shift the association of these Trumps to the full expression of their dignity. So
rather than simply use Aries for the Emperor, we can use Mars dignified in Aries in the
First House.
The Signs also find much resonance in twelve of the sixteen Court cards, and these are
sufficient to carry the personalities of the astrological Signs. There are two ways to go
about this. The simplest and most straightforward uses the notion that both the Signs and
the Court are portmanteaus of tense and gender, or a quality and an element. If we assign
the tenses of cardinal, fixed and mutable to King, Prince and Queen and let the elements
and suits be, then we have the King of Wands as Cardinal Fire or Aries, the Prince of
Pentacles as Fixed Earth or Taurus, etc. Others make different assignments, but this is the
set we'll use here.
The second method of assigning the Court to the Zodiac will be dismissed here as
more systemic overelaboration. In order to bolster claims of great antiquity for the Tarot,
early developers of the occult versions reached for an ancient and then-abandoned system
of parsing the ecliptic into 36 slices called Decans or Decantes, three for each Sign of the
zodiac. See also. This was an Egyptian system and antedated the Chaldean (Babylonian)
simplification of 12 Signs. The Golden Dawn then assigned each of the Court to the third
Decan of one sign and the first two of the next. This system is available elsewhere, both
in books and online. It complicates and compromises the purity of the core conception of
the Court. It’s doubtful whether these complicated assignments have really been analyzed
in any serious detail by someone competent in astrological interpretation. They seem to
have merely been accepted on the authority of earlier authors.
The same overelaboration was done with 36 of the Pips cards. Each Decan was given a
systematically, but otherwise arbitrarily, assigned Pip and planetary ruler. This provided
an association of a Planet acting through a Sign, through which to elaborate divinatory
meanings. Working backwards through this development, however, it is hard to see how
this could possibly have been fundamental to the meanings of the cards in question. We
can easily see how a connection might be drawn between Mars in a Fire Sign and the
Five of Wands, since Mars is known to be appropriate to Geburah, the Fifth Sephira, and
Wands represent Fire. But the Golden Dawn assignment to Saturn in Leo is lot more
confusing. Similarly, the Queen of Cups, as the Watery or Mutable part of Water, would
seem a natural fit to the zodiac Sign of Pisces or Mutable Water. Assignment to the last
Decan of Gemini and the first two of Cancer makes no sense at all, at least to someone
who knows the more straightforward language of Astrology. This was another needless
and not very useful complication, and a feeble attempt to forge an antique patina for the
cards.
Finally, the four Princesses or Pages were given by the Golden Dawn to four quadrants
around the North pole. Crowley thought this made sense, but it never really did, and
never had any practical use. In searching for an alternative, I happened to notice that the
key words used consistently for the Princesses or Pages actually lined up pretty well with
those used by astrologers for the Lunar North Node. This substitution has been made
here, so that the Princess of Wands might get some meaningful contribution from
observations of the North Node in Fire signs.
Yijing (I Ching)
Various attempts have been made in the last century to tie the Yijing into the Western
Mystery Tradition’s systems. Aleister Crowley took the early lead here. Significantly, he
was able to tie the 16 Court cards to 16 of the Gua (Hexagrams) by analyzing them as
portmanteaus of the Yijing's representations of the four elements as four of the Bagua
(Eight Trigrams) permuted amongst themselves. Elemental Fire was represented by Zhen
or Thunder, Water by Dui or Wetland, Air by Xun or Penetrating Wind, and Earth by Gen
or Mountain. So, for example, the watery expression of fire (Queen of Wands) would
resonate with Wetland (Water) over Thunder (Fire), which is the Gua of Following, or
Thunder in the Lake, suggesting responsiveness to a pulse, getting into the rhythm of
things, going with the flow. Interestingly, when these 16 assignments are plotted onto the
8x8 graphic presentation of the Gua as a sequence of binary numbers (called the Xian
Tian or Primal Heaven arrangement) the plot shows bilateral symmetry, a property which
is characteristic of all of the Yijing's own structural dimensions. It remained to also tie the
other four Bagua to the Elements. This works by also assigning Li or Flame to Fire, Kan
or Water to Water, Tian or Heaven to Air and Kun or Earth to Earth. Karen Witter (source
not known) agrees with this reiteration of the four elements in the eight Bagua. The first
set of four, which Crowley identified, she called the attributional elements, and the latter
set of four the archetypal elements. Her terminology is adopted here. These two sets are
something like local and generalized versions of each of the elements. Gen or Mountain,
for example, is local earth, while Kun or Earth is the broader conception of earthliness.
A Westerner might want to see Tian or Heaven as Fire, but the Chinese conception of
Heaven is much different than the West’s. Heaven is more of an intelligibility than an
intelligence. In China the parents of the family of four are not Fire and Water, as they are
in the West, but Heaven and Earth, or Air and Earth. as with the Greek Uranus and Gaia.
Heaven is not a creator god who drives existence with his inscrutable purposes, but the
intelligible clockworks of a natural order of being, or natural law. We should note that
this is not always the case in Chinese folk religion. In China, the symbols of the Earth
assumed most of the oceanic associations that were attributed in the West to Water,
perhaps in part because the center of ancient Chinese civilization was found far inland
and the great seas were a more remote experience. What we in the West call ‘oceanic’
experiences and symbolize with big water are taken up by the Zhouyi conception of a
wide and fertile Earth. Interestingly, the Mawangdui text of the Zhouyi calls the Kun
hexagram ‘Chuan,’ Stream, Water or Flow. Curious, too, is that the mare (depicted in this
hexagram) is sacred to Neptune, her creator in Greek mythology. Remember that in these
symbolic languages, the symbol is not what is being referred to: the symbol is only meant
to evoke a state of mind. Not the finger, but the Moon.
Crowley also took a good run at associating the Bagua to eight of the ten Sephiroth of
the Tree of Life, particularly as they are correlated to the seven Planets of Astrology. He
succeeded well with six of them, but bungled two by relating Gen to Netzach or Venus,
and Dui to Chesed or Jupiter. Anybody who knows Venus will correlate her instead with
our flirty and saucy little sister Dui, leaving Gen to be represented by either Jupiter or
Saturn. Actually, Gen is problematic because it has both of these aspects. As a force of
equilibrium, equanimity, stability and a higher, less-needy kind of love, this is Jupiterian
or Jovian. As a force that stops us or brings us up short, it is Saturnian. Here we are using
Gen as it resonates with Jupiter and giving Saturn a higher purpose. Such a system then
makes possible a portmanteau analysis of the 40 Pip cards, if we take the upper Bagua or
Trigram to represent the Suit (as a Predicate) and the lower to represent the Number (as a
Subject).
Crowley's remaining Yijing assignments were sporadic, disordered, and weak, as were
the efforts of several of the new age writers who have attempted the task by intuiting or
channeling their assignments without any use of structure, or a good grasp of the core
meanings of the Gua and the Bagua. Others, who have relied wholly on structure, have
followed Crowley's lead and attempted to go further. Whitcomb does not overreach,
staying comfortably within Chinese tradition. Hulse makes an effort, but is hampered by
Crowley's errors and missing information. Skinner has attempted a fuller interconnection,
but has relied for his sources on apocryphal Han Dynasty numerology (Han Yiweishu),
religious Daoist (Daojiao) metaphysical speculation and Feng Shui, most of which have
completely abandoned the basic meanings of the Bagua in favor of endless structural
speculation, all of which lie outside of the Yijing as its own tradition (called Yixue or Yi
Studies). In this way, Skinner winds up doing too many silly things like assigning Water
to Mercury, Mountain to the Sun and Wind to Jupiter. Without the attention due to
inherent meanings of correlated elements there can be no resonance or correspondence,
unless you are running on pure pareidolia, in which case you can connect anything.
What nobody else has seemed to have noticed with regard to a possible resonant (but
still non-historical) connection between the Tarot and the Yijing is that if you add up the
number of all of the Yijing's recognized diagrams you get 64 + 8 + 4 + 2 = 78. The key is
in understanding that 64 of these would have to be developed as portmanteaus of the
Bagua in their inner (Zhen) and outer (Hui) positions, as we saw in Crowley's Court, and
the remaining 14 would have to remain as simpler constructions, which lend themselves
to Trumps. There is, of course, an inherent problem here in that the Trumps, Court and
Pips (as well as the Gua, Ba Gua, Xiang and Yao) would then lose any sense of their
organizational hierarchy and all be set on a level field. Within such a system, the Tarot’s
own hierarchy would be held in abeyance, so that the Trumps, Court and Pips are at least
temporarily peers. But, once again, we are not looking for exact equivalencies for two
historically independent systems. We are simply looking for resonance, and for whatever
information this can provide. When we superimpose more complex systems like Tarot,
Astrology, Qabalah, and Yijing over each other, the very different meta-structural systems
get bent or stretched a little. Elements of each language might have to change part of
speech or some other property. Sentence structures will get altered. The most critical
thing is that the individual or component elements resonate with each other, and in doing
so, communicate some meanings back and forth. This is a lot easier when we get into
smaller scales and simpler patterns, like four-armed mandalas, or the ten-sphere Tree of
Life.
The Pips-to-Yijing correspondences were pretty straightforward for the Two’s through
the Nine’s. The Bagua ties to the Sephiroth and the Planets were important keys to this
arrangement, even more so after Crowley’s two errors had been corrected. That is said
with all due respect for what he did manage to accomplish. The four archetypal Bagua in
the upper Hexagram position determined the Suit and the lower Bagua, eight of the ten
Numbers. The Aces and Tens were more of a challenge. There were eight Gua left to
assign to eight Pips. Eventually a rational explanation presented itself. The four Suits
were given to the ‘attributional’ Bagua in the upper position, leaving the lower Bagua to
determine whether this was an Ace or a Ten. Since the Aces are of a somewhat neonatal
character, just getting started in life, without much momentum, these were left to rest
supported, but not powered, on Kun. The Tens, which are being driven to the limits of the
element and beyond, were taken to be pushed to their extremes by sitting on top of Qian.
This was the combination where the meanings seemed to resonate best, and they actually
helped when translating the Chinese text.
Thankfully, one thing that these systems have in common is a portmanteau
morphology and two-part symbols tend to predominate in the larger vocabulary. Even the
signs of the zodiac are in part portmanteaus, of tense and gender, or quality and element.
Following Crowley’s lead, this formed a reliable system to work with. The system
presented here is of recent invention, only in use since 1976. It might present a challenge
to someone who has already taken seriously one of the other systems in circulation, and it
might even prove too much of a challenge for someone to unlearn the few Crowleyan
assignments that have been altered here. The only claim to validity here is rational
analysis and some decades of testing to justify this system. It was emphatically not given
to anybody by the Ascended Masters of some White Light Brotherhood or any other
ancient authority. This is, however, the first time that Tarot-to-Yijing assignments have
been made by someone who has the studied the Yijing in this kind of depth and translated
it from the Chinese.
There is a lot more supplementary material available that pertains to both the Yijing
and Tarot as symbol systems capable of correlation. This has been edited and assembled
as a 35-page pdf document available here as a Supplement.
Component Ideas in the Minor Arcana

The Four Suits
Dividing the world by four, as a conceptual exercise that yields what is called a Scale
of Four, was probably done before the Greek Empedocles (c. 490-430 BCE), but his is our
first surviving account. This quadruplicity is nearly universal in human cultures. It is best
known in the west as the four Greek elements: fire, water, air and earth; in the realm of
human experience as father, mother, son and daughter; in our need to grow food as
summer, winter, spring and autumn; and in our need to remain oriented as south, north,
east and west. As our cultures began to communicate, a lasting cross-fertilization began,
with long lists of attributes accruing to these four groups of meanings. But often, due to
cultural differences and to differing sets of shared associations, there is not a similar
universality in what goes into each of the four categories. As such, there is no perfect
system of translation between all of these culturally-based systems. Often there is at least
one set that can be truly annoying. To make matters worse, people who originate new
systems of conceptualization using Scales of Four are frequently less than careful, not
fully informed, or not in full possession of reasoning skills. There is a surprising amount
of disagreement among both early and current writers on the Tarot as to what corresponds
with what. And much of this can even be called embarrassing. Crowley didn’t make
things any less confusing when he promoted his Knights into the older King’s position,
and then replaced the old Knights with Princes. Crowley’s Knights assumed the old
King’s association with Fire (and Princes, Air), but many have reassigned non-Thoth
Knights to Fire, and by default, Kings to Air. That said, the set of associations to the Four
that is presented below is what I believe to be the best we can do. It is largely derived
from the Golden Dawn system of attributions. In the Tarot, this means that Fire-Wands-
Kings, Water-Cups-Queens, Air-Swords-Princes and Earth-Pentacles-Princesses will be
correlated together. Yet departure from this system may or may not affect an author’s
interpretations of the Court cards, since in most cases it’s doubtful that the author derived
much meaning from these associations in the first place, despite claims to the contrary.
There are a few different ways to arrange the four, both linearly and geometrically. The
first is as a family, the sequence in which more books than not are arranged (including
this one). These are Father, Mother, Son and Daughter:
Fire-Wands-Kings-Father
Water-Cups-Queens-Mother
Air-Swords-Princes-Son
Earth-Pentacles-Princesses-Daughter
The second is the original Empedoclean order, by the increasing weight or density, as we
move downward:
Fire-Wands-Kings-Father
Air-Swords-Princes-Son
Water-Cups-Queens-Mother
Earth-Pentacles-Princesses-Daughter
The third is the X-shaped geometry patterned on the fixed signs of the Zodiac. This is the
arrangement of the Four Kerubs, as seen in the Wheel of Fortune and World Trumps of
the Tarot, and also the appointments to the four lower points of the Pentagram:
Air-Swords-Aquarius-Man Water-Cups-Scorpio-Eagle
Earth-Pentacles-Taurus-Bull Fire-Wands-Leo-Lion
The Four Suits divide our transactions between the inner and outer worlds, or the more
objectively experienced inner world events, into four general classes or categories.
Before going into each individually, here is an overall review:
Tarot: Wands Cups Swords Pentacles

Kings Queens Princes Princesses
Astrology Fire Water Air Earth
QBLH (1) Atziluth Briah Yetzirah Assiah
Olam (World) Archetypal Creative Formative Material
Aleph-Beth Shin Mem Aleph Tau
Yijing Bagua (2) Li, Kan, Qian, Kun,
Flame Water Heaven Earth
Zhen, Dui, Xun, Gen,
Thunder Wetland Wind-Wood Mountain
Yi Xiang (3) Old Yang Old Yin Young Yang Young Yin
Sphinx (4) Velle Audere Scire Tacere
To will To dare To know To keep silence
Humors Choleric Sanguine Melancholic Phlegmatic
Jung Intuiting Feeling Thinking Sensing

Parts (5) Spirit Soul Mind Body
Jones (6) Combustion Saturation Ingenuity Diligence
Virtues (7) Fortitude Temperance Justice Prudence
Misc Ardent Sensitive Elastic Sensible
Impulsive Sympathetic Correlative Manifest
Individual Protean Abstract Physical
Emanation Transmission Organization Consolidation
Notes
1 The Four Worlds or Olamot are considerably more hierarchical in concept.
2 Karen Witter, from source unknown, has independently arrived at the same elemental
correspondences and has named the upper row “archetypal elements” and the bottom row
“attributional elements.” While I adopt little of her system beyond this, I will be adopting
these two terms.
3 The Wu Xing or Five Phases of Chinese philosophy is a scale of Five and does not
correlate well with the Four. It also does not correlate with the Bagua, or eight trigrams,
although people insist on trying.
4 P.F. Case mistakenly reverses dare and know. Technically, scire means something
closer to knowing how. The Latin word scire is the root of the word science.
5 For associative purposes only, not a metaphysical model
6 Terms used by Marc Edmond Jones, an astrologer
7 Even though the Trump named Temperance is given to the Fire sign, Sagittarius.
Wands and Fire

(a.k.a. clubs, staves, rods, batons, scepters, etc)
The association of the suit of wands to the element of fire is probably the least intuitive
of the four assignments. Part of the confusion comes from an old linking of the suits to
medieval European social classes, wands to farmers (as earthy as they come), cups to
clergy, swords to nobility and pentacles to merchants. Had the suits evolved in Europe
this might have been more plausible. But they came from (or through) the Middle East,
with the rest of the 52-card deck, where the original wands were polo sticks (jawkan),
and polo was known as the sport of kings, and thus of the nobility. Some have tried to
close the gap between wooden wands and fire by giving them green leaves and thus
implying life force, elan vital, and even intent, and telos as innate direction. Yet it is not
the green wood that burns well. We can also make wands into torches, or raise them to
kindling temperature, where, given a little oxygen, they actually turn into fire. Fuel is just
slowed-down light, trapped by photosynthesis, awaiting liberation. Sunlight that’s been
locked up or invested in cellulose is now getting free again as fire: that's how come it
dances. As a handle, the rod transfers kinetic thrust to the point of the spear. And, of
course, there is the magic wand, the spirit gun, which directs the energy or force of will.
For non-wizards, they at least have a pointing function. As a symbol of stature or
authority, the wand is a means to both author and authorize activity. And, obviously,
Freud would be right here in suggesting that this wand is just an eager, erect phallus,
representing the libido. But he might even see a lit cigar.
Persons and events signified by wands represent the entity as a metabolic process, a
heat-generating being, an exothermic reaction, but in the process also generating the light
of consciousness. This is driven from within by an excess, an impulse, a challenge, a heat
demanding to be spent or dissipated. Wands evoke the challenge to will, to be more, to
expand self. Wands are proactive and power is their issue. Both addiction to power and
insensitive force represent its failure. In physics, power’s measure is the rate of
transformation of energy from one form into another. Ineffectiveness, no matter how
forceful, is not power. Friction and resistance are not power. Note also that the lambent
flame in the right place does more than searing heat in a wrong one. This suggests the
need for a sensitivity or intelligence that is not inherent in flame but must be learned. A
second cluster of lessons awaits in learning self-control and self-limitation. Done
properly, the fiery metabolic process can miraculously transform even cheeseburgers into
experience and wisdom.
This is more about spiritedness than spirit as a ghostly thing, like the spirit seen in a
spirited horse. But it does carry the sensation of an autonomous entity existing prior to
perception, feeling, thought and sensation, leading some to see a fundamental spirit.
Others might sense an emergent process arising out of multiple sub-conscious activities.
Intuition arises thus as well, out of simplifying cognitive modules deep in the brain, a
pre-verbal intelligence that summarizes our experience and guesses proactively at our
futures, without much conscious or linguistic involvement.
Note: the following section is a grab bag of key words, and a feature that will be used
throughout this book. The only order is alphabetical. It is not recommended that these be
memorized. Rather, the intent is to give you first a feel for the general meaning of the
larger idea, and then a gestalt that ties the cluster together and implies further meanings
that infill the cluster. The scope or breadth of these ideas is considerably narrower than
those found elsewhere, in order to develop the gestalt more tightly around the core
meaning. If you are taking a day to study each card (a highly recommended program) it
might be a useful exercise to go through this section slowly, and out loud, and try to
stretch your mind to make a connection between each key word and the card or symbol in
question. This is good practice for reading the cards as well.
Key Words, Concepts and Phrases:

aggression, ambition, anger, animation, appetite, ardor, assertion, autonomy, being
headstrong, bravery, career, compelling force, competition, confidence, consumption,
courage, creative spirit, determination, distinction, drive, dynamics, effect, efferent or
active side of emotion, emergence, energy, enterprise, expression, feedforward, fight, fire
in the belly, glory, growth, heat, honor, identity, illumination, impatience, impulse,
independence, individuality, individuation, initiation, initiative, innovation, intention,
irrepressibility, jeito, kindling, knack, liberation, light, meaning, mobilizing, motivation,
motive force, originality, opportunism, optimism, passion, personal track or direction,
pique, play, pluck, point of view, power to transform, pressure outward, presumption,
pride, protection, purpose and divergence of purposes, pushing beyond the known,
rashness, relevance, restlessness, self-actualization, self-direction, sense of self, sensing
opportunities as fuel, spark, spontaneity, sport, stimulation, striving, struggle, talent,
temper, transformative power, uniqueness, urgency, value, venturing, vigor, vitality, want,
warmth, willing, willpower, winning, zeal, zest.
Correspondences:
The Astrological correspondence to the Fire signs (Aries, Leo and Sagittarius) is
obvious and self-explanatory.
The Kabbalistic correspondence is to Atziluth (the Archetypal World). To a Platonist,
this suggests a world of ideal forms which all of lesser existence must strive and fail to
fulfill. For the existentialist it is the world of compelling possibilities, especially the ones
too exciting to be left untried. For the Nietzschean it is the many-centered perspective on
the world as Will to Power. It is more fundamental and powerful than ideas empty of
content, which it creates to identify and manipulate its outlets and opportunities. It also
suffers from confinement within (and enslavement to) these very ideas.
The Yijing Bagua-to-Suit correspondences have Li, Flame, in the upper position in
eight places; and Zhen, Thunder, in the upper position for Aces and Tens (underpowered
by Kun or overpowered by Qian). The Court Wands have Zhen, Thunder, in the lower
position, with this energy expressing itself outwardly as one of the four “attributional”
elements. The Court assignments were developed by Aleister Crowley.
Cups and Water

(a.k.a. hearts, chalices, coupes, etc)
This suit concerns our various juices, our tastes and our tears. Even the loftiest of our
mental states are brewed up in stews, blended in cocktails of blood-borne endocrine
secretions, pheromones, and neurotransmitters. This is the real aqua permanens, the holy
water, and the soul. Persons and events signified by Cups represent the being as an
endocrine system, a complex of chemical interactions and communications, glandular
activity, endothermic reactions, desiring both balance and fresh stimulation. Even the
altruism attributed to Cups and Water, the empathy, nurturing and love, relates back to
our internal chemical status, and is ultimately hedonic. Water is our affect. Nearly all of
our feelings are here, but only some of our emotions. When emotions drive us to action
they belong more to Wands. The heart is moved towards feeling well or good, or simply
much. Love is a trick life plays on us with dopamine, oxytocin and such. But it’s a really
good trick.
The symbol of the Cup, the holy receptacle, is overtly vulvar or vaginal, ready for
seed, pleasuring, or both. It is worth pondering here that the cup is not the water. Water
by itself is shapeless or protean. The Cup is the form or shape, the vessel of feeling. The
containment or boundaries of feeling make context important. It gives the water place and
specificity, it individualizes our feeling, makes life our story, our soul, our heart, and the
sum of our states of mind. The cup also receives and carries our sustenance. It’s a
repository for experience, a way to remember and then a way to imagine or dream. It’s
also a cauldron of regeneration. Cups and water evoke the challenge to dare, to receive, to
open up, to be fulfilled. This is easier to do when the being learns to remain on loving,
reciprocal terms with the world. Because relationships are usually the driver of our most
intense feelings, this is one of the main concerns of the suit of Cups. Fertility and
creativity both mean the dissolving of our boundaries and forming successful
combinations with the world, with others, and with our own isolated parts.
This suit refers to the affective side of cognition, less subject to control, except by
choice of values. Affect is a fuzzier way of thinking but still a way of thinking. Feelings
make decisions, but often with terms like always and never, unsullied by logic and
reason. Feelings tell us to approach or avoid, like or not like. When we aren’t careful
about what we want, our feelings can hamper us with biases and resistances against new
experience. Sentiments and resentments, reward and aversion circuits and structures, are
more ancient than human thought and language. Our states are sourced from beneath the
thresholds of awareness, especially in our temperaments and moods, so the thought is
rarely critical. It is by our responses to new stimuli, referred to our memories for
likenesses and precedents, that our past functions on our present, overcoming our
inhibitions and painful memories, adapting to stressors, and defending boundaries, when
we need to get life lived or things done. The Chinese word for heart (xin) also means
mind, but it’s in the sense of “do you mind? Do you care?” This is a Cup function, the
Cup’s form of sentience, the way our feelings think. They can make bad choices, but they
also take us places that reason cannot. We live and learn much by these choices.

absorption, aesthetics, affect, affection, affective liquidity, afferent or inward-directed
side of emotion, anxieties, appreciation, attachment, beauty, bliss, boundary sensitivity,
brooding, care, changeableness, channeling, cleansing, comfort levels, compassion,
concavity, confluence, conjoining, connection to life, convergence, crucible, depression,
desires, dissolution, dissolving, disturbance, dreams, ebbs, elation, emotional needs and
security, empathy, emptiness, eros, escapism, fantasy, fears, feeling, flooding, flow,
fluidity, fulfillment, fullness, glandular activity, happiness, heart, hope, imagination,
incompleteness, inconstancy, insecurities, intensity, interconnection, irrationality,
irritability, kindness, likes and dislikes, liquidity, longing, medium, memories, merging,
mingling, mirroring, moodiness, narcissism, nurture, pleasure, premonitions, privateness,
reaction, receptivity, reflection, refreshment, regret, relatedness, relationship, relaxation,
resentment, responsiveness, rewards or their absence, romance, satisfaction or its

absence, saturation, secrecy, self-containment, self-indulgence, sense of connection or
lack, sense of depth, sensitivity, sentience, sentiment, serenity, shapelessness, sharing,
social relationships, softening, solubility, solution, sorrow, steeping, subjectivity, subtle
sensation, surface tension, surge, susceptibility, sympathy, touchiness, turbulence, union,
vulnerability, yearnings.
Correspondences:
The Astrological correspondence to the Water signs (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces) is
The Kabbalistic correspondence is to Briah (the Creative World). This is a world of
flux and change, the world which shapes itself in eddies and waves and along lines of
least resistance, or "sensitive chaos." It isn’t form or law until we name it so. Sometimes
called Akashic fluid, this hypostasis or substratum of ultimate stuff is analogously seen as
akin to electromagnetic or gravitational fields, or as a plenum, or an ecosystem. It is
always changing shape. And it is big, inexhaustibly big. It is pure possibility, within its
own order and limits, and the mother of the world. Its power is to respond to what is, as it
is, and become or help it become what it is not. It is creation, change, and the round river.
The Yijing Bagua-to-Suit correspondences have Kan, Water, in the upper position in
eight places; and Dui, Wetland, in the upper position for Aces and Tens (underpowered
by Kun or overpowered by Qian). The Court Cups have Dui, Wetland, in the lower
elements.
Swords and Air

(a.k.a. spades, epees, blades, etc)
The Sword is several things: a weapon, a tool, an object of art, a shaving razor, an
unflattering mirror, a surgeon’s scalpel, a warning, or a word to the wise. Its nature is
negation: it disconnects, it selects, it declares no, it ends things. It pokes holes in stuff. It
puts space between what used to be one thing, and a thing cleaved thus shows us its
insides or inner workings. It frequently points to problems and trouble. It’s the critical
mind. There are many in this field of study who judge this a bad thing, who haven't
formed close friendships with their intellects, and might in fact like to do away with
thinking altogether, and all judgments (but their own). Their intellects have not been kind
or responsive to them. Swords will be more frightening to them because they imagine
themselves on the pointy end instead of the hilt. This is why Swords are given such dire
auspice in books on Tarot. But we will be taking a more positive approach to negativity
here. The Sword can only disillusion in proportion to one’s illusions. If we don’t have
correct thoughts we will have illusions in their stead. Problems are one thing to whiners,
quite another to mathematicians: it’s a question of attitude, of leaning into the problem
instead of backing away. And while so many enjoy the benefits of diversification and
subsequent evolution, this process would not have pleasant results at all without the little
unpleasantness of natural selection. But a negative evaluation does not require ill will. A
simple no, or a turning aside, will often suffice. Air has a pleasant side, as when we get
fresh breaths, and there is a global linguistic tendency to have one word for both air or
breath and spirit (vis. ruach, prana, qi, pneuma, and spiritus).
The Sword creates or identifies entities and identities with new words and edges. The
air that enters the newly created space can even be likened to breath, the first breath of
new beings. Air is the familiar medium for the vibratory phenomenon of communication
(even if common to all states) and so has come to symbolize media itself, particularly
language. The Sword is a symbol of the powers of abstraction, a distancing from the
phenomenal world, dividing, if not to conquer, at least to utilize or to study. It means both
stepping back and penetrating. It seeks out useful information and gathers intelligence,
sometimes impersonally, and sometimes coldly. Persons and events signified by Swords
represent the entity as a nervous system, an intelligence-gathering activity, a neuro-
electrical network of what, how, when and where (but ofttimes stuck on why). Swords
evoke the challenge to know how, to make life intelligible and live usefully. The violence
attributed to Swords only occurs when thought grows rigid, as with religion and politics,
or when life runs out of balance. Beyond this, the Swords are swordplay, mental and
perceptual exercise, instrumentality, decisions and the details of their implementation,
problem-solving behavior. Like Swords, words and ideas can be tools or weapons. Words
and ideas, put into play before deeds, can mean less violence too, since ethics emerge
from thoughtfulness.
A Sword has no force of its own: it’s an instrument of enaction. While intellect is often
associated with power used in problematic ways, we still need the critical mind in order
to live well in the world, to use good judgment. Our body of knowledge is loaded with
error, and the evolved human mind carries a formidable toolkit of anti-cognitive, self-
deceptive processes. Swords are the primary tools of our vigilance here. We need good,
sharp minds to grasp natural law, either to better obey it or to violate it with more
promising, long-term impunity. With or without a creator, the world explored by science
is scripture, and the patterns underlying material form deserve a respect that borders on
reverence. We need our challenging mindsets. Swords have points and are edgy. This is
how we get through error.
Swords can be applied to both ideas and stories, but stories contain strong Cups
attributes as well. We have a need to learn and convey the meaning of things not just to
the culture at large, but to cultures yet to evolve as well. Our culture has made grave
errors, in part because our direction has not been adequately questioned and criticized.
We have many things we need to sever from our thinking and from our lifestyles. We
need cognizance of alternatives, knowledge of options, in the degree of detail that a
reliable prediction of outcomes requires. Knowing our options permits changing our
minds. If we do not evaluate some things as unworthy of existence, their unworthiness
eventually saturates us. We need to set conditions and limits: there are dangers, problems
and puzzles ahead.

abstraction, affliction, aloofness, amputation, analysis, artfulness, argument, articulation,
artifact, belief, boundaries, calculation, categorization, choice, choosing, clarification,
clarity, cleverness, cognition & recognition, coldness, communication, comparison,
conceptualizing, conflict, constraints, contention, correction, criticism, cutting through,
debate, decisiveness, decision, definition, delimitation, detachment, differences of
opinion, differentiation, disagreement, discernment, discrimination, dissection, distance,
distancing, disruption, disunity, divisiveness, dividing lines, division, edges, enforcement,
error, evaluation, exactness, focus, formal operations, formulating, heuristics, ideation,
ideology, illusion, incisiveness, information, insensitivity, instrumentality, intellect,
intelligence, invention, judgment, knowledge, language, law, learning, limiting, logic,
negation, objectivity, observation, Occam's razor, order, organization, pattern, pattern
recognition, patterning, penetration, planning, pointing, polish, prediction, principle,
problem solving, problems as puzzles, projection, propaganda, rationality, rationalizing,
reason, reasons, referents and references, reflection, refraction, replication, resolution,
resourcefulness, ruthlessness, science, selection, separation, seriousness, severing and
severity, shaping, sharpening, sharpness, skill, speech, standards, stepping back, strategy,
strife, structure, supervenience, tactics, taxonomies, techne and technique, thinking,
thoughtful attention, tool use, transmission, troubles, vivisection, voice, wit.
Correspondences:
The Astrological correspondence to the Air signs (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius) is
The Kabbalistic correspondence is to Yetzirah (the Formative World). This is the world
of order and structure, the Vedantin adhyasa and nama rupa, imposed and impressed
upon Briah. In space, it is boundary, pattern, form, figure-ground relations, dimension,
number, etc. In time, it’s continuity, repetition, maintenance, learning, self-organization,
sequence, the diachronic evolution of form. It is thus, given limited wisdom or lack of
perspective (which all finite beings have) the prelude to thing-hood. Yetzirah is divisive
and articulated by nature - it must have or make some contrast. Both imply abstraction,
distancing, reflection, choice, versatility and options.

The Yijing Bagua-to-Suit correspondences have Qian, Heaven, in the upper position in
eight places; and Xun, Wind-Wood, in the upper position for Aces and Tens (under-
powered by Kun or overpowered by Qian). The Court Swords have Xun, Wind-Wood, in
the lower position, with this energy expressing itself outwardly as one of the four
“attributional” elements.
Side note: air (as vapor) and tempered metal are both symbolic children of fire and
water.
Pentacles and Earth

(a.k.a. diamonds, coins, discs, deniers, stones, etc)
The Pentacles and Earth stand in for the sensible world, for sensible folk, the material
world, the world of slow, frozen, or viscous energy. These are the things with boundaries
(perhaps carved by Swords), nouns, processes that are changing so slowly that they look
like entities. The Pentacle is also many different things: the atom, the chief component in
all larger structures, the cell, whether seed or egg, the crystal, be it tool or gem, a talisman
to attract good things, or an amulet to repel bad things, and money to buy just about any
things. Pentacles represent the entity as embodying a set of learned and embedded skills
and behavior patterns, hierarchies of cells and selves, and any methods of acquiring,
manipulating, and valuing that are needed to further the needs of this embodiment.
Pentacles evoke a challenge to keep silence, to find what is needed and come to rest, to
equilibrate, to acquire homeostasis, and invest any surplus in futures.
The otherworldly loathing of the things of this world does not belong to the Pentacles.
There are good and useful senses of the word “materialism” that are lost in knee-jerk
reactions to the word. Matter is only what you make of it. A doctrine of materialism does
not automatically preclude an acknowledgement of consciousness or spirit as important
dimensions of the world. It is not always a denial of the immaterial. It merely suggests
that these are emergent processes and qualia, rather than fundamental properties and
substances. That they might not be fundamental or original does not make them any less
sacred to those who appreciate or revere them. To go otherworldly in this matter is to
forsake what sustains us, what feeds us and brings us to life. The prima materia is not
dead weight. The material is a living, productive, carbon-rich soil, and not merely dirt, a
place for roots and seeds, and the ground of our being. The material is more like pǔ, the
uncarved piece of wood in Daoism, than simple clay: it comes with an original grain or
nature, or natural laws, to work with or against.
This suit began its career as diamonds and coins, then as coins worn as charms. It was
the early occult Tarot authors who imbued them with more magic, de Geblin as talismans
and Levi as Pentacles, objects charged with the five-pointed star, the seal of Solomon,
with which to impress the great web, that makes the magic happen. Crowley made them
into whirling discs, charged with angular momentum. This should remind us that coins
are invested energy, resources, time, or labor, and this investment stores potential energy.
They are storage for energy, fungible substitutes for the energy needed to do things, to be
spent now or later, to meet our needs. They are not just the things that own us. The
Pentacles call for realism, facts as givens or challenges.
It is, of course, naive realism to see hard facts only. The hardest and stillest stone we
now know to be mostly space, charge, and movement. We don’t want to reduce too much.
Surfaces hide much mystery: just look at what others who claim to know us know of our
inner lives. We learn to look closer. The energy in money, the pentacle in the coin, like
the spark in the shell in Kabbalah, is redeemable tender for all debts public and private.
Resources, as the word implies, can be sourced again and again. If not, they are really
capital that is lost if not invested with wisdom.

ability, acquisition, actualization, amulet, applicability, assiduousness, attachments,
barter, base, body, bones, brick and mortar, capital, cares, cautiousness, comfort, concern,
concreteness, conservation, consolidation, construction, convention, corporeality,
creation, density, dependability, diligence, domesticity, economy, effects, embodiment,

employment, enduring, establishment, evidence, facts, farming, finances, foundation,
frugality, fruition, fruits of labor, fungibles, gravity, ground of emergence, groundedness,
grounds for, harvest, indulgences, inertia, influence, inheritances, instinct, invested
energy, investment, involvement, labor, lasting impressions, lasting itself, loss, making
sense, management, manifestation, materialism, materiality, matter, medium of exchange,
merchandise, method, mundanity, naive realism, needs, nouns as slow verbs, objective
reality, obligation, occupation, opacity, ordinariness, ossification, outcomes, ownership,
palpability, parsimony, particulars, patience, pattern of behavior, persistence, phenomenal
world, place, possession, possessiveness, practicalities, practice, pragmatism, prima
materia, productivity, profitability, proof, property, prosperity, prudence, quid pro quo,
raw material, realism, realization, resources, results, rewards, routine, ruts, safety,
seasons, security, seed, sensation, sense, sensibleness, shield, stability, stabilization,
steadiness, stewardship, storage, stubbornness, support, sustenance, talisman, tangibles,
tenure, things with boundaries, thoroughness, tokens, touch, trade, tradition, training,
valuables, values, vested energy, wherewithal, work, worth.
Correspondences:
The Astrological correspondence to the Earth signs (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn) is
The Kabbalistic correspondence is to Assiah (the Material World). This is the world of
sensation and concern, the sensible world of making and doing, that which our perception
perceives as hard facts, here or not here, and things bumping into each other, unable to
occupy the same space. In this world even the lightning may be seen as a thing, as “it”
flashes. The forms of Yetzirah are stuffed with Briah at the promptings of Atziluth. Assiah
is only degraded insofar as perception conceives of slow-moving changes as independent
or static. This world is concretion, being in and for itself, identity in a more stable sense,
and inertial resistance to change.
The Yijing Bagua-to-Suit correspondences have Kun, Earth, in the upper position in
eight places; and Gen, Mountain, in the upper position for Aces and Tens (underpowered
by Kun or overpowered by Qian). The Court Pentacles have Gen, Mountain, in the lower
elements.
The Court, or Four Dignitaries

Since the Court figures go by a number of names, depending on the decks and their
narrators, we will have to adopt a single system here and leave it to you to translate. The
Kings here appear in Crowley’s deck as Knights. The Queens have always been Queens
(at least since playing cards got to Europe). The Princes here are Waite’s Knights. The
Princesses here are Waite’s Pages.
The four Court Dignitaries, Figura or Persona (King, Queen, Prince and Princess), also
known as face or figure cards, are the subjective interpretations of the Scale of Four,
assigned human personality traits and temperaments that are correlated with four of our
social, political and familial functions. Like the Suits, the Court also correspond to fire,
water, air and earth, as well as Jung's four psychological functions: intuiting, feeling,
thinking and sensing (both sets in the order above). We have the four dignitaries from
four different kingdoms as it were. With portmanteau morphology, the Court dignitary is
the subject of the portmanteau and the Suit is the adverbial predicate (as well as naming
the dignitary's skill set). The dignitaries will also reflect degrees of accumulated life
experience or maturity, but with the understanding that there are appropriate levels of
inexperience in the Princes and Princesses.
The Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley have made a 4x4 interpretive matrix out of
these two scales, Court and Suit, which gives sixteen possible combinations, and they
have derived an abundance of systematic and coherent meanings for the Court Cards
using this matrix. One of their more successful devices has been to consider that there is
an aspect of each element that behaves a little like each of the other elements in its outer
expression. The inner character is the Suit, the outer expression (their term is ‘part of’) is
the Dignitary. For example, there is a Watery ‘part of’ Fire: there are times when fire
seems to behave like water, in its fluidity of motion and responsiveness to the currents
around it, or simply the flow of heat and light. This part is associated with the Queen of
Wands. The Fiery ‘part of’ Water, on the other hand, is seen when water releases its
potential energy, as when the bottom drops out of the river and the water falls. This is
water’s readiness. This is associated with the King of Cups. And of course there is an
Earthy ‘part of’ Earth, where the Earth is behaving exactly like it’s supposed to behave,
in the authenticity and stillness of the Princess of Pentacles.
When these cards appear in a reading, they are said to foreshadow social activity or
influences, or to recommend preparation for this. Among various references to the Court,
they are said to represent:
social interactions, meetings, encounters and challenges
specific people with these traits encountered in our lives
character or psychological types, personalities or temperaments
events impacting, influencing, or triggering a particular trait
a stance, position, outlook, point of view, or attitude
qualities or traits to recognize, nurture, or beware of
levels of development, maturity, mastery or attainment
parts or facets of our personality or parts of ourselves
a particular or unique approach to life
roles to be modeled or played
Correspondences:
Astrological: The first three Dignitaries (King, Queen and Prince) also relate to the
three Qualities or the triplicities of Astrology’s Zodiac: Cardinal, Mutable and Fixed
respectively. As they combine with the corresponding Elements of the Tarot Suits, we get
the portmanteaus for the twelve Signs. For example, the King of Wands would resonate
with Cardinal Fire or Aries, the Queen of Cups with Mutable Water or Pisces. These are
best understood as Ascendants or Rising Signs, since they color our outlook on life. This
is one of two systems used by the Golden Dawn. The other, assigning the Court Cards to
the 36 Decans of the Zodiac, has been abandoned in the present work as peripheral and
perhaps totally irrelevant to the core meanings. The fourth Dignitary, the Princess, has
historically been assigned to the four directional quadrants around the north pole. This
never made any sense. But if you compare the key words that have accumulated around
the Princess cards to other concepts in Astrology, they look very much like those of the
North Node or Dragon's Head, as this is expressed through the four Elements. And so, for
example, the Princess of Wands may be examined here for any relationship she might
have with the North Node in Fire Signs.
Kabbalah and Qabalah never did and don’t really have much of a part to play in the
development of Court meanings. Attempts have been made to cross reference the four
Olamot or worlds with themselves, but this doesn't yield much of value.
Yijing: Aleister Crowley developed a system of correlations between sixteen of the
Gua (Hexagrams) based upon the 4x4 matrix system, a portmanteau analysis using Bagua
(Trigrams) in the lower (Zhen) and upper (Hui) positions of the Gua. The lower position
or inner character was given to the Suit and the upper to the Court. Crowley only used
half of the eight Bagua, the four “attributional elements” Zhen-Thunder-Fire-Kings, Dui-
Wetland-Water-Queens, Xun-Wind-Wood-Air-Princes and Gen-Mountain-Earth-
Princesses. There is a structural perfection to this arrangement as well a a resonance in
meaning: see Fig. 33 in the Dimensions chapter of my Book of Changes. See also the
“Hui Gua” section for these four Bagua in the Xiao Gua chapter.
Other: There are other scales of Sixteen in systems outside of the Tarot. Best known is
the MTBI or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is an exploitation of the combinatory
possibilities of four binary pairs of human traits, to wit:
Attitudes: extraversion/introversion (E/I)
Functions: sensing/intuition (S/N) and thinking/feeling (T/F)
Lifestyle: judging/perception (J/P)
An INTJ, for example, would be an Introverted Intuitive with a Thinking and Judging
inclination. Conflicting attempts have been made to correlate these sixteen possibilities
with the Court Cards. These are binary, not quaternary functions, so any correlations
would need to be based upon the binary axes of the Court cards. That would be either
king-queen vs prince-princess (parents vs children) or king-prince vs queen-princess (m
vs f); and wand-cups vs swords-pentacles, or wands-swords vs cups-pentacles among the
Suits. We could make an attempt here for what it might have to offer, but it would not be
central or a part of the development of core meanings.
The same is true for a similar scale from psychology, known as 16PF, or the Sixteen
Personality Factors, specifically: Warmth, Reasoning, Emotional Stability, Dominance,
Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, Social Boldness, Sensitivity, Vigilance, Abstractedness,
Privateness, Apprehension, Openness to Change, Self-Reliance, Perfectionism and
Tension. While many of these ‘pop’ with individual Court Cards, any correlation is an
exercise for another place and time.
Finally, there are three systems of divination that use a scale of 16 principles. Two are
variants of an indigenous African divination system known as IFA. The third, developed
in Western Hermeticism, is known as Geomancy, and uses 16 four-line figures with some
similarities to the Yijing. These have undergone attempts at correlation with Tarot's Court
Cards, but they remain outside the development of core meanings of the cards.
The Kings, or Crowley’s Knights

Images: the Kings are traditionally pictured seated on thrones, holding the symbol of
their element. Crowley mounted his on horseback, leading many to be confused about the
Kings’ association with Fire. Thrones are probably still the best, since the powers to
command and delegate command are best represented here.
The four Kings show the power of the element in leading or initiating activity, to
motivate or drive us. Although the King’s is a power vested by the cumulative experience
of a lifetime or a lineage, he doesn’t always arrive by way of his ambition. He may
inherit, succeed, or be called. Kings are quick to act or decide, but normally delegate the
follow-through. Commanders can’t be expected to do a lot of the labor. Actions may be
swift and transient, but they are not always explosive or violent, as is often described.
They are shown in command and generally in control of themselves. Each King has a
major life lesson to master, one that is not guaranteed to him. For Wands it’s impulse
control, Cups, deferred gratification, Swords, adaptive thought, and Pentacles, the
courage to risk in the right amount. All need to learn that true authority is the duty of
authors, and this comes along with accountability for one’s creations, or responsibility for
one’s domain and people. Given the mastery of their element, the wisdom of experience,
and the knowledge that ultimately the throne is a place of service, their rule will be
worthy. However, it must be remembered that to master their suit or element is not to
transcend it. The King of Cups is no swordsman, the King of Wands no counselor. Since
Kings don’t always have people around with the guts to critique or contradict them, they
will need to learn to self-regulate, to find or provide their own feedback. When truly
grown up in attitude, they know that force of character and compelling example get more
work done than force and compulsion. The key idea here is maturity, a lifetime spent in
learning what needs to be learned for the job, a stock of affordances and a repertoire of
perspectives or points of view. His fairness as king depends on his commitment to service
to others instead of his own ambitions. He will compel his followers best by setting
compelling examples instead of compelling their behavior.
Key Words:
achievement, arrogance, authority, autocracy, capability, chief, cogency, command,
competence, confidence, control, decisiveness, direction, discrimination, dominion,
driving force, edict, education, effectiveness, elder, example, experience, expertise, father
figure, greatness, head man, honor, impetus, imposition, influence, initiative, judgment,
last word, leader, learnedness, leadership by example, management, mandate, mastery,
maturation, maturity, noblesse oblige, over-assurance, overconfidence, paternity and

patronage, presence, prowess, respectability, right of rule, self-directedness, specifying,
taking charge.
Correspondences:
Astrology: The Cardinal Signs of their Elements, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn,
understood as the Ascendant or Rising Sign.
Kabbalah and Qabalah: Not really applicable. But one might try looking around in the
World of Atziluth for inspiration.
Yijing: Zhen, the Bagua or Trigram of Thunder in the upper (Hui) position, situated
above the “attributional” Bagua associated with the Suits.
The Queens
Images: the Queens are traditionally pictured seated on thrones, in the manner of the
Kings, holding the symbol of their element.
The four Queens show the power of the element to receive, to welcome or accept new
or external influences or changes. This is not the same thing as passivity, and that it might
appear as passivity makes it dangerously easy to underestimate the Queen. By
sanctioning change, by being willing to undergo transformation, by being ready to absorb
or learn, she positions herself as supervisor and guide, while the whole world does the
work. She conducts, and adds her style. She can influence without having to command.
The Queen is more likely than the King or the Prince to experiment successfully with the
applications, possibilities, permutations and ramifications of her element, going beyond
its familiar scope. She discovers potentials that may not be so obvious. Her versatility or
flexibility adapts her powers to new contexts and applications, extending her reach into
broader fields. She is broader than the King and more experienced than the Prince. Her
emphasis is on how the suit can interact with the world or be applied in different and
unexpected ways. She may seem less results-oriented than the King, but she is able to
consider new information or experience as result enough. What seems like generosity or
altruism in lending her wealth, sharing good will, and spreading her resources around is
really a function of her understanding that this is how to multiply her wealth, good will,
and resources. Generally, she is nurturing, although the commonly misunderstood Queen
of Swords is a special case, q.v. Her effects in the real world are more situational than
absolute: she sets examples here and there, rather than making general decrees. Her
influence on her environment, or the activity she promotes, is brought about by attractive
forces like inspiration. She may be more interested in process than foreseen results. Her
will may adapt to real-world circumstances. She will explore the permutations of an idea,
transcending its original mold and limitations.
Key Words:
adaptability, alliances, applicabilities, applications, assistance, development, channeling,
circulation, coalition, collaboration, conducting, confederation, contribution, cooperation,
draw, encouragement, exchange, extrapolation, flexibility, fostering, fulfillment, help,
helpfulness, incubation, influence, interaction, inspiration, interconnection, interpersonal
management, joining, lure, nurture, participation, partnership, permutation, persuasion,
provision, ramifications, relating, relationships, responsiveness, shared experience,
sharing resources, support, supportiveness, synching up, transformation, transmission,
understanding, unexpected applications, utility, variations on the theme, versatility.
Correspondences:
Astrology: The Mutable Signs of their Elements, Sagittarius, Pisces, Gemini and Virgo,
World of Briah for inspiration.
Yijing: Dui, the Bagua or Trigram of Wetlands in the upper (Hui) position, situated
The Princes, or Waite’s Knights

Images: the Princes, Waite’s Knights, are traditionally pictured on horseback, holding
the symbol of their element. Crowley placed his in chariots. Both suggest that there are
distances to be traveled, although the Prince of Pentacles might only be riding out to fix
the fence or bring in strays.
The four Princes show the power of the element to explore and extend its reach, all
while maintaining its original nature. This is the expanding life of the element. He is a
hybrid of what he has been and what he will be, carrying out the element’s development.
Living and learning, and living to learn, developing real-world experience is imperative,
as his future throne is not guaranteed. He prepares for maturity by collecting plenty of
specific experiences and generalizing from them. His efforts at this are determined and
concerted, committed to the processes of the suit, acting it out, finding its limits, finding
out where the element no longer works, and thus learning from failure. He is ready to
seize upon any opportunities consistent with his suit, gaining competence, skill, and,
hopefully, self-confidence through trial and error. Like typical young men, job one is to
find his boundaries, edges, and margins, and then push a little past them, just to be sure.
He may seem to be in the business of excess. His approach asks questions like: how fast
will it go? what am I capable of? what can I get away with? who says? He can seem an
agent of the element rather than its master, just as teenage boys can seem like agents of
testosterone. He is certainly the one of the Court most often in trouble or error, and
sometimes thumbing his nose at natural selection. He has more warnings attached to his
interpretations than the other three dignitaries. Yet he may be the truest to his suit’s
extended nature. Where the boundary is as distant as the farthest sources of fuel (Wands)
or a virtually unlimited intellectual world (Swords), one might expect to see a lot of
movement. The Prince of Pentacles is again a special case: all the movement described
here is more circumscribed for him, and much of his exploration may be a reexamination
of the known. While the Princess seeks the core of the Suit, the Prince will seek the
circumference, learning the ways of the larger world, collecting the world’s affordances,
like animals sniff out their niche before settling in, filing away where food can be found
and noting paths of escape.
Key Words:
adventure, ambit, ambition, amplification, beta testing, broadening, crossing boundaries,
daring, dedication, determination, development, eagerness, education, errands, excess,
expansion, expedition, experiment, exploitation, exploration, expression, extension,
extrapolation, extremity, feedforward for feedback, field work, finding limits, getting
educated, goals, intensity, journeyman, learning life’s larger lessons, missions,
movement, opportunism, overdoing, practice, precipitousness, prematurity, preoccupied,
proving oneself, pushing envelopes, quarry, quest, reach, recklessness, reconnaissance,
searching, spreading out, testing, testosterone, training, transformative experience, trial
and error, unfinished business, zeal.
Correspondences:
Astrology: The Fixed Signs of their Elements, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius and Taurus,
World of Yetzirah for inspiration.
Yijing: Xun, the Bagua or Trigram of Wind-Wood in the upper (Hui) position, situated
The Princesses, or Waite’s Pages

Images: the Princesses, Waite’s Pages, are traditionally pictured standing on open
ground, proudly holding the symbol of their element. I like them best in bare feet, but that
might just be my sickness talking. The Princess is sometimes said to suggest messages in
readings, rather than people, or perhaps people simply bearing a message or news, and
whose character or personality may be irrelevant.
The four Princesses show the power of the element in latent form, as potential to be
developed or set free. She is far from mature, and she lacks the abilities which go with
maturity, but she embodies the inherited gifts of her noble lineage. She is an amateur, in a
place of learning, but the word amateur means she is loving her work, practicing for the
future, cultivating her element-specific character, attending to developing her worth.
Lacking arrogance and preconception, she brings a fresh perspective that might bring to
light what the more sophisticated views have missed. She has nothing to prove yet, no
need to defend a constructed self-image. It is job one to examine and learn the core of
who she is, look into the heart of the suit, the deeper meanings of her element, her
authentic and original nature, prior to the more complicated interactions with the real
world, prior to entanglements with context. She will know what most and what best to
stay true to. She grounds her study in the prerequisites. In developing the basic ideas, the
essence, or essentials of her suit, she also learns which of the things that normally attach
themselves might be unnecessary, the things that a more exhaustive study picks up with
fewer questions. For example, the Princess of Cups might learn that wanting more of a
feeling might not be that closely related to having or getting more of a feeling: it might be
more effective simply to be grateful for what she has. The Princess is laying the
foundations for her further growth, and getting the right cornerstones set in their proper
positions will be key to a lasting structure. This is why someone beginning a study ought
to take the most care in choosing the first rounds of their input, the most germane and
respectable data, and not the cheap thing that is hawked to the novice. In a new area of
study, the beginner who starts with high standards will find the extra effort well spent.
There is an element of service in her behavior, but this is as much an internship or
apprenticeship, to learn what she may one day ask of others should she become a queen.
Key Words:
appreciation, apprenticeship, attentiveness, basic education, beginner’s mind, caring,
catalysts, core curricula and experiences, crystallization, curiosity, dependence,
discovery, distillation, elementary education, essence, essentials, formative development,
fresh look, freshness, fundamentals, grounding, handmaiden, hidden talents, honesty,
ingraining, innocence, innocents, input, interest, internal exploration, internalization,
investigation, inwardness, learners, learning, loyalty, mindfulness, new ideas or news,
novices, original nature, news or new information, parsimony, place of learning,
premises, prerequisites, probation, probing, raw material, reflection, respect, self-
cultivation, simplicity, sincerity, student, study, trial and error, unrealized potential.
Correspondences:
Astrology: The North Node or Dragon’s Head through the Elements. This is sometimes
associated with lessons to be learned, a faculty to be developed, and called ‘a point of
intake and integration.’
World of Assiah for inspiration, and particularly the associated idea of the Shekinah or
indwelling presence.
Yijing: Gen, the Bagua or Trigram of Mountain, in the upper (Hui) position, situated
The Ten Numbers

Even though the Ten Numbers are involved in the developed meanings of more than
half of the Tarot deck, few authors have tried to delineate their separate interpretations, or
their roles in forming the card meanings. And of those who do, many forget the lessons
learned the moment they go on to describe the individual cards. For example, an author
might say that the Ace represents only the very tenderest beginnings of the element’s
expression, and then turn right around and say that the Ace of Wands is a very powerful
card, bringing lots of force with it. This makes no sense. The Ace of Cups is not love, it’s
the readiness, openness, or worthiness for love. This section explores the symbolism and
the core meanings of the Ten Numbers, specifically as they have developed in the Tarot. I
have already tried to draw a clear distinction between Number Symbolism and
Numerology, and explain why Numerology is not being considered here in any way.
The Numbers are subjective or personalized interpretations of the Scale of Ten, which
have derived their meanings from a combination of sources. We spoke earlier about the
morphology of portmanteau symbols, how subject and predicate, or upper and lower, or
inner and outer had different parts to play in the overall card. Here the numbers are the
more subjective component, the subject’s or operator’s side (like the lower or Zhen
Bagua position in the Yijing’s Gua), while the suit indicates the more objective side of
things, the field of operation, the type of circumstances, and the tools to be used (like the
upper or Hui Bagua position in the Yijing’s Gua). However, this can still be read two
different ways:
If a Pip card is thought to portray an objective occurrence, a worldly predicament, or
something that is happening to or around the querent, the card will have a completely
different meaning than times when the card is considered as be an attitude to be adopted.
In the latter case, the reader will want to subjectively invoke or adopt the character
indicated by the number and pick up the tools indicated by the suit. But in the former
case, this might also be the most useful approach, since it offers a more personal and
sympathetic understanding of the forces involved. Pamela Smith’s Seven of Swords
offers a good example of the difference. Most writers, it would seem, have a knee-jerk,
moralistic overreaction to the image: “Oh my, this is dishonesty and betrayal. Shame on
this person.” But what Smith was in fact portraying was the simpler idea of stratagem,
planning, in an amoral or a relativistic context, the Seven (out for Victory, as Netzach)
employing Design (Swords). To internalize the card gives a much clearer picture of its
meaning than simply reacting to the image..
There is another useful approach to understanding the ten Pip cards in each suit as
progressions in both sequential directions. We can see, for example, a restabilization
process in moving from the Five to the Six of Pentacles. We can see a partial remedy for
the nightmares of the Nine of Swords in developing the restraint called for in the Eight of
Swords (another much-misunderstood Smith image).
Throughout the early centuries of both playing cards and Tarot cards, there is not much
evidence that the Ten Numbers used in the forty Pip cards were accorded any special
significance or symbolism. These cards in both decks show similarities in geometrical
arrangements of the suit symbols, but this is as likely a function of geometry itself and
not some deeper archetypal structure. If there were any systematic assignment of
numbers to meanings, some hidden lore passed slyly among the fortune tellers, this
should show hints in a greater coherence in any early interpretive meanings. But it does
not.
The earliest attempts to arrange meanings together with the Pip Numbers appear to
belong to the Golden Dawn. And the first real hard evidence that somebody was working
with an interpretive algorithm was also the first systematic attempt to portray the Pips
with realistic (if cartoon) vignettes, in the popular deck of Pamela Colman-Smith. It’s a
mystery to me where she got this, because I don’t think that Waite fully understood her
symbolism or its sophistication. It’s important to try to get to her understanding because
her deck is now canon, and the basis for well over half of the other new decks. Over the
early decades of this Golden Dawn endeavor, a system of number symbolism that is
unique to the Tarot (even distinct from the WMT or Western Hermeticism) began to take
shape, with perhaps the most useful of the contributors being Aleister Crowley, and most
particularly, in a short essay that he termed ‘The Naples Arrangement.’ This document is
so seminal to the Tarot’s evolved number symbolism that it is included here in its entirety
following the table of correspondences below.
Pre-existing systems of numerical symbolism were clearly tapped, and fragments were
incorporated here and there when convenient. We can see bits of the Pythagorean system,
and also occasional flashes of the Archons and Aeons of the Gnostics and the Emanations
of the Neoplatonists. The Jews followed the Gnostics and Neoplatonists in the early
centuries of the current era with their own attempt at a Hermetic-type system: the very
brief Book of Formation, the Sefer Yetzirah, somewhere around the 6th Century CE. This
could be connected culturally to their mystical Shiur Komah tradition, and to both
Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism, but there is little of relevance in these to the Tarot, or
even to Kabbalah. In the Sefer Yetzirah we are introduced to the Ten Sephiroth, Spheres
that are Ciphers.
The Sefer Yetzirah does not go far in defining what the Sephiroth are. It simply calls
them the Voices of Belimah (Not-Anything) and assigns them to Spirit, Air, Water, Fire,
Above, Below, Forward, Back, Right and Left. It stresses that there are 'Ten and not Nine,
Ten and not Eleven' (SY 1:4), even though a bonus, eleventh Sephira (the singular form)
called Daath, or Knowledge, would make its insistent appearance almost immediately
and become fairly standard fare by the end of the 13th Century. This was never called a
true Sephira, but more like the ‘external aspect of Kether’ (Scholem, p. 107). Subsequent
writers have described the Ten as: divine emanations or hypostases, attributes or
principles, steps or stages in the manifestation of divinity, crowns or potencies, planes or
dimensions, energy transformers and energy transformations.
It is important not to confuse the ten Numbers that appear in the Pip cards with the
Sephiroth themselves. In Crowley’s terms, “Although (the Pips) are sympathetic with
their Sephirotic origin, they are not identical, nor are they divine persons.” (p.189). They
describe the behavior characteristic of a Sephira without involving the deification or
imputing a subjectivity other than the reader's own. At best, the limitation of a Sephiratic
influence to one of the four elements diminishes it considerably. It loses not only the
other three elements but the synergy between them as well. Crowley, however, tends to
go too far in diminishing their character as he descends down the Tree, particularly below
Tipareth (i.e. the 7s through 10s). He is unnecessarily negative about the descent of spirit
into the sensual world, an uncharacteristic stance for such a naughty boy.
The Jewish mystical system appears to have gone underground until the 12th Century,
reemerging with the work of Isaac the Blind (1160-1236) and the publication of the Book
of Brightness or Sefer Bahir (1174). Here the Ten Sephiroth (and the 11th) began to get
individual names. Most of the names which adhered best to the ideas were drawn from
two passages in the Tanakh, where several characteristics of the deity are named. The
passages, taken together, also suggest what would become the final numerical sequence
of the ten. From the King James translation (my parentheses):
Exodus 31:3 And I have filled him with the spirit (1) of God, in wisdom (2), and in
understanding (3), and in knowledge (Daath), and in all manner of workmanship (4-10)
1 Chronicles 29:11 Thine, O Lord is the greatness (4), and the power (5), and the glory
(6), and the victory (7), and the majesty (8): for all (9) that is in the heaven and in the
earth is thine; thine is the kingdom (10), O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.
The Bahir, and subsequent texts of what would become Kabbalah, begin to speak of a
Tree whereon these Sephiroth might be configured, but none of the descriptions match
the one to emerge graphically in the early 16th century. The first of these appears in a
1516 frontispiece of Paul Ricci's translation of Gikatilla’s Gates of Light, around the
beginning of the Safed school of Kabbalah. The primary authors of the Safed school,
especially Moses Cordovero (Remak) (1522–1570), Isaac Luria (Ari) (1534–1572), and
Chayyim Vital (1543-1620) were born shortly after this and published their own
informative versions of the graphic, which was named the Otz Chayyim or Tree of Life.
Scholem (Kabbalah, p. 106) suggests that the Tree of Life diagram dates from the 14th
Century, but gives no citation. This may be a typo, as he is not inclined to the same
exaggeration and pseudepigraphy as the ‘true-believer’ Kabbalists. Athanasius Kircher
published a depiction of the Tree of Life for the Europeans in 1652, based upon a 1625
version by Philippe d'Aquin.
I have my own unproven hypothesis about the origin of the graphic Tree of Life: it
derives directly from China, from a diagram offered by Chen Tuan (906-989), a Chinese
Daoist, called the Wujitu, and then from an adaptation of this called the Taijitu by Zhou
Dunyi (1017-1073), a Chinese Neoconfucian. Their transmission to the West would not
have been difficult, as this was also the route that paper, printing, and even the idea of
playing cards also took, through India, the Middle East and into Europe. Wujitu means
Diagram of the Ultimate Nothing and Taijitu means Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate.
Both portray, in the second sphere down, a prototype of the Taijitu that we now associate
with this term: the familiar Yin-Yang diagram. Aside from the renaming of some of the
spheres related to the Wu Xing or Five Movements, all that needed to be done was to
tease the second sphere into two separate, component spheres (as Chokmah and Binah, or
Wisdom and Understanding). Martin Zwick, in “Symbolic Structures as Systems: On the
Near Isomorphism of Two Religious Systems” is the only other scholar I have seen to
arrive at this. But see for yourself: Wujitu and Taijitu.
This Tree of Life, like the Yi’s Primal arrangement, permits analysis of the ciphers or
spheres geometrically, in interrelationship or dimensional pattern, as well as in various
sequences, two of them major. The first sequence is ontological. From ideas numbered
Zero through Ten, we track the evolution of being from no-thing-ness. Many think that
this tracks the gradual degradation of spirit into matter. But a more interesting view
foreshadows the development of systems theory, as simpler processes create functional
and increasingly negentropic complexity. The second sequence is existential. From ideas
numbered Ten through Zero, we track the evolution of a particular being as it blunders its
way up a scaffolding or ladder of its own making, to explore the higher, simpler, and less
egocentric realms of awareness. This is also the Kabbalistic process of redemptive repair
of the world, or Tikkun. In this direction, Daath, Knowledge, plays a more important role
as it becomes either a vehicle of transcendence or an agent of self-destruction as we cross
the abyss of the ego, beneath which all we see are reflections of ourselves. In a
fascinating cross-cultural convergence, the meaning of the ten Numbers as an upward
progression from ten to one are almost perfectly captured in the ten Oxherding Pictures of
Zen Buddhism.
Once the Tree of Life was established, the resulting geometry and sequence enabled an
assignment of the Planets of Astrology to the Sephiroth. There existed at the time only
one widely-accepted geometric arrangement for the Planets, this being the Western
Hexagram, the Magen David or Shield of David, and only one sequence, the Ptolemaic
sequence of apparent periodic cycles, to wit:
Saturn Saturn, 29.5 Years

Mars Jupiter Jupiter, 11.86 Years
Sol Mars, 1.88 Years
Mercury Venus Sol, 1 Year
Luna Venus, 224 Days
Mercury, 88 Days
Luna, 27.32 Days
Terra, 1 Day
Plotted onto the Tree of Life, the organization is obvious
1 Saturn
Kether As Time
3 2 Neptune Uranus
Binah Chokmah Kun Qian
# Saturn
Daath Yang
5 4 Mars Jupiter
Geburah Chesed Zhen Gen
6 Sol
Tipareth Li
8 7 Mercury Venus
Hod Netzach Xun Dui
9 Luna
Yesod Kan
10 Terra
Malkuth Yin
(Kelipot) (Pluto)
The addition of the Planets to the Tree system allowed an immense cross-fertlization,
out of which many peculiar creatures were spawned, as well as some very useful insights
from added depth of field. We are not going to be enumerating angels or demons here,
since for our purposes they don’t exist. The Golden Dawn and Crowley both screwed up
by placing Saturn with Binah. Saturn is just a lousy fit with both the ‘Great Mother’ and
the ‘Great Sea.’ Further, the dichotomy between Wisdom and Understanding really needs
to be captured by a pair of symmetrically contrasting Planets, a function which I think
falls to the more recently understood Uranus and Neptune, representing Cosmos or
Elegance and Chaos or Complexity. Finally, Saturn should be remembered as being the
final planet, or the planet of finitude, for most of Astrology’s long existence, and there are
two points of view with regard to our finitude. One is from inside the skin (the organ
‘ruled’ by Saturn), the boundaries that we have learned not to cross, or the spankings we
have received from existence, and the other is the big picture, the infinitesimal hominid,
seen sub specie aeternitatis, at the feet of the Great One of the Night of Time. Saturn in
relation to Daath would be the former perspective, in relation to Kether, the latter. This
relates nicely to Scholem’s comment above: Daath can be seen as an external aspect of
Kether.
I had to make some corrections to Crowley’s work in correlating the Yi’s Bagua to the
Sephiroth. Crowley had Dui bound to Chesed and Jupiter, but really, to place Dui with
anybody but Venus is just ludicrous. Little Sister’s just gonna pout and break things. This
leaves the only difficult assignment, Gen, to Chesed and Jupiter. The best way to make
sense of this is to view Gen from two sides. The first is the spirit of equanimity and
composure, and the higher love that this permits: having met our needs, we can move on
to higher things. This is clearly Chesed and Jupiter. But Gen has a Saturnian aspect as
well, as a force that stops us or turns us aside. Gen does not relate well to Chesed in this
particular sense and this should be kept in mind. A little more on this shortly.
Table of Correspondences
* Indicates a departure from, or addition to, the Golden Dawn and Crowley systems
Tarot Astrology Qabalah Yijing Quality*

Ace Saturn* Kether, Crown Yang, Active* Kronos, Atman
2 Uranus* Chokmah, Wisdom Qian, Heaven Cosmos, Elegance
3 Neptune* Binah, Understanding Kun. Earth Chaos, Complexity
4 Jupiter Chesed, Mercy Gen, Mountain* Agape, Eudaimonia
5 Mars Geburah, Judgment Zhen, Thunder Andreia, Thelema
6 Sol Tipareth, Beauty Li, Flame Genius
7 Venus Netzach, Victory Dui, Wetland* Eros, Ananda
8 Mercury Hod, Splendor Xun, Wind-Wood Logos, Chit
9 Luna Yesod, Foundation Kan, Water Psyche, Sat
10 Terra, Pluto Malkuth, Kingdom Yin, Passive* Soma
Note that there are also alternative names for the ten Sephirot, among them: 1) Rum
Maalah, Inscrutible Height; 3) Marah, the Great Sea; 4) Gedulah, Greatness; 5) Pechad,
Fear; Din, Judgment; 6) Kavod, Glory; Rahamim, Compassion; 7) Netzach is also
Endurance; 9) Yesod Olam, Foundation of the World; Zaddik, Righteous One; Kol, All;
and 10) Mamlakhah, Kingship; Atarah, Diadem; Shekinah, Indwelling Presence
The Naples Arrangement

From Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth, pp. 13-16
The Qabalists expanded [the] idea of Nothing [Ain], and got a second kind of Nothing
which they called ‘Ain Soph,’ ‘Without Limit.’ They then decided that in order to
interpret this mere absence of any means of definition, it was necessary to postulate the
Ain Soph Aur, ‘Limitless Light.’ By this they seem to have meant very much what the
late Victorian men of science meant, or thought that they meant, by the Luminiferous
Ether.
All this is evidently without form and void; these are abstract conditions, not positive
ideas. The next step must be the idea of Position. One must formulate this thesis: If there
is anything except Nothing, it must exist within this Boundless Light; within this Space;
within this inconceivable Nothingness, which cannot exist as Nothing-ness, but has to be
conceived of as a Nothingness composed of the annihilation of two imaginary opposites.
Thus appears The Point, which has ‘neither parts nor magnitude, but only position.’ But
position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position
with which it can be compared. One has to describe it. The only way to do this is to have
another Point, and that means that one must invent the number Two, making possible The
Line. But this Line does not really mean very much, because there is yet no measure of
length. The limit of knowledge at this stage is that there are two things, in order to be able
to talk about them at all. But one cannot say that they are near each other, or that they are
far apart; one can only say that they are distant. In order to discriminate between them at
all, there must be a third thing. We must have another point. One must invent The
Surface; one must invent The Triangle. In doing this, incidentally, appears the whole of
Plane Geometry. One can now say, ‘A is nearer to B than A is to C.’
But, so far, there is no substance in any of these ideas. In fact there are no ideas at all
except the idea of Distance and perhaps the idea of Between-ness, and of Angular
Measurement; so that plane Geometry, which now exists in theory, is after all completely
inchoate and incoherent. There has been no approach at all to the conception of a really
existing thing. No more has been done than to make definitions, all in a purely ideal and
imaginary world.
Now then comes The Abyss. One cannot go any further into the ideal. The next step
must be the Actual- at least, an approach to the Actual. There are three points, but there is
no idea of where any one of them is. A fourth point is essential, and this formulates the
idea of matter.
The Point, the Line, the Plane. The fourth point, unless it should happen to lie in the
plane, gives The Solid. If one wants to know the position of any point, one must define it
by the use of three co-ordinate axes. It is so many feet from the North wall, and so many
feet from the East wall, and so many feet from the floor.
Thus there has been developed from Nothingness a Something which can be said to
exist. One has arrived at the idea of Matter. But this existence is exceedingly tenuous, for
the only property of any given point is its position in relation to certain other points; no
change is possible; nothing can happen. One is therefore compelled, in the analysis of
known Reality, to postulate a fifth positive idea, which is that of Motion.
This implies the idea of Time, for only through Motion, and in Time, can any event
happen. Without this change and sequence, nothing can be the object of sense.
There is now possible a concrete idea of the Point; and, at last it is a point which can be
self-conscious, because it can have a Past, Present and Future. It is able to define itself in
terms of the previous ideas. Here is the number Six, the centre of the system: self-
conscious, capable of experience.
At this stage it is convenient to turn away for a moment from the strictly Qabalistic
symbolism. The doctrine of the next three numbers (to some minds at least) is not very
clearly expressed. One must look to the Vedanta system for a more lucid interpretation of
the numbers 7, 8 and 9 although they correspond very closely with the Qabalistic ideas.
In the Hindu analysis of existence the Rishis (sages) postulate three qualities: Sat, the
Essence of Being itself; Chit, Thought, or Intellection; and Ananda (usually translated
Bliss), the pleasure experienced by Being in the course of events. This ecstasy is
evidently the exciting cause of the mobility of existence. It explains the assumption of
imperfection on the part of Perfection. The Absolute would be Nothing, would remain in
the condition of Nothingness; therefore, in order to be conscious of its possibilities and to
enjoy them, it must explore these possibilities … .
These ideas of Being, Thought and Bliss constitute the minimum possible qualities
which a Point must possess if it is to have a real sensible experience of itself. These
correspond to the numbers 9, 8 and 7. The first idea of reality, as known by the mind, is
therefore to conceive of the Point as built up of these previous nine successive
developments from Zero. Here then at last is the number Ten.
In other words, to describe Reality in the form of Knowledge, one must postulate these
ten successive ideas. In the Qabalah, they are called 'Sephiroth', which means 'Numbers.'
As will be seen later, each number has a significance of its own; each corresponds with
all phenomena in such a way that their arrangement in the Tree of Life … is a map of the
Universe. These ten numbers are represented in the Tarot by the forty small cards.
Crowley also offered a summarized version later in his Book of Thoth:

61=0.
61 +146=0 as Undefined (Space).
61 +146+207=0 as basis of Possible Vibration.
1. The Point: Positive yet indefinable,
2. The Point: Distinguishable from I other.
3. The Point: Defined by relation to 2 others.
The Abyss-between Ideal and Actual.
4. The Point: Defined by 3 co-ordinates: Matter.
5. Motion (time) ... for only through Motion and in Time can events occur.
6. The Point: now self-conscious, because able to define itself in terms of above.
7. The Point's Idea of Bliss (Ananda).
8. The Point's Idea of Thought (Chit).
9. The Point's Idea of Being (Sat).
10. The Point's Idea of Itself fulfilled in its complement, as determined by 7, 8 and 9.
Ace
The four Aces postulate a pure conception of each element and suit, but not their full
manifestation, not the elements themselves, but their seeds or their DNA analogues. They
are more of an implication of the suit’s possibilities. Only the prerequisites, the necessary
and sufficient conditions, have been met, but now that there is this opportunity, the
opportunity itself may act as a cause. Capacity or emptiness can be a kind of power of its
own, as the two Janus meanings of the word capacity imply. Aces can represent the
awakening or rebirth of an elemental faculty in a person, or the positing of this faculty as
an aim, focus, or center of reference. They become the root force of the element, and the
narrowing of the plenum of all possibility to something specific and real. They suggest
attending to beginnings, the consolidation of an initial position, and the setting of
preliminary goals, to be modified by further developments. It is by no means certain that
this new thing has any future, or any purpose in being. It may be too soon to say where it
might want to go. It might be pluripotent, like an undifferentiated stem cell, still full of
possibility. It might just be a raw stimulus, drawing our momentary attention, to develop
as we see fit. In many systems of mystical thought, the point of a being’s emergence
remains throughout the evolution of the being as its point of contact or unity with the
divine, an idea that is close to the Hindu Atman. It is not a perfect unity but an emergence
from a unity that might point the way back, like water emerging from a fountainhead. It is
thus a being’s highest ideal or goal when it wants to get its divinity back. Another way to
get a sense of the Ace is to cast your memory way back into early childhood and recall
the first time you consciously noticed: “Whoa, I’m alive! This is how I feel! This is My
thought! I’m touching My thing!” This dawning of our awareness, this emerging property
or faculty, is the Ace.
Aces are often referred to as a gift, which recalls David Viscott’s (1993) oft-misquoted
and misattributed claim: “The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is
to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” Our approach to new
beginnings will often say what will become of them. This may be a new opportunity, or
one just newly noticed. We can’t see where it’s going yet, and we’re not sure if it has any
future. This is where we come in, to make it so.
The Number One connotes both beginnings and unity. A single point is not sufficient
to create dimension, but it is dimension’s prerequisite. A point posited forms the center of
a reference or coordinate system, the sine qua non of position in space and time. With no
external reference it only be grasped from within, in outward motion or emanation: its
only direction is outward. In Kabbalah, the emergence of Kether may be likened to a
rupture in nothingness, a pneumatic phenomenon, a hole in the void, as if torn open by a
spark or an utterance, through which the potential for being emerges. It is analogous to
telophase in mitosis, but is close to parthenogenesis as well. Old Egypt knew this creation
out of ‘nothing’ as as the god Ptah, the opener.
Scales, models or analogs of the One are telophasic in character (the One sprouting a
bud) or in some other way they identify, idealize or even deify the interface between self
and other as a conjunctive process.
Key Words:
aperture, arising, aspiration, availability, basic quality, birth, center, conception, creation,
discovery, emanation, emergence, epiphany, essence, eureka moment, false starts, focal
point, focus, formative period, fountainhead, fresh take, germination, gift, herald, highest
hypothesis, ideals, incentive, inception, initiation, integrity, lead, new challenge, newness,
news, nucleus, opening, opportunity, origin, originality, point of contact, point of entry,
positing, postulate, potential, preconditions fulfilled, presence, promise, prototype,
readiness, rebirth, revelation, root cause, source, spark, starting up, stimulus, stirring,
suggestion, threshold, trial, trial run, undertaking, the unmanifest.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Depending on one's perspective, the One can be represented either by Daath,
Knowledge, or Kether, the Crown; the Hidden Intelligence, the inscrutable light, the first
motion, the breath of that which is not. The point in space and time allowing a thing to
begin, a positing, Ehye or Eheieh (I Will Be), coming into being.
The Soul: Yechidah, spirit. Color: White; Commandment: No other gods
Astrology: Saturn (Shabbathai), Cronus, Saturn and Kronos, Time. The first functional
limitation. Self as a difference or remainder, the universe minus the not-self, self defined
in terms of the other, in terms of what it isn’t. Life at the boundary.
Yijing: Yang as the first spark of light or life. Bagua Kun, in the lower or Zhen position,
providing only the most basic support for the four attributional Bagua. “Work on the
basis, one’s foundation and premises, broadening, getting context correct, being in the
right place.” From my Book of Changes, Xiao Xiang chapter, V1-464.
Oxherding Pictures: Back in the world with gift-giving hands
Quality: Kronos, Time’s window of opportunity for an entity; Atman
2
The four Twos speak to a recognition, creation, union, or reconciliation of contrasting
elements. Where two opposites are mutually exclusive, such as at one of life’s crossroads,
they advise a commitment to the path chosen. Twos avow and affirm one or both halves.
Many Tarot authors start with the idea of opposition as antagonism and go no further, but
the duality here is not that black-and-white, and the Smith cards they are attempting to
account for do not portray a conflict either. There are many kinds of dichotomy besides
conflicted opposition, some preferable even to the kind seen in the Yin-Yang diagram. A
second element may give direction or contrast. The twos in the Tarot are inclined to either
a directional vector model, points earlier and later in space and time, or to a model
portraying the dynamic interplay of opposites that eventually creates something more
than the sum of the parts, a symbiotic relationship leading into synergy. There are moving
parts to mesh or integrate.
Simplistic dualisms often ignore a wealth of grey area and involve the logical fallacy
of the excluded middle, or tertium non datur (no third given). There are many types, and
simple minds conflate them: us is to them as good is to evil as man is to woman as self is
to other as superior is to inferior as white is to colored: this doesn’t work and it causes a
lot of trouble. These dichotomies, and others, like figure-ground relationships, absence-
presence spectra, syzygies, non-synergetic complements, and inimical win-lose battles
may root their meanings here in two-ness, but these meanings are not generally the rule in
Tarot unless one is locked into an overly simplistic mindset.
What the Twos do not do is look around, to see themselves objectively from outside.
The two’s Wisdom may know precisely where to go and what to do there, but to know
other points of view, or to know the value to be found in the more crooked paths, wants
the Understanding of the threes. The Twos are more linear than that, although such
understanding may yet emerge as the two combine. Insight might find unexpected
solutions by rearranging the two pieces of the puzzle.
The Number Two is an elongation of the point in space or time, stretching the point,
connecting the dots. Two connotes both linearity and choice. Two points define a line, the
first dimension. A vector is formed in the track or movement of the point, like an arrow.
Such movement also allows for a simple comparison of before and after. The notion of
competing with ourselves for a personal best is an example. When encountering the
‘same’ self elsewhere on a continuum, we can start to measure our development. We can
objectify a little, attach names and values, and make our choices accordingly. While two
points don’t have an external reference point, they can at least reflect each other. Such
reflection and comparison can still indicate or suggest a value judgment, such as when
good opposes evil, or wisdom, stupidity.
Scales, models or analogs of the Two are classified above in a number of forms, and
the type should be known before operations are performed. Once again, in Tarot we are
primarily looking at directional vectors, such as competing with yesterday’s self instead
of an enemy, or else the productive integration of component parts.
Key Words:
admixture, affirmation, agreement, alternation, alternatives, ambivalence, antagonism,
balance, bias, binaries, bisociation (Koestler), blending opposites, choice, complement,
coordination, counterclaim, coexistence, combination, complements, compromise,
confirmation, continuance, continuation, continuity, continuum, contrast, cooperation,
coordination, coupling, crossroads, decision, determination, developing, dichotomies,
difference, direction, divergence, division, duality, duet, duplicity, duration, dyadics,
extension, extenuation, integration, intention, interaction, interdependence, joining,
mirroring, negotiating, opposition, pairing, partnership, polarity, polarization, prospect,
purpose, purposefulness, radius, reach, reciprocation, reconciliation, reflection,
reinforcement, relationship, repetition, resolve, spectrum, symbiosis, teamwork, telos,
unfolding, vacillation, vector.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Chokmah, Wisdom, the Radiant Intelligence, the Great Stimulator, the Second
Glory, locus of the primordial idea, Abba (the great father), the first power of conscious
intellect within Creation, uncovering the deeper truth.
The Soul: Chia, the life force or will; Color: Commandment: No name in vain
Astrology: Uranus, the Heavens, Inspiration, Originality. Self as a path through Cosmos,
the intelligible universe, a place where powers meet for a time, as a knot or nexus. Large-
scale transformation from a simple action in the right place and time. Suddenness or
discontinuity in life as a function of the distance of self from its path of power, its lack of
attunement.
Yijing: Bagua Qian, Creating (Tian, Heaven) in the lower or Zhen position with the four
archetypal Bagua above. “A powerful driving force, or meaning, in need of expression.
This can overwhelm inadequate tools of expression.” V1-485.
Oxherding Pictures: Reaching the source
Quality: Cosmos, Elegance, simple expressions or formulations of natural law
3
The four Threes present an inclination to branch outward or explore new options. Their
theme is growth, expansion, or extension. The three is the child of two, the offspring or
spinoff, expanding into family, joining something larger than itself, or perhaps the result
of a choice or decision. At times the threes suggest joining with others, widening the
circle and multiplying connections. We can go beyond reflective loops. We can rise above
opposition this way: left wing and right wing, same chicken, or dragon. Threes can help
us jump to the higher levels of integration. This is the first multidimensionality, and the
first possibility of pattern beyond simple repetition.
A third point gets us outside of the line, to view things from different angles, to adopt
alternative points of view. The plane or field lets us explore sideways, to go places where
linear thinking cannot. It forms a matrix. We can see more interaction. We see
alternatives to what the linear view tells us is true. It is not as effective as the two in
getting specific things done, unless better ways are found that make up for the time and
energy spent. Three is associated with expanded understanding, seeing more than one
side, knowing things from different angles, at times with the compassion that comes from
borrowing another’s perspective. This give us other options, and thus the freedom to
choose among them that we lacked before we widened our view. It is thus related to
liberty.
While three points define a plane or field, they may also be seen as the smallest
number of points able to form or enclose a figure. The three also symbolizes support, as
three legs make a stable stool, and as triangles are used to make structural trusses.
Threes have a mystical aspect: we are heaven or the cosmos seeking to know itself, or
life itself seeking to reconnect with itself. Even some real and skeptical scientists think
this. This broadening into the world implies an underlying sanction, since diversification
is the way of evolution itself. If we see nature as sacred, then movement into the bigger
picture is already consecrated or blessed.
The Number Three connotes both breadth and option. Three points define a plane, the
second dimension. Potential direction expands infinitely when moving from line to plane:
the path becomes a field. When the third point is interposed between the first two, we can
add an interface between opposing entities, or a fulcrum to balance them. Or we can add
present to past and future. With the third point elsewhere, off the line, we have alternate
points of view, points of reference, or new perspectives. We can compare experiences and
choose more wisely. perhaps going more ways than one. Understanding is knowing from
different angles. The higher human adaptations to the sphere of this number will tend to
be mystics more than avatars, less prone to vector-driven purposes in life, more apt to
acknowledge relativity: to know that yes, this is true, but so is that.
Scales, models or analogs of the Three tend to divide into two groups: synchronic
(happening at the same time) and diachronic (happening over time). The first places a
mediating influence or fulcrum between two opposites, as the Hindu or Vedic Guna
Sattwas, between Rajas and Tamas, or as Laozi placed Qi between Yin and Yang in his
only mention of those two words. The second places some version of presence between
past and future, the Vedantin Brahma, between Vishnu and Shiva, for example, or fixed,
between cardinal and mutable in the tenses Astrology, or insight, between hindsight and
foresight.
Key Words:
acknowledgement, addition, affiliation, alternatives, arbitration, branching outward,
breadth, broadening, complexity, complication, confusion, cooperation, context, dendritic
forms, differentiating, diffusion, divergence, diversification, elaboration, emergence,
evolution, expansion, expression, extension, fertilization, flanking, fulcrum, getting a
larger picture, group activity, growth, interaction, latitude, liberty, matrix, mediation,
multiplication, multiplicity, new factors, offspring, options, outreach, overextension,
overview, perspective, progression, prospect, ramifications, reconciliation, reference, side
effects, spinoffs, spreading out, synergy, synthesis, tolerance, understanding, unfolding,
variation, versatility, widening.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Binah, Understanding, the Sanctifying Intelligence, Ima (the Great Mother),
matrix of nurture. Understanding as standing under, as supporting of the world, relating
to beings from within, with compassion or sympathy.
The Soul: Neshamah; Color: Black; Commandment: Remember the Sabbath
Astrology: Neptune, the Sea, the Deep, Compassion, Confusion. Reference feeling within
greater environments, life, region, world. Self as a wake through Chaos, the mysterious
universe, a place where impressions are left writ in water. Processes of universalization,
dissolution and embrace. The edge of measurability, failure of definition and fact. Ocean
and Gaia in the blood. The doors of perception, the mystic’s reality.
Yijing: Bagua Kun, Accepting (Tu, Earth) in the lower or Zhen position with the four
archetypal Bagua above. The Bagua of Earth in early China takes on many of the West’s
oceanic associations. Ancient China was an inland culture and these feelings, such as
embrace or unity, adopted the more familiar symbolism of the good Earth. “Work on the
basis, one’s foundation and premises, broadening, getting context correct, being in the
right place.” V1-464.
Oxherding Pictures: Both Ox and self transcended
Quality: Chaos, Complexity, natural laws apply but outcomes are indeterminate
4
The four Fours suggest stabilization, equilibrium, stillness, and a time to rest or re-
evaluate. Priorities are sorted during this pause, the superfluous is shed and personal
domain is reorganized into a coherent, realizable, and perhaps more portable whole. The
fours are resistant to change, whether bodies are at rest or in motion. This gives them a
temporary reliability to counterbalance the trouble caused by their inertia.
Jung’s four personality functions fit this model, as do the four elements of the Greeks.
The elements make up the constituent parts of all manifest entities. To be fair to the
Greeks, the conception of element was a little broader than that of our present day. The
four were also dynamic processes and states of both matter (plasma, gas, liquid, solid)
and change.
In the Qabalah, the fourth Sephira down has crossed what is called the Abyss, between
idea and actuality, though it is still abstracted from time. Getting ‘it’ together and keeping
‘it’ from wandering off (or succumbing to entropy) is the task of this sphere. It is the
mound-builder on top of his mound, the demiurge, king of the hill, on terra firma at last,
or on his last terra firma if he's planning on going beyond. He’s feeling expansive, good,
and generous. The mountain’s payments of debt are its scree and talus slopes, its homage
to a long-term equilibrium and stability, in the broadening of its base. This is Nietzsche's
Bestowing Virtue, to overflow is not to lose: giving is part of the process of having, and
even its point. Abraham Maslow’s idea of ‘being motivation’ fits here too: this follows
‘deficiency motivation’ after needs have been met. The Fours can be a little full of
themselves, being self-contained and self-sustaining. But because the universe operates
on principles other than negative entropy, the status of all things is temporary. We simply
use what we can before it all comes apart. We fix and settle things until that no longer
works. Stability and order are temporary states.
The Number Four connotes both substance and stability. Four points will define the
simplest solid, the tetrahedron. This is the first we see of existence in three-dimensional
space, the possibility of physical structure. Note here that the cross-section of a line is a
point; that of a plane, a line; that of a solid, a plane. By extension, a solid would be a
cross-section taken through a still higher dimension: space-time. An object, a solid,
entity, thing, or noun, is still an abstraction, a thing taken out of time and time’s processes
of creation and destruction. The appearances of endurance, permanence, perfection, or
even stability, are an illusion created by our limitation in time. And yet these appearances
are the cornerstones of our reality, of which there are usually four. In construction, square
often means true.
Scales, models or analogs of the Four can follow a 2x2 matrix formula (a+b)2 = a2 + b2
+ ab + ba, where ‘a’ is a father or yang principle and ‘b’ a mother or yin principle, ‘ab’
the male offspring and ‘ba’ the female. But there is a hierarchy in this model that doesn’t
exist in all scales of four. There is also the compass or four-directions model, the four
seasons or the medicine wheel. Where there is no mother and father or higher and lower:
each of the four has its own intrinsic sovereignty. The wheel orients in space and time.
Key Words:
accumulation, achievement, actuality, arrangement, assumptions, boundaries, cohesion,
completeness, comprehension, concretion, confirmation, conformation, congealing,
consistency, consolidation, construction, delimitation, depth, durability, embodiment,
enclosure, endurance, equilibrium, establishment, extension, fixation, foothold,
formation, formative period, foundation, framework, holdfast, holding, honesty,
immobility, incorporation, inertia, limits, manifestation, materiality, measurement,
models, optimization, outcome, perfection as illusion, physicality, plateau, poise,
possession, practicality, predictability, prototype, realism, realization, reification, rest
stop, restoration, scaffolding, security, self-containment, settlement, solidification,
stability, stabilization, stagnation, standstill, stasis, stationary period, steadfastness,
steadiness, stillness, stop, structure, substance, tangibility, tenacity, three-dimensional
space, validation.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Chesed, Mercy, or Gedulah, Greatness; the Settled, Measuring, Arresting, or
Cohesive Intelligence; magnanimity, equanimity, beneficence
The Soul: Ruach (Part); Color: Blue. Commandment: Honor father and mother
Astrology: Jupiter (Tzedek), the Greater Benefic, magnanimity, equanimity, the higher
powers of grace, majesty and command, being on top, self defined from within in
positive terms, as the sum of one's identities.
Yijing: Bagua Gen, Stillness (Shan, Mountain) in the lower or Zhen position with the four
archetypal Bagua above. Associations of Gen to Chesed are generally limited to the more
positive or upbeat aspects of Gen, the security to be generous; stillness, centeredness, or
embodiment, and less applicable to its function as resistance, stubbornness, etc., although
these more negative functions do apply well to the fours as mass, inertia, and resistance
to change. “Finding security and stability at this point in time, patience, equilibrium, self-
possession and restraint with matters at hand.” V1-467. We have already noted that Gen
has a Saturnian aspect as well, an obstructive function, but that that part doesn’t work
with this correspondence.
Oxherding Pictures: The Ox Transcended
Quality: Agape, the Higher Love; Eudaimonia, Flourishing
5
The four Fives are challenges to stability found in the Fours. Emphatic, destabilizing,
and cogent, the Fives are often seen as violent, upsetting, disturbing, or stressful when
change is not a conscious choice, or the most attractive option. They demand adaptation
and adjustment. We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
The feedback we get here might even be none of our doing or karma: only some things
truly happen for a reason. But any information we get from forces that do not support our
present direction can still be adopted as lessons in life. Our own resistance to change is
often the biggest part of the problem. Sometimes our challenges are best taken up as
challenges to our understanding, because this new information might just be the negative
entropy that restores order and stability, until next time.
Theologians came up with the idea that their god was absolutely perfect. This meant
that he couldn’t change. He was already in the perfect place, therefore he couldn’t move.
He already knew everything, and therefore he couldn’t learn. This shows in his writing.
Perfection has nothing to do with this world or the next. Anything that wants to stand still
gets abused. Adaptation is the name of the game. With the Fives, motion catches up. The
rough edges get knocked off. The stable thing gets tested, gets taken sideways and aback,
gets bent out of shape, gets refined, gets selected out and substituted, replaced by
something better adapted to the movement around it. Someone testing a new product
should not whine when it breaks: they should simply learn and make the needed changes.
Survival of the fittest means adaptive fitness. It refers to the creature best fit, not to the
mightiest bully.
Vigorous, vital, kinetic and assertive describe the feelings of the Fives from within.
More than any other number, the Fives will change meaning depending upon whether the
subjects identify subjectively with the character or force of the number, or they regard
themselves as on the receiving end of an external power or agency, getting pushed or
knocked around. The optimum approach to the Fives is therefore to side with the powers
in play, or at least to make use of their momentum or inertia. Then we have growth and
learning opportunities. This is not the place to play victim. Resourcefulness and resilience
are needed here.
The Number Five connotes motion, momentum and power. The next dimension is
time, change, and the forces of evolution that include selection and extinction. Fives are
kindest as a feedforward process, like the first fetal kick at the uterine wall or the urgency
driving the sprout into the daylight. Matter in motion through time undergoes change.
This contains information and often re-formation. The logistical uses of feedback are
functions of numbers or spheres more complex, but the process of adaptation starts here.
Fives possessed of kinetic energy or fearlessness can be blind to both advantage and
danger. Thus, Fives are normally strength or force, and not power, until they can learn to
become more sensitive to the world around them and its opportunities.
Scales, models or analogs of the Five fall into two general categories: the first models
dynamic balance: this is the mandala or medicine wheel, the four directions joined by a
center. In the East, the axis is the ever-imperturbable Buddha at the motionless center of
the wheel. The second models a dynamic imbalance, deliberate change. Its form is the
pentagram, or the Seal of Solomon, the four elements topped by quintessence (the Fifth
Essence) or spirit. This is the point of the star that gets aimed up or down. This is used in
spellcraft to effect change. In China we have the dynamic Wu Xing or Five Phases.
Key Words:
activity, adaptation, adjustments, adversity, agitation, alteration, being affected, breakout,
challenge, change, conflict, confrontation, constraint, coping, corrective force, crisis,
critique, deconstruction, destabilization, discomfort, discontinuity, dislocation, disorder,
disquiet, disruption, disturbance, doing, drive, dynamics, erratic behavior, excitement,
fear, fluctuation, friction, imbalance, impact, improvisation, inconsistency, inconstancy,
instability, justice, karma, kinetics, loss, mobilization, movement, novelty, obstacle, pain,
partial loss, process, radical adjustment, reaction, reformative period, regrouping, release,
restlessness, rigor, robustness, setback, severity, shakeout, shakeup, something extra,
strength, stress, struggle, surprise, terror, test, transition, trial, troubles, uncertainty,
unexpectedness, unpredictability, upset, variation, versatility, vigor, violation, vitality.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Geburah or Din, Judgment, or Pechad, Fear; the Radical Intelligence, Rigor,
Strength, Severity, Justice, the warrior king, eliminator of the useless.
The Soul: Ruach (Part); Color: Red; Commandment: Do not kill
Astrology: Mars (Madim), War, drive, rushing force, kinetic energy, movement, power,
heat, dominance, upset, force of character, the struggle for survival.
Yijing: Bagua Zhen, Arousal (Lei, Thunder; Dong, Movement) in the lower or Zhen
position, with the four archetypal Bagua above. Moving things along, shaking things up.
“Being driven from within by motives, appetites, natural inclinations: the will to live and
advance the intentions.” V1-476.
Oxherding Pictures: Riding the Ox home
Quality: Andreia, Courage; Thelema, Will; character and tests thereof
6
The four Sixes depict self or entity as interconnected with a larger context, interacting
with a greater whole, with special reference to the state of things right now. Boundaries
are just permeable enough to allow inputs and outputs, and the formation of a stabilized
organization. Sixes are a dynamic arrangement, integrating experience into the structures
of being. While reflective self-awareness comes a little later, attention and awareness are
here. The deeper self is an energy burning system, not a static thing, with basic drives for
wholeness, maintenance, health, and identity. What it imagines itself to be is usually
extraneous to this. Energy learns, when given a suitable place, so light learns. Life is what
light has learned to do over billions of years. Life is a system that develops negative
entropy, the noble fight against the heat death, and homeostasis, feeding and growing on
otherwise-wasted starlight. Our awareness is not metaphorically light: it’s the same
sunlight trapped photosynthetically by the food we just ate, getting metabolically burned,
except that the energy is organized a bit better now. Now it’s on its way again, back into
the night, but if we pay attention, we can make it do some useful stuff before it goes too
far out.
Six, particularly as informed by the Sephira Tipareth, is said to mediate between the
physical and the divine. Metaphorically, this is to live in two worlds at once: the darker
world of causes and sources of fuel, out of which we emerged, and the brighter world of
our emergent experience, called qualia, the things that didn’t exist before life learned to
make them, like blue, happiness, purpose, and consciousness. We are the flame that does
this, the center of the spirit, and its witness. Spirit is not some transparent thing that came
from elsewhere to cloak itself in meat. As a verb, it isn’t some thing that you have: it’s
something you do, something you use, or else lose. It’s also not something that you can
do yesterday or tomorrow, so the four Sixes will speak to what is at hand, the context of
our development, the work we can do right now. That’s where the light is shining.
The number Six connotes both illumination and harmony. Being, or each being, comes
to sense itself here as itself, and embedded in a context. As a sequel to the Five, Six is the
self-organization subsequent to a dynamic interaction with context. Feedback was the
consequence of motion. Beings learn to attend to this by developing sentience, awakening
or lighting up. We learn rhythm and patternment. Then feedforward done for the sake of
feedback becomes an intelligence-gathering activity: life lives to learn. Interaction with
the other, harmonizing with the world, becomes the process by which the being
illuminates what it means to say ‘I am.’ Self is a place where energy cycles back on itself
and gets knotted up for a while. We fuel first, then feel the kind fires of sunlight
transformed. We are not yet binding time: abstraction comes later. We are cutting across it
in one vast, moving moment, perhaps one of our making, perhaps one which blinds us to
the birth and death of our sun. Ah, but the glory for now. Fiat lux: it’s a thing of beauty.
Scales, models or analogs of the Six fall into a few classes: The Hexagram, Magen
David, or Shield of David, depicts the harmonious interaction of faculties as intersecting
triangles. Integrating fire and water, ups and downs, this is the closest image the West has
to the Eastern Taijitu. It is used in the mystic arts to invoke intense subjective experience
(not to evoke or conjure). There are also six directions to point, six sides to a cube and
‘flower of life’ geometries, but these are not used in Tarot. Neither is the six-line Gua of
the Yijing, which describes a moving moment, with each line being in part a place in time
or a phase in a longer process of change.
Key Words:
appreciation, arising, attention, awareness, balance, beauty, beginning of awareness,
centrality, character, coherence, completeness, comprehension, consciousness, context,
continuity, cooperation, coordination, culmination, cycling energy, dynamic equilibrium,
elegance, emergence, equilibration, equilibrium, exchange, exposure, feedforward and
feedback, harmonizing, harmony restored, healing, heartiness, illumination, individuality,
individuation, integration, interaction, interconnection, interfacing, mediation, meshing,
moment, momentousness, negative entropy, organism, organization, presence, radiance
and radiation, rebalancing, rebirth, reconciliation, recovery, reintegration, reorganization,
resolution, resonance, responsive adaptation, restabilizing, righting, self-correction, self-
organization, self-repair, sentience, spiritedness, symmetry, systemic evolution and
organization, systemization, wholeness.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Tipareth, Beauty, or Kavod, Glory, or Rahamim, Compassion; the Mediating
Intelligence, harmony, balance, integration, agreement, resonance
The Soul: Ruach (Center); Color: Yellow; Commandment: No graven image
Astrology: Sol (Shemesh) the Sun, life, sentience, the inner light, the sense of being alive,
the spark within or elan vital, health, awareness, consciousness.
Yijing: Bagua Li, Arising (Huo, Flame) in the lower or Zhen position with the four
archetypal Bagua above. Li is both the convergence of factors that bring us to the present
and the divergent radiation of evolutionary progress from here. “Organizing the light
within, the identity, according to clarity, values and visions, to perform the next
transformation.” V1-479.
Oxherding Pictures: Taming the Ox
Quality: Genius, brilliance, the living, self-organized flame.
7
The four Sevens portray a lack of contentment, a perceived lack of content, which
drives beings onward: appetite and appetitive behavior, hunger and thirst, desire or want
and its fulfillment, and the being’s quest for personal success, thriving, or victory.
Survival is only the beginning of these personal goals. The Sevens want much more and
this involves the learning of more effective stratagems, often by way of trial and failed
experiment, attempts to succeed driven more by affect than reason. What works and what
doesn’t are there to be learned, perhaps the hard way, until easier ways can be found.
Sevens can exploit the environment, or adapt to it, or do both and still do no damage.
The Sevens are largely about Self and how it gets what it wants. Self-ishness only gets
its bad name from when it gets done poorly. Self-interest, they say, is often enlightened.
With self-assertion we explore the envelope of the possible. With self-directed activity we
can follow our adopted purposes. Self-defense is an unquestioned right. But figuring out
who we are to begin with is more than sometimes a challenge, since most of us are little
more than a shifting coalition and vote of an unstable cluster of alternative selves. And
amidst this confusion, our needs and our wants, and the ‘needs’ that we are told we must
satisfy, get conflated. Both pleasure and happiness follow us, or fail us, depending on
how well we learn the meaning of enough. And enough, in its turn, is a function of both
our tastes and our capacity for gratitude.
The key ability to satisfying desire, or locating reliable sources of emotional value, is
having a good attitude. This is conquest, and victory. This doesn’t require acceptance as
it’s often understood. Acceptance is not the same thing as approval. To accept what is, for
what it is, doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t change it. It’s fine to imagine things being
different and wanting them to be different: we just need to accept what we have to begin
with if we want to deal in facts instead of fantasy. The movement of self to actualize or
win, the struggle to improve ourselves, and even having the incorrectly-maligned sense
that our self-esteem and self-love should be earned or conditional, suggest that we take
life personally. All of the Sevens are in search of a winning strategy (Netzach as Victory).
If the Seven of Cups is to succeed, it will take charge of the power to assign value, to
self-determine what is important, and not waste energy running between this and that.
The Seven of Swords has a mental plan. He’s calculating an effective move. Now a bunch
in the enemy camp will have to fight without their swords.
The number Seven connotes our desires and their fulfillment. With the number Six we
evolved a conscious being. The first consequence of this awareness is the being’s drive to
remain in existence: it likes being here, despite any unpleasantness. It’s a pro-creative
urge, even an urgency. It’s difficult to stop at homeostasis: it will ask that its lot keep
improving. It wants to stimulate itself by rubbing against good stuff. It wants both
struggle and peace. Only the human is hell-bent on the former: he tells himself to seek
things he cannot have, or things painful to get, or even that pain is worth seeking. Some
worship their martyrs, the ultimate masochists. Buddha pinned much of our misery on
craving, aversion, and ignorance, three of the Seven’s more notorious traits. But there is a
place for wanting more, pushing limits and boundaries, and really, to extinguish desire
when a little control and a few adjustments could make life just wonderful, seems a bit
extreme. So we challenge the harmony of the Six with the Seven, and just hope for a
more satisfied version some day. We go for it instead of waiting for it.
Scales, models or analogs of the Seven are largely mythological, and deal with gain
and loss, and magical thinking: a lucky god for each day of the week, lucky sevens, seven
angels for seven ills, seven hells for them, seven heavens for us. The hexagram used for
invocation has six points plus Sol at its center, rounding out the seven classical Planets
(and Archons) that are really just the seven human parts of our psyche.
Key Words:
accretion, acquisitiveness, affection, appetite, approach, approval, attachment, attraction,
attractive force, bait, calculating, challenge, choice, conquest, consent, craving, desire,
discontent, drive, eagerness, effort, embracing, Epicureanism, experiment, exploitation,
exploration, fitness, gaining, finding your way, grasping, growth, hedonic treadmill,
hedonics, hedonism, hunger, importance, inclination, incompleteness, individuality,
ingenuity, initiative, inner motive, intensity and intention, kama, longing, losing to good
effect, love, lust, magical thinking, managing for objectives, motivations, need,
overreaching, passion, permission, pleasure, pluck, possession, preference, quid pro quo,
rankable values, ravening, risk, rite of passage, satisfaction, seduction, self-interest, self-
serving, sensuality, subjectivity, success, taking chances, taste, temptation, testing, thirst,
trying, valuation, victory, volition, wanting more.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Netzach, Victory or Endurance, the Hidden or Occult Intelligence; Triumph,
desire fulfilled, enduring the turbulence, conquest with feeling
The Soul: Ruach (Part); Color: Green; Commandment: Do not not covet
Astrology: Venus (Nogah), Love, external splendor, in the beholder’s eyes, attraction,
hedonics, aesthetics, desire, motivated love, acquisitiveness.
Yijing: Bagua Dui, Satisfaction (Ze, Wetland) in the lower or Zhen position with the four
archetypal Bagua above. “Sustaining joy by meeting the present wants with present
resources, taking care of real needs before moving on.” V1-482.
Oxherding Pictures: Catching the ox
Quality: Eros, Ananda (Bliss)
8
The four Eights show problem-solving behavior, employing intelligence, foresight,

logistics, and knowledge, brought and carried forth from both first-hand experience and
the culture at large. We learn the rules of survival, self-maintenance, and self-repair, and
then we learn how to get more. The organism moves through its environment exploiting
this for what it needs and wants. It learns to understand boundaries, or what can and
cannot be done. Having its wits about it frequently helps, and having a plan, on occasion.
With luck it learns to autocorrect before other forces of correction have to come from
outside to bring or restore order.
Familiarity with similar situations can be a help or a hindrance: the mind does not
always jump to the right conclusions. The cognitive skill sets we use don’t always have
the full set of tools. More often than not, unlearning is missing, the acknowledgement of
error that leads to corrections in thinking. Also, without proper care, one’s methods of
reading the world can be at least as consuming as the problem to be solved. Evaluation is
ongoing, and one can seldom seldom predict when a higher order of thinking might pop
up and answer all questions at hand.
Like their patron deity, Mercury, the Eights like to move between levels or planes of
existence, carrying information back and forth, playing messenger between mind and
practicalities, and when it’s not too confusing, between cognition and affect. This last one
is often the hardest, but head and heart do not need to fight. Communication assumes
common ground and shared meaning, even between the levels and planes, so metaphors
and analogies, symbols and signs are often the language to translate.
The Eights show a functioning system, adapting and stabilizing over time, processing
the feedback from self-directed activity, healing when damaged or hurt, discovering the
characteristic rhythms of life, and learning to foretell the future a little. Sevens learn to
live, then to live and learn; Eights live in order to learn to live without getting in trouble.
The number Eight connotes both information and order, understanding systems and
components, especially mental. With the Sevens, the being developed a will to survive,
and then some, and set out, with lots of feeling, to get what it needed and then what it
wanted. Reason was not always its companion. Mistakes were made. With the Eights,
what has been learned is applied. Cooler heads seek to prevail, now that they have it all
figured out (ha). The mind tries to make life a bit of a science, to predict a behavior’s
outcomes, that the same mistakes might not be made twice. It shares its information and
draws from culture’s precedents. It invented human language in order to do this. The stuff
that knowhow is made of takes little space and is easily accumulated and stored.
Retrieval is somewhat harder: one needs the magic words. But when this is done
correctly, we have plenty of tools for making good decisions, solving puzzles, and
predicting the future, or at least anticipating the consequences of our actions. The greatest
challenge here comes from learning the wrong thing first, then taking hints that this is the
case, and then admitting and correcting the error or flawed information. Unlearning is
very much harder than learning.
Scales, models or analogs of the Eight fall into two categories. The first, of seasons,
cycles, and circles, uses the Eight to orient us both in space (compass points) and in time
(seasons, beginnings and midpoints), helping us to predict where we are. The second
ogdoad, the first cube or two cubed, uses eight concepts to map the dimensions of mind,
the Yi’s Bagua, for example, which also correlate with time of day and seasons. Both
categories imply a sense of roundedness, completeness, order, regularity, and symmetry.
This include Hermetic systems in general, The Gnostic ogdoad was a firmament above
the seven heavens where divine wisdom dwells.
Key Words:
abstraction, acumen, adaptation, adjustment, advice, ambivalence, analysis, applicability,
appraisal, aptitude, aptness, articulation, assessment, attunement, calculation, capability,
ciphering, clarification, classification, cleverness, clues, cognition, communication,
consideration, control, correspondence, craft, culture, data, data processing, decision,
design, discernment, dissection, divination, evaluation, facts, formulation, information,
insightfulness, intelligence, knack, knowhow, learning and unlearning, literacy, making

connections, meanings, measure, measurement, media, mediation, medium of exchange,
metacognition, negotiation, ongoing re-evaluation, optimization, ordering, organizing,
pattern recognition, patterning, plasticity, prediction, prescription, prioritization, problem
solving ability, rationality, reading, readjustment, reasoning, rebalancing, reciprocation,
recognition, recursion, reevaluation, regulation, regularity, remedies, repeatability,
repertoire, representation, rhythm, rules, savvy, schema, Spencerian or Darwinian fitness,
structure, study, supervenience, systemization, talent.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Hod, Splendor, Glory or Elegance, the Perfect or Clear Intelligence, the order
in the world, the network of the masters, the mechanics of perception.
The Soul: Ruach (Part); Color: Orange; Commandment: Bear no false witness
Astrology: Mercury (Kokhab), Intelligence, perception and communication, information
and networking, discernment, assessment, repertoire, familiarity, analysis, method of
inquiry, logistics, problem solving, nimbleness, subtlety
Yijing: Bagua Xun, Adaptation (Feng, Wind and Mu, Wood) in the lower or Zhen
position with the four archetypal Bagua above. “Using one’s wits in self-organization to
cope with the external, rethinking and altering the postulates as needed.” V1-473.
Oxherding Pictures: Perceiving the ox
Quality: Logos, Chit (Cognition)
9
The four Nines show the ways we greet the world’s reluctance to match the Eights in
intelligibility. This is the world as it is, with all of its unseen forces and interconnections,
a world that’s unavailable to the senses and naive realism. This world just won’t stand
still, although things may seem resolved and complete. Nines include all that might one
day be known about the world that isn’t known yet, the magic that isn’t distinguishable
from science. Mutability and flexibility are required of the faculties, if life isn’t to be just
blind manipulation of the unintelligible. The possibilities seem an endless plenum and
sentient beings are best off ready with many contingency options. Here are the formative
powers which continue to form when no one is watching. Here is most mystery. Here is
the ground of being that sustains us. Here is the solid oak table made of the vast spaces in
atoms, moving slowly toward the junk yard or bonfire. It’s the world where shamans pull
hidden strings to make things change on the other side of the island, like the moon tugs at
our animal souls. And of self in this world of flux and change, we’re little, temporary
tangles in the web, eddies in the undercurrents. We are not separate, we have never been,
we are rooted in this fertile and unknown stuff. It is our bottomless foundation, and it isn't
terra firma. It’s clouds of gas forming planets, and fish crawling out of the sea, and us
turning back to sign our names in this liquid, on behalf of its author. We are confused.
Most run to the known and predicted. Some try to keep learning.
This huge unknown we’re in is what upholds us. We can choose to blunder ignorantly
through it, seeing no further than the opaque pages of scripture, or we can get humble and
keep on adapting to a fluid existence. Every being that ever went extinct was once a
stable organization within a changing niche. The learning that will continue to learn will
build on a moving, dynamic platform. The smugness and the complacency of knowledge
and answers are for the short-lived beings. Where completion is thought to be a lasting
conclusion, it tends to become ironically so. Better than perfection is synchronization
with the rhythms of life. The Nines must maintain systemic resilience to maintain their
viability, and keep changing to maintain their completeness. Our foundations must be
dynamic, like building footings in seismic zones.
The number Nine points to both subliminal and semi-conscious aspects of existence,
the primordial roots from which the psyche emerges, and the rest of nature as well. This
is all that we do not know of the world, supporting us from below. Subsequent to the
Eight, the being has become a fully-developed living system, acting like nature itself,
with little conscious effort or thought, newly equipped to survive and self-regulate as it
negotiates its way through the known world. The being evolved and learned to adapt to
its niche. The challenge now with the Nines is with the word “known.” If change were
not the rule, we could wrap it all up here and at least call things complete, if not
concluded. But now the niche itself is known to be always changing, demanding our
resilience. Perfection is delusion. Changes are powered by necessity. Even the rules and
natural laws that tend to form with the Eights may have to adapt. Beings may need to
accept the shaping forces applied to them.
Scales, models or analogs of the Nine, the end of the digits, are fairly difficult to find,
but the recipe for one is obvious: the scale of three, inbred to form a matrix. It might
model aspects of the human mind, as the Enneagram typology models personality. The
Nine Muses, the daughters of Memory, enumerate our creative gifts. There are now only
nine astrological planets and lights, rounding out the parts of our Psyche.
Key Words:
accumulation, adaptation, adjustment, alteration, amenability, assimilation, attainment,
baseline, basis, buffering, change, compatibility, completion, compliance, conformance,
consequences, contingency, correction, culmination, evaluation, evolution, feasibility,
flexibility, flow, fluctuation, fluidity, flux, footing, fulfillment, homeostasis, impression,
instinct, integration, long-term viability, maintenance, matrix, maturation, modification,
necessity, nimbleness, ongoingness, permutation, plasticity, plenum, pliancy, progression,
reconciliation, reconsideration, recovery, regeneration, relearning, renewal, resilience,
resourcefulness, responsiveness, restoration, revision, sensitive chaos, subconsciousness,
subliminal forces, substratum, subtleties, sufficiency, summation, true sustainability,
undercurrents, underpinning, unlearning, variation, versatility, viability, vulnerability.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Yesod, Foundation, the Pure or Purified Intelligence, the web of necessity, the
vision of the machinery of the universe, the storehouse of all forces, the energy of
integration, the plenum beyond the obvious.
The Soul: Nefesh, astral mind; Color: Purple; Commandment: No adultery
Astrology: Luna (Levanah), the subliminal, responsiveness, assimilation, sensitivity to
impression, apperceptive mass and perceptual inertia
Yijing: Bagua Kan, Exposure (Shui, Water and Xian, Risk) in the lower or Zhen position
with the four archetypal Bagua above. “Changing ones’s shape in confronting exigencies
of a situation, especially emotionally, responding with fluidity.” V1-470.
Oxherding Pictures: Discovering the hoofprints
Quality: Psyche, Sat (Being)
10
The four Tens depict the extremes of life in the world we sense, in the world known to
us through naive realism, where the table is a solid and we ourselves are important. They
are ways to encounter, respond to, or otherwise cope with a super-abundance of the
element in question. This excess might be cumulative over time or encountered suddenly.
An over-fullness of development, a culmination, or a completion, now begs for change, a
refocusing of attention and effort, out of the broader perspective which comes from
satiety or exhausted effort.
The Western traditions have their weird fascination with completion as perfection, and
an unchanging eternity as a thing to be desired. The prospects of senescence are often
countered with talk of ideal realms and afterlives. But completion is an impermanent state
and only mocks the pretentiousness of perfect and eternal. Perfection is already past the
tipping point for long-term stability, already a step too far. To seek the final arrangement
is not the way to find meaning in a world where everything changes and dies. This is
rather a question of what to do with the momentum of change and the breakdown of the
newly outmoded: what have we learned and what can we do with that? What can we take
with us when we go? To attempt preservation is to lose that. It’s interesting that the loss
of Pluto as the Planet who would rule this underworld has been greeted with such
resistance, but this parallels and illustrates what happens with the Tens. It's hard to let go.
The Tens of Wands and Swords, the more ‘masculine’ suits, are generally depicted as
more aggressively excessive than the Cups and Pentacles. Collapse of the effort is more
immanent, discontinuous, and dire, and recovery more radical. Cups and Pentacles come
to a gentler conclusion and often imply a handoff of the effort to a new generation to
carry it forward. Cups and pentacles are less handicapped by thought, and so can be more
surprised by the passage of time. But all four suits transition to something new and
different.
The Tens suggest a pause for looking around, a rethinking of continued progress on
this particular path, a way to carry the lessons learned forward, and apply them to other
pursuits in other directions, especially beyond the present moment. This is a refreshing of
purpose, not necessarily a great loss, a restart in the next dimension, a new chapter,
perhaps with a big plot twist. That completion is impermanent, or perfection a transient
state, is no tragedy except to the insecure or deluded. It’s easier to change the insecurity
or delusion than it is to change the whole of reality. None of this, however, means that
this fleeting moment cannot at times be savored. The naive reality is after all, the world
we spend most of our time in. It’s stagnation, and the subsequent disappointments that we
need to manage. It’s on us to find life's meaning in a world where everything changes and
dies. We usually succeed temporarily, if you call that success.
The number Ten connotes both completion and the full materialization of the element.
This is the endpoint of creation, where is is often assumed that the divine is finished with
its work. Throughout the Piscean Age it has been the fashion to malign the world while
praising the beyond. To lowlanders, rocks are nouns or things: they don't move or change
much. Highlanders see more verbs, rocks moving, if slowly, changing and multiplying.
The material world is a process, as spirit is a process. The point is, matter has wrongly
been made a scapegoat for our ills. The Qabalists say that even deity regrets going this
far, that our earth and mother are now too far from heaven. We can at least say, as
existentialists, that our notion of heaven is too far from our earth: the two are joined at
our feet, whether we’re down in a pit or up on a mountain. But going too far (or needing
to stop in time) is the Tarot meaning, so that the process and progress of the Suit must
either end now, or begin with something new, or else be passed to the next generation.
Scales, models or analogs of the Ten rely heavily on the accident that humans evolved
with ten fingers. But because that was all we got, it became the symbol for having a full
set of something. The ten Sephiroth of both Kabbalah and Qabalah have had much to do
with the evolution of the Pip meanings, along with bits of Astrology, Yijing and less
elaborate systems that have been brought in as correlates. The venerated Pythagorean
Tetractys (1+2+3+4) has had some indirect effects. The Ten Stems of Chinese lore have
had no influence.
Key Words:
accumulation, anticlimax, attrition, climax, closure, collapse, completion, conclusion,
consequence, consummation, critical mass, culmination, cumulative consequences,
decline, denouement, departure, descent, end of a chapter, cycle, era, phase, or process,
ephemerality, exaggeration, exhaustion, expiration, extremity, finale, finality, follow
through, force majeure, fulfillment, institution, intemperance, legacy, limit, maximum,
metamorphosis, metanoia, mortality, moving on, natural conclusion, obsolescence,
outcome, overabundance, overdoing, overextension, overkill, overload, overshoot,
overreach, paradigm crash, past perfect, peak, realignment, rebirth, recycling, results
emerge, refocusing, responsibilities, rethinking, reversal, samvega, satiety, senescence,
surcharge, surfeit, terminus, tipping point, transformation, transition to the new.
Correspondences:
Kabbalah: Malkuth, the Kingdom; Mamalkhah, Kingship; Atarah, Diadem; or Shekinah,
the Indwelling Presence, the Cohabiting Glory, or Kallah, the Bride; the Resplendent
Intelligence; the world as altar, earth as heaven's bride

The Soul: Guph, animal soul; Color: Earth tones; Commandment: No stealing
Astrology: Terra, Gaia, Home. Ironically, it’s the materialists who tend to think its alive.
Pluto, were it still a planet, as lord of the underworld, would be lord of the Kabbalistic
sparks within the shells, the Kelipot Nogah, wanting redemption, repair, or Tikkun.
Yijing: Yin as accepting or responsive. Bagua Qian, Creating (Tian, Heaven) in the lower
or Zhen position with the four attributional Bagua above, each overwhelmed by their own
excessive development or progress. “A powerful driving force, or meaning, in need of
expression. This can overwhelm inadequate tools of expression.” V1-485.
Oxherding Pictures: Search for the Ox
Quality: Soma, embodiment, of the body. “You did not come into this world, you came
out of it, like a wave comes out of the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” Alan watts. (A
little plug for emergence in a world of hungry ghosts)
Wands
Ace of Wands
Root of the Powers of Fire
Readiness, Enthusiasm, Willingness, Quickening
Image: Root of the Powers of Fire. A roughly phallus-shaped torch is held forth by a
hand emerging from the bottom of the card. This need not be an angelic hand issuing
from heaven or another dimension, but consider that a magic wand requires consecration
or dedication to a higher purpose, or else it’s just a stick or any old penis. See
descriptions of the alternative depictions of this tool where the Suit of Wands is
discussed.
This is our primordial energy, our life force, or elan vital, the drivenness of individual
beings, ‘natural as opposed to invoked force,’ awareness and other things that life can
make from metabolic heat. By analogy with the fire triangle, heat, fuel and oxygen must
all be supplied to create or sustain a flame: fill in the parts of the analogy. Oxygen, for
instance, might be exposure, or it might be the literal molecule that allows metabolism.
The buildup to this moment might be regarded as fuel. And note that a new flame will
need tending, unless it emerges in a flammable or explosive context, or else it might die
out. The process may still be a little endothermic, requiring more input to reach a
kindling point. Learning how to light up is a task the Ace shares with the Princess, but
she is a little further along in the learning process. The force may feel like a creative
pressure or urge, pressure wanting expression, a pioneering spirit, a challenge that calls to
action, empowerment, and carping the diem. Note that it’s pressure in the blood that
holds the phallus erect. This is either a call for or a source of courage and self-
encouragement, a new source or energy or motivation, a getting fired up, an excitement,
or an enthusiasm. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 16, Readiness or Enthusiasm, a building
charge of energy. This is called a responsive movement, stimulated, rather than purely
self-initiated.
This signals a starting point or new beginning, a personal enkindling or quickening; a
new personal project, such as living life more vividly, or raising mindfulness, or fulfilling
a drive. It might be a new identity or role, a new or renewed sense of purpose, a new
interest or stimulus, a new passion ignited or kindled, a new torch to carry, or just
something worth getting excited about. We may be discovering a personal potential or
undeveloped gift still to be realized, still more promising than actual, perhaps not yet a
source of dynamic energy, but needing more input or nurture, a flame in need of fanning.
This may still be a general drive that needs to be narrowed or specified to get real. It may
be that the raw energy is already there but its use or outlet is still undefined. A new state
of mind has received a majority vote of the selves that one is made up of. There is
nothing quite like novelty for piquing our interest or awareness and bringing our selves
together. This is called will, but it’s not yet will until it’s in motion, so it’s actually more
would now than will, more like a willingness looking for its chance.
This could also be an unblocking, or a opportunity at last to act, starting with finding
the right place and time, a moving forward for which one has been ready for some time.
There may also be a rhythm that one first needs to synch up with, or some other way to
overcome inertia and capture momentum. Or it could refer to the renewal of a source
gone dormant, the fanning of old embers and sparks, the revitalization or reinvigoration
of a state that we have known and learned we could lose. The past might be regarded here
as fuel.
Key Words:
arising, arousal, aspiration, assent, attunement, avidity, awakening, beginning, boner,
brio, cause, confidence, consonance, creation, drama, drive, eagerness, encouragement,
enkindling, enlivening, enthusiasm, exaggeration, excitement, exhilaration, exuberance,
fire starter, ignition, illumination, impulse, incitement, initiation, initiative, innovation,
inspiration, intent, intention, interest, invigoration, forwardness, ignition or its failure,
kindling, libido, liveliness, love of life, novelty, origin, originality, pique, potency and
potential, preparedness, principle, promise, quickening, readiness, rekindling, rousing,
rush, source, spark, starting, stimulation, stimulus, stirring, surprise, thrust, urge and
urgency, vigor, virility, vitality, want, willingness.
Warnings and Reversals:

apathy, boredom, complacency, delay, demotivation, depression, dispiritedness, doubt,
embarrassment, enterprise is cancelled, erectile dysfunction’s attitudinal equivalent,
impatience, indolence, impotence, inertia, false start, flash in the pan, frustration,
pointlessness, self-indulgence, timidity.
Components:
Ace plus Wands. The beginning of a dynamic process, an opportunity for energy to do
work, which is the definition of power once the work is being done. Capacity, a measure
of emptiness, is also the capacity or power to do work.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Saturn in Fire Signs and Houses (GD: 0° Aries). Issues of dignity, identity,
individuation, initiative, managing the inhibitions, reserve, self-esteem, self-expression,
urgency, willingness.
Qabalah: Kether in Atziluth. Opening up a new point of view, positing a new sense of
identity.
Yijing: Gua 16, Yu, Readiness, Enthusiasm, Willingness. Da Xiang: Kun (Ace) below,
Zhen (Wands) above; “Thunder comes from the earth with energy. Readiness. The early
sovereigns composed music to celebrate merit, enthusiastically offering this to the highest
divinity.” The joyful noise. Preparedness to move. The Tuan Zhuan glosses Yu as shùn
dòng, responsive movement. Dance is even implied in Yu’s etymology, specifically the
inclination of elephants to move to human music. “Worthwhile to establish delegates and
mobilize the reserves.” Response in the direction the world already seems to want to go.
Two of Wands
Dominion, Domain, Nobility, Valuing
Image: A man of strong economic or social presence stands at a battlement or parapet

surveying his world and its boundaries from a commanding vantage, holding a longstaff
and an orbed scepter. A more gnarled staff stands alone. The battlements might be
regarded a defining wall, between what we are and what we are not. The territory already
claimed goes up to here, where the other, with its possibilities, begins.
Human is as human does. Poets will say something different, philosophers too, but
they largely describe their own fantasies. We adapt or fail to adapt by our actions, and this
is how we become what we are. Such a definition denies us our greatest human
hypocrisy. The Two of Wands is about knowing who we are, what we want, and how we
enact our choices. It’s the development of our identity and purpose, and then about how
we take responsibility or ownership of the world around us, however big or small that
world may be. Given the clarity of direction that the wisdom of the Two can develop, a
deeply personal path or calling, we can claim the right to create the world we live in,
sometimes on a grand scale, but easily on our own. This takes the courage to change the
things we can. Of course the platitude says we should try to change only ourselves. But
this is our choice: “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.“ It is knowing who we
are that tells us what to do. The rules are simple then: be true.
Dominion is probably the best single word for this card, and it is commonly used here.
It comes from the Latin domus, meaning home. It refers to our own domain, what we
claim as our own turf and purview, what we are ultimately responsible for, what we are
lord or domine of, what we are able to dominate, and what is within our rights to
domesticate. We are not required to take charge of anything, not even ourselves. This
helps to explain why the world is run by a hive mind. Some of us would change this. And
some of us who would will only make things worse. But the character of this card is to
apply directed energy to further the good, to make the world a more habitable place, and
perhaps to give something back to the world. The counterpart in the Yijing is Gua 14, Big
Domain or Possession in Great Measure, enrichment, treasuring, which needs little
explanation. The Chinese speak of wu wei, not doing or inaction, as a value for living, but
the kind of doing (wei) that is not being done means ‘acting’ in the sense of playing a
specified role that is far too frequently sideways to our original nature. And this in its turn
tends to emerge from inferior wisdom about what we need and want, and what it means
to have. The truly noble can ‘have’ as much just holding a pilgrim’s staff: the greatest
power is in the power to assign a value to things, and a high value to evaluation and
revaluation themselves. It’s the appreciative and the grateful who are rich. This is
knowing what you have and what you want or need, all sorted by their value to your life.
Of course, the truly noble will also own their mistakes, or own the consequences of their
actions.
As we search for our identity, the empowerment of knowing ourselves, we look first
for a continuity in time. We prioritize around this identity. We try for a binding alliance of
the many parts of ourselves, a unity that is our integrity, an integer or an undivided
wholeness. We compile a self out of the sum of our values, starting with likes and
dislikes. We seek to own ourselves, and to own up to our errors, then responsibly alter
who made them. So continuity is one thing and discontinuing error another. We are not
just the line we like to draw between only our shiniest moments. Delegating tasks and
influencing others will do little outside of the world we can manage, and what we cannot
demonstrate or exemplify will not be adopted. We can manage this only by walking the
talk. In short: be excellent.
Key Words:
affirmation, affluence, ambition, appropriation, areté, aspiration, assets, assumption,
attainment, authority, avowal, being lord, boldness, calling, cause, choice, claiming, clear
position, command, confidence, confirmation, containment, convergence, conviction,
counting of blessings, dedication, determination, directed will, direction, electives,
emboldenment, endowment, enrichment, entitlement, exaltation, excellence, futurity,
gratitude, higher purpose, identity and identification, intent, intention, license, nobility,
overseeing, ownership, owning up, owning your life, personal power, pride, principles,
privilege, purpose, resolve, responsibility, revaluation of value, rights, rule, sovereignty,
summoning, taking charge, taking control, taking hold, taking title, taking responsibility,
validation, valuation, value, wealth, wherewithal, will, worth.

arrogance in arrogation, blind ambition, conflicted sense of identity, disappointing
success, domination, domineering, greed, haste, ingratitude, linearity of purpose, loss of
will, mismanaged claims, obstinacy, opposition from others, overweening ambition and
pride, recklessness, shamelessness.
Components:
Two plus Wands. The directing of energy towards an aim, or the focusing of a dynamic
force according to a chosen purpose or want, and also the forces converging behind that
choice. Avowal of purpose or direction. Crowley says, “energy initiating a current of
force.” There is not a lot of circumspection, reflection, or reviewing of options here: it’s
closer to knowing than knowledge.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Uranus in Fire Signs and Houses. Issues of autonomy and autocracy in
decisions to change the world, the courage to change the things we can, taking
responsibility outside of ourselves, sense of personal purpose or higher purpose.
Qabalah: Chokmah in Atziluth. Wisdom in action, setting forth principles and establish-
ing precedents.
Yijing: Gua 14, Da You, Big Domain, Possession in Great Measure, Great Havings. Da
Xiang: Qian (2) below, Li (Wands) above; “Flame in heaven above. Big domain. The
young noble suppresses the bad and promotes the good, accepting heaven’s terms and
higher laws.” Endowments, dominion, enrichment, laying claim, wealth of experience,
owning one’s power to assign, rearrange and revise values. “Supreme fulfillment.” Where
we learn to make our own values we command our own enrichment.
Three of Wands
Enterprise, Expansion, Liberty, Character
Image: A merchant stands on a promontory overlooking a harbor,

leaning on one of three staffs, watching the boats of one of his ventures set
sail toward horizons that lie beyond his domain. He may have two absent
partners. A rising sun should be featured. The direction is outward bound.
It’s a new enterprise, day, era, or adventure.
The energetics of the Three of Wands is the launching of a new venture,

the opening up of a young system to multiple new inputs, enriching
stimulation, where adding seems more like multiplication. It’s an energy
gradient for living systems to feed on. The circulation of energy scrubs,
clarifies, and organizes the system (or the self) through which it flows. As
it does, so it becomes new and applied information. Things working
themselves out tend to learn and follow their natural inclinations. As input
is broadened, so is the effect. While positive feedback is not always to be
desired, motion builds on motion here, and enrichment on enrichment. We
learn best by doing, and the lessons learned just seem to work themselves
out without micromanagement.
A new or growing enterprise may under way. Business and commerce
can be understood both literally and metaphorically here. What is
suggested and even recommended (and in the corresponding Yijing Gua)
is free market economics, free trade, open-door policy, classical
liberalism, loosened external constraints, and the invisible hand. But lest
there be confusion, this is absolutely distinct from modern corporate
capitalism, where the laws, trade agreements, subsidies, and governments
are purchased on the cheap and enacted to serve a top heavy and stratified
economy. This is a far less corrupt, more dignified approach to business:
expanding horizons, exploring possibilities, exploiting opportunities,
growing in vision and influence, and simply responding to demand with
supply. There is no reason that this cannot be accompanied by conscience,

which is normally a casualty of unfair interference and the artificial
manipulation of market signals relating to supply and demand. But
expansion doesn’t necessarily mean growth, and growth in finite systems
isn’t always a positive thing. It’s often better to substitute development,
improvement, or refinement.
Free minds are the close analogs of free markets. They will capitalize,
by way of broad-mindedness, on the free speech and inquiry in the
marketplace of ideas. They thrive on sunshine and openness. The free
exercise of liberty is by far best teacher we have. As we work out our
chosen destinies, we learn to be accountable for our actions, and we
unlearn the worth of blaming others. We learn from the risks we are
willing to take. We can learn not to touch the stove or the fan in theory, but
the freedom to touch might lead us to learn it indelibly. Legal prohibition
only drives behavior underground and into the shadows, to organize crime.
The censorship and distortion of information diminishes our understanding
of reality. Sunshine, fresh air, and transparency are, for the most part, only
unfriendly to pathogens. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 35, Advance or Progress, and
uses the rising sun, or daylighting, for its central metaphor. It refers to the free circulation
of free energy, both its liberation and its capture.
The analogies and their benefits extend to the commerce in
interpersonal energy, to social activity, and to the learning of moral and
ethical behavior. This is the card’s common association with character and
virtue as a fiery or Wands force. With tolerance, we live and learn to let
live. Right is the reciprocal and the complement of duty: my right to speak
my mind is also my duty to let you speak yours. We learn this by
interacting and exercising our freedoms, not by being told by a leader,
preacher, or book. Full accountability means that we are responsible for
how this world runs and that people get the government they deserve. Our
world is not the sum of all of our actions: it’s the sum of each of our
actions. The fire and the sovereignty is in the individual. The expansive or
extensive thrust of the Three helps to make this contagious. Victims must
learn to unite and take down their own bullies all by themselves, and until
that day, the bully will rule. But permission sometimes must be taken, not
merely begged for. Energy needs to risk itself to learn and understand, as
either the air or the wings must be moving before a bird can change its
course, or as a boat must be in motion before its rudder will work.
Key Words:
adventure, assent, assistance, availability, branching out, broadening,
character, circulation, collaboration, commerce, connections, cooperative
endeavor, development, disclosure, discovery, diversification, emergence,
emerging, energy gradient, enterprise, events unfolding, evolution,
expanding horizons, expansion, expediting, expedition, experimentation,
exploration, expression, extension, extrapolation, free trade, generosity,
glasnost, growth, interaction, largesse, liberality, liberty, license, loosened
constraints, networking, new horizons, open-mindedness, openness,
opportunities, opportunism, options, outgrowth, outgoingness, outreach,

overture, project taking off, progress, progression, projection, promotion,
prospect, realization of hope, speculation, systemic self-organization,
thriving, tolerance, trade, transparency, undertaking, validation, venture,
virtue, virtus, vision.

bringing something to light proves disgusting, clinging to old ways and
darker times, failure of nerve, fear of risk, fear of being first, grandiosity,
hyperbole, opacity, overconfidence, parasitism, refusal to pardon the past,
secrecy, setback, trouble with partners.
Components:
Three plus Wands. Exposure to broader choices or alternatives of behavior
and their consequences. Allowing a greater flow of energy to teach or
instruct, in the sense of growing structure for understanding. Exploring
and experimenting.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Neptune in Fire Signs and Houses. Opening up into energy,
learning by doing, venturing, reaching out, generosity that earns rewards,
speculation, experiment, collaborating in efforts.
Qabalah: Binah in Atziluth. Growing understanding by reaching into a
broader world of involvement and experience.
Yijing: Gua 35, Jin, Expansion, Progress, Advance. Da Xiang: Kun (3)
below, Li (Wands) above; Sunrise. “The light rises over the earth.
Expansion. The young noble naturally radiates clarity of character.” De, as
character or virtue, offers a good understanding for both the Gua and the
Card. “The prosperous lord uses grants of horses to breed a multitude and
by the light of a day three times grants audience.” Enterprise, free markets,
circulation, disclosure, liberty, improvement, thawing, opening up,
generosity, permission.
Four of Wands
Nichemanship, Accommodation, Caravansarai, Integrity
Image: A wayfarer arrives at a place where the wayward can rest, an open-air canopy,
a temporary structure, already containing a fire and three other nomads who all seem to
hail from different cultures. Four walking staffs are seen. The mood seems celebratory,
even with fungible celebrants. The day’s last task is to enter and make himself at home.
Many decks feature a celebration of sorts, and perhaps even a marriage, but this is only a
moment in time, when things hold relatively still, not a lasting state of affairs like a
marriage would be. This a stay at the inn in the midst of a longer journey. The day will
pass, but it’s one that may be remembered.
There is an inherent tension between the organizing, constructive, and consolidating

processes of the Fours and the disorganizing, restless, and dynamic energy of the fiery
Wands. This is resolvable, however, in the idea that stability and structure here are only
temporary, dynamic, and ad hoc, or ad interim. This is stability in motion, security on the
move, dynamic equilibrium. There is only one provision here: the stability of fire is in its
sources of fuel. A self-sustaining system needs only to feed. But if all it does is consume
then it cannot maintain its place or its welcome. It takes care to stay longer than this. A
home base may also be a formula or standard for living, an ethic, a reliable attitude, or an
adaptable sense of identity, in which case the entire journey can be both home and
destination. Otherwise, the term completion may simply be ironic, and wherever you go,
there you are.
Who we genuinely and fundamentally are can be altered by experience, and we want
that if we are living well. Continuity is more important in life than consistency. Stability
exists, but in an ever-changing form, and a tolerable continuity is conditional and
contingent upon getting along with our context. If we enter this present context correctly,
we at least have a place to rest for a while and things might hold fairly still for a time.
Identity is constrained for now by place, as the fire is by a pit or a hearth, with a stock of
fuel close by. The Wands that form the gate in Smith’s deck signify something more like
a party or a weekend event. I would use the term caravansarai, a stable place for the
travelers who are constantly streaming through it. Feeling at home here becomes a simple
matter of tact and good manners, but better still if you can tell a good story. While we
adapt ourselves to our niche here, we still want a niche in which we can be ourselves.
Self-management is advised. The sacred fire, the eternal flame, the controlled burn: all of
these want to have some maintenance included in their budgets.
The idea of ‘completion’ is frequently mentioned along with this card, but a functional
arrangement or working configuration captures the notion much better. This includes
having a functional personality and a working identity. We are meeting the conditions of
our place, but not assuming that we will remain the same when the context changes. We
are only completing what needs to be done for now. We are able to know and respect the
place we are in, to know the place on its own terms, to fit in and still be ourselves, to
remain self-reliant but tactful, politic, polite, and thankful enough to obtain any help that
we need. Nothing is really done or complete here, except that we have now put more
days, descansos, and milestones behind us. This may be no more than a state or stage of
attainment, prior to moving on.
Also relevant to the card is the stability that we carry with us through the fire and the
changes, how we stay recognizable to ourselves while we are evolving and adapting to
our circumstances, how well we hold ourselves up and hold ourselves together. This is
our integrity. In order to remain both consistent enough and adaptable, we will want to
travel lightly, as it’s easier to hold it together when we have less baggage to manage: a
little luggage maybe, or a small carry on, or maybe a bug-out bag. Perhaps a tent instead
of a building. The corresponding Gua in the Yijing is The Wanderer. One prepares with a
few well-chosen and highly portable tools, such as our wits, tact, credit, self-rule, a
likable attitude, or a useful one, and working notions of what is necessary and sufficient:
just the essentials, a simple standard or formula for living. It’s also easier to get out of
tight spots this way. The ease and comfort with which we move through the world, our
sense of at-home-ness, is a function of our adaptability, or our nichemanship, our tactics
of intrusion, and our capacity for diplomacy. This gives us a more dynamic version of the
Four’s stability. The goal is to not be a stranger. For the sake of avoiding unpleasant
surprises, we want to be trusted for the reliability of our character. It helps when a good
repute or reference precedes us. The presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt
help preserve us. These will make negotiating mutually acceptable arrangements easier,
even with strangers. As Bob Dylan put it, “'to live outside the law you must be honest.”
This preserves us a more reliable freedom.
Key Words:
accessibility, accommodation, ad hoc, ad interim, amenability, approach, arrangements,
arrival, availing oneself, caravanserai, chameleon, comfort zone, completion, conditions,
context dependence, controlled burn, diplomacy, encampment, entering, fitting in,
functionality, gateway, genius loci, guest etiquette, halfway home, harvest home, haven,
holiday, homeostasis, improvisation, inn, integrity, interlude, intermission, local activity,
marked occasion, meeting place, meetness, milestones, minimalism, nichemanship,
passages, portability, protection, provision, pushing limits, recharge, refueling, refuge,
repast, repose, respite, rest after labor, rest stop, resting place, reward, rite of passage,
sabbatical, safe house, security on the fly, settlement, shelter, sponsorship, stability in
context, stable period, steadiness, stopover, stopping point, suitability, tact, temporary
completion, time off, trust building, welcome.

arrogance as ‘not asking’ (rogare), baggage, botched entry, estrangement, freedom is not
independence, friction, inconsideration, inconveniences, ineffectiveness, insecurity,
insensitivity, intrusiveness, quarrels, rudeness, suspicion from strangers, tactlessness,
thoughtlessness.
Components:
Four plus Wands. The packaging of a fire can only be accomplished with a modest and
well-controlled burn, as this is done in a lantern, pit, or hearth. We want to combine a
stable identity with an intensity of experience that can change our identity in fundamental
ways. It’s a compromise here: more movement than the Fours want, and less than what
Wands would stir up.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Jupiter in Fire Signs and Houses. A self-image or identity that seeks the
genuine thing, first-hand and up close. This can mean getting one’s precious self out of
the way, adapting, and playing a different part to meet the experience on its own terms
and turf. This is the Jupiter who turned himself into a bull or a swan to get his needs met.
More especially, it’s the Unknown God, the Jupiter who went door-to-door with his pal
Mercury, disguised as vagabonds, to see the true nature and character of his people.
Qabalah: Chesed in Atziluth. “Establishment of the work with tact and gentleness.” (here
Crowley attributes this to the influence of Venus, but a higher love is an attribute of
Jupiter as well, particularly agape, and certainly of Chesed as beneficence)
Yijing: Gua 56, The Wanderer. Da Xiang: Gen (4) below, Li (Wands) above; “Atop the
mountain is a flame. The wanderer. The young noble is lucid and prudent about the
function of sanctions and thus avoids prolonged legal process.” Making oneself at home,
but only on a temporary basis, the tactics of intrusion, diplomacy. “With modest
fulfillment, the wanderer persists. Promising.” Unencumbered by wealth, the ad hoc life,
living without a net, traveling light.
Five of Wands
Strife, Struggle, Competition, Assertiveness
Image: The RWS deck and most of its clones show 5 people armed with staffs and
involved in a melee or free-for-all. It’s unclear whether this is in sport or in earnest, but
the competition seems fierce. In either case, much of the energy spent here is self-
cancelling, and nobody is questioning whether this is worth the effort. A card could also
depict a slightly older gentleman defending himself with his staff against four similarly
armed assailants, having already disarmed one, and now stepping towards the second
while watching a third.
Darwin began: “We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.”
The core meaning of the Five of Wands is as straightforward as the Four was complex,
although the Five will tend to make more of a mess of things on the back end. The force
for change, or kinetic energy of the Five is expressed here through the element of Fire.
Something is likely to get moved around or altered. The basic idea is that change is the
rule. It can be temporarily resisted, but often this will makes the needed adjustments more
abrupt, radical, and even violent, the longer that change is resisted or stresses allowed to
build up. It’s like plate tectonics: better ten little quakes than a major disaster. But the
notion of pent-up emotions or hostilities can also offer a false, self-fulfilling, ‘hydraulic’
model of things, demanding a catharsis or venting before more useful solutions are tried.
While the Tarot images show interpersonal competitions and conflicts being worked out
more violently or aggressively, this will not always be the case. Our worthy opponent
could as easily be a disobedient part of ourselves, or anything else that might get us
piqued, heated up, riled up, vexed, annoyed, or enraged. Sometimes it’s just an excuse to
blow off some steam. It’s a good idea simply to let the images of interpersonal conflict
here stand in as a metaphor for energetic divergence in general.
Crowley's account of two ways to view this card, cited earlier, bears repeating: “The
Five of Wands is therefore a personality; the nature of this is summed up in the Tarot by
calling it Strife. This means that, if used passively in divination, one says, when it turns
up, ‘There is going to be a fight.’ If used actively, it means that the proper course of
conduct is to contend” (BOT 43).
Although straightforward diplomacy is probably not an option here, there are usually
alternatives to violence, even in self-defense. Raging against the rock that jumped out and
stubbed your toe is almost always a bad idea. The martial arts can provide a pretty good
model for non-violence. The best defensive move might be using your feet to walk away.
An Aikido or Jujitsu approach might move directly into the center of the situation’s
gravity and take control from there, simply helping the opponent to fall down. The kinetic
energy here might be redirected or reapplied. Often aggression is just a substitute for
confidence. If clarity and cooler heads can prevail at all, someone might think to ask if
there really is a right and wrong here. We can often put cards on table and tell the truth
and work it out, or we can resort to law and legal force, and even save ourselves some jail
time thereby. Sometimes the exercise of this right to legal recourse is even a duty, even
when the police power or system of justice is known to be corrupt. Rashness can be even
blinder than this. This situation usually becomes intolerable after a time, and demands
satisfaction or resolution, or that an obstacle be removed,
Authors will often suggest that this is only play, or a friendly competition, and this is
sometimes the case. Both of these, of course, go way back, beyond even our life in the
African trees. Just watch the young cats play-fight. Thought is a latecomer here. And it
isn’t always just preparation to battle for mates or territory, or for driving the intolerable
and the insufferable out of our tribe and our niche. The Five of Wands is also vigorous
effort for its own sake, for the simple pleasure in exercising power or force, for flexing
some muscle, for the dopamine, for good health, and for learning more about life.
Whether in sport or in earnest, our mock combat teaches agility, decisiveness, ingenuity,
focus, and fair play. These games are analogs of real world affairs that go far beyond the
more heated engagements. They even have something to add to quiet walks in the woods.
And, naturally, this can can mean what it seems like it means: a true test and rite of
passage, one played for keeps and even for survival, an incident calling for extreme self-
assertiveness and exertion, an emphatic contradiction, or non-acceptance, of things as
they are. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 21, Biting Through, which describes the use of
emphatic, corrective action. Violations of due order, forces at odds and cross-purposes to
what we know is a better way, unjust and illegal challenges to our sovereignty or our
safety, being put or set upon: all of these might demand emphatic action or force. We
know in ourselves that forward motion often has repercussions, especially if we fail to
process the feedback we get. But sometimes it falls to us to be the repercussion or be the
feedback for others. We may have an opportunity here to offer some good information to
bad actors and actions and answer a challenge with appropriate force, asserting what is
right. But where it’s information we offer, there are good arguments for starting first with
clarity, instead of wrath or rage. Clarity is still the best hope for an effective solution,
even if diplomacy is out of the question.
Key Words:
affront, aggressiveness, agitation, assertiveness, burning need, censure, challenge, check,
clash, cogency, combativeness, competition, competitiveness, conflict, confrontation,
confusion, contention, contradiction, crime, crisis, criticism, crossed purposes, defense,
destabilization, disagreement, disarray, discord, disobedience, disorder, disorganization,
dispute, dissent, divergence, divided opinions asserted, dynamic paralysis, dysfunction,
effort, emphasis, emphatic force, enforcement, excitement, execution, ferocity, fight,
friction, hassles, heated tempers, hotheadedness, interruption, intervention, intolerance,
irritation, judgment, litigation, nuisance, obstacle, offense, opponents, pugnacity,
punishment, purgation, quarrel, rashness, retaliation, retribution, rivalry, roughhousing,
self-assertion, self-defense, serious play, shakeup, sparring, sport, strain, strength, stress,
strife, struggle, taking action, territorialism, tests, trials, trouble, uncertainty, unrest,
upheaval, upset, violation, violence.

acrimony, blowup, confusion, contradiction, dangerous combat, deadly or lethal force,
defensiveness, exertion, frustration, hypercomplexity, indecisiveness, ineffectiveness,
infighting, legal problems, lex talionis, litigation, panic, rage, rashness, recklessness,
squabbling, training is overly structured, violence, wrath.
Components:
Five plus Wands. Forces for stabilization allow pressure for change to build. The pressure
releases suddenly, with force out of proportion to that of steady change, breaking out of
the Four's confines. A backlog of change catches up quickly, structures are challenged
and defended, the changes test the status quo,
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mars in Fire Signs and Houses. Mars is good with fire, maybe too good. It’s
an inclination to act dynamically, with assurance and vigor. Self-assertion does not need
to be offensive, aggressive or violent, and the absence of these is often a measure of real
assurance and strength, even in a warrior.
Qabalah: Geburah in Atziluth. Breaking out of the stability and confines of the Four and
Chesed, the balance swings from peace towards force, from love towards judgment.
Stability has led to a backlog of change, now being remedied at a pace faster than gradual
change would have moved.
Yijing: Gua 21, Shi He, Biting Through, Decisive Action. Da Xiang: Zhen (5) below, Li
(Wands) above; “Thunder and lightning bite through. The early sovereigns clarified
penalties when declaring the laws.” Emphatic judgment, teeth, consequences that bite,
culpability, incisiveness, enforcement, eradication, execution, criminal law, termination,
trenchancy. “Satisfaction. Worthwhile to execute justice.”
Six of Wands
Individuation, Distinction, Achievement, Moment
Image: The RWS deck depicts a mounted hero in a triumphal parade, sporting a laurel
wreath, with staff bearing men alongside him on foot. This is a moment of celebration for
a victory. Alternative: Five recently retired militiamen have built a bonfire out of their
fighting staves while a sixth and final member of their party has just arrived to add his
own fuel, end all doubts and celebrate. The last to arrive appears to be welcomed with
high praise, and sports a victor’s wreath.
The Six of Wands is an identity centered on the moment, on how things stand right
now. This has its potential for transformation, but is not now looking either forward or
back. The moment being savored is a summation of everything that brought us here.
Recall that the light that now burns in the brain was sunlight not long ago, captured by
our food and prey. We are right in between where it has been and where it is going.
Contrary to what most want to believe, consciousness is conditioned, a dependent arising
from earlier versions of fuel, a continuum of different forms of expression that has
learned to become self-aware. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 30, Arising or the Clinging,
the flame reflecting on itself, between the fuel it has been and the light it is re-becoming.
The Gua, a doubling of the Bagua Li, combines the meanings of both convergence and
emergence. Li being symbolized by an eye, our vision is important here. If we look more
closely at the word re-spect, we can see it means ‘look again.’
Understanding the progression beyond the Five of Wands is essential to grasping the
development of the Six. The Five upset the stability of the Four. The Six is the response
to the lessons learned from this disequilibrium. Things move back into balance with a
new and stronger sense of identity, continuity, and stability. This is a more resilient
organization. It has been tested. A crisis or a struggle has now been overcome. Time has
shown us things, informed us about ourselves. This is the basis for a number of the card’s
associations, such as victory after strife, gain after uncertainty, resolution of difficulties,
conquest over troubles, and the triumph or triumphal parade portrayed in the Smith deck.
We emerge both victorious and better informed. It is like a graduation or commencement,
a valediction. We are distinguished by our recent past and by the special role we played
there. We dress ourselves up in our finest true colors.
This is a culmination of the past, before resuming our journey. The moment carries the
momentum forward into a different context or present. It imports the past into the future.
Everything leads up to what we know now. It’s a good time for review and assessment, to
sum or wrap things up. We know ourselves better after these trials and tests, with a better
sense of which senses of self to keep and which to let go. Competence has been tested
and credit where due is now given. Externally, we are what we’ve accomplished or done.
There is no hypocrisy in this form of self-definition. Human is as human does. There are
lessons in care and respect for what brought us here, the ingredients of our current
moment. It is said that, on top of all that’s past, we “stand on the shoulders of giants.”
This applies to the current status of human culture and civilization as well. We may have
earned our triumphal parade here, the momentousness of it all, and the enhanced
reputation that may help us to move things along. But where we abandon, disregard, or
disrespect our sources, we lose our momentum as well.
The moment now becomes self-aware, unburdened now by an incomplete past with its
doubts about the future. These questions are answered now. Now it’s understanding how
we got here that informs us of where to go next. The past is prologue, mere preparation,
and food for the flames. It’s a moment where much can be changed. We are able to use
lessons from the past and apply them to a future. We are so good at this that it all seems
part of a great and mysterious plan. One of the most vapid and meretricious platitudes out
says that “everything happens for a reason.” Nietzsche counters this with “a loss rarely
remains a loss for an hour.” Life is opportunistic and will find ways to turn the past to its
advantage, making random events and accidents seem purposed. Decisions made now
can be based on current predictions of what has already happened, on what has been tried
and found true. Goals are resolved and reset with new and better data.
Sometimes the books will suggest that unwanted things have also been learned, and
this is more central to the meaning of the card than it’s given credit for. We know
ourselves better after a trial or test. We may have learned about parts of ourselves not
worth keeping. The recognition here is deserved, but not all of it is good. It may be that
we have proven ourselves to be useless, inferior, inadequate, or incompetent. We may
have achieved only failure. We may be in need of correction. It’s the downside of honest
acknowledgement, but it’s what has been proven here, what we’ve learned of how we got
here, that can tell us how best to move on. If at first you don't succeed, try doing it right
next time.
Key Words:
acclaim, achievement, acknowledgments due, actualization, after-the-facts, appearances,
apperception, appreciation, arising, arrival, articulation, attainment, attention, between
times, clarity, climax, coherence, coming together, conditioned arising, consequence,
consummation, convergence, culmination, departure, distinction, emanation, emergence,
emphasis, equilibrium restored, exaltation, glory, human is as human does, identity,
illumination, import, indebtedness, individuation, instance, lessons learned, moment,
momentousness, momentum, outcome, past as prologue, past perfect tense, pinnacle,
precedent, presence, procession, promotion, proof, qualification, radiation, realization,
recognition, reconciliation, reflection, resolution, respect, restabilization, results of
feedback, revelation, review, reward, sentience, significance, situation sorted, taking
stock, triumph, true colors, unfolding, victory, vindication, wrapping things up, zenith.

comeuppance, the culmination could be of failure, disconnectedness, disrespect, earned
failure, exposed fraud, inconclusive gain, indefinite delay, insolence, lessons not learned,
repeating history, looking back moaning or gloating, losing touch with one's sources and
opportunities, missing out on the transformation, narcissism, postponement, proven

incompetence.
Components:
Six plus Wands. Energy interacting with context develops new information that helps to
organize and restabilize the system after the upset of the Fives. Order emerges from the
chaos with the processing of feedback, and sentience emerges from order. The system
begins to self-regulate.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sol in Fire Signs and Houses. An identity centered on self as awareness of a
self, the continuity that remains as thoughts and feelings come and go. The ‘I am’
experiences, with emphasis on the moment or context in time, the stream of the moving
moment, the river yes, the same river never..
Qabalah: Tipareth in Atziluth. Following Geburah, an energized Tipareth becomes the
reassembly or restabilization of self with new information or lessons learned. The entity
is tested, tried and gradually trued.
Yijing: Gua 30, Li, Arising, The Clinging, Radiance. Da Xiang: Li (6) below, Li (Wands)
above; “The light appears twice. Arising. The mature human being is continuous in
clarifying and illuminating into the four directions.” There is a dual focus in this Gua: on
the conditions which bring us up to the present, what we depend on or adhere to, such as
our sources of fuel and the past we are working out, and on where we are going next, our
next departure, how we will differ henceforth. This is conditioned or dependent arising.
“Meriting persistence. Fulfillment. Attend to the cow. Promising.” The advice to ‘attend
to the cow’ means to honor our sources or fuel if we want to remain continuous. Line six
is especially apt.
Seven of Wands
Valor, Individuality, Disparity, Diversity
Image: A lone man, with longstaff in hand, defends himself against six unseen
assailants. He occupies the higher ground in the skirmish and so he has a small, initial
advantage, or defensible position, in addition to the stimulating challenge of facing down
these odds. Most versions of this card are RWS clones, and many bear the apt title Valor.
Much is often made of the character's mismatched shoes. We can only guess that Pixie
wanted to convey a hurry or urgency to take up this position.
The evolution from the Six to the Seven of Wands is from sentient entity to the newly
self-conscious self, from individuation to individuality, and from being tested to doing the
testing. Now more importance is attached to the difference between the inner and outer,
and the needs and wants of the inner begin to take greater precedence. Drives for self-
actualization, to be more, to win or succeed, kick in. Self-ishness get its bad name from
people doing it poorly, so others lose in the process, but this need not be the case. When
effective, this helps to move evolution along.
When we are separate we each have our own points of view, relative to the others. This
diversity is analogous to each of our eyes seeing a different picture. It’s because of this
difference that we perceive depth so well. Linguistic coincidence or not, the biodiversity
in an ecosystem contributes heavily to the depth of its resilience. It is worthwhile all
around to maintain individual differences and to celebrate the outstanding. Standing one’s
ground is central to the meaning of this card. Pride has the same public relations problem
as selfishness. It’s often a big error, but it isn’t really a sin. When it comes to feeling
proud of being what we are, keeping this in context is best. It’s fine to enjoy your blue
ribbon on the weightlifting team, but it’s not an Olympic gold medal. And even the gold
medalist can’t compete with a dumb, half-crippled ox when pulling a loaded cart.
Sometimes it takes pride, or at least a strong sense of honor, to resist the social pressures
that work against articulating our own special version of character. To maintain our
personal growth we sometimes need to build on little successes and be extra wary of what
failure can do to our spirit. We may need to pick our battles more carefully, to be more
tactful and tactical, and to compromise against the best we can be, just to hang onto some
self esteem and respect. This is stress, and sometimes we need to emphasize ourselves
just to stress our urgency. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 38, Estrangement or Opposition,
which examines personal divergence from others, and from the norms, as a necessary
component of needed diversity. We see the world in greater depth because our eyes give
our brains two different pictures. To all be the same is not a good thing. A lack of
diversity contributes little to the whole and its resilienc.
Standing out from our background, distinguishing ourselves from our context, is the
root of the word existence. When we look at the life evolving around us, we note that
diversity is the norm, not the exception. Convergence and conformity are more common
within separate species, as they seem to try to hold themselves together: the mating dance
is done in a very particular way or you don’t get to breed. Some humans require the right
wristwatch or shoes before mating. Nevertheless, even within the species, diversity is the
measure of depth and resilience, the ability to adapt to changes. This requires more than
the fashions of watch and shoes changing yearly. We owe an allegiance and loyalty to
ourselves, but this is a biological imperative that’s seen in varying strengths. Being only
yourself is a struggle in a conformist society, so that the Seven of Wands is often seen as
a struggle or battle. We do have plenty of cattle among us. Daring to differ, even begging
to differ, wants some sense of purpose and a fighting spirit. This does not require having
or making enemies. A pursuit and succession of personal bests can be enough of a target
or goal. And regardless of how very special we are, there are always a few companions
worth choosing for their ability to confront us, correct us, or challenge the way we see
things, other eyeballs with other points of view.
The majority can be as much of a tyrant as any individual despot. It’s against this mob
rule and peer pressure that we claim our sovereign rights as persons. The herd that is
more than half of our numbers will vote these rights away at the first opportunity. It takes
every bit of our feistiness and vigilance to resist. As the RWS card depicts, we take a
stand, stand our ground, stand up for ourselves, holding our own, or we fall. And we need
a vantage position, like a home-field advantage, a little moral high ground, some sense of
inviolable and inalienable rights, from rights of self-defense to rights of self-expression.
If it harm none, we also include the right to be wrong. Being wrong is nothing to be
proud of. We might want to double-check on this possibility. Being true to yourself might
be a mistake if your true self happens to be an asshole. Firmness of purpose, conviction
and fighting spirit are not in themselves the virtue here. We might recall Nietzsche's
words: “but what convinces us is not necessarily true: it is merely convincing. A note for
asses.” Lest we be absolute, a little flexibility is sometimes in order. Even admitting some
pressure from peers might help to validate their own rights to self-expression, and the
rights of like-minded minorities.
Key Words:
against the odds, aloneness, articulation, asserting identity, battle, boldness, bravery,
challenge, commitment, confronting a challenge, conviction, courage, daring, defiance,
determination, disparity, dissent, dissociation, dissonance, divergence, diversity,
emphasis, fearlessness, feistiness, fighting spirit, finding strength, heroics, high ground,
holding your own, honor, idiosyncrasy, incongruity, independence, individualism,
individuality, intrepidness, loyalty to self, maintaining position, non-conformity, oddness,
odds, overcoming, perseverance, persistence, personhood, perspectivism, picking your
battles, pluck, polarization, pride, proving oneself, resistance, resolve, self-assertion, self-
defense, self-determination, sovereignty, specialness, standing out, standing your ground,
staying true, steadfastness, stereopsis or retinal disparity, sticking out, stress,
stubbornness, surmounting, taking a stand, tenacity, tension, uniqueness, upholding
personal principles, valor.

alienation, anxiety, being overwhelmed, being wrong, convictions that can’t learn,
discord, hyperdefensiveness, embarrassment, defeat, giving up, hesitation, intimidation,
isolation, lack of objectivity, overconfidence, overreach, overreaction, peer pressure, self-
doubt, selling out, surrender, tyranny of the majority, unearned self-esteem, vainglory,
vulnerabilities.
Components:
Seven plus Wands. The sense of personal identity seeking enhancement and vivification.
Wanting to shine on our own terms, whether for inner confidence and courage or for
outward honor and praise that can be taken personally.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Venus in Fire Signs and Houses. Desires to develop a strong sense of identity,
to stand out, to be self-assured, or self-loving, whether deserving or not. Ardent and
inclined to take things personally, seeking beauty, glory, drama, and honor. Actualizing
the sense of self.
Qabalah: Netzach in Atziluth. The will to be victorious as an entity, to feel success, to
will success into existence, to be pleased with personal attainments, to meet needs and
wants well.
Yijing: Gua 38, Kui, Estrangement, Opposition, Disparity. Da Xiang: Dui (7) below, Li
(Wands) above; “The flame rises, the lake descends. Estrangement. The young noble
associates, and yet is unique.” Polarization, diversity, distinctiveness, oddness, individual
nature as divergent; unique points of view, to squint disbelievingly. “In ordinary matters,
promising.” To maintain self-esteem, we pick our battles and don’t overreach. Crowley
suggests the card means “victory in small and unimportant things.”
Eight of Wands
Direction, Trajectory, Projection, Objectives
Image: Eight javelins are seen in flight, now on the downward trajectory of a ballistic
arc, maintaining an alignment that suggests there must have been a coordinated aim and
an unseen but common target in a previous time, but not long ago. The aim or intention
set might be clearer with a larger frame or window.
Most books will speak most of this card in terms of swiftness and speed. The RWS
deck set a standard for portrayals of javelins, spears, staffs, or arrows, all traveling at
what seems to be great velocity. Both the association with the planet Mercury and the
energy of the fiery Wands would seem to support this meaning. But this is only one of
several attributes of more central meanings. Closer to the core, the idea behind the picture
is that all eight items seem to share a common aim in their trajectory. The action of
launching them had direction, method, purpose, or design behind it. Because of this they
are going towards the same destination. Choices have already been made and decisions
enacted. The projectiles have gone ballistic, but this word is poorly understood. An object
that has gone ballistic is no longer under any force of acceleration: it’s coasting, acted on
now only by gravity, windage, and drag. What set the projectile in motion has already
done its job and the time to make big choices and mid-course corrections may be past.
This was according to an aim or a plan, something that is now working itself out. It’s now
up to the idea or the design to prove its own worth or viability. In the Hermetic view of
magick, an imaginary version of what needs doing is done in advance, signaling the
intention, sending a message to the future, and if the plan belongs there, the world will
get the idea. The spell has already been cast. But this is just another way of saying that
design precedes implementation.
This card implies a developed mental ability that is applied to living in the world, and
knowing something of our own capabilities, so that we can predict our effects. With the
Seven of Wands we learned some things about who we are and what we are capable of.
With the Eight, we can now apply that knowledge to improving our context, niche, or
world, so that life can be more predictably trouble-free or pleasant. We have creative
designs on the world. We are looking ahead and trying to solve our problems in advance.
From our present position in what is going to be the past, it’s difficult to micromanage
these affairs. What needs doing now has largely been done in advance. We can only try to
cover our contingencies, and allow for range and windage. Expertise can only take us so
far here. While events may not be entirely out of our hands now, the best laid plans might
still need to adapt to unseen realities. Fussing and meddling might only interfere. We will
need some patience: the ballistic arc is also a learning curve. “A screaming came across
the sky.”
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 50, The Cauldron, which also speaks of change by
design, with a focus on the alchemy of creating or nourishing a better and nobler society.
Results are not seen immediately here either. Once the spell is cast, one has to let it go or
fly. The ceremonial food offering here models a kind of social engineering, nourishing
our culture in specific ways to optimize cultural outcomes. We have an instrumentality
mentality, and the recipe is our formula. This is explicitly an analogy: wind and wood
below (8s), symbols of adaptive intelligence, feed the creative flames (Wands) above. We
nourish and inspire others by doing what we do best and thus setting a good example. We
honor the potential in our raw materials. We manifest our best visions. We set our
standards high. In looking this far ahead, we also seek to become better ancestors,
worthier founding fathers and mothers. What is cooking in the pot is a consecrated or
dedicated offering. In the Western Mystery Tradition, this giving our best, this excellence
by design, is the alchemy termed “the Great Work of the Transformation of Mankind.”
It’s doing what we can for our evolution. In the words of the Great Ones, “Be excellent to
each other.”
The point is ensuring that we are better prepared for tomorrow than we have been in
the past, that we continue to develop our life skills. There is the implication in the RWS
card, in the association with Mercury, and in the Cauldron, that this is a joint or concerted
effort, an alignment of aim and purpose, a cultural endeavor that necessitates networking,
communication and cooperation. Forces are drawn into alignment, priorities are adopted
by prior agreement, goals and objectives are shared. The root of the word communication
means to make common, to spread the idea around. Alternatively, his card may also refer
to the exercise of mental agility (cittammannata and cittapagunnata in Buddhism).
Key Words:
activation, administration, aiming true, alignment of aims and forces, ambition, analogy,
application, arrangement, aspiration, awaiting results, coordinated effort, dedicated effort,
demonstration, design, directed activity or motion, directing change, direction, directives,
discharge, dispatch, dream, efficiency, execution of intent, expediency, experiment, focus,
formulation, forward thinking, future orientation, game plan, goals, guidance, guidelines,
implementation, initiatives, instrumentality, intention, master plan, means, missiles,
missions, missives, objectives, orientation, parallel efforts, planning, positive action,
pragmatism, projections and projects, promotion of idea, proposition, purpose, purposeful
action, reach, refinement, spellcraft, study, sublimation, sudden progress, swiftness,
targets, trajectory, vectors, visionaries, visions being realized.

denial of preconditions, discord, dispute, dissipation, failure to allow for conditions,
haste, impetuousness, loss of control, magical thinking in the pejorative sense,
micromanagement, misalignment, overextension, too-rapid advancement, visions based
on wishful thinking.
Components:
Eight plus Wands. Thought is not abstract here: it has energy. It’s design with a purpose,
applied intelligence, design that has no reality until it’s implemented. Conjecture and
hypothesis do not make theory. They can’t stand alone until they are tested or verified.
Networking is energetic here.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mercury in Fire Signs and Houses. Knowledge is communicated by example
and application, not by abstraction. Ideas and idealisms are acted out, demonstrated,
implemented.
Qabalah: Hod in Atziluth. Order moves towards implementation, and good order will
implement itself, without micromanagement. The world is seeded with the idea and the
viable idea grows.
Yijing: Gua 50, The Cauldron, Alchemy. Da Xiang: Xun (8) below, Li (Wands) above;
“Over the wood is a flame. The cauldron. The young noble applies principles of
positioning to manifest higher purpose.” Applied heat, consecrated or dedicated offerings.
Dedicated change, science as art, alchemy, the great work of transformation. “The most
promising offering.” The nourishment of ability, excellence by design, instrumentality,
social engineering, creation of a higher culture.
Nine of Wands
Suspense, Vigilance, Alertness, Unfinished Business
Image: The RWS deck shows an already embattled guardian, standing stalwart and
resolute in front of a cache of spare staves as if expecting some more of the unexpected.
This could also be depicted as a wanderer with his staff greeting eight similarly armed
guards at a pass gate or outpost, seeking permission to pass. Permission does not appear
to be a foregone conclusion. These are lethally-armed men defending an imaginary line.
He has come a long way, evidenced by a bandaged head and foreign attire. There are
suggestions of more trials to come. He must pick his battles well, but some may not be
avoidable and he still has far to go. Discretion here is as useful as valor.
This card depicts an ongoing, dynamic interaction with the environment, at a point
midway through what appears to be a series of challenges. In other words, life on Earth.
But what is portrayed here is not one of our more relaxing or boring moments. There is
an air of unsettledness here: things are not in a stable state or in their proper place and the
tension is dynamic. There is an energy in this displacement that’s analogous to potential
energy in physics. When we are at a distance from where we need or want to be, we can
use this as a sort of motive or driving force. A tension between what is and what must be
will move things along towards a more equilibrated state, as though driven from behind
by what lies ahead. We are drawn or pulled along. Necessity can be used as a drive as
well as an excuse. That things are not right yet need not be a bad thing.
The Nine of Wands will demand a greater perspective and warn against shortsighted or
precipitous action. We are likely to have long-term goals that short-term demands and
pressures just won’t respect, but we need to combine the two, reconciling our distant aims
with our current necessities, and this is best done in ways wherein one will help the other.
Of course there is great wisdom in attending to present circumstances, especially when
failure can threaten our further progress. Details of the longer course may be in doubt and
distractions may need to be dealt with. There will be obstacles to our progress that were
not in our plan. To remember the longer-term goals and objectives will help us to
measure or optimize our response. As we make our mid-course maneuvers and
corrections, we try to make even accidents and setbacks serve our longer ends.
In the systems model of our Tarot number symbolism, the Eights, combined with the
learning that we have done, give us an ability to predict the future a little, at least in an
environment that isn’t hostile to our theories, or too much changed from the one we are
familiar with. But Nines show one of the problems we have with adaptation: that niches
change as well, especially when we are on the move, with miles to go before we sleep.
The system we have developed needs to learn resilience for this, and self-repair. As Alan
Watts suggested, there is wisdom in insecurity. It’s a good time to stay alert and alive,
living as we do in interesting times. And if we are to stay alert, we will need to hold some
strength in reserve, grab some second winds, and pace ourselves for the longer run. We
don’t all need to live right on the edge or in danger. But at least when things are dynamic,
we can draw strength from outside or within and do our responding with some of the fire
we carry in ourselves. We don’t need our fortunes told to us.
The narrowness of our behavioral options is a function of the size of our world. The
specialists’ options are narrowed. Fitness is how and where we fit in, and tiny niches
need a less generalized fitness. Our contexts can be made larger, both in space and in
time. We increase our behavioral options by remembering more of the length of our
journey and the distances yet to be traveled. We keep our minds stretched out in this way,
giving us room to sort our options. We think on the fly, ex temp and ad hoc. Our
expectations of difficulty cannot be allowed to be overwhelming: they must be seen as a
challenge. The problem is seen as a thing to be solved, something like an intelligence test,
if we want the cheese at the end of all this amazement. Problems are for solving.
We are a bit like Odysseus here, making his long journey home, meeting the needs of
the moment, losing sight on occasion, getting past Circe and the Siren songs. But we have
to get through the journey and kill us some suitors, or the epic will never get written or
sung. P.F. Case saw this in this card, where he suggested a ‘danger of violence in foreign
places’ in the course of our long journeys. This energy of displacement that demands so
much vigilance, while motivating us at the same time, in represented in the Yijing by Gua
64, Not Yet Across or Before Completion, the ironically named final chapter of the book.
It has the same advice to stay on your toes and alert as long as you’re this far from home.
It depicts a young fox crossing a half-frozen steam, an exemplar of care and vigilance in
the animal kingdom.
Key Words:
adaptability, adventure, alertness, anticipation, apprehension, attentiveness, carrying on,
cautiousness, character development, circumspection, dauntlessness, determination,
discernment, discipline, displacement, drawing on reserves, dynamic tension, endurance,
fidelity, fitness, going the distance, guardedness, heedfulness, insecurity, intermediate
stages, involvement, long-term goals under short-term threat, maintaining priorities,
meeting necessities, mid-course corrections, no rest, outpost, perseverance (with a longer
view than that of the 7 of Wands), persistence, precaution, presence of mind, readiness,
remembrance of scales, renewed commitment, resilience, resolve, resourcefulness,
responsiveness, self-reliance, separation, stamina, strength in reserve, strength of
purpose, suspense, suspicion, tenacity, tension, the thick of it, threshold, transition,
uncertainty, unfinished business, vigil, vigilance, wariness, watchfulness.

adversity, barriers, carelessness, complacency, defensiveness misplaced, delays, energy
depleted, fatigue, forgetting where you are, hurdles, ignorance, linearity, obstinacy,
overconfidence, presumption, problems, rigidity, running battles, shortsightedness,
stubbornness, stress, trapped far from home.
Components:
Nine plus Wands. Every moment we live through is a wrapping up of all things past and
an opening up to potential for changes. With respect to ideas of completion, this is the
most we can expect from this world. If we want to maintain a sense of accomplishment,
we need to keep on adapting, to be ready to hold or defend our gains.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Luna in Fire Signs and Houses. A readiness to respond to circumstances
actively or energetically, proactive responsiveness. Alertness and self-reliance in exigent
situations, being present to experience, adaptability that will seize what advantages it can.
Qabalah: Yesod in Atziluth. The dynamic energy of a universe in flux can be tapped as an
energy source even where it seems to be problematic. This is the world we are given,
what we have to live in. With the right approach we can sail upwind.
Yijing: Gua 64, Wei Ji, Not Yet Across, Before Completion. Da Xiang: Kan (9) below, Li
(Wands) above; “The flame is positioned on top of the water. Not yet complete. The
young noble is heedful and discerning so that things remain straightforward.” State of
transition, unfinished business. “Fulfillment. The little fox is almost across the half-
frozen stream. To soak one’s tail is not a direction with merit.” Determination,
concentration and energy. Not being in the right place yet is a source of incentive and
potential energy.
Ten of Wands
Efficacy, Perseverance, Demands, Overcommitment
Image: A man staggers forward, overburdened, bent over by the weight of ten heavy,
unbundled staves, which also obstruct his view. He may be on the verge of losing his
grip, but the suggestion is that he is nearly to his goal. Even in his slow progress, he
stumbles past a rope and a potential travois. But he fails to see the possibilities. Force is
one way to do this, but it implies expending energy against resistance or inertia. The
alternative path to power is to expend less energy by finding a way around the resistance
or inertia. Sometimes this is called sensitivity, sometimes intelligence. Smith took her
idea for this card directly from the Ten of Swords in the late-15th-century Sola-Busca
deck, the only deck before hers to use vignettes to portray the Pips.
This card depicts the burden of ill-regulated force, force that is in need of something a
little extra. We have come to the limits of what we can do with raw energy, or with what
we can do with our individual identity, or with ourselves as currently estimated. Our
project, which might be perfectly noble and worthy, might have become an obsession.
The word per-severance means making it through severity, but this is not a virtue in itself.
Making it through to success has more value, and getting things of value done is the
virtue. In a headstrong, headlong way, we might be compromising the effort itself, with
the threat of hitting a wall, or of burnout, or at least of wasting a great deal of energy on
ineffective, inept, or outmoded methods. If we are stiff-necked, locked-on, and obstinate
enough, it might still be possible to push through to the end here, but as costs go up, the
benefit ratio plummets. Diminishing returns compromise success. Expenditures should
help, not be a burden. There should be enough energy left for better ideas.
A need for prioritization is a useful way to see this. Power is measured in terms of
efficacy. In physics, power is the rate at which energy changes form to do work. It’s a
rate, not a quantity of force spent, the rate at which work gets accomplished. It’s defined
by effect or outcome, not by the energy spent on stress and strain. To the extent that a task
is difficult, it isn’t power being felt, but resistance. This is a hint to find a path of less
resistance, an approach with better leverage, or a way to delegate. Might needs right. It’s
not the amount of effort expended but the elegance of the outcome. The reward will not
be proportionate to the struggle but to the intelligent application of energy. Doing things
the hard way, taking on challenges without thinking things through, might get things
done, but it isn’t power. Efficacy or efficiency is not a complete substitute for vigor or
force, but they make a good team. Power incorporates both energy and wisdom. It learns
to do more with less. Laziness, they say, is the father of invention. A little more discovery
is needed here.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 34, Big and Strong or Power of the Great, shows a billy
goat or ram butting a hedge, and recommends a pause to rest and look around, in case
there might be a better way through or around. This is like moving towards the axle of the
wheel, where the motion is least. The most effective pace might include pausing to rest
and reconnoiter, to look at the problem as being more like a puzzle, to use one’s head in
loftier ways than as a bludgeon. There is an adage in Zen that suggests: “You should sit in
meditation for twenty minutes every day, unless you are too busy; then you should sit for
an hour.” This is a good adage to use here. A better way is likely unseen due to current
effort and a narrowness of focus. Meta-solutions require an overview of the problem. Too
linear a direction can even find us blocked or thwarted by inanimate objects that should
not be expected to cooperate.
The Ten of Wands may suggest finding a different mode now, one that uses elements
other than fire, a need to start using other faculties, rethinking the elemental components
of the effort. The need for this sort of transition is typical for the Tens. We’ve run out of
things that energy alone can do well. In particular, new inputs might be sensory or
informative, ways to find a more optimum path from this place: feeling in Cups, thought
in Swords, and practicalities in Pentacles. Insight is sometimes defined as a dynamic
reorganization of the perceptual field, getting a new perspective or scale. Looking can
hinder seeing. In Permaculture there is a principle about spending information before

spending energy. Intense focus misses the peripheral view which may hold better options.
Lastly, there may be issues of personal achievement here, and a sense that to delegate
any parts of the task deprives us of satisfactions. We might not be assuming too much, or
laboring under some delusions. This might not be a form of self-sacrifice or martyrdom,
but perhaps this question should at least be asked, to help us explain why we turn down
offers of help.
Key Words:
action, assertion, big responsibilities, burden, butting heads, challenge, circumspection,
compulsion, constancy, cost-benefit analysis, demands, determination, diminishing
returns, doggedness, drivenness, effectiveness, efficacy, efficiency, effort, endurance,
exertion, exhaustion, extremity of effort, forging ahead, heroic effort, implementation,
ineffectiveness, inefficiency, inflexibility, insistence, linearity, narrow aims, obsession,
oppressiveness, out of depth, overbearing, overburden, overcommitment, overdoing,
overextension, overload, overshoot, overwhelm, ox or bull mind, performance, power,
predicament, preoccupation, pressure, purpose without planning, purposefulness, pushing
through, reassessment, single-mindedness, stamina, strain, stress, striving, stubbornness,
surcharge, tenacity, thoroughness, travail, tunnel vision, unproductive behavior, vigor,
wanting out right now, willfulness.

blind force, blinders, burnout, butt-headedness, can’t say no, counterproductive behavior,
excessive effort or force, exhaustion, failure of imagination, failure to delegate, fixation,
impatience, importunity, ineffectiveness, inefficiency, laboring under a delusion, lack of
vision, obsession, obstinacy, overestimation, outdated approach, preoccupation, stress,
stubbornness, the last straw, traps, tunnel vision, tyranny.
Components:
Ten plus Wands. Inertia as resistance to change, but the inertia here is in both the subject
and the object, and something has to give. We have reached the limit of what fire can do
for us. Force might need to turn to finesse for assistance.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Pluto in Fire Signs and Houses. We know that Pluto is not a planet, but it’s a
symbol. Concern for taking individual identity, personal development, and expressions of
power as far as we can, to leave our mark on the world that survives us.
Qabalah: Malkuth in Atziluth. The maximum expression of the original idea and spirit,
where it ends and becomes something else, having seen how far it can go and unable to
go any further, at least in its original form.
Yijing: Gua 34, Da Zhuang, Big and Strong, Power of the Great. Da Xiang: Qian (10)
below, Zhen (Wands) above; “Thunder in the sky above. Big and strong. The young noble
will not take a step without respect.” The need for force to pause and understand what it
is doing if it seeks to be effective. “Worthwhile to persist.” Line 3 and others: “The billy
goat butts the hedge, entangling his horns.” The head-on approach fails to see the options.
Princess of Wands
Princess of the Shining Flame, Rose of the Palace of Fire
Endowment, Identity, Appetite, Purposefulness
Image: A staff, with leaves, and slightly taller than the character is held erect with both
hands and admired. Alternatively, a young princess tends a burnt offering at a sacrificial
altar, turning the beast with her wand so that its tip has caught fire. She samples the meat
to get it right, not sacrilegiously, for hers are a people of fire: divinity is within, but
wanting out. Alternatively, she could be carrying a torch into a place that clearly shows
promise of discovery. The Knapp-Hall deck has an insightful image of the Princess (as
Page) planting a wand in the ground, as a tree cutting, looking ahead to later in her life.
She is sometimes portrayed delivering news or messages, as announcements or

proclamations.
Each Princess has a fundamental project in personal development. For the Princess of
Wands, it’s the discovery of who she is and what she seems born to do best. This is
intimately connected to what excites her or whets her appetite. We create our purpose out
of our inclinations. The search is for her gifts, her passions or her calling, and she finds
them in the things that ignite her or bring her most fully to life. As the earthy part of fire,
she is fuel and the search for fuel. This concerns the getting and using of appropriate
combustibles. It’s only an illusion that fuel is something other than energy that’s
awaiting liberation. Fuel is locked-up light, and not less light. And it’s moving slowly
enough now that we can think about what to do with it. Fuel can also be helpful
information, just waiting to be discovered in the things that interest us, or things that help
us to flourish or thrive. When things go right, we learn to be attracted to the right
combustible substance.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 27, Hungry Mouth or Corners of the Mouth, develops the
same fuel metaphor as a question of diet and nutrition, explicitly including our cultural
sustenance and carefulness for the words that we use and expose ourselves to. We build
ourselves out of these resources, and the light we give back comes from here. We learn a
right dependence on such sources. The food metaphor also means learning how to hunger
effectively, to feed real hungers instead of becoming all appetite and hungering after
things we are told to need. Back when it was legal to experiment on human babies, one
batch was given a free choice of diet, twenty little bowls to pick from, with no praise or
scolding for choices. It wasn’t long until their little baby bodies told them what they
needed. We just need to learn to heed our original natures and hungers. We can then ask
something like this of public education: what could take something as insatiably hungry
as a young human mind and make it lose its appetite for learning? Being told to stop
playing around? Serious learning will follow from a perception of personal relevance.
The value of deferred gratification will become clear enough in time. Teaching discipline
is relatively irrelevant to a real education. Making students hungry is far more useful,
catching them on fire, helping them find the on-switch or driving purpose.
The Princess of Wands is on the lookout for sources of nourishment and inspiration
that come the closest to what she discovers of her nature. She is a bit of a huntress here,
wanting direction or prey, to feed what she wants to be or become. She might try on extra
identities, or mistake valid experiences for valid realities. While she may seem endlessly
curious and experimental in search of experiences that light her up, she is not looking to
digress or wander too far from who she is at heart. Given a choice, she would likely
prefer to burn steadily, with reliable enthusiasms, rather than flicker and sputter as
excitements come and go. Nonetheless, burning is still about liberation from the solid
state of things. She wants a charge, motive power, and arousal, and that could even mean
wanting some drama in her life. In fact, drama, theatrics, role playing, and trying on new
identities might become important stimuli. “From a little spark may burst a flame” Dante.
Thus she may also experiment with different cognitive and affective states and their
sources.
Sometimes the flame will take on the nature of the fuel that it consumes, so that it pays
to learn the right appetites. Hence the phrase from cybernetics: garbage in, garbage out.
The noble character wants real substance to burn, consistent resources to feed a reliable
flame. This suggests developing some care early on for higher quality sources, which
might be inconsistent with a still-underdeveloped sense of identity or purpose. Without
knowing what is relevant to what, it might be hard to choose an interest other than by
how this lights us up, or an even more superficial appeal. It’s by trial and error that we
discovers what empowers us. For this reason we need to be free to make errors. This is a
search for personal purpose, something rewarding to do with our lives, our real wants.
Which of the two wolves do we feed? Higher purpose, a life serving forces greater than
ourselves, comes later than this, if it even comes at all.
Key Words:
anticipation, appetite, ardor, arousal, avidity, challenge, character, choosing an interest,

core, curiosity, diet, earnestness, education, encouragement, endowment, enthusiasm,
excitability, excitement, experiment, exploration, food, fuel, gifts, heart, heartiness,
hungers, huntress of power, identity, individuality, inspiration, interest, intrinsic nature,
kindling, lighting up, meaning, metabolism, motivations, novelty, nutrition, opportunism,
palate, passion, personal discovery, personal growth, potential energy, procurement,
predilection, prospects, provision, purpose, recourse, relevance, reliable sourcing,
resource, resourcefulness, right dependence, self-betterment, self-discovery, sampling,
sources, specialness, specialty, standards, stimulation, stirrings, subsistence, substance,
sustenance, talent, temper, temperament, trying out sources, what we feed on, wonder,
yearning, zeal.

adopting weak values, bad information or intelligence, disinterestedness, embellishment,
fad diets, false premises, fickleness, getting excited in error, ignition failure, fickleness,
impatience, inconsistency, indecision, omnivorousness, randomness in diet, reluctance,
restlessness, rumor, subverted appetite, tedium, trust betrayed.
Components:
The Earthy part of Fire. Sources of metabolic nourishment and heat. Fuel, food, kindling,
raw material. Wants grounded, consistent or reliable sources of energy. The “chemical
attraction of the combustible substance” (Crowley).
Correspondences:
Astrology: Caput Draconis in Fire Signs and Houses. A basic drive to learn who we are,
what we want and what sets us on fire. Seeking our core identity, lessons that are not
extraneous to our original nature.
Qabalah: Not a very useful source of ideas here.
Yijing: Gua 27, Yi, Hungry Mouth, Corners of the Mouth. Da Xiang: Zhen (Wands)
below, Gen (Princess) above; “Beneath the mountain is thunder. Hungry mouth. The
young noble is careful with words and expressions and moderate in drinking and eating.”
Meeting needs, self-reliance, diet, selecting input for output. “Persistence is promising.
Study the hungers, from searching to feeding.” Fostering health and strength of character.
Choices of menus, not just choices from the menu. Good taste. Starving the false and
nourishing the true.
Prince of Wands
Prince of the Chariot of Fire
Adventure, Exploration, Circulation, Mission
Image: A young prince sets out from home on horseback, bearing his staff high. With
clothes still fresh and his horse still prancing, he crosses the stream bounding his familiar
turf. His haste is of youthful exuberance. He is not on a warlike mission, but he could
unhorse you with his staff if you stood in his way. His task is to transform what he can of
the world into personal experience, to build a curriculum vitae.
The Prince of Wands is the quintessential man on fire. He is normally depicted on a

mission or journey, and moving quickly, as though having much ground yet to cover. Our
knight errant is on multiple adventures, more of a treasure hunt than a specific quest. As a
prince, he is an emissary. He is exploring realms over which he may one day be lord or
statesman. These are lands far afield from the palace. He needs to import knowledge of
the unfamiliar, since information is also access to the energy he will one day be using to
rule his domain. His gain here can be had in two ways: the first is in what he brings
home, even if only wisdom or experience. A second kind of gain increases his alertness
to the signals. This may have a tendency to magnify or exaggerate the importance of his
experience. Exposure to the distant and strange will alert him to signs that others don’t
notice. Lest this all go to his head, he should remember that the point of his future
dominion is service to his domain and his people.
As discussed for the princes in general, his task is to explore out to the boundaries of
his home realm, and a little beyond, just to be sure. This can mean going too far, which is
perhaps what youth is for as well. He might learn that when fire grabs indiscriminately at
fuel, it tends to draw the firefighters. But the elsewhere and the beyond cannot and should
not be resisted. Such boundless energy is often out of bounds just by definition. For the
element of fire, we need to go where the fuel is, to the fresh and novel experience. While
the exploration may express an abundance of energy, this is not really activity for its own
sake. The point is personal growth, recognized or not. Castaneda might call him a hunter
of power (like the Princess), and power must move around to meet its opportunities. He
may act quickly to seize chances and press others into his service, sometimes seeming
thoughtless or blunt. He may need lots of refueling. And he may have trouble resting
until he is halfway burned out.
The Prince is exploring his options and choices by first-hand expedition, instead of by
letters or schooling. This is not to say that hearing a good story cannot be a first-hand
experience. And look at all that Alexander the Great learned in school. But this is a
matriculation into the school of hard knocks. He is learning the reins with actual horses,
not his hobby horses. Multiple points of view are learned from multiple points of vantage,
by going there and doing that. Foreign devils may become human beings. His options,
when grown, will be many, like the wardrobe of a theater, because he will have to play
many parts, even while being himself. And lots of the costumes he finds may not get used
but once. Much will be abandoned or forgotten. Steadiness and follow through not his
strong suit.
The Prince gets lots of lively adjectives, starting with ardent and energetic. Hurried is
often the case, impulsive and excitable too. Hasty and impetuous might be too often true.
Although these are different words, peremptory and preemptive might both apply here.
There are also words like upbeat, outgoing, and exuberant, for when he is doing it right.
He is seen as ready to go or to act right now, like a rescue worker or a first responder on
call. Thus moving quickly is not always hasty: it's merely responsive. He may seem to be
led by opportunities rather than led from within, and this can sometimes look like being
misguided. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 42, Increasing, reaching out to take what we
can of what the world is offering, broadening life experience, and receiving generously.
He may be inclined to not think things through, and therefore be subjected to risk and
surprise. Going to where the action is often means acting on incomplete information, in
order to get there at all. If he knew all about what he was exploring, it would not be the
unknown and it might not keep him excited. This doesn’t mean he needs to reinvent fire,
however: he can still watch for cues and clues left by other young princes before him. Of
course it’s true that a clearly marked mission might make his success more probable, but
those are for those he will one day assign missions to.
Key Words:
abandon, advance, adventure, affordances, alertness, alternatives, ambition, amplification,
augmenting, boldly going, challenge, circulation, clues and cues, collecting stories,
curiosity, daring, departure, discovery, drama, eagerness, emigration, energetics, envoy,
exaggeration, expanded horizons, expansion, expedition, exploits, exploration, extension,
exteriorization, exuberance, farther frontiers, feedforward for feedback, fervor, getting
experienced, going far afield, hazarding, hurry, impulse, impulsiveness, individuation,
insistence, intensity, invitations, journey, knight errant, learning multiple points of view,
learning to appreciate, leverage, on a mission, opportunism, options, the path perilous,
Phaeton, promptings, promptness, prospects, quest, responsiveness, restlessness, roles
and costumes, seeking novelty, self-development, suddenness, taking advantage, the
unknown, treasure hunt, unending journey, urgency and urges, transit, variation,
venturing, vistas, wanderlust, wildfire, windfall.

attention deficit, burnout, crossing a hard line, discontinuity, distractedness, distraction,
doldrums (a place without fuel), doubtlessness, dreamer, excesses, exploitation, fantasy,
flightiness, going nowhere fast, going too far, hot temper, impatience, impetuousness,
impulsiveness, interruption, irresponsibility, overextension, precipitate action, premature
ambition, rashness, scatteredness, trespass, unexpected changes.
Components:
The Airy part of Fire. The gaseous fluidity of fire, as seen in the flame dancing across the
log, hunting up the flammable gases. Movement to where the fuel or ignition is. More of
a wildfire than a controlled burn, changing quickly, but the heat output is still steady.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Leo Ascending, as the Fixed Fire sign, Ruler: Sol. Abundant energy, the
relentless Sun, sport and play. Exteriorization, release from self-containment, internal
pressure to be more in order to burn more or give more. Exuberance, drama, enthusiasm,
excessiveness, exaggeration.
Yijing: Gua 42, Yi, Increasing, Increase. Da Xiang: Zhen (Wands) below, Xun (Prince)
above; “The wind and the thunder. Increasing. The young noble, when seeing the good,
as a rule, makes improvements; when having transgressed, as a rule, makes corrections.”
Receiving generously, taking well, using the gifts, blessings to count. Extension,
diversification, broadening, enrichment, enhancements, windfalls, gifts. “Worthwhile to
have somewhere to go. Worthwhile to cross the great stream.” A world of information
and experience is out there for the taking.
Queen of Wands
Queen of the Thrones of Flame
Concert, Empowerment, Versatility, Tracking
Image: An attractive queen, seated on a throne and holding a staff, leans forward with
a look composed of curiosity, enthusiasm, and skepticism, as if wanting to be persuaded
to support a good business, cultural, or art proposal. A sunflower suggests tropism, a
spontaneous turning towards light and energy, and a black cat, familiarity.
The Queen of Wands might sense a meaningfulness inherent in her experiences that
transcends that of the individual actors and favors interrelationship. Consequently, her
interest is in circulating the fire, in sharing experience and projects, and in developing a
sense of a greater identity with multiple living parts. She gets her work done by enlisting
help and engaging her subjects. She may wait a short while to give her consent to these
experiences and projects, to have some assurance of their meaning or worth. She is noble
and has her standards. She is an independent or liberated sort, but she has a peculiar form
of self-directedness that takes direction from the world around her. She will take on the
energy of what moves her. She is able to change who she truly is without pretending. She
knows the importance of synergy. Her identity is inextricable from her participation in
life and she can even become the cause she supports. She will take guidance, but in an
opportunistic way. She will take the lead, but in a way that obeys natural law, follows the
movements of the world around her, and takes direction from an ethical compass. Being
human, she may be deceived on occasion or be subject to charismatic actors. Too little
pre-selection for the worth of an endeavor might lead to overextension, or dabbling. If a
habit is made of this, the wrong kind of cynicism develops.
She is attractive, magnetic, and approachable when her standards can be met. She can
be a good sponsor or underwriter, if the pitch for the cause is persuasive enough. She
needs to be both drawn and invited to participate in a project, then in turn, she can draw
upon and invite some considerable resources into the work. Once excited into motion she
can move with some authority, but what may appear to be an intuitive decisiveness and
spontaneity is in actuality an alert sense of adaptive responsiveness. She is not reticent or
shy. The Yijing counterpart, Gua 17, Following, develops the contrast between following
willingly or willfully and following blindly or passively. The image is thunder in the lake,
the pulse in the blood, the rhythm of things, to be sensed and moved along with. This
Queen follows like a tracker, or even a bounty hunter. She tracks what is going on in her
world. Ultimately she is more of a finder than a seeker. She is aware of where she is
going and her pursuits are purposeful. It takes courage to be like this. She is not the type
of lady to stay down, or in the kitchen. As a companion, she is a well-trained hetaera,
self-assured and self-possessed. Nobility follows her loyally, wherever she might choose
to go. Her sympathies are a resonance with the world.
The Queen of Wands is proactively adaptive, practicing fitness by intent, taking fitness
in the Spencerian or Darwinian sense of a skillful versatility. She can change who she is
without pretending, and what she wants has no need to be constant. That’s just a regular,
feminine thing, but it helps her to move with the energy that’s in circulation. She can best
maintain concentration if the object of her focus is moving. While the Prince wanted to
explore the extents of his realm of experience, the Queen wants the permutations of its
applicability, to try the wisdom out and spread the experience around, to experiment and
permute, to hybridize the elements of her culture. She is an artist herself in some way,
and she supports the arts. To persuade her, one gets her enthused instead of convinced.
She is genuinely interested in others, passionate when inspired, and generous for a good
cause. But she is not selfless, and she might require much persuasion in terms of
enlightened self-interest, even if hers is a larger idea of self that includes her whole realm.
She still likes to be at the center of the hive. It’s those noble standards again. Her love and
respect might be somewhat conditioned on worth, but the genuine thing is requited. She
is a friend of higher culture.
She likes to be involved, whether this be down deep in the work, in the rhythms and
the composition, or above it like a conductor, coordinating the parts of the effort.
Whether as active ingredient or catalyst, she likes being close to the heart and the pulse of
things, ever ambitious to maximize throughput, so that benefits are shared or spread
around.
Key Words:
accessibility, accord, adaptable identity, advocate, alliance, approval, assent, assistance,
attending, attraction, attunement, cahoots, channel, charity, charm, clues, circulation,
coalition, collaboration, colorfulness, communitarian, compassion, concert, concord,
conduit, confidence, connectedness, connections, consent, consideration, contagion,
contribution, daring, discovery, empowerment, endowment, enthusiasm, experiment,
facilitator, flame spread, huntress, incentive, interest, interrelation, involvement, leading
from behind, liveliness, magnetism, participation, passion, patroness, persuasion, pulse,
pursuit, rabble rousing, resourcefulness, responsiveness, self-assurance, sharing, sincerity,
sponsorship, sympathy, synchronization, taking part, tracking, transmission, tropism,
underwriter, versatility, vibrancy, warmth, willingness.

capitulation, codependency, cynicism overgrown, distrustful, too easily deceived, fickle,
golden opportunity slips by, impatience with the opposition, inner confidence needs
external stimulation, instability, mistrust based on experience, overcommitted with
enthusiasms, recklessness, shallowness, stubbornness in error, volatility.
Components:
The Watery part of Fire. The fluidity and the dance of fire’s movement and circulation,
apparently spontaneous and chaotic, but in obedience to natural law. The colorfulness of
experience. The spreading out or contagion of flame.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sagittarius Ascending, as the Mutable Fire sign, Ruler: Jupiter. Curious and
exploratory, outgoing, broadening horizons of action and experimentation. Generous and
charitable with higher good in mind. Enjoys being influential and inspirational, moving
and colorful.
Yijing: Gua 17, Sui, Following, Adapting. Da Xiang: Zhen (Wands) below, Dui (Queen)
above; “Within the pool there is thunder. Following. The young noble, approaching
nightfall, goes indoors for refreshment and relaxation.” Thunder in the lake is a pulse to
be taken up or be moved with. “Following. Most fulfilling. Worthwhile to be dedicated,
not a mistake.” Distinctions are drawn between willfully or willingly following, tracking
for example, and blindly following, without a sense of self-direction.
King of Wands
Lord of the Flame and the Lightning, King of the Spirits of Fire
Independence, Maturity, Self-Possession, Sovereignty
Image: A fiery-eyed king is seated on his throne with his power staff in hand, granting
the reader audience. He seems intensely calm, attentive, fully present, and self-assured,
and at the same time, animated and passionate. He is just as eager to support a worthy
cause as to put an end to a bad one. He is open minded and will hear you out, as long as
you’re making sense, and if you can stay succinct and on point. You can see power in his
stillness.
The King of Wands is the Prince all grown up and seasoned now, and come home to
stay more put. His time as a prince on the move has served him well, as he built a broad
understanding out of narrow, specific lessons. He likes having his lessons already
learned, and might even know he’s not done with this yet. He now sees several sides of
an issue, which helps when serving as judge. What wisdom this life has taught him has
begun to look like intuitive wisdom, but despite all that life itself has learned and passed
through the genes, one is not born a sage or an elder. The identity that we evolve is
confirmed, or scaled back, and polished by experience until it seems second nature.
Sometimes we are even made stronger by what has failed to destroy us. The King should
know his mind fairly well by now, and that his own best interest is the same as his
domain’s. Empowering his people also serves him well. One of his more challenging
lessons is learning to learn second-hand. The fact that none are allowed by right to tell
him what to do doesn’t obscure the fact that it’s most embarrassing to make public
mistakes that could have been avoided. It’s not always right to read the instructions or ask
for directions, but reading the signs that say when we ought to is often a useful skill. So
the King has lived and learned, with much beneath and behind him now, and this is what
has become of him, with his choices based on his precedents. But he is now capable of
truly original ideas and plans, seeming to arise out of intuition.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 51, Arousal, emphasizes the development of maturity and
self-possession. These give us a mastery over our impulses, and particularly, our
tendency to react to a stimulus instead of responding. We learn what starts and startles us.
This is a King we have here, or a natural aristocrat, an alpha male, born to lead, a hunter
of power who can turn nearly any situation to his advantage. He knows when and how to
act when others only cower. Taking charge is what he does. When provoked, he is swift
to respond, without the predictability of a reflex. High energy is his element, and this is
his version of grace. As such, it serves him well to know the difference between action
and reaction, between response and reflex, between impetus and impetuousness, between
impulse and impulsiveness. If he needs just a moment for this, he can take it: this is the
wiser side of deliberate. And if he seems composed and dispassionate, just be aware that
control is not the end of his passion.
Having viable visions are best, and this means keeping one’s eyes on the road ahead.
Being headstrong works best when the head in question holds senses and reason. Being
independent works best when we can independently seek out the help that we need, or
delegate those tasks that it makes little sense for us to do by ourselves. Self-starters will
function best when they know the right place to start from. A great leader will want to be
surrounded by talent, even by those with more skill than his own. To be proactive and
autonomous is not about not seeking feedback or counsel. Conviction and firmness are
traits to be much admired, except when we are deluded or wrong. The flexibility we need
in this case is our lifelong education. It isn’t vacillating, flip-flopping, or waffling. And it
takes a lot of nobility and dignity to do this, to back up and think twice. When you can’t
still learn, it’s maladaptive. This is when pride makes us fools.
It takes a lot to learn competence, more than most people have. Another of the great
alpha challenges is how to bring out the best in the betas, something good in the gammas,
and anything at all in the deltas. But frustration must be seen as reaction for an alpha who
would be a good leader. He cannot be impatient with the slow-moving folk or bothered
by the slow-witted. And there is really only one great way to compel them: to lead by
compelling example. And with regard to authority, that is a thing for authors, not readers.
Key Words:
ability under stress, adept, ambition, aplomb, arousal, assertion, assurance, authority,
autocracy, autonomy, clout, cogency, command, compelling example, competence,
composure, confidence, conviction, decisiveness, demands, dignity, dominance, drive,
effectiveness, empowerment, executive, exemplar, experience, fierceness, fire with
purpose, firmness, grasp, grip, immediacy, impetus, impulse control, independence,
initiative, integrity, invigoration, leadership by example, mandate, mastery, maturity,
motivation, nobility, patriarch, poise, principle, probity, quickening, resolve, response
ability, responsibility, sangfroid, self-directedness, self-discipline, self-mastery, self-
possession, self-starting, sovereignty, spiritedness, starting, suddenness, taking charge,
virility, volitional maturity, willfulness.

aggression, arrogance, arrogation, authoritarianism, autocracy, blind impulse, bravado,
despotism, egomania, excessive principle, exaggeration, false start, harsh criticism,
imposition, impatience, impulsiveness, insensitivity, intolerance, overconfidence, overly-
opinioned, overreaction, rashness, ruthlessness, stubbornness, tactlessness, tunnel vision,
tyranny, weak follow through.
Components:
The Fiery part of Fire. Lightning and thunder, the fiery expression of fire, a short-lived
burst of powerful energy. The Golden Dawn stressed the action in the short term, or the
fleetingness of this character's influence, but simple and single acts can have ongoing and
lasting effects and repercussions that we must take responsibility to manage.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Aries Ascending, as the Cardinal Fire sign, Ruler: Mars. Characterized by
independence, ambition, assertion, aggression, decisiveness. Self-motivated, headstrong,
competitive. Short attention span, so not great with follow-through, but also not inlined to
hold resentments.
Yijing: Gua 51, Zhen, Arousal, the Arousing, Shock. Da Xiang: Zhen (Wands) below,
Zhen (King) above; “Resounding thunder. Arousal. The young noble uses fear and alarm
to adjust and examine.” Learning from repercussions. “Shock brings fear and alarm, and
mirthful words and echoing laughter. The thunder startles for a hundred li around. But do
not let drop the ladle of sacred wine.” Life experience brings increasing self-mastery. We
live and learn. Impulse control and the development of response over reaction.
Cups
Ace of Cups
Root of the Powers of Water
Openness, Worthiness, Availability, Security
Image: A chalice, in a man's hand, is tipped slightly towards the viewer, exposing a
cup half filled with what might be water, wine, or blood. There is a suggestion in this
shape of the human female pudenda. Many cards and authors imply that the cup is the
holy grail and would depict it as ornate. If you wish to use this image of a sacrament here,
see ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ and choose wisely. But we don’t need this
magic pretend blood to commune with the sacred. We merely need to be open, sincere,
and worthy. An alternative image could depict a cup that’s just beginning to be filled in a
Japanese tea ceremony.
As discussed in the introduction to the Suits, the Cup is not the water. The Ace of Cups
is not affect, feeling, or emotion. It is our readiness for these, the place we have made for
them, and our worthiness, or our sense of worthiness, as well. Without this, the liquid is
just a spill. The card speaks to the process of opening up, to how we make room within
ourselves for authentic and heartfelt experiences with others, or opening to our own inner
lives, or to the natural world. This is what starts the flow. It’s our readiness to both give
and receive, to respond to gifts, to meet someone new, to acknowledge a muse, to let
ourselves be stirred. This is about precursors or preconditions to genuine feeling.
Muju wrote: “An inquisitive professor once visited Nan-In to pay his respects, but he
could hardly bring himself to stop talking. Nan-In served him tea, pouring the cup full
and not stopping. ‘It is overfull,’ cried the professor, ‘no more will go in!’ ‘Like this
cup,’ said Nan-In, ‘you are full of your opinions and speculations. I cannot show you
Zen unless you first empty your cup.’”
Just like at home in the kitchen, we want to put our fresh beverage into a clean, empty
cup. Cleanliness here is emotional clarity, a freedom from any of the undesirable residue
from our past experience, from our residual sentiments and resentments. Just about any
sentiment is legitimate once: it’s when we pummel ourselves with the same emotions
over and over again that we jam up our opportunities for fresh experience that respects
what we are facing. Several authors list fulfillment as a meaning for this card, but it isn’t,
yet. The meaning is closer to full-empty-ment, not being so full of ourselves that we
cannot make room for the fullness we want from the world. This emptiness is capacity: a
capacity for enjoyment, for love, for rewarding experience, for receiving new gifts and
blessings, for feeling and emotion in general. The Ace of Cups represents a new new
sensitivity, or a sensitization, a readiness to feel. The analog in the plant kingdom, of
course, is the open flower, ready for pollination.
The astrological correlation of this card to Saturn in Water signs underscores the big
challenges we have in relaxing our inhibitions and opening ourselves up. While someone
with this configuration might be said to define themselves in terms of their sensitivity or
their capacity to feel, this same sensitivity can also lead to damage, overexposure, and
subsequent desensitization. Our capacity for openness is a function of our wounds as well
as our wants. The fear of our being hurt again, mistrust from having our trust betrayed,
self-doubts that are often deserved because of our boneheaded mistakes, all of these can
shut down our willingness to receive the new. Saturn ‘rules’ the skin, the metaphorical
boundary where we receive our wounds. But there is nothing in the rules that says that
the part of our identity that is symbolically represented by Saturn needs to play the victim
or martyr. If we are to succeed in life, this part of us needs to learn mastery of these fears
and doubts, to learn the worth of vulnerability and to keep coming back for more. We are
not, however, avoiding that old definition of insanity here: we make different mistakes
next time.
Security and insecurity are also the primary theme of the Yijing counterpart, Gua 45,
Collectedness or Gathering Together. The vessel here is the reservoir or pond, raised
above the earth, requiring that its banks be maintained so that the water doesn’t leak out.
There is also an emphasis in the text of the social aspects of security, how we congregate
wanting connection, and attain comfort levels in our safe environments and sanctuaries,
allowing us to open up. There is much crying and sighing depicted in the Yijing’s text.
We prepare the place for our water and fulfillment follows when we are ready. We seem
to like a little insurance beforehand.
The Ace of Cups can be related to four exalted states of sentient awareness described
in Buddhism as the Brahmaviharas or Abodes of Brahma. These largely concern our
better social relationships, which tend to dominate our affective states. Metta is loving-
kindness or good will; karuna is compassion or sympathy, but not fellow-suffering;
mudita is a sympathetic gladness in the well-being or success of another; and upekkha is
equilibrium or equanimity. At least four more pertinent states can be added here: khama,
forgiveness; katannuta, gratitude or thankfulness; garava, reverence, deep respect or a
sense of the sacred; and khanti, patience. All eight of theses states show an openness of
the heart, or a readiness to accept, that characterizes this card.
Key Words:
acceptance, appreciation, afference, assurance, attunement, availability, care, caution,
cheerfulness, cleansing, collectedness, communion, confidence, connecting, consecration,
contentment, convocation, disponsibilité, enjoyment, esteem, faith, fertility, forgiving,
fountainhead, gift, gratitude, emotional healing, invitation, longing, open heart, opening
up, openness, overflow, permission, preparation, preparedness, purification, readiness,
receiving, receptacle, receptivity, renewal, reservoir, responsiveness, risk, sacrament,
sanction, sanctity, securing, security, seeking fulfillment, sensitivity, sensitization,
sincerity, softening, surrounding, susceptibility, tenderness, threshold, trust, upwelling,
vulnerability, welcoming, wellness, willingness, worthiness.

anhedonia, anxiety, blocked emotion, closed off, craving, false heart, fearfulness, forced
joy, full of oneself, guilt, half-heartedness, insecurity, mistrust, negative self-image,
numbness, rancor, repression, resentment (re-sentiment), self-abasement, self-doubt, self-
loathing, shame, sterility, suppression, unearned sense of self-worth.
Components:
Ace plus Cups. Readiness to open up within and into the world of affect, to give reign to
the feelings and emotions, and the comfort level needed to do this. Work on precursors to
feeling, finding the source or wellspring of love or other genuine feeling.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Saturn in Water Signs and Houses. Issues related to opening up the feelings,
sensitivity and sensitization. We can define ourselves as a feeling being if wounds and
traumas don’t lead to emotional shut down.
Qabalah: Kether in Briah. The fountainhead or source of sentience, opening up the heart,
understanding with feeling, readiness to feel and for expression of feeling.
Yijing: Gua 45, Cui, Collectedness, Gathering Together. Da Xiang: Kun (Ace) below, Dui
(Cups) above; “The pond is raised above the earth. Collectedness. The young noble puts
aside weapons and instruments, guarding against unreadiness.” An elevated pond requires
embankments, shoring up, and maintenance to hold the water. Security, freedom from
insecurities, preparedness, readiness, sanctuary. “Fulfillment. The sovereign approaches
his temple. Rewarding to encounter a mature human being, making an offering.
Worthwhile to be dedicated. To offer great sacrifices is promising. Worthwhile to have
somewhere to go.” There is much weeping and emotion in some of line texts. Pulling and
holding yourself together. Composure, dignity. Congregating with others for comfort.
Two of Cups
Avowal, Promise, Intention, Affirmation
Image: A young couple, facing each other with intense-but-loving eye contact, toast to
a chosen future together. The scene is one of promise, avowal, and depth of commitment,
out of a foresighted present into a chosen future. Its persistence is in large part a function
of the original sincerity of their avowals. Salud. They are usually seen toasting this future
together beneath the Caduceus of Hermes. That much makes sense. There is a sanctity to
these vows, even though any implied contract here may have been negotiated with some
quid pro quo. The necessity of capping this Caduceus with a winged lion’s head isn't as
clear, and might even be dismissed as gratuitous.
While nearly everybody who writes about this card speaks first of the love between
two people (or an avowal of continued love), we need to remember that this card can as
easily pop up in questions about business or broken plumbing. The vignette in the RWS
deck obscures a far more general meaning, much as it does in the Trump of the Lovers.
Recall that the Two is a stretching of the point, giving it a direction, a line, or a vector, or
a contrast between earlier and later states, and that Cups represent affective states, shaped
feelings or emotions. This card, then, is about making feelings last and go somewhere on
purpose, an emotional connection either with a person or with a hoped-for result,
changing, if possible, only for the better. The couple exchanging vows is one very good
exemplar of this core meaning, but it’s not the only one, and even here, Crowley’s phrase
“love under will” or love with some direction to it, is more to the point than simply love.
It’s feeling or attractive force joined with purpose and permission. This is honest and
conscious love, something elective, or chosen, not something fallen into. This is not a
case of “the heart wants what it wants and can’t help it.”
It’s water’s nature to fluctuate, often making the maintenance or even continuity of an
affective state something of a challenge. While many will argue that since ups and downs
are necessary, each to contrast the other, then they must be experienced in equal intensity
and duration. But this is platitude, and suffering is not necessary to happiness. Neither
does happiness require an attachment to something more stable. It’s often simply a matter
of setting aside our complaints and deciding what we want, combined with a sense of
gratitude for whatever we have at the moment, and patience with the pace of the rest of
the parade. To make a feeling or emotion last in an unchanging way is perhaps a little
deluded, but we might think of this as a stream that we can make more steady and reliable
with better intentions and attitudes. Any extended feelings will have to come to terms
with the changes that time has to offer.
Besides duration and intensity, we also have choices of quality. We want worthy and
meaningful states, hearts full of respect and appreciation, love and trust, comfort and
enthusiasm. It’s OK to be conditional here, to set conditions like these. We want to grow
into a future where such states come more often and stay longer. And we want to have the
times that lie between these to show some improvement as well. We tend to think of our
feelings and emotions as things that happen to us. Many somehow think it’s inauthentic
to show some self-control or management here. Comes love, nothing can be done? That’s
largely a way of fooling ourselves, particularly into proceeding with extramarital affairs.
The vector that should be our greatest concern here is between our present and future
selves. How much quality and worth do we wish to prepare for, and are we ready to work
on the values we need to attract ourselves in the better directions. The Yijing counterpart,
Gua 05, Anticipation or Waiting, concentrates on the things we might do while waiting
for our real lives to begin, on maximizing the meanwhile, which will eventually include
all of our moments. It will take more work than wishing to have the fullest life, and the
work needs something to want. We could make better use of our emptiness here by not
filling up on random experience. We may want to guard some gates and even lock some
doors. Being reconciled or resigned to host any strange thing that comes our way is a big
part of our emotional confusion, and the main reason we get knocked so far sideways
when we at last cross the path that we should have been on.
Lastly, there is the great challenge of doing all of this work with someone else as a
partner. Life has evolved some useful tricks to help get us started here, like oxytocin and
dopamine, to blind us to each other's flaws and faults for a sufficient amount of time,
until it’s too late to just walk away. We have until these begin to wear off to have built a
more lasting foundation, not just with promises and vows, but with meaning and
sincerity, common ground and purpose, trust and support, sacrifice and conciliation.
These must be enough to challenge and defy all reason. This is in hope of something
more than sum of the parts, why two or more are gathered.
Key Words:
affection, affective intention, affinity, affirmation, agreement, anticipation, aspiration,
assumption, attraction, avowal, balance, basis of trust, bond, commitment, communion,
conciliation, confidence, confirmation, connection, consecration, constancy, cooperation,
coupling, covenant, declaration, dedication, determined states, devotedness, devotion,
earnestness, elective affinities, encounter, endurance, engagement, equal partnership,
exchange, expectancy, hope, intention, long-term commitment, love, love under will,
loyalty, mutuality, oath, pact, patience, pledge, predetermination, presentiment, promise,
promising a future, prospect, purpose, reciprocity, recognition of an equal, reconciliation,
reflection, relationship, resolve, respect, right intention, sincerity, standards for feelings,
steadfastness, steady stream, support, surety, sympathy, tests of time, toast ( na zdorovie,
salud), troth, trust, upholding an oath, validation, valuing, vow, intelligence applied to
feeling, work of love.

affect at cross-purposes, betrayal, breach of promise, broken trust, denial, dissonance,
distraction, doubt, estrangement, falseness, fickleness, impatience, infidelity, intolerance,
misdirection, misunderstanding, seduction, troubled relationship, unenlightened self-
interest,
Components:
Two plus Cups. Giving a focus or direction to affect. Giving an aim or a higher purpose
to feeling and emotion. Taking responsibility for feeling and intending a higher quality,
elevating the standards. Being true, staying true.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Uranus in Water Signs and Houses. Uranus, as a path of power and higher
purpose, has its reputation for radical discontinuity because most people come at theirs
sideways instead of in alignment. They get knocked sideways. Uranus in Water elevates
feeling and emotion as guides worthy of persistence and consistency, an avowal to hold
true. Epicurean standards in pleasure and happiness (eudaemonia).
Qabalah: Chokmah in Briah. Wisdom or intelligence applied to the world that always
flows and changes. Staying a course. Seeking direction from what sensitivity tells us and
and reinforcing that with assent.
Yijing: Gua 05, Xu, Anticipation, Waiting. Da Xiang: Qian (2) below, Kan (Cups) above;
“The clouds rise into the sky. Anticipation. The young noble takes refreshment and
sustenance with peace of mind and cheer.” The clouds rise into the sky. The satisfactions
of needs and wants are delayed, pushed back to some future time, leaving the challenge
of maximizing the meanwhile, maintaining a useful attitude or worthwhile, though
temporary, substitutes. “Be true. Honor fulfillment. Persistence is timely. Worthwhile to
cross the great stream.” Crossing a stream is best done before the floods come.
Three of Cups
Affiliation, Community, Commonality, Confluence
Image: Three women, in festive attire and mood, celebrate their friendship in the midst
of a garden, toasting with cups held high. This could be a harvest celebration. The RWS
image appears borrowed from Sandro Botticelli's Three Graces, or Charities (Thaleia,
Aglaia, and Euphrosyne) but they are given cups. A modification might show three races
here: black, white and Asian.
The Three of Cups is first of all the sharing of fellow feeling, and particularly between
related individuals (however distantly) on common ground. This is our extended family,
which only for the wisest and most understanding among us includes all of life on Earth.
This is our fraternity, or sorority, our in-group, of whatever size. It’s where our feelings
feel belonging. Thought and judgment, planning and artifice, rules and regulations are all
still relatively absent here. Effective spontaneity is the only conditionality. Holding is
done with the open hand. When we do impose order on top of this, it seems diminished.
Clearly, the larger the group, the more the intimate social affections are challenged and
the more trust will give way to precaution. As such, most of our human clubs and
conventions are limited or parochial in scale, and define themselves at least in part by the
kind of folk they are not. We cut ourselves off in this way from the fuller effects of this
card, but at least within the circles we draw we get to know a liberality of feeling and get
a taste of what we could be in a better world.
The Yijing’s counterpart, Gua 08, Belonging or Holding Together, depicts water spread
out over the earth, with the water being naturally or spontaneously drawn to the lowest or
humblest place. This anticipates the Daojia image of confluence: the hundred tributary
streams paying tribute or making con-tributions to the humblest state. There is neither
structure nor force involved here in all of this movement. This is simply gravity and
water's surface tension, and might be likened to the cohesive tendencies of familial and
familiar relationships. And it might also be applied to holding social institutions together
without need of excessive artifice. We emphasize what the Lakota Sioux call in prayer:
mitakuye oyasin, all our relations.
The standards of quality we have here are organic and spontaneous. We are following
our bliss and our hearts, guided by attraction, but there is a real hazard here in being too
unconditional with our affections and falling in with the wrong crowd, of adopting and
being adopted by what might be called inferior people. Commonness and commonality,
even averageness or normalcy, can drag us down to our lowest common denominators.
Common ground, origin, interest, or cause is a low standard, not a high one, an inclusive
principle, not a noble cause. There is more to the big picture than what like minds can
agree on. This should be remembered when we want to turn the human norm into a god
or political leader. It flies in the face of the painful half of evolution on earth, the half that
makes sure it all works: selection. Our interrelatedness has a big place in the life of
enlightened and sentient beings, but ultimately the highest and best use of our humility is
still, paradoxically, to elevate ourselves.
Transcending the person, getting beyond the person, or getting over the person, may be
regarded as one of the main goals here. Transpersonal psychology is concerned with
expanding the sense of identity beyond the individual and embracing greater realities, the
human family, the web of life, the starry cosmos evolving to study itself, and exploring
our more distant horizons, from the depths of experienced time up to the higher orders of
trans-human awareness. But having the experience that proves to you once and for all
that ‘we are all one and interconnected’ is not a spiritual attainment, nor is it seeing the
whole of reality. It is merely a little piece of firm ground to stand on and another
experience to explore. It’s a place to get started, and not the final goal of understanding.
We gather with our kin and kindred to learn a little kind-ness. And cease for a while from
struggle.
So this is a place to begin, not an end to our journey. The benefits of community are
sweeping: sharing a sense of belonging with others, supportive friends and environments,
a sense of fitness to our place and acceptance, without critique, a sense of life proceeding
as it should, thankfulness, welcome, comfort, enjoyment, home, and celebration. Few
experiences are more damaging to us than having our trust betrayed and this spares us
much of that and offers the healing force of an overflow of affection. We just need to
remember the hazards as well: the loss of the outside that is being excluded, forgetting
that the mind of a group is a fiction, and the loss of the personal center that’s the ultimate
source of all mind and all sovereignty.
Key Words:
abundance, affiliation, affinity, alliance, assemblage, assimilation, association, being
drawn or attracted, belonging, bounty, braided affect, brotherhood, camaraderie, caring,
celebration, circulation, coherence, cohesion, comfort, common ground, commonality,
communion, community, compassion, compatibility, concord, concourse, confluence,
congress, connection, consolation, contribution, convergence, conviviality, cooperation,
draw, embrace, enjoyment, familiarity, family, flow, fraternity and sorority, friendship,
fulfillment, gathering, grace period, graciousness, happiness, home, hospitality, idealism,
identification, immersion, inclusion, interrelations, joining, like-mindedness, magnetism,
merging, mutuality, naturalness, nurture, openness, overflow, peers, philia, pleasure,
plenty, the Rainbow Gathering and its warriors, reassurance, reconciliation, relatedness,
reunion, sharing, sisterhood, sociability, society, solace, spontaneity, spreading, sympathy,
union, welcome, wholeness.

betrayal, codependency, compromise, cultural pollution from poor selection, dilution,
escapism, extenuation, forced affiliation or connection, group think, in-group bias,
incompatibility, indulgence, lack of appreciation, loss of center within the group,
misidentification, misplaced belonging, out-group prejudice, overindulgence, peer

pressure, selflessness abused, shallow or superficial relations, unconditionality in excess,
wrong crowd.
Components:
Three plus Cups. Understanding as opening up and feeling interconnected, sharing and
communing with others. Emotional clarification and acceptance.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Neptune in Water Signs and Houses. Trends towards organic society, issues of
belonging, family, commonality, merging and identification. Transpersonal psychology
and consciousness.
Qabalah: Binah in Briah. Understanding, interconnectedness and matriarchal values in a
fluid and transpersonal world, creative interaction with others beyond selfish interests.
Yijing: Gua 08, Bi, Belonging, Holding Together, Union. Da Xiang: Kun (3) below, Kan
(Cups) above; “Across the earth there is water. Belonging. The early sovereigns
established the numerous realms to make kinsmen of all of the leaders.” Gathering on
common ground. Confluence, union, affiliation, association, mutuality. “Promising. For a
first consultation, supreme and enduring commitment. Not a mistake. Wanting peace,
approach directly. The late are the unfortunate ones.” Affinities are spontaneous and
natural. A failure to come together suggests that the potential connection might not have
been there after all if it took so much time to think it through or wait for invitations.
Four of Cups
Impasse, Distraction, Processing, Reevaluation
Image: A young man sits by a tree, his posture a little defensive, seeming to dream of
being elsewhere, and also perhaps regretting being here. With three drained, upside-down
cups by his side he stares vacantly into a fourth, full cup, offering fresher refreshments,
but he shows no inclination to reach for it. His body language indicates his being closed
off. What has happened is not what he wanted. The new cup resembles the Ace. The offer
seems better than his attitude towards it, but appearances may be deceiving.
The Four of Cups shares a difficulty with the Four of Wands: the nature of the Four is
to seek composure or composition, to develop structure and stable identity, but operating
through a fluid element keeps changing all of that. Affect is ephemeral. A sort of dynamic
equilibrium needs to be found, but without the complex skill sets and tools that come
with the lessons of the higher numbers. We think we know where we’re going, then
realize halfway there that we really want something different, or that ‘there’ is not what
we thought it might be, or even that ‘there’ was all in our head all along. We have an
affective attainment or satisfaction that soon feels empty, stagnant, or sour. We discover
that feelings and emotions are fluid and compromise our stability, or else they keep on
going with some kind of inertia when we need to change our directions. They are not
always responsive to the equally dynamic realities of living. Water is a fluid and here it
flows nowhere. Simple adaptability simply isn’t enough. Just when we get our attitude
readjusted, the thing we’ve just adjusted to changes.
The subject in the RWS deck is pausing to reassess, reevaluate, or reexamine what has
brought him to this pass, or impasse. It’s easy to imagine that the cups were full of wine
and that our subject is rethinking everything and abstaining for now. And then we might
continue the analogy and imagine that he is moving towards recovery and working his
fourth (!) step, ‘making a searching and fearless moral inventory.’ In any event, this sort
of personal reassessment is a core meaning of this card. The counterpart in the Yijing,
Gua 39, is Impasse or Obstruction, and depicts coming to a place where further progress
is blocked and some sort of detour, bypass, or emotional resilience will be required. The
text speaks speaks specifically to a temporary halt to one’s progress in order to work on
one’s character, a revision of either one’s identity or one’s purpose. Sherlock Holmes
might call these ‘three-pipe problems.’ But you know he would make the most of it, and
that is the real key here: we make new contacts and see new possibilities when we pause
to look around us, to ponder or reexamine where we are going. We might be complaining
of a detour which could turn out to be a much richer experience than meeting our original
goals. Plan B stands for Better plan, at least when Plan A has failed.
One of the common subtitles for this card is blended pleasure, an obscure joining of
words that might mean pleasure mixed with confusion, doubt, perplexity, discomfort, or
anxiety. Or it could mean ambivalence, or vacillation. The astrological correlate of
Jupiter in Water signs means a sense of self that wants to identify with feeling and
emotion. This can be good when affect agrees with a pleasant reality or even if it simply
remains fairly stable. But when feelings are challenged or challenging, so is this sense of
self. One gets confused, rather than simply sensing confusion. Such an unpleasantness
can be taken too seriously, or too personally. To feel like a success, one might need to
reestablish the goals in terms of attainability: baby steps, taken one day at a time.
The worst approach here is to sulk and pout, to fester inside, to get stuck in emotional
feedback loops, to be self-absorbed in a self-limiting self, to take the pity pot for a throne,
to see change as upset, to be unresponsive, all in order to have some constancy to the
feelings. Such spells take time to break, while the world moves even further on. And time
in such moods is always always and never, never just for a moment. So what if this is the
end of a path or of one chapter of life? It’s the plot twists that keep it interesting. A good
mystery should take a convoluted route. Routines become ruts and entrenchments. Habits
turn into addictions. Things arise, things pass away. It’s our readiness in need of renewal.
On the positive side of things, this card can be used as an emotional skill set. Variety of
experience expands and extends the range of what we can identify with, of who and what
we can be, provided that we learn to not cling to favorite states. We can keep the attitude
going while plans, goals, and directions are changing or even reversing. Our fearless and
searching inventory becomes a catalog of attitudes, from which to pick and choose. We
are detoured but not deterred. We can look for new opportunities that are sideways from
where we were going. On the less obvious positive side, disillusionment means being
stripped of our illusions, disenchantment, freed from enchantments, and disappointment,
informed that our appointments need tuning. We rediscover our broader selves and find
the paths not yet seen. The best of our feelings need refreshing: from time to time is
good, but continuously is much better.
Key Words:
ambivalence, anticlimax, bewilderment, blind alley, brooding, change of direction,
change of heart, complications, composure, confusion, contrarieties, dead end, dead stop,
deadlock, dealing, delay, detour, dilemma, discomfort, discontent, dissatisfaction,
distraction, diversion, doldrums, doubt, drawback, emotional inertia, equivocation,
hanging on, hindrance, impasse, impediment, inconvenience, interrupted plans or routine,
introspection, moral inventory, misgivings, off track, opportunity overlooked, path
unseen, pause, perplexity, pondering, predicament, preoccupation, presence of mind,
processing, quandary, reassessment, rebooting, reconsideration, re-contextualizing, re-
envisioning, reevaluation, reformulation, regrouping, reorientation, reset, rest stop,
restlessness, review, revision, rumination, satiety, scruples, self-reflection, soul searching,
stagnation, stasis, stationary period, surfeit, stalemate, uncertainty, unmade mind,
withdrawal.

annoyance, apathy, aversion, bitterness, boredom, complaint, disconsolation, discontent,
discouragement, disgust, disillusionment, ennui, frustration, inflexible moods,
ingratitude, jadedness, lethargy, petulance, pity pot, pouting, re-sentiment, self-
indulgence, staleness, stagnation, stuck in the past, sulking, sullenness, surfeit, unmade
mind, weariness.
Components:
Four plus Cups. Seeking composure or composition, to develop a structure and a stable
identity, but operating through a fluid element that undermines stability. Feelings need to
keep moving and changing. Identifying with these creates problems with a stable sense of
identity. Wave forms and eddies permit stable shapes in an ever-changing medium, but
they cannot hold onto the medium and must let this pass through.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Jupiter in Water Signs and Houses. An inclination to identify self with what
self is feeling, and to try to hold faith and confidence there. Good to expand and explore
when the feelings go many places, but one must learn resilience, to choose between
states, or else to avoid the unpleasant feelings, which is much harder.
Qabalah: Chesed in Briah. Mercy and equanimity in the vast wealth of a changing world,
developing and securing the ability to embrace the richness of it all.
Yijing: Gua 39, Jian, Impasse, Obstruction; Da Xiang: Gen (4) below, Kan (Cups) above;
“Over the mountain is water. Impasse. The young noble turns bodily around to work on
character.” Water over the mountain means storms in the highlands. The pass is closed,
the journey is literally at an impasse. At least a day to kill, or maybe to live. “Worthwhile
west to south. not worthwhile east to north. Rewarding to encounter a mature human
being. Persistence is opportune.” The character Jian also means having trouble with the
feet in going forward, which suggests a parallel with the English word scruples, derived
from the Latin for a pebble in one’s sandal or shoe. The meaning of both is pausing to
correct things.
Five of Cups
Disappointment, Retrenchment, Rallying, Salvage
Image: A disconsolate man in a hooded black cape stands with his head bowed amidst
five wine goblets, three of which have been overturned. That’s more than half-emptied.
Crying over spilt wine, he pays no attention to the two full goblets remaining, to which
his back is turned. His ingratitude with what remains risks the loss of this as well. This is
disappointment, but not not yet disillusionment, since he still has illusions.
As the word emotion implies, we draw energy for motion from affective states. We use
them as a motive or motivating force. We also have inherited an evolved inclination to
feel loss more acutely than we feel gain: loss hurts us more than gain pleases us. Along
with this, we have a disinclination to feel content with an emotionally neutral status quo.
This is why crisis mode, upset, and stress are such normal states, and a part of why
people like to play the victim. Affective adaptation is being forced upon us here. We
suffer because it drives us, no matter that it drives us insane. We mistake intensity for
meaning or power and fuel up on our resentments and losses. Force can be dramatic, but
it isn’t power. As naive, irrational, and unintelligent as our feelings and emotions can be,
there is still good guidance to be had here. But we cannot mistake them for who we are.
We are born to dissatisfaction. When we have enough to eat, then we still don’t have
enough friends. When we have enough friends, then the color of paint on the house is all
wrong. These are sometimes referred to as low, high, and meta-grumbles. We behave as
though we have a right and entitlement to everything going our way. Ingratitude often
becomes our normal state of mind.
Emotions and perspective are almost opposites. Emotions pull us out of both moment
and context and into themselves. It always takes some time to process and sort them, but
meanwhile, our reason and judgment are hijacked and gone. They can leave us naive and
destabilized, overwhelmed and maladapted, and still we regard them as sacred somehow.
We can even lose such priorities as living preferred over dying, or longevity over quick
burnout. The multi-stage process of grieving a loss is fairly well understood, and we can
expedite this, as long as this is not rushed, pushed, or forced. Feelings are somewhat
more present than emotions, but these are not as much of a Five of Cups problem as they
are a way to point the way out. We need to feel like there remains something more,
beyond the setbacks, troubles, and clouds over our judgment. We need to find some
reason to pull ourselves out of our pits. Beyond some early point to all this, our suffering
is voluntary.
There is much information to process here. When we are disappointed, we can ask
ourselves what went wrong in making those appointments. When we are disillusioned,
we can reexamine our illusions. When we find ourselves disenchanted, we can look at
who cast those enchantments. Things didn’t work out as promised, planned, or predicted,
but we can’t use our failed expectations to judge or measure the world. The world is
change, and powers beyond our own. It’s our job to find our own way to survive. Unlike
disillusionment, maybe our discouragement still wants to discover some new source of
courage, just not in an inflated sense of the power we wield or the luck we deserve. We
still look to external circumstance, but we take Castaneda’s advice by 'using all the event.'
Naturally, here, we look to the two cups remaining. The three were nothing more than the
high costs of living in the real world, like cutting a check for the rent or the mortgage. Or
dues. Or tuition. Or an offering. Or the rainy day write off. It doesn’t hurt us to feel a
little dissatisfied, though it still helps to remember that needs are more secure than
desires. Hunger is good: it feeds us. In the end, it’s ingratitude that kills us. We are lucky
to have the two cups remaining. Realism is the best position to take here, reorienting to a
changed reality, and acceptance of the losses. But this is not the same as approving of the
losses.
What we have lost is a number of unhatched chickens, all painstakingly counted. We
have to reclaim what remains. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 03, Rallying or Difficult
Beginnings, we rally with and around what remains, despite our initial difficulties, and
fight for the higher priorities, with all of the energy that the Fives and the Thunder can
offer. Since these are Cups, we might have some challenging issues with appeals made
strictly to reason. We need to sense or find our most urgent needs, outside of this narrow
context and inside the bigger picture. We have to see this greater perspective as relevant
here and now, and turn the urgency into an urge. We can draw off some force for this
project from where it is currently being wasted: letting go can be an empowerment. We
might not even need to calm down, which is not a good fit for the fives anyway. We just
want to get redirected and make ourselves more effective and less maladapted. We say
‘bygones,’ suck it up, snap out of it, rub some dirt on it, grunt, and move on. Nor do we
need to play the victim before we can ask for some help.
Key Words:
alliances needed, bottoming out, brooding, bygones, comeback, concentration, coping,
crisis, crisis management, crisis mode, cutting losses, destabilization, disappointment,
disruption, dissatisfaction, distress, disturbance, dukkha, emotional distraction, ephemeral
affect, facing the facts, facing the music, fallback position, focus, frustration, getting a
grip, grieving process, hypersensitivity, inflammation, letting go, loss in pleasure,
mishap, muster, need for objectivity, partial loss, pessimism, plan B, prioritizing, pulling
it back together, rallying, readjustment, realignment, rebounding, recalculation,
reclaiming, recovering, re-empowerment, regrouping, reinstatement, rescue, resilience,
retrenchment, salvaging, settling, snapping back, snapping out of it, sorting it out,
sucking it up, taking stock, triage, upset.

attachment, bereavement, bitterness, clinging, clouded judgment, denial, despair,
dwelling on troubles, emotional hijacking and loops, exaggeration, fretting, gloom, grief,
ingratitude, lament, melodrama, moping, narrow focus, overreaction, overreliance on
external circumstance, paralysis, partial loss made worse, pity pot, remorse, resentment,
self-fulfilling pessimism, sense of entitlement, slough of despond, sulking, vain regret,
victim mentality, wallowing.
Components:
Five plus Cups. A forceful energy is applied to or through an element that’s at its best
when it’s at peace. This can lead to much splashing and spilling, be this milk, water,
wine, or tears. Some time must be taken to settle down and recover, to gather wits and
helpers. All change will cost something.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mars in Water Signs and Houses. Inclined to use feeling and emotion as a
source of motivation and fuel. Can regard emotion for its own sake, or for the sake of
motion. Having less fulfillment might be perceived as less drive, so the intensity of
dissatisfaction might be drawn upon instead.
Qabalah: Geburah in Briah. A disequilibrating force is introduced to calm seas, resulting
in storminess and stress. But storms only bring climate back into balance by dissipating
accumulated energy. They would not exist without a built-up gradient or differential, a
backlog of change.
Yijing: Gua 03, Zhun, Rallying, Difficulty at the Beginning. Da Xiang: Zhen (5) below,
Kan (Cups) above; “Clouds and thunder. Rallying. The young noble sorts warp from
weft.” Clouds and thunder: a heavy storm descends on a tender plant that’s trying to
establish itself. There is a sense of urgency to be tapped here, offering more promise than
self-indulgence can. A rite of passage. “Supreme fulfillment. Worthwhile to be persistent.
Not at all useful to have somewhere to go. Worthwhile to enlist delegates.” A need to
forget expectations and focus on present realities. The rainy day write-off. Get help by
enlisting others and other points of view. No use or need to play the victim.
Six of Cups
Culmination, Eudaimonia, Presence, Persistence of Memory
Image: The RWS deck shows two children playing in an idyllic, old-country garden
setting, and six cups with a flower in each. An adult is in the background. These may also
be inner children, perhaps drawn from memory. Alternatively, a family of six, two
grandparents, two parents and two children, join in a toast around a happy family table.
The focus is on the children, who are giggling to each other while toasting. Everything is
in place and the terms and conditions for happiness appear to be satisfied. Barbara Walker
suggests that our archetypal primordial golden age of giants was grownups all around us
as kids.
The Six of Cups brings us up to the present day, where, ready or not, all of the past is
completed, and completed prologue. The core meaning is This Moment Now, one of
appreciation and deep reflection on what has brought us here. We are cumulative beings,
a culmination of prior influences. Now we are in a moment well-earned, where nothing
more needs be done for a while. Humanly good and decent days are portrayed here. The
terms and conditions for our happiness are satisfied. There is well-being and feeling well.
Or this is a memory of such a moment, brought forward into the present. It’s good to look
back and review, as long as we aren’t desperate to be where we’re not. Kierkegaard said
that “life can only be understood backwards, although it must be lived forwards.” This is
a time for that understanding.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 63, Already Across, speaks of a present which is now just
about perfect, where all of the parts have found their proper place and it’s time for some
final or finishing touches, and tying off of loose ends. This is the culmination of a long
project or past, but time neither stops nor slows down, and any relative permanence to
this pleasant tableau might as well be forgotten. Incompleteness is what drives us, and
calls in the energy needed. So with the dynamic just about spent, it’s time to prepare to do
maintenance, against no less of a foe than the heat death of the universe. There are
diminishing returns here. Seeing forward is facing decay. Even temporary permanence
will only be won by an anticlimactic, uphill fight against unrelenting entropy. Still, our
duty is to enjoy things while they last, and if we can be wise, to be grateful even as our
favorite things are slipping away.
It is fashionable among the ‘spiritual’ folk to advise living this life in the present, but
there is a point to having our memories, as well as our predictions. We can’t really be
here now for long, and it takes a bit of conceit to think we can be here now at all. At the
very least we can add some breadth and depth to even our shortest moments. We bring
the inertia of our pasts to all of our perceptions. This is called apperception, our wealth of
experience brought to bear on the present, together with our cognitive errors and Bly’s
‘long bag we drag behind us.’ Consciousness of the past informs our present emotional
situations, and affect has inertia aplenty. We face our current problems with the way we
remember our pasts. It helps to have some awareness of what we are doing. If we want to
move forward, we won’t be over-idealizing the past or longing to recreate it. We still
want life to keep getting better than what we’ve had before.
Vonnegut wrote “And I asked myself about the present. How wide it was, how deep it
was. And how much was mine to keep.” In a way, we live to collect good recollections,
stockpiling emotional snapshots, special moments to take along with us through time,
even though most memories are destined to fade or get misremembered. We try to freeze
them for later use, especially the flashes of perfection. It’s the job of storyteller and poet
to turn the world into memories, and those back into tales. The goddess of Memory was
the mother of the Muses. Goethe’s Faust both risks and does it all for a single moment of
happiness worth freezing in time. We can often count the best of our moments, and the
ones that are close to perfection are usually not all that numerous. We keep these in
special places in ourselves. We can keep our lost loved ones alive in this way as well.
There is much to be praised in bringing the past along. There are problems when we
measure our current moments against our most-shining ones, and when we think the
person at the center of those is the only one who we truly are. And there are problems in
being so fond of ‘back there’ that we cannot face today. But we need to bring the things
that we’ve learned along with us if we want any worthwhile kind of tomorrow. And good
memories show they are worth making more of, even for older folks.
The past is not really finished or perfect. The degree of our memory informs our
present awareness and actions. We use what we learn and bring with us in order to better
ourselves. The past brought to present helps to choose better futures, and we have all our
various pasts to choose from. But even memories can keep on growing. The neural
structures of memory are plastic. Each time we bring something up, we add the present to
it. If we bring a thing up as resentment, we make our bad feelings just a little bit worse
before we put them back. If we bring a thing up in an atmosphere of fondness, kindness,
understanding, or forgiveness, we can file it back away with a little less of an unpleasant
charge. There is no rule that forbids our rewriting of personal history, in non-delusional
ways, updating ourselves, upgrading ourselves in the process.
Key Words:
afterthought, anticlimax, appendix, apperception, attainment, attractions of the past,
awareness, between times, childhood past, climax, completion, contentment, continuity,
culmination, emotional snapshots, enjoyment, epilogue, eudaimonia, felt perfection,
hindsight, home environment, inner child, innocence, joy, maintenance, memento,
memories, memory as stimulus, mnemonics, moment, momentousness, moments relived,
nostalgia, perfection, persistence of memory, presence of mind, realization, reawakening,
recall, recognition, recollection, reconsideration, rediscovery, reenchantment, reflection,
remembrance, reminders, reminding, reminiscence, renewal, residuum, retrospective,
resurrection, reunion, reverie, review, revising, revisiting, saudade, simpler times, time-
binding, uses of retrospection, well-being.

backing up into the future, chasing the dragon, cherry-picking our moments for identity,
clinging to the past, coming events, getting stuck in memory, grieving, indecision, living
in or for the past, pink clouds, pining, PTSD, regression, regret, remorse, resentment,
sentimentality, unacceptable present, unrealistic desires, unresolved issues, vanity,
wishful thinking.
Components:
Six plus Cups. Out of developing organization sentience arises, the ability to be present
and aware, although not yet in a self-conscious way. We are ongoing culminations. This
has a feeling of being brought here by all we have been through, and of having arrived.
J.M. Storm wrote, “We remember the things that make us feel.” We mark our personal
significance best with the water element.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sol in Water Signs and Houses. Wanting to identify ourselves by our feelings
and emotions, or by what we are capable of feeling and emoting. We are the taking of
things personally. Our identity reflects our subjective responses, our desires, enjoyments,
passions.
Qabalah: Tipareth in Briah. The integration and harmonization of the system of self is
experienced subjectively and personally, as a responsiveness or felt interaction. Emphasis
on identity as a sensitivity. Feeling present, being here.
Yijing: Gua 63, Ji Ji, Already Across, After Completion. Da Xiang: Li (6) below, Kan
(Cups) above; “Water positioned over the flame. Already complete. The young noble
contemplates sorrows and thus prepares to maintain against them.” Achieving order or
perfection, follow up and follow through. Anticlimax, denouement, finish, winding down,
maintenance. “Fulfillment is minor. But rewarding to persist. At the beginning, promise.
By the end, disorder.” Issues of issues of past and perfection. Final steps of the crossing,
preparing to look back.
Seven of Cups
Taste, Choice, Gratification, Allocation
Image: The RWS deck portrays a man from behind, appearing by body language to be
full of wonderment, looking enchanted by a gallery of delights spread out before him,
displayed in cups as icons of varying forms of pleasure. It’s a version of the kid in the
candy store. The image asks the question of whether the subject will choose wisely or
indiscriminately. Will the heart just want what it wants, period? Will he get lost in the
options? Alternatively, a young, well-dressed man sits alone at a table, on which are set
seven goblets of wine, some red and some white. He has finished one goblet and happily
signals goodbye to the rest.
The Seven of Cups is about the learning of our limits in the pursuit of what we desire,
but since this learning is so often done so poorly, the card is often said to foreshadow
either frivolity, or an inability to defer gratification, or excessiveness and its subsequent
regret. The excess and regret are the consequence of poor choices, but not the core
meaning of the card, which is wanting to feel good, or better, or well, in the sense of
healthy, or well in the sense of skillfully. This is the self-interest of the Seven pursued
with the feeling and emotion of the Cups. We want to explore our possibilities, see what
the options are, see what we can get away with, or see how far we can go. How full or
fulfilled can we feel? Of course we want it all, and right now too, if we can have that. We
want to feel alive, so we do things for the sake of feeling itself. At bottom, we are
experimenting with our own neurochemistry, with go-to ingredients like dopamine and
oxytocin.
Since feelings are so little inclined to listen to reason, the learning process here will
require some experience. Except for the sense of satiety, limits and self-restraint are not
an inherent or inherited part of our seeking. They must be learned. The suit of Cups lacks
judgment, so the cost of our unrestrained desire needs to be felt and processed. It’s not
logical to think that we are born ready to say no to something pleasant that’s free for the
asking or taking. But there is often too much available that we can want successfully, and
wanting gets out of control. We have no native immunity to promises and temptations.
And then the advertisers get to have their say and have their way and people start to want
useless and frivolous things, and want them right now, or else feel inferior to their peers.
Many people will even do crimes so they don’t have to wait. But it’s just not good
selfishness to destroy, dissipate, or profane the self. The degeneration of our wanting into
wantonness is selling ourselves into slavery, the original meaning of addiction. Even
when we don’t go this far, we risk getting lost in the options, approach this or approach
that, an ambivalence that threatens to spread us ‘a mile wide and an inch deep.’ We give
up the magic for empty mystique, and deeper study for sound bites, so we don’t need to
miss out on the next distraction. In Arabic they call this ghafla, a soul-emptying,
mindless distraction. We become emotional gluttons starving for real nourishment.
Emotions aren’t a way of thinking critically, and feeling is only a kind of discernment
that sometimes could use some rational help. We hope that we will have the sense, in the
literal sense, to learn to pick and choose wisely, to develop good taste and high standards,
without resorting to rules or authority figures. But we do need to explore and sample
some of life’s variety. We hope we can learn priorities and boundaries. Among the great
variety of feelings and experiences set out on this table of life, the better choices do not
preclude sensuality, eroticism, intoxication, gusto, or zest. It’s only a matter of getting
things experienced in the right proportion, a middle path, and a golden mean. So we
simply look at our options with an eye to narrowing these down, selecting personal
desires according to what we value the most, and maybe even to what we have carefully
chosen to value, to what is relevant to our own evolution. Perhaps we can even order their
pursuit according to our own ‘hierarchy of needs,’ that we might meet these and be free
to move on.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 60, Jie, Boundaries or Limitation, begins by depicting a
broad flood of affect in need of viable channels. We need the water, the feeling, but we
want it where it will do us some good. We gradually learn to pace and limit ourselves, to
defer gratification, to know our measure. Pleasures might be transient and successes not
retained, but they are as necessary to mental health as food, which isn’t retained either.
As long as we need this we might as well be gourmets about it. There is much clucking
and tsk-ing and wagging of fingers around this issue of pleasure, usually by those you
would not want to have for role models. The whole subject of pleasure-seeking behavior
stirs up almost as much cultural, social, and religious nonsense as the subject of death. So
many of us live in fear of both living and dying.
The word hedonics ought to be a real word, for the study of pleasure-seeking behavior.
Hedonism, the philosophy that states that pleasure can be a good guide to right living, is
actually a broad spectrum, and its higher-frequency end can make a lot of good sense.
Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius all spoke up for good taste in pleasure, with caution,
selection, discernment, and values. It was the also the first philosophy rooted in natural
history. They also wrote about atoms. Lucretius wrote of evolution and natural selection.
But they remain best known for saying that our joys and sorrows are our most reliable
guides to the beneficial and the harmful, for suggesting great care care in selecting for
worthwhile pleasures. This is not the same as saying that pleasure should be our pursuit,
any more than we should drive for the sake of the speedometer reading. We refine our
desires and defer the shortsighted self-gratification. Their highest standard of happiness,
called eudaimonia, wasn’t considered a neutral, anhedonic, or apathetic state, but a
positive form of pleasure. Yet happiness itself is not the best pursuit: it’s an indication of
living rightly, of pursuing the best in life, but it’s only favored by chance, and not
guaranteed to good behavior.
Key Words:
abridgment, agency, allocation, allowance, apportionment, appraisal, boundaries, brio,
budgeting, choice, constraint, decisions, deferred or delayed gratification, delight, desire,
determination, discernment, discretion, distinction, enjoyment, emotional intelligence,
Epicureanism, eros, ethical measure, eudaimonia, evaluation, fulfillment, gratification,
gusto, happiness, hedonism, hunger, indulgence, limitation, liveliness, measure, measured
steps, middle way or path, moderation, pacing, passion, pleasure, preference, priorities,
profusion, proliferated options, proportion, prudence, quota, ratio, rationality, rationing,
relish, resolution, restraint, satisfaction, savor, selection, selectivity, self-discipline, self-
interest, self-limitation, self-regulation, self-respect, specificity, surfeit, taste, terms,
transient success, triage, value management, verve, zest.

addiction, arbitrary wants, confusing want and need, cravenness, debauchery, delusion,
dissipation, dreamery, emotional gluttony, false hopes, foolish whims, glut, gluttony,
greed, immoderation, impatience, imprudence, incontinence, indiscriminate wanting,
intemperance, lack of restraint, licentiousness, lust, overextension, overindulgence, self-
delusion, self-indulgence, shortcuts to pleasure, superficiality, tanha, temptation, wishful
thinking.
Components:
Seven plus Cups. Self-seeking in the world of feeling and emotion, hedonism in its full
spectrum from debauchery to Epicureanism. Learning our limits and boundaries by way
of satisfying our desires and experiencing the consequences. Meeting needs, then wants.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Venus in Water Signs and Houses. Life will be about exploring to the end of
sensitivity and desire, maintaining a sense of sensation, and feeling good or well.
Sentience is the draw and the guide. Will be limited by personal capacity as well as the
environment.
Qabalah: Netzach in Briah. Personal conquest and victory, or simply success, assessed in
terms of its sense of rightness or feeling that movement is responding as it should.
Yijing: Gua 60, Jie, Boundaries, Limitation. Da Xiang: Dui (7) below, Kan (Cups) above;
“Over the pond there is water. Boundaries. The young noble regulates numbers and
measures and weighs the merits of action.” Too much water to fully contain, requiring a
channel. The necessity for boundaries and limits. “Fulfillment. Bitter limitations do not
invite commitment.” An emphasis on proceeding with growth, but in a well-paced and
self-regulated way, as bamboo grows one section at a time.
Eight of Cups
Provision, Accessibility, Resource, Refreshment
Image: A solitary, robed figure has turned his back on an old well and now crosses a
footbridge to begin or continue a journey under a waning moon. On the rim of the well sit
eight full cups. The arrangement of cups is unbalanced, incomplete, but good enough.
The cups will not chase the wanderer, nor will the well, but he knows where to find them.
Maybe the job is simply done, maybe done well, and things are set up now for later. But
for now, he’s been here and done this, and it’s time to move on. To remain here would
mean diminishing returns. Ordinariness and habituation are motive forces. So it’s on to
more exciting things to drain the excitement from.
The Eight of Cups hones in on the complicated relationship between head and heart,
thinking and feeling, reason and emotion, or cognition and affect. The point of view with
the Eights is mental. We learn a lot from the things the heart gets us into. And even the
head knows that too much restraint on the feelings will keep us from the experiences that
allow us to learn so much. Ultimately the head is more interested in feeling’s past tense,
on getting it all sorted out afterwards, although it knows at least dimly that this may
require having a deeply authentic experience in the first place. The mind wants the ability
to call on past experiences when needed, from a safe and unobtrusive distance away, so
there is a focus on getting the experience behind us, where it can be better understood.
Affective affordances are found and set aside, but encoded for later access. Nietzsche
wrote in his last notebook: “One does not get over a passion by representing it. Rather, it
is over when one is able to represent it.” We have what we need from this experience for
now. The RWS card is a depiction of leaving some feelings behind us and preparing to
move on. While this may be an abandonment, it is not a disavowal or a repudiation. It’s
neutrality instead of negation. We haven’t scorched any earth, burned any bridges, or
poisoned any wells. As Anonymous wrote, “Sometimes you just have to be done. Not
mad, not upset. Just done.” The previous effort was simply a preparation for a greater
freedom. With a new perspective we now have freedom towards, not just freedom from.
There is a side of this that has some big drawbacks. With having it all figured out, with
the problem now solved, we may think that our abstract summarization was all that we
needed to learn. Where the mind has been and what it has done becomes ‘been there,
done that.’ Experience has now been encoded and emptied of its present emotional
content. We spoke with someone for a couple of minutes a couple of years ago and now
claim to ‘know’ this person. The mystic experience? Oh, I’ve had one of those, now I'm
awake. The past loses its feeling, texture, and depth. Transience is the rule, of course, and
we cannot take everything with us. We have to mine the whole time for a handful of
moments, and this is all we can carry, unless we want to end the journey now and dwell
right here. We sometimes have to take things for granted to make any progress at all. The
place served us well for a time. And we leave a little a cache behind, perhaps for when
we want to come back.
A mind that enjoys feelings and is articulate in its understanding might appear to be
overthinking, or have already overthought. It may converse knowledgeably about affect
and speak well of passion, even if not presently having the experience, and in all of this it
might seem abstract and detached, emptied of subjective meaning, having lost the sense
of refreshment. Mental understanding of feeling and emotion works on a different time
scale, one that is not in the moment. The point of having things sorted is in large part
building an infrastructure for access to our feelings. Often these help or cause us to react
more quickly than thought to similar situations. We may have left a place in the past, but
we also now know the way back. The inner life is organized. In waxing philosophical
over prior emotional states, it’s possible to call up or conjure those feelings again. We can
go too far of course. With our feelings all named, counted, sorted, and weighed, we have
done little to secure our routes to back to happiness.
Another force pushes us onwards as well: hedonic adaptation, or the hedonic treadmill.
We are genetically predisposed to not even like it if the good things stay the same. Our
hopes and expectations adapt ever upwards. If we can’t have constant improvement, or at
least some gradual intensification, then we will go after variety for its own sake instead.
It takes a lot of gratitude for what we already have to keep this process under some
control. Familiarity would rather breed contempt. It’s novelty that keeps the mind awake,
just like it’s acceleration, and not steady movement, that lets us know we are moving. We
have a need to renew the familiar if we want to keep it around. A resource is a source that
we can keep coming back to. Refreshment is just that, a freshening up again, just as
respect means ‘to look again,’ which offers a clue to a lasting enjoyment or better
appreciation of steadier states.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 48, the Well. This is something, literally, that we really
dug at one time. We have a resource that we can come back to whenever we are driven by
thirst. We retain the ability to go deep again, to access our depths. But most of the time
we have left it behind us. The structure that makes the magic is out of sight and out of
mind. We know the way back, and can even tell others how to get there as well. The texts
of the lines in this chapter discuss the periodic checkup and maintenance issues, how we
ought not to take this completely for granted, how we ought to keep the water accessible,
to keep refreshing our outlooks and browsers. Even in stable systems, negative entropy
still needs inputs of energy. By analogy, we have tapped, perhaps with forethought, a
source of feeling, refreshment, or nourishment and conceptually set things in order, for
the sake of securing future access. Although this source lives largely outside of our
awareness, it is nevertheless a resource. The Yijing also emphasizes the social aspects, as
either the well was dug at the center of things, or things developed around the well as a
center. Feelings and emotions are an older and more common ground for humans than
our cultures, languages, thoughts and ideas.
Key Words:
abandoned or forsaken success, acceptability, accessibility, acclimatization, adequacy,
anticlimax, assets, back burner, been there & done that, bygones, cache, conclusions,
contrivance, convenience, decline of interest, deflation, departure, desertion, detachment,
discontinued effort, disenchantment, enough for now, equanimity, evaluating feelings,
familiarity, excitement worn thin, final insights, follow-through, graduation, habituation,
hedonic treadmills, impermanence, inurement, liquidating assets, lost interest, lost shine,
moving on, new or next chapter, nominal access, non-attachment, novelty, obsolescence,
outgrowing feelings or pains, presupposition, provision, refreshment, reservation, reserve,
reservoir, resource, resourcefulness, restlessness, routine, satisfactions, secured access,
set-aside, stock in trade, sufficiency, summations, thoroughness, wrapping up.
apathy, boredom, complacency, desensitization, detachment, discounting, emptiness,

feelings destroyed by analysis, halfheartedness, indolence, jadedness, neglect, numbness,
over-familiarity, overthinking refreshment, taking for granted, taking things as given,
presumption, stagnation, staleness, tuning out, weariness,
Components:
Eight plus Cups. Cognitive processes and communications can be involved deeply in
feelings and emotions, but the objective is understanding, useful organization of memory
and facilitation of recall. Feelings are evaluated and sorted, but one hopes the best of
them are left alive and the worst can be managed in time.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mercury in Water Signs and Houses. A mind that is interested in experiencing
and communicating feeling and emotion, but not likely to linger on these once they are
understood and put in their proper places. Affective experiences collected as affordances.
Qabalah: Hod in Briah. A cognitive grasp of the fluid dynamics of the world of feeling
and emotion, proceeding in an orderly way through what is chaos to others, and an
appreciation of the responsive sensitivity of nature.
Yijing: Gua 48, The Well. Da Xiang: Xun (8) below, Kan (Cups) above; “Above the
wood there is water. The well. The young noble labors for the people to encourage
cooperation.” Commonality and common ground in understanding our shared experience,
in ways that can be communicated. “Rearranging the town does not change the well.
Neither losing nor gaining, whether leaving or arriving, the well is the well. To nearly
reach, but then to fall short with the well rope, or to damage its bucket, is disappointing.”
Provision of resource ahead of time, resourcefulness gained by having lived through
something, locating and naming it, and having it available. Dangers in taking the well for
granted, being unmindful, letting it go.
Nine of Cups
Flow, Responsiveness, Feeling, Contentment
Image: A portly, benevolent djinn beams at the reader as he floats cross legged just
above and behind nine cups, arrayed like trophies, indicating the reader’s choices with a
sweeping hand. In the RWS deck, a portly gentleman sits in front of nine cups arrayed on
a shelf behind him. His posture and expression convey satisfaction. “Ford’s in his Flivver.
All's well with the world.”
Commonly called the ‘wish card,’ the more superficial interpretations predict that we
will have a stroke of luck in attaining our happiness. This is the wish of the silly people,
who only use Tarot to have their fortunes and futures told. If you have a wish out there, it
is going to come true. Be careful what you wish for. It’s your fate: you don’t have to do
any work or anything. This is usually nearsighted, and with unforeseen consequences.
What is not often mentioned in the books is that this is almost always a temporary state, a
little shot of neurochemicals that soon wears off. The deeper question this card poses is
only hinted at by the frequent cautions against smugness and complacency. That is, if we
want to have a more durable sense of happiness or satisfaction, we will probably have to
trade wishing for working, and dreaming for diligence, and feel our way into a way of
living that has happiness as a symptom, or a sign that we are on the right path, and even
then with no real guarantee of satisfaction. We will tend to get what we position ourselves
for. We give up the chasing of wishes and fantasies for the pursuit of higher activities,
engagements and purposes that secondarily bring us more lasting emotional rewards.
These provide a more resilient foundation (Nines and Yesod) for the continued ups and
downs that are sure to follow this moment’s up-ness. There may be problems of renewal
and replenishment without change of context, unless the attitude is nimble enough to
provide the motion. The Nine of Cups, regarded as a skill set, will develop the emotional
intelligence needed to either make satisfaction last longer or to be more accepting of its
comings and goings. It will also help instruct the whole being in how to find itself in this
position more regularly.
Time or duration is the big question here. Most people have a squinty-eyed view of
shallower time, like the sensationalist newspapers looking at wildly fluctuating curves
instead of long-term trends and reporting ‘crime rate soars’ one day and then ‘crime rate
plummets’ the next. We want a less ephemeral view here. Many books imply that the
satisfaction or happiness predicted by this card will last. It almost certainly will not. And
affect itself is too naive to have longer time horizons or a more mature relationship to
change. Ongoing satisfaction is a more dynamic process that stays a course only by
dynamic efforts at navigation.
The pursuit of happiness is an unfortunate phrase when we pick this for something to
follow. The degree of our happiness is just a reading on a dial that may or may not tell us
how well we are doing. We don’t live for this readout, we live for doing well and the dial
says what it says. Our best chance for sustaining happiness is simply doing what we love
doing, or what we do best or well, finding a rewarding groove, and earning ourselves
some self-esteem. There is nothing inherently wrong or inferior with having wishes and
wants, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to believe in magic. Of course we want to
be careful what we wish for and want. But these are just eddies and waves in the longer
flow of the stream. Confidence wants repeated successes more than future assurances.
Deep and lasting satisfaction actually requires impermanence: it needs to move and
adapt.
Both moving water and moving through water are fundamental to the symbolism of
both the Nines and the Cups, as well as their ties to Luna and Yesod. Heraclitus phrased
this as panta rhei, everything flows and nothing abides, and asserted the impossibility of
stepping into the same river twice. Laozi had much to say about the way that water
moves and what this has to teach us. Bruce Lee wrote, “Be like water making its way
through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way
around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose
themselves. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into
a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put
water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water my
friend.” To be present in this way earns more luck than it stumbles into. We tune our
ability to find the right place at the right time with the right attitude. The universe will
stand behind someone on the right path, but the right path is defined as the one that has
the universe standing behind them.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 29, Exposure, picks up the same double-water images and
concentrates on the dynamic qualities of such a combination, activities that get the blood
pumping, like traversing or running a river that’s running white through a gorge. The
hazardousness of the image is often mistakenly interpreted as a prediction of danger,
when in fact it's a good incentive to use such exigency to come more fully alive, to
awaken more completely to the realities we are moving through, to be more fully present
in the flow of things. Deep water over our heads is not a bad place to be if we have either
learned to how swim or learned how to learn. The trick is to keep ourselves centered and
on our true path. Feeling here is a verb, and by feeling our way we learn what true means.
The real happiness is in the difficulties and challenges that life can meet authentically and
surmount. It has nothing to do with being given good luck or good fortune. We might
have some plain old luck, but even there we must be present to win.
Key Words:
adaptation, alertness, aptness, assurance, attunement, availability, centering, challenge,
comfort, commitment, concentration, concord, consummation, content in both its senses,
contentment, continuity, currents, depth, emotional wealth, enjoyment, eudaemonia,
exigency, exposure, feeling, flow, fluidity, fulfillment, gratitude, health, heart, heart’s
content, hoped-for results, immersion, impressions, intensity, involvement, happiness,
optimism, overcoming, panta rhei, path of least resistance, plunging in, presence,
reassurance, replenishment, responding, responsiveness, reward, satisfaction, savoring,
security, sensitivity, sincerity, spontaneity, subtlety, sure things, the way out is through,
throughput, transitory suffering, trial, undergoing, well-being, white water, ziran.

absence, blind faith, complacency, conceit, dispute, fear, feeling entitled, feeling shaped
to attract failure, fear, heedlessness, imperfections, indulgence, insecurity, insincerity,
misplaced reliance, pursuit of happiness as backwards, overindulgence, self-indulgence,
self-praise, smugness, superficiality, unearned sense of self-worth, vanity, vicissitudes,
vulnerability.
Components:
Nine plus Cups. The foundational possibilities of our feeling and emotion. Questions of
where more reliability might be found. Getting past the ups and downs to a more lasting
or durable happiness and satisfaction. Peak experience is temporary, but at least it lives
on in memory. The best keys to happiness are in flows, fluctuations, or processes instead
of in states.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Luna in Water Signs and Houses. We can’t get any wetter than the moon in
water. This is immersion in a world of fluctuation and change, the rising and falling tides
of feeling and emotion, across the full range from sensitivity to intensity to dreaminess.
Qabalah: Yesod in Briah. A fluid foundation for a fluid world, liquidity and flow as the
basis of whatever stability and reliability we might find. Perhaps pontoons, ballast, deep
leaden keels, and sheet anchors are in order.
Yijing: Gua 29, Kan, Exposure, The Abysmal. Da Xiang: Kan (9) below, Kan (Cups)
above; “Water is ever arriving. Repeated exposure. The young noble continues in
character and conduct, practicing teaching and serving.” Heartfelt commitment, staying
true to a middle path, concentration. “Be true. To keep the heart secure is fulfillment.”
Exploring the participatory aspects of moving like water through challenging terrain,
maintaining presence of mind through a dynamic and even risky environment.
Ten of Cups
Satiety, Satisfaction, Fulfillment, Transition
Image: The RWS deck shows a family of four in a rural setting, celebrating a rainbow
of ten cups. The rainbow may be meant to signal a covenant, perhaps promising lasting
happiness or a happily ever after. Alternatively, two children might be seen playing with
nine cups in an idyllic garden, perhaps making mud pies with the family silver, while
behind them their young parents dance off to pursue a cup at the end of a rainbow.
The core meaning of the Ten of Cups is satiety, or how we feel about having or having
had enough. There are several directions to take the interpretation of this, including some
darker ones. The RWS card is a little misleading here, unless it’s intended to be ironic,
and encourages the writers of Tarot books to speak about perfected, permanent, perpetual,
or lasting happiness and success. One might think these people had never been humans
living on earth, but then many humans on earth believe they are going to just such a place
after their death. Feelings don’t stay still or last. The subject is indeed about finding or
preparing to find some continuity after our needs get satisfied, or after we’ve had enough,
but most of the time this concerns moving on, or returning to earth and reality. This is not
a fairytale fantasy of happily ever after. Reality doesn’t work this way. But feelings and
emotions might feel things this way, leading to a temporary sense of lasting perfection.
Abraham Maslow has a good handle on this process. We progress from one satisfaction
to another, meeting our most basic or fundamental needs first, and then moving on to our
more optional ones, our electives. If this were managed with some care, we could satisfy
ourselves upwards instead of around in circles. We can get the preliminaries and priorities
behind us and then go to work on such lofty pursuits as working out our chosen destinies.
This implies not getting carried away with our shortsighted illusions of permanence and
perfection. Perhaps it sounds a little on the rational side for the suit of cups, but our
feelings can learn lessons as well, and the formula is simple enough: meet needs, then
move on.
The state of affairs depicted here could be more happiness than you ever thought was
possible, something too good to be true or to last. With satiety, we have already reached a
climax or culmination. We still have some happiness to spend before it falls away or slips
from our grasp. We can make it last a little longer, or invest in something more durable.
We often move ourselves forward with exaggeration and hyperbole, but beyond a point,
this just doesn’t serve us well, if it ever really served us at all. An excess of wine leads to
a hangover, an excess of speed to a crash. Two-thirds complete might be the most perfect
state for us all. There is a fullness of feeling or emotion that can still be fully appreciated,
even in the face of realism, even though lasting happiness can’t hold onto this much.
The word sustainability is horribly overused by our parasitic species and its pro-growth
economy. As Edward Abbey remarked, ‘growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of
the cancer cell.’ At bottom the word sustain means to hold something up from below, to
provide or take care of the preconditions needed for something to exist. The focus is not
on the thing by itself. With this understanding, a sustainability of affect or attitude is what
we are looking for with this card. The happiness here will need to move on soon. What
we want to maintain or improve are the conditions of its arising. De-growth to sustainable
levels is often proposed as the best solution for humanity’s global woes. We can develop
an analog for our internal world and calm ourselves down, redefine what ‘enough’
means, cultivate better gratitude, and maybe take some deep breaths instead of racing
onward for more than we need. We might try wanting what we already have. But then we
have innate challenges to contend with, like boredom with steady states.
We want to look at how things are shaping up down the road before us. There is some
implication of this in the depiction of the two children at play in this card: there is a new
generation coming up now. The blessed state may yet keep regenerating. Impermanence
of feeling and attitude will not be defeated, but a maturing attitude may still look to
adjusting the meaning we have for contentment and remaining thankful for the chance to
witness this grand parade as it moves on by. We can cultivate what is more likely to last
for a little longer. If this time is used to re-choose, to redefine what is important and not,
then some of our losses can be selected, or made matters of choice. Permanence is out,
but who but those afraid of the unknown would want it? As Susan Ertz wrote, “Millions
long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon.”
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 43, Decisiveness, concentrates on satiety, or having had
enough, but more in the sense of having ‘had it up to here.’ The subjects of the lines are
busy getting carried away or going obsessively over the top. They are advised to unload
some of the feeling or emotion that is driving them before they go too far: to back it
down, or dial it back, or dial it down. Their hyperbole and exaggeration are to be
supplanted by straightforward disclosure and exposé. The greater hyperbole, the sooner it
will fail. It’s a time to put the feeling in its proper place, to discharge it, to deflate it. No
matter how exciting this has all been, we prepare to wrap or sum it up now. We beat
disappointment to the finish line with realism. We need to become less extreme, more
sustainable, and prepared to let ourselves down safely and proactively, but without
ruining the moment of consummation with pessimism.
Key Words:
abounding, abundance, affirmation, anticlimax, apogee, arrival, as good as it gets,
attainment, breakthrough, climax, completion, consummation, contentment, counting
blessings, cresting, culmination, decisiveness, deflation, desired outcome, detumescence,
discharge, disclosure, emotional stability, enjoyment, extravagance, finale, fulfillment,
grand finale, gratification, gratitude, having had enough, having our fill, home, family
life, fantasy, finality, ideal states, lavishness, long-term enjoyments, mature pleasure,
overdevelopment, overflowing, passage, peak experience, perpetuating success, pinnacle,
plateau, progression, realization, regeneration, relish, resolve, reward, satiety,
satisfaction, saturation, sufficiency, summation, superabundance, superfluity, surplus,
sustainable states, thriving, transition, wrap-up.

affluenza, disruption, disturbance, exaggerated life, excessive emotion, fairy tales, glut,
hyperbole, diminishing returns, glamor, honeymoon ends, imperfection, impermanence,
imprudence, indignation, indignity, indulgence, mania, obsession, overemphasis, overkill,
over-stimulation, pink clouds, surfeit, superfluousness, too good to be true, wantonness.
Components:
Ten plus Cups. Reaching the limits of where feeling and emotion can take us, ultimately
raising the question of where to go from here, which need not be answered until this state
has passed. These states are not dwelling places, but they do make good rest stops for
smelling flowers and stuff.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Pluto in Water Signs and Houses. An overabundance of affect to remind us of
our finitude. Refocusing on larger contexts, like what might last or what is larger or more
durable than ourselves, and how we react to seeing things that way.
Qabalah: Malkuth in Briah. The fullest manifestation of the fluid universe. Containment
is only possible on a temporary basis and needs refreshing.
Yijing: Gua 43, Guai, Decisiveness, Breakthrough, Resoluteness. Da Xiang: Qian (10)
below, Dui (Cups) above; “The lake rises into the sky. Decisiveness. The young noble
dispenses favor to reach those below, so that resting on virtue is avoided.” The water
level is sky high, or over the top. “A disclosure at the royal court, a truthful appeal. This
will be serious. Inform the home town. Nothing worthwhile in resorting to hostilities.
Worthwhile to have somewhere to go.” Depicts satiety like the Tarot, but more in the
sense of having had it up to here. To continue the old mode of excitement is to get carried
away or take things too far.
Princess of Cups
Princess of the Water, Lotus of the Palace of the Floods
Economy, Service, Sincerity, Simplicity
Image: A captivating young princess, clad in a white Grecian tunic, is practicing her
humility and charm by playing the role of Hebe, the Olympian cup bearer, offering the
refreshments to unseen laborers. The cup bears a turtle insignia. She is self-contained and
full of potential, like a rosebud. She is intent and reflective, willing to serve or to help,
enthusiastic about sharing, a loyal and trustworthy worker. When not in service, she may
be dreamy in creative ways, but perhaps unclear on the differences or boundaries between
sensed, felt, and imagined worlds.
The fundamental lesson for the Princess of Cups is to maintain as much as she can of
her original sensitivity and cultivate her own subjective truths in a world that’s not always
friendly to opening up. Maintaining a sense of wonder means learning to let traumas,
fears, and insecurities pass without toughening up. This could mean limiting her exposure
to the larger world, but it even requires strength and courage in the smaller worlds. She
will be looking for the hearts of the matters, her core feelings, the most important ones,
closest to home, the most true to who she is. She will be the most studious here. By
original sensitivity is meant not cluttering her heart with a lot of extraneous emotional
distractions, boiling things down to essences and essentials, valuing or treasuring the
things that mean the most. It’s an heroic effort and no small matter to stay kind-hearted
and true, compassionate and affectionate, tender and thoughtful in a complicated world,
thus the need to keep things simple. Such a sensitivity doesn’t need to be overwhelmed to
be fulfilled.
The cup-bearer image suggests humility and service. The cup is meant to move the
wine, not to hold it. But the art of giving is also good training for learning to receive with
grace. The substratum of relationship is symbiotic, give and take, sharing and taking with
gratitude. The value of a sacrifice is more than its price or worth, but this aspect is much
misunderstood. To sincerely offer something up is not to ask for more: it’s an expression
of gratitude for things already received. Those who get this backwards are just begging to
be unsatisfied. We learn a lot more from our humbler perspectives, our places of learning
and service. But this, too, recommends against doing this for results. We can’t feed on the
gratitude others might show us, we can’t live for the happiness that others might choose
not to feel. This is just codependence. We find our rewards in the experiences we own.
There is a bit of the Japanese tea ceremony in this card, a simplicity that distills the
experience to its essence and draws more mindfulness than shallower minds might think
it deserves. The word re-spect means to look again or look closer. This is cultivating the
ability to find value in the ordinary and the everyday, which opens up the way to a deeper
and more reliable sort of enrichment. There is parsimony here, and economy, taken in its
original but nearly forgotten sense. Developing an appreciation for what we have is key
to the most satisfying next step we can take: learning to want what we have. There is
another great key here as well: if we are holding onto something of negative value, then
losing it is a win. We lighten our burdens considerably by dumping the things that are not
worth carrying with us. We also help ourselves to fill up by plugging our leaks. When we
can enrich ourselves with what is already available to us, then we can save ourselves a lot
of trouble, suffering, and running around.
We are often caught between being true and being hurt, between being authentic and
being accepted, and between being impressionable and being a fool. We learn to place
fuses that dim or cut off our sensations and feelings before they blow larger circuits. We
get scars through which we can no longer feel. There are good arguments for cultivating
finely tuned sensibilities, for staying more simple, innocent and pure, but these also argue
for choosing to live in a world that might be a little too small for our larger purposes.
There is no magic solution that avoids getting twisted up or numb inside, other than
waxing more philosophical about our emotional pain and learning to let it run or pass
through us, and giving it no place to dwell.
The Princess is said to be artistically inclined, a little dreamy and romantic. Her fertile
imagination is the power to give meaning and substance to contemplation and fantasy.
Manifesting her subjectivity would be a function of her enhanced aesthetic sense, her
ability to appreciate even a relatively impoverished environment. She should have a good
sense of her gifts, and a sense of gratitude that would not want to waste them. This is also
a way of creating new wealth, even if it only adds to the richness of her experience. Her
art would tend to be artless, a simple expression of her natural sensitivities.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 41, Decreasing, shows a lake (big cup) half full or empty,
reflecting a mountain. It’s not a time of abundance or overflow, but the things we learn in
this state, such as appreciating what we have, and learning to do more with less, are a
great make-up sort of wealth that also serves in times of plenty. On the cup half-full or
half-empty question, you might say the Yi weighs in with the cup being twice as large as
necessary. Decreasing is about paring life down to the real essentials and finding wealth
there. The turtle shown in several Tarot decks, also figures in one of the lines. The turtle’s
shells were used in divination, but while they represented wealth, they served no purpose
if they were not used up.
Key Words:
acceptance, accommodation, accord, acquiescence, admiration, aesthetics, affection,
agreeableness, aid, appreciation, approval, artlessness, assent, authenticity, being
captivated or enthralled, caring, carefulness, cherishing, compliance, concentration,
consent, core, courtesy, creativity, crystallization, deference, discretion, distillation,
economy, enrichment, essentials, esteem, fondness, frugality, good faith, gratitude,
guilelessness, hallmark cards, happy medium, harmony, heart, Hebe, honesty, humility,
imagination, innocence, interest, invocation, kindness, less is more, manifestation,
minimalism, modesty, nourishing appreciation, occupation, offerings, openness,
parsimony, plainness, Polyanna, rapture, realization, reification, respect, sacrifice,
satisfaction, sensitivity, service, settling for less, sharing, simplicity, sincerity, small is
beautiful, softness, sufficiency, sukkha, sweetness, thankfulness, thrift, treasuring,
valuing, vulnerability.
codependency, depreciation, deviance, distraction, extenuation, disappointing reciprocity,

flattery, guile, ingratitude, insincerity, irresponsibility, neediness, resentment, seduction,
superficiality, ulterior motive, wear and tear.
Components:
The Earthy part of Water. Various forms of a loss of fluidity, movement into a denser
state, making less dilute: crystallization, formation, ice, dew, distillation, condensation,
precipitation, pooling, boiling things down, concentration, enrichment, getting essentials
out of suspension, keeping the best stuff. Emotional eclecticism.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Caput Draconis in Water Signs and Houses. Cultivating true and fundamental
sensitivities within a potentially hostile environment can mean wanting a more limited
environment, or an appreciation of what it means to settle for less, settling for what is
most important, or working with the most natural or essential feelings and emotions.
Yijing: Gua 41, Sun, Decreasing, Reduction. Da Xiang: Dui (Cups) below, Gen
(Princess) above; “At the foot of the mountain is a marsh. Decreasing. The young noble
rules out resentments and restrains desires.” Trimming excess, plugging leaks, lowering
one’s expectations, doing more with less. “Be true. Outstanding opportunity. Nothing is
wrong, but it calls for persistence. Worthwhile having somewhere to go. How is this
applied? A pair of simple rice baskets may be used for the offering.” This is close to
Schumacher’s idea of small is beautiful. Appreciating the subtle instead of needing to get
blown away or loaded up. Economy in its best and most original sense. In liquids,
concentration and enrichment both imply a smaller volume with a higher percentage of
the good stuff.
Prince of Cups
Prince of the Chariot of the Waters
Intensity, Romanticism, Relativity, Point of View
Image: A handsome young prince, dressed for diplomacy or courtship, rides slowly
towards the reader on horseback, bearing a full cup as a gift. He has intentions, perhaps in
layers, but has not yet made them known. Whether for experience or love, he’s a suitor
coming to call. He may be bringing a proposition, an invitation, or an opportunity. He
seems important. If he is not a knight in shining armor, he either thinks he is or is trying
to look like one for reasons that he’s not sharing. He may not yet know what dreams he
follows.
The Prince of Cups has the costume and bearing of the alternatively named Knight of
Cups. He seems to be a man on a mission or quest, a knight errant in search of chivalrous
adventures, or a marital suitor of the sort that the Book of Changes calls indistinguishable
from a robber. And he probably would have a winged horse, if he could. His mission may
be known only to himself, but whatever it is, he appears committed and convinced, and
would like to appear convincing. He could be romantically principled, or he could be a
ladies’ man in the garb of prince charming, just trying to get some desires satisfied. In all
likelihood, he is sincere in his quest. But in the books this card raises a lot of questions as
to the Prince’s true character and motives. You get the idea that you might want to check
his references, or even check the cup for roofies. Driven by internal chemistry, which
expires, he won’t always spend the night and cook breakfast. If this is some sort of pon
farr, he might not even hear a loud No. It’s likely true that if he is seeking relationship,
it’s for what it can do to enhance his own feelings or emotional states, and that he wants
something that the one he approaches has probably not been planning to give him. But
there is nothing inherently wrong or disingenuous about this. He may yet have much to
offer in return. And even if this approach is a deception, it may be from self-deception,
not wickedness. With all the trappings and mystery, it might not do any good to announce
his intentions, since a con artist would do the same anyway. One looks for other tests, as
for empathy.
As one of the four Princes, he is out to explore the extents of feelings and emotions, to
see how far these go. There is a hunger for experiences that bring up feeling and emotion,
an interest first in how things affect him. Intensity and passion are often the first
measures of this, getting wound up, or getting up a head of steam, or some personal
hydrodynamic. These feelings are felt down in his personal pool, and this is a private
resource. He would like them to be deep, important, significant, and at least a little bit
profound. They get amplified and exaggerated so that he gets a full measure. Of course
he is full of himself. This is all a private and personal experience, however much he may
want to share it. Of course he is following his desires more than real-world feedback, and
while reaching for deeper personal truths he may yet be unable to understand others. This
is not, after all, an especially discriminating intelligence that he is cultivating. He may be
moved in wrong directions by his feelings, or driven into error by his emotions. He may,
for the sake of intensity or intoxication, seek out pain and suffering, if it only feel potent
and true.
The Prince is a romantic, who likely believes in himself and his mission, a dreamer
within his visions, or a poet in love with love itself, who believes his poems non-fictional.
Few experiences will enter his world unaltered by the romantic view. He may be driven
to live for images just to add to his poems, or to be impressed for the sake of making
impressions. Feelings lead, themselves in pursuit of the dream or romance. Here is a
paradoxical tension, between inner senses and romantic involvement with others. He
wants to not be so private, but has to live deep inside, with only his own perspective and
little overview. At least the search for a romance or a purpose beyond himself suggests
being more honest about his lack of completeness if he is living in isolation. Even the
self-absorbed must absorb some of the other, must search for external references or
sounding boards, but something more than projections and their reflections, a world that
is more than their mirror. This demands development of social skills that do more than go
through the acceptable motions. This demands a working Theory of Mind.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 61, The Truth Within, begins with the subject as a private
pool of personal resource, with wind and wood above to bring us news of the other. It
speaks of relativity. Piglets and fishes, sons and daughters, must be expected to act like
themselves, encouraged to be true to themselves, not be reflections of us. The new agers
jump to conclusions from reading only the title, thinking that inner truth must be the
universal truth. The message is the opposite. Yes, we have a resonance with things akin to
us. But we need to outgrow our perceptual limits, to see more than our own little picture,
if we want a less limited version of truth. This is not to dismiss our personal relevance,
our libidinal worlds, our sub-surface selves, our undercurrents, our hidden communities
of subliminal motives, our big secrets and mysteries. These are resources that we have for
survival, our guts, our intentions and urgencies, our rage against the dying of the light.
We simply want to learn what goes where, and know more about the big picture.
Key Words:
appeal, approach, ardor, attachment, attraction, charm, chivalry, conviction, courtesy,
dedication, depth, desire, determination, devotion, eagerness, earnestness, emphasis,
enticements, fancy, fervor, gallantry, hypnosis, import, importance, in love with love
itself, inducement, inner nature, innersense, insight, intensity, intoxication, inviolability,
invitation, involvement, issues of personal importance, meaning, mindset, mystery,
outlook, partiality, passion, pathos, persistence, personal perspective, persuasion, poetry
with purpose, point of view, privacy, profundity, proposals, propositions, prospect, quest,
relativity, relevance, resonance, resourcefulness, romanticism, secrecy, self-interest,
sentiment, shrewdness, stress, subjectivity, subtlety, suitor, tenacity, tension, tidal forces,
undercurrents, zeal.

artifice, bait, bewitchment, confidence game, craving stimulation, cunning, deception,
deflation, discouragement, fantasy, flamboyance, flattery, flirtation, fraud, guile, jealousy,
lack of overview, libidinal worlds, narcissism, obsession, pretentiousness, promises
unfulfilled, seduction, self-absorption, self- delusion, self-importance, self-indulgence,

solipsism, torment, toxic emotion, trappings, vanity, venom, walk of shame.
Components:
The Airy part of Water. Water obeys its own set of laws, which we learn from within by
experience. We have the hydraulic transfer of pressure through liquid or steam, surface
tension and elasticity, latent heat and volatility, and wave forms. The airy part of water is
in exploring what shapes or boundaries the waters can assume. Steam and evaporation are
water turning into air. This requires an input of energy to transcend one’s own puddle
thus. As the Sufi said, "I came like water, like wind I go."
Correspondences:
Astrology: Scorpio Ascending, as the Fixed Water sign, Ruler: Mars. Outlook from deep
within. Characterized by depth and intensity. Persistent, tenacious, determined, driven,
willful, passionate. Secretive or mysterious. Shrewd, devious, resourceful. Keeping that
rubber band wound up to keep going. Self-generated affect.
Yijing: Gua 61, Zhong Fu, The Truth Within, Inner Truth or Sincerity. Da Xiang: Dui
(Cups) below, Xun (Prince) above; “Over the pond there is wind. The Truth Within. The
young noble considers legal process while delaying execution.” Truth Within is a limited
view, like a private pool, personal and intense, but narrow. We still need the overview and
other perspectives before making important decisions. “Piglets and fishes. Promising.
Worthwhile to cross the great stream. Worthwhile to persist.” Relativity and alternative
points of view are learned by getting beyond or outside of ourselves.
Queen of Cups
Queen of the Thrones of the Waters
Empathy, Openness, Accessibility, Responsiveness
Image: A mature and approachable queen sits on a throne on the far side of a small
pond, gazing with a deep, trance-like expression into a cup held with both hands. There is
a hint of a mirror image in the pond. She is being filled with the experience she seeks, a
vision, an answer, a divining, or a feeling. More commonly, the images show a closed or
covered cup. Alternatively, this could be some version of Yemanja (Yemoja, Lemanja,
Yemaya) the Orisha, Mother of Waters, or a human representative, bathing at the seaside.
The Queen of Cups is traditionally described as a warmhearted woman, well-loved as a

friend, wife, or mother. She is somewhat dreamy, gifted with vision, empathy, sympathy,
and imagination. Since the greater part of human affect concerns social interactions,
inter-personality and interpersonal relationships are near to the core of her world. She
will want to be connected, interested, and beloved, and excited to circulate stories. But
she will thrive or suffer according to the quality of her social environment. Without other
skills, characteristics to give her confidence, a strong will, and force of character, she may
prove too passive to be sufficiently selective about the society she keeps, and indeed may
overly treasure such values as unconditional friendship and love, even if these people hurt
her. She will tend to be trusting, kind, affectionate, and approachable, with a capacity for
forgiveness proportionate to her empathy, but betrayals of her trust and credulity could
take their toll and lead to resentment and a shutting down. A sense of helplessness and a
victim mentality could rob her of her gifts. Her eagerness to belong socially could also
lead into smothering behavior, excessive self-sacrifice, codependence, or enabling the
dysfunction of others. Even here, though, reproach belongs more to the pernicious
influences than to her. This may be the reason why many artists depict her with a closed
cup, protected from pollutants. In the right environment, however, she is what feeling and
emotion are all about.
Compassion, sympathy, and empathy would define her if you could stretch to call these
definitions: their boundaries are permeable. They change with what they adopt or reflect.
The name of the Asian goddess of these traits, Guanyin, means ‘attending the cries.’
They have this in common. However, there is a danger here that this goddess does not
succumb to: fellow suffering, although Guanyin herself is a better fit to The World card.
There are open feelings and hearts here, without much interposition of preconception and
judgment, but there remains enough good sense to stay above the suffering that does
nobody any good. Soft-hearted does not need to mean soft-minded, although these are
often fused. A small bit of hardening of toughening can be useful here. Sensitivity need
not be susceptibility to random impacts and impressions. Mistakes will be made without
judgment, although frequently being open to the new will make up for being open to the
wrong. The Queen simply needs to learn from all of her sampling and tasting, and lesson
one is to live life in a wholesome place that encourages the aesthetic sensibilities to
remain open. As a Queen, or a homemaker, she can do much to make this happen.
Like a mimic, chameleon, or mollusk, she might take the shape and color of what she
touches or what touches her, adopting more than adapting, and might be imaginative
enough to become anyone, and lose herself in the mirrored hall. As a chameleon on a
mirror, who she is is anybody’s guess. Her versatility could come to be seen as frivolity,
her ambivalence as confusion, and her unpredictability as unreliability. But maybe it’s her
true nature to shift shapes and truly be all of these things she becomes, to not have a
hardened or solid core. An unconditionality of the mind brings its own set of challenges.
The clarity of her perceptions might depend on the stillness or turbulence of her waters.
The Queen is neither understood nor understands rationally. Critical thinking is not her
strongest suit. She will tend to be unquestioning, and so can be faithful to things that are
not true. She will likely be honest as far as she understands things. Hers is a protean
reality, one of shifting shapes and images, and uncertainty, as the nature of the perceived
reflects that of the changing observer. Belief without question, gullibility and credulity,
and subsequent delusion, could be ongoing problems.
This Queen’s mystic and mediumistic side is often referred to. She lives close to the
threshold of subconsciousness, where dreams and visions emerge. Self-hypnotic loops
and experiential engulfment can make whole otherworldly worlds, but she may not be the
best judge of their reality or depth, ever at risk of becoming a bliss ninny or frivolous
flibbertigibbet if she doesn’t have friends who can help her stay anchored and oriented.
There is a danger of spreading out too thinly. With trust in experience for its own sake,
the subjective can tend to be reified, or made prematurely real. Inner musings, fantasy,
and trance can go may places that reality wouldn’t dare, but this sometimes exposes
reality’s failure of nerve and imagination, even leading to wondrous invention.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 58, Satisfaction or The Joyous. In addition to the above
characteristics, the doubling of the trigram of the rich and sensuous wetlands also stresses
the cultivation of pleasure and happiness as intrinsically benign and instructive. With
self-interest and its gratification, we negotiate our own progress and personal evolution.
It’s an attractive rather than a driving force, but it moves us right along.
Key Words:
absorption, acceptance, accessibility, adoption, affinity, allure, ambivalence, ananda,
appeal, attending, attraction, attunement, availability, bliss, breadth, broad-mindedness,
captivation, caring, chameleon, channeling, charm, cheer, communion, compassion,
connection, contagion, devotion, empathy, enchantment, encouragement, eros, exposure,
fascination, fluctuation, fluidity, fulfillment, fusion, immersion, impartiality, impression,
imprint, intuition, magic, medium, melting, merging, mimicry, mirroring, mysticism,
open-mindedness, openness, pliancy, projections, rapport, rapture, receptivity, reflection,
resonance, responsiveness, reverie, satisfaction, saturation, sensitivity, sentimentality,
shape-shifting, subjectivity, sympathy, taste, tolerance, union, versatility, vulnerability,
welcome, whimsy.

bewitchment, codependency, confusion, credulity, distortion, disproportionate reactions,
distraction, emotional manipulation, emotional vampirism, fickleness, hallucination,
haze, glamor, gullibility, illusion, inconsistency, inconstancy, indolence, irresolution,
meekness, melodrama, misguidedness, moodiness, naiveté, narcissism, nebulousness,
overextension, pernicious influences, sentimentality, susceptibility, unreliability, vanity.
Components:
The Watery part of Water. The fluidity and immediate responsiveness of water, capable of
taking any form that natural law allows. Saturation, immersion. An ability to merge with
context. Tranquil receptivity and powers of reflection.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Pisces Ascending, as the Mutable Water sign, Ruler: Jupiter. Characterized by
sensitivity and openness. Affectionate, hospitable, trusting. Impressionable, sympathetic,
sensitive, suggestible, receptive. Plastic, malleable, protean, adaptable. Ethereal,
mystical, mediumistic, nebulous.
Yijing: Gua 58, Dui, Satisfaction, The Joyous. Da Xiang: Dui (Cups) below, Dui (Queen)
above; “Interconnecting pools. Satisfaction. The young noble joins with friends for
discussion and practice.” It isn’t water’s nature to separate itself from other water.
Opening up, sharing, enjoyment, gratification. “Fulfillment. Rewarding to persist.” This
is not the same as persisting to be rewarded. We follow our bliss by allowing ourselves to
do so, but don’t chase it out of desperation. Harvest, reaping rewards, fruits.
King of Cups
Lord of the Waves and the Waters, King of the Hosts of the Sea
Maturity, Patience, Ephemerality, Deferred Gratification
Image: A mature or paternal, but still bright-eyed King on his throne offers a cup to
the reader in the attitude of a toast. One cannot be sure if it’s wine. A bemused but
mischievous glint in his eyes gives him the air of a old Bedouin chieftain, but with strong
suggestions of both sincerity and kindness. He is both dignified and approachable here, a
potentially fierce or highly enthusiastic nature with a calm and warm exterior. Marcus
Aurelius might be a good model here. So would Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham. He
wants both respect and gratitude, but he wants to earn them.
The King of Cups is usually described as a decent and mature man, with a calm
exterior and good humor, experienced, deliberative, considerate, and approachable. He is
likely to be likable and charming, and perhaps even charismatic. He might not appear to
be a sensitive or emotional fellow, since he has developed some reserve or reticence in
his maturity, but he is not at all cold, nor especially judgmental. He has a big heart, but
also an understanding that won’t submit to the frivolous and ephemeral. He is familiar
with the ranges and options of his own feelings, and can feel them vicariously in others.
Once consenting, he can be touched. He is responsibly responsive, or careful about his
arousal, and steady in his enthusiasms, even if they may not last long. He could be both
sensuous and sensible at the same time. He may or may not be deep, but he has collected
some substantial life experience. We spoke earlier of the four Kings’ degree of maturity
and sovereignty each relying on one most-important life lesson. This King must learn
about time in a related pair of aspects: ephemerality and deferred gratification, summed
up as patience. He will be guided, but not controlled, by affect. He might also be fearful
of losing control from some past experience. But then, because affect is fleeting, he will
be on to other things.
The King of Cups is not without emotion. Rather, he is so comfortable in the realm of
emotion that it is an area of expertise for him and he can feel empathy and compassion
for those around him without becoming upset himself. He may seem reserved, restrained,
even reticent. This is emotional self-control, or better, self-management, that is not at all
unemotional. It is a kind of discriminating intelligence that is best learned by one who has
been open to his feelings and emotions and learned some good lessons from this. His
emotional intelligence has become emotional wisdom, even sagacity. He is the leader of
his feelings now, not their obedient follower. Experience has given him a stock of
alternative ways to feel and emote, including the skill he needs in order to hold them in
abeyance until some more of his options have been weighed, and compared in the light of
their longer-term outcomes. He knows some things now about promises and bait, some of
them learned at some cost. He can estimate what is important before choosing to get
involved, when his criteria for a more promising experience have been met. This is done
by slowly learning his nature and developing his personal values.
You will find this King responding just about right in between repression on the numb
side of things and catharsis on the overblown side. But when you witness him emoting
you are apt to see some enthusiasm and earnestness, or caring and compassion. Feelings
and emotions are not things that wise elders outgrow. The Buddha had much to say about
emotional self-management, particularly when he spoke of right intention. But he trained
his wisdom on our more problematic emotions, craving and greed, ill-will and aversion,
harmfulness and cruelty. The superior states, while not to be hunted down, were not to be
dismissed. Both the Stoics and Epicureans shared similar values. The Stoics were a bit
more extreme in seeking apatheia, life without passionate suffering, although this was
not nearly as numb as what we now refer to as apathy. Both sought eudaimonia, human
flourishing and well-being. The final word on the matter might be that our feelings can
choose, not just our thoughts. With a little experience and practice, these too can have
standards, good tastes, and values. This is how to cultivate the Stoic and Epicurean ideal
of eudaemonia, or human thriving.
As a king, of course, he has his subjects. He needs to know what his subjects need and
want, and even what they could be helped to want. As a counselor, he has clients. As a
therapist, he has patients. As a dad he has kids, as a grandpa, grandkids. He will want to
be a good listener, concerned and sympathetic, attentive and understanding, tolerant and
comforting, but not a chump or a sap. Understanding doesn't mean agreement, support
doesn’t mean indulgence, empowering doesn’t mean permissiveness. He may not be at all
sympathetic with impatience or shortsightedness. As these are his duties, all he might
want in return for this guidance and perspective is a little respect and gratitude, and these
because these two help others to learn.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 54, Little Sister’s Marriage. Much of the text looks at the
problems of haste and impatience that resolve with our maturity later, but a couple of the
lines depict the patience and self-control that this card is trying to develop. An ideal King
of Cups is depicted as the King Diyi in Line 5. The lessons of immaturity, impulsiveness,
or jumping to conclusions, will eventually lead us to longer time horizons and better
perspectives. This is the one who says ‘no, thank you’ to the Marrying Maiden, despite
the near certain promise of short-term gratification.
Key Words:
affect as choice, agreeableness, allowance, appeal, calm, care, caregiving, caretaking,
cautiousness, charm, coherence, comfort, compassion, composure, comprehension,
consideration, counsel, deferred or delayed gratification, dignity, diplomacy, discernment,
discretion, emotional liberty, equanimity, experience, familiarity, good listener, grandpa,
grasp, guidance, helpfulness, kindness, liberality, maturity, nobility of heart, noblesse
oblige, patience, patronage, probity, provider, reserve, resilience, resourcefulness,
response ability, right intention, reticence, sagacity, samma sankappa, sanctuary, security,
self-assurance, self-management, self-mastery, self-possession, self-restraint, sentience,
sincerity, solicitousness, stewardship, still waters running deeply, stewardship, support,
sympathy, tact, tenacity, tolerance, tribal elder, warmth, wisdom, wise advice, values as
self-taught.

blinders, compromising position, distraction, double dealing, ephemera, haste, hypocrisy,
impatience, impulsiveness, indecision, ineffectuality, precipitate action, prematurity,
seduction, settling early for less, shiftiness, shortsightedness, transience, unenduring
enthusiasm, volatility.
Components:
The Fiery part of Water. Potential energy or hydropower. Energy crosses the ocean as
gentle swells, but these can turn into great waves when coming ashore. Water will hug the
lowest place in the river bed until the bottom drops out and the water falls or cascades.
Water’s enthalpy powers hurricanes. Water has tremendous potential energy when the
time and place are right for its release.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Cancer Ascending, as the Cardinal Water sign, Ruler: Luna. Characterized by
care, sensitivity, sympathy and nurture, but also some not-so-passive, proactive energy,
provided that a sense of comfort, familiarity, or security are in place. Expanding the
feelings as much as bruises and armor allow. Diplomatic, conscientious, careful. Helpful,
caring, fatherly or motherly. Traditional, domestic. Can be volatile, impatient, erratic,
easily upset, and irrational if insecure.
Yijing: Gua 54, Gui Mei, Little Sister’s Marriage, the Marrying Maiden. Da Xiang: Dui
(Cups) below, Zhen (King) above; “Over the pond there is thunder. Little Sister’s
Marriage. The young noble uses enduring ends to understand the ephemeral.” Requires
an understanding of how things play out over time, one that comes with maturity. “To go
boldly has pitfalls. Not a direction with merit.” Impatience, haste, or rushing into things is
one way to learn about life. This can mature in the end to a calmer and more appreciative
way of being that can look at options even for feeling and emotion, and defer gratification
as needed.
Swords
Ace of Swords
Root of the Powers of Air
Ideation, Perspective, Epiphany, Comprehension
Image: A beautiful, but dangerous-looking broadsword is held triumphantly aloft from

below the card by a hand which could belong to either a man or a woman. In many decks
this sword is shown piercing a crown, which could symbolize both sovereignty and
Kether, and with palm and olive branches to keep the Christians happy. The RWS card
and most clones depict the hilt being held by a hand emerging from a cloud. Others show
the hand emerging from a lake, alluding both to Excalibur and to Yetzirah emerging from
Briah. Some variants show Excalibur embedded in a stone. Decks may show the sword
pointing up or down, the former being more common.
The Ace of Swords carries the connotations of the Swords in general: one-pointedness
(the Buddhist cittekeggata) and penetration at the pointy end; the two edges, for cutting,
dividing, and shaping, and a warning about unintended consequences; and also the hilt,
wanting a firm grasp of matters at hand, the practicalities of thought. It’s not a power but
a tool to do the work that’s the measure of power. It’s a strong signal to others, a sign of
authority, or a suggestion of competence. It symbolizes the cutting edge of discrimination
or the making of distinctions. It’s the power of having just the right word in both magic
and science. The Vorpal blade goes snickersnack and takes off the Bandersnatch head.
This Ace can speak of the formation of a good idea, of the process of ideation or
conceptualization, of a figure emerging from its ground, getting resolution or sharpness,
the process of getting a definition or a name affixed to an experience, the cognition that
precedes re-cognition, the reduction of the flow of experience to a form, principle, or
order. It is in-formation, both a specific insight or special piece of information and a
summary or generalization of many such insights and pieces of the puzzle that in turn
becomes a component in a still-larger comprehension. It’s a way to pack up a lesson so
we can carry it with us, a distillation of experience or new piece of knowhow, a likeness
or model that we can use as a tool. It’s the name or word the wizard needs to make the
demon run errands. It’s the new word you’ve just learned that rearranges half of your
thinking. The word concept means ‘to capture with.’ This is an organizing or central
principle, a specific affirmation, command, or emphasis, which may become the central
nexus of a new order or organization. It’s a good question, or a good answer, but as an
Ace it ought not be both: it’s not both beginning and end.
One of our more vapid and erroneous platitudes declares that there are no new ideas.
It’s spread by those who have none. The word discovery suggests that we are uncovering
something that is already there, but this is only sometimes the case, and even then the
perception, cognition, concept, or name is often new. The Ace of Swords can be the birth
of a new idea. It could be an invention or a patent, a new meme, a seed idea, a new key, a
core meaning, a key piece to a puzzle, a new category, a new algorithm, a new thought, or
a new application for an old thought. On a personal and even unspoken level, it might be
a lucid vision, an epiphany, a mental breakthrough, a getting of the right idea, a new
perspective or focus of awareness, a eureka moment, the formation of a gestalt, or even a
whole new paradigm that starts a scientific revolution. A good, multi-layered example
was the formulation of William of Occam’s Razor: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem, the principle that entities in a theory are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity. This is a way to slice fat from our theories and a mighty fine Ace of Swords.
With this Ace we might be working on our first premises and postulates, or forming
new questions or hypotheses, still at our cognitive starting point, or getting to the bottom
of knowledge, questioning the ideas that we build our mental lives around. Perhaps we
are integrating a new idea into an old framework. We have a lot of work to do here, since
by birth and culture of origin, we are the heirs to a vast array of what might be called
anti-cognitive processes, ways to not know or to keep ourselves from learning more:
cognitive biases, defense mechanisms, coping strategies and logical fallacies. And when
these things have taken over our cultures, we take up our literal swords as a sterner and
more serious instrument of correction, righting wrongs outside of our own heads as well.
As such, our sword can stand for our purpose, or our Excalibur, if we have a higher
purpose, our noble cause or conviction, our highest priority and point of focus, our oath
or word of honor.
Truth changes with point of view, although it is often merely the same truth enriched
by adding new points of view. The Ace of Swords suggests that we look at our
perspective, the starting points of our observations. The Buddha saw what our suffering
did to our perceptions and asked how clear our vision could be if it had fear and pain at
its base. For this reason, he dismissed our gods and religions, and looked instead to the
suffering clouding our minds. Perhaps if this could be cleared up, if we developed a more
comprehensive collection of points of view, we might see things more as they truly are.
This is the theme of the Yi’s counterpart, Gua 20, Guan (as in the name of the Chinese
goddess Guanyin) perspective, contemplation, or the act of attending. This is the issue of
being both subject and object and seeing from multiple sides, a true comprehension that
combines both specification and generalization. It’s about getting our minds and concepts
wrapped fully around things. It advises the missionary to read the signs and the natives
first, to understand other perspectives before imposing new ideas.
Key Words:
abstraction, affirmation of justice, aim, algorithm, analysis, answer, assumption, belief,
breakthrough, clarification, comprehension, concept, conception, conceptualization,
conquest, criterion, criticism, critique, cutting through, decision, definition, design,
determination, discernment, discovery, emerging view, enforcement, epiphany, eureka,
examination, exposé, focal point, focus, formulation, frame of mind, generalization,
gestalt, good question, hypothesis, ideation, identification, initiative, insight, integrity,
invention, inventory, investigation, invoked (not natural) force, key, knowhow, law,
logos, lucid moment, means to an end, mental acuity, mental concentration, mental
distillation, missing piece, model, object, objectification, objective, objectivity, one-
pointedness, outlook, overview, paradigm, patent, perspective, plan, point of view,
postulate, prajna, principle, priority, purpose, resolution, review, right idea, rule, scrutiny,
simplification, specification, specificity, stark relief, starting point, summation,
supervenience, thought worth having, truing, vantage.
anti-cognitives, arrogance, bad idea, bias, brain fog, coldness, deception, delusion, denial,
Dunning-Kruger, duplicity, error, fallacy, fetish, idée fixe, imprudence, lack of aim or
focus, one-track mind, preconception, prejudice, procrustean concepts, reason being
overvalued, remoteness, toxic belief, unexamined life, unintended consequences.
Components:
Ace plus Swords. The Ace of Mind. The origin of mental functionality and the beginning
of the work to develop good and useful mental functioning. How the idea or the word
comes into being as we get edges carved around an experience. Cognition is embodied
when sensation encounters our native abilities and heuristics, our intellect.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Saturn in Air Signs and Houses. A character wanting reliable cognition or
perception must examine the basis or formation of these. Wants a structural approach to
cognition. Constraining the mind and setting its boundaries in order to meet the mind’s
objectives. Systematic, disciplined, organized, strict, critical. May see it almost a duty to
perceive the world correctly.
Qabalah: Kether in Yetzirah. In the beginning was the Logos or Word, at least as it goes
in the myth, but this is at the beginning or basis of cognitive or conceptual worlds.
Yijing: Gua 20, Guan, Perspective, Contemplation. Da Xiang: Kun (Ace) below, Xun
(Swords) above; “The wind moves over the earth. Perspective. The early sovereigns
examined the regions and comprehended their societies to establish their doctrines.” We
want our understanding to fit the real world first, and do this by sincerely attending and
trying to understand the reality first, rather than simply imposing our views and seeing
what we are predisposed to see. “A cleansing but not a sacrifice. Being true is as good as
majestic.” Comprehensive observation or examination will involve multiple frames of
reference. Our experience is enriched by our optional and alternative views.
Two of Swords
Synthesis, Synergy, Reintegration, Creativity
Image: The RWS deck and most of its clones depict a blindfolded woman, seated with
her back to the sea, with arms crossed and holding two crossed swords in a symmetrical
position. She appears to be in a deep deliberation or meditation, cultivating inspiration,
possibly trying to Feel the Force. She is training to listen as well as see. Alternately, a
sorceress with cowl thrown back holds two different swords high above her head in
clashing contact, liberating a spirit fire against an unstable sky and a rough sea that she
faces.
The RWS Two of Swords character seems to be working out or through a problem of
perception, perhaps having blindfolded herself to wake up her other senses, to see other
possibilities, even alternate realities, as though the solution has not been available to
ordinary states. She want to be blind to the obvious or the expected. Her back to the sea is
said to be emotion held in abeyance, dispassion, a search for equanimity and equilibration
rather than submitting to vacillation, ambivalence, or indecisiveness. She is deferring a
decision or judgment, perhaps suspending both belief and disbelief, avoiding distraction
while her analysis is in progress. Since we all have at least two brains, it often makes
sense to think twice. We all contain contradictory natures, we all contain multitudes. The
world has its tricky duplicities too: wave and particle, electricity and magnetism, space
and time, mass and gravity, and so on. The mind wants some rising above. We pause here
to rearrange our data, and even our methods of arranging the data, and perhaps we can
ask some different questions.
At the lowest level of interpretation, we see most readers and writers concerned with
the cognitive problems of dualism: two swords, dueling, en garde and touché, the fight to
see which side is better, or who has the better argument. Those trapped in dualistic or
either-or modes of thinking, which might be most of us, tend to see this card as some kind
of conflict or conflictedness, clash, indecision, stalemate, or at best a détente, truce, or
compromise, as a conventional title ‘lord of restored peace’ suggests. Even the mystics
will get trapped by Yin vs Yang. As with our court system, such adversarialism is often
the worst way to get at what’s true, often just forcing a choice between exaggerated half-
truths. It’s our fault when we oversimplify things, reify or harden our thoughts, and take
our ways of simple-minded thinking and talking as the basic rules for the universe. While
binary systems exist in plenty of places, simplistic distinctions are often too sharp for a
higher or more complex reality. There is nearly always some middle excluded.
Sometimes this is a problem of perception, between us and what we think is the world,
and the cognitive dissonance undoes us. Sometimes it’s an analog of our retinal disparity
or stereopsis: each eye gets a different picture. We argue about which point of view is
correct, when we need them both to see depth. Polemics do not often serve us. The sum
of these kinds of two-alisms is less than the sum of the parts. We need to do some work to
get the rest of the data and perhaps even change our minds or our entire way of thinking.
On a level above our right-and left-handed options is a reconciliation of opposites, a
resolution of paradox, a finding of common ground, a harnessing of opponent ideas into a
working team. This does not always mean win-lose compromise: as with a good market
transaction, both sides can get what they want and come away winners. This might take
finessing and haggling. As Fitzgerald noted: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the
ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
function.” We might call this trans-partiality. Here we have arbitration and mediation, or
diplomacy, the finding of harmony, perhaps even making use of the tension, disparity or
stress between different ideas and points of view, and development of the skill, deftness,
and dynamic control that this requires. Or else we have syncretism, putting two halves
back together, a unified perspective doing double the duties, the power of synthesis
leading to synergy, a whole that’s made greater than the sum of the parts. This is the
vision of depth that we get from combining visual perspectives. It’s only increasingly
complex until it all comes together: then we often get elegance. Insight is sometimes
defined as “a dynamic reorganization of the perceptual field.” A decision doesn’t always
require compromise. Sometimes an answer just needs a different question.
The next level up is just that: rising to a level above. Here we find Einstein’s advice:
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were
at when we created them.” This is also known as de Bono’s lateral thinking. Here we find
Solomon’s baby, and Alexander’s Gordion Knot. We are the masters of our ideas, not
servants. Here we ask new questions. Problems are good things here. We break up old
patterns to suit our objectives. We think outside the box. We posit a tertium quid, a third
thing unlike the two. We take liberties with the order, especially how we perceive things.
Arthur Koestler suggested that creativity emerged from the juxtaposition or joining of
two separate matrices, or separate fields of structure, thought, or perception, or movement
between two mental disciplines. He called this ‘bisociation,’ the “simultaneous mental
association of an idea or object with two fields ordinarily not regarded as related,” The
theory also accounts for the success of hybrid vigor, the successful evolution of sexual
reproduction, and even the nature of humor. Koestler's Act of Creation is well-
represented by the Two of Swords. Strong emergence provides another example in
philosophy, how new things under the sun come to be out of unions of the old.
We can get outside and above ourselves here, and ask “what would the universe do?”
We have a lot of momentum and power if we can get onto this ride. We can look to higher
and natural law, and possibly even find loopholes. Here is vocation, calling, true purpose,
living up to our fullest potential, and higher purpose as well, living for something greater
and longer-lived than we are. It means several lifetimes of study, and a long, tough road
to any real or earned success. Here we find Buddha’s last words: Compound beings are
ephemeral, strive with heedful diligence. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 01, Creating,
symbolized by the growth of the dragon. This is the slow maturation or ripening of
genius, precociousness not withstanding. This is a look forward to persistence or duration
in time, a perspective beyond the human, towards the being who comes next to replace
us. A dragon is above the dualities, above yin and yang: why would he favor his left or
right wing when a sky full of stars is what he wants?
Key Words:
advaita, alternate realities, arbitration, artistry, autonomy, awaiting more input, balance,
bilateral agreement, bisociation, cause, choice, choice point, clarification, cognitive
challenge, complements, complexity resolving, compromise, concertedness, coordination,
creativity, decision, decisiveness, dedication, determination, dichotomy, dispassion,
dualism, duplicity, dyadics, elegance, emergence, emergentism, equanimity, equilibration,
equipoise, feeling the force, genius, higher ground, higher law, higher order thought,
higher purpose, higher wisdom, hybridization, ingenuity, initiative, insight, intention,
inventiveness, ius naturale, mastery, mediation, metacognition, metasolution, negotiation,
non-dualism, originality, quandary, rapprochment, resolving disparity, reconciliation of
opposites, paradox, quandary, reintegration, resolve, resoluteness, resolving paradox,
simplification, suspended judgment, syncretism, synergy, synthesis, tertium quid,
thinking twice, visualizing outcome.

adversarialism, betrayal, binary or dualistic thinking, cognitive dissonance, contradiction,
denial, discord, disparity, dissension, duplicity, excluded middle, falsehood, incongruity,
inconsistency, indecision, irresolution, misrepresentation, offsetting factors, paralysis,
polemics, provocation, stalemate, uncertainty, vacillation.
Components:
Two plus Swords. Mental direction or directing the mind. The need to look at the right
form of dualism, such as outmoded vs improved. Linear thinking is limiting, particularly
when it limits to right vs left. Uses of higher order thought, getting above the problem.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Uranus in Air Signs and Houses. Uranus, as the higher octave of Mercury, is
metalevel thinking, creation of the message that Mercury delivers, transcendent thought.
Quick study. Outside the box, individual, original, questioning, visionary, innovative,
experimental.
Qabalah: Chokmah in Yetzirah. Vector and direction in the world of form. Adaptation of
form to serve the ends of the will: creativity. Applied logos.
Yijing: Gua 01, Qian, Creating, Heaven. Da Xiang: Qian (2) below, Qian (Swords)
above; “Heaven moves inexhaustibly. The young noble is naturally energetic, without
rest” Sovereignty, command, self-mastery, authority, cogency, will, dynamic life. “The
greatest fulfillment rewards persistence.” Genius, in the original sense of beget or create,
still carries the more modern attribution of 90% perspiration. We work for it. Creativity
as a function of mastering or harnessing opposites, as a dragon’s left and right wings.
Three of Swords
Sorrow, Separation, Grieving, Moving On
Image: The RWS image shows a valentine-style heart, pierced by three downward
thrusting swords. The image was taken directly from the late 15th century Sola-Busca
deck, making this by far the oldest of the pictorial pips. Alternately, a robed penitent
kneels before an altar in which three swords have been embedded, point down,
resembling crosses. On the robe is an emblem, a bleeding heart pierced by three swords.
The Three of Swords is almost universally correlated with sorrow. This is another card
with head (Swords) and heart (Threes) in a fragile partnership. In this case, the world has
grown too big, or the options too many, or the better choices too few. Perhaps a painful
truth has shown itself. Head and heart need to come to terms and agree on how to handle
this. Our disobedient feelings are not following the rules of reason, or else our rational
choices are leaving us in emotional quandaries. There are cognitive components to the
suffering, and suffering is bewildering the wits. The meanings can be as simple as triage,
trivialities, triangles and third parties, all threes, of course. Sometimes they take or tear us
apart. It may be not so much about getting our feelings hurt as what alienation,
abandonment, existential angst, or betrayal can do to us, and not so much our emotional
pain itself but the pain of understanding things we might rather not face or see, which
calls up the question of whether we are truly understanding things at all. The head must
allow for feelings, and feelings, the need for good choices. This card isn’t always about
love for another person. This is merely a fine example of how things may not work out
according to our wishes or designs. Others may have a say in how it all works out. But
we will have some kind of losses to grieve or mourn, and this may leave us with little
choice but to walk away. Choosing what to feel might mean choosing what not to feel.
These are swords after all. Some problems can’t be solved. The mind passes, the heart
breaks.
What we thought was true, or wanted to be true, was not. The world that we thought
was small and simple enough to manage was not. Things won’t always go our way. We
can't have it all. We might even have known this in theory already, and this new insult is
just a reminder. Disappointment, disillusionment, and disenchantment have to be good
and instructive things, don’t they? The finitude of intellect is one of the truths to be found
on the quest. There is too much data awaiting collection. When a hungry mind wants it
all, it winds up with noise and much with no value, plus a neocortical overload. Those
with a want to believe will stuff up their minds with guests best left uninvited. Soon the
mind can take no more, including its cure. More critical skills are best instilled at the
start, best by the end of childhood. If we sort our data on the way in we can have much
less to toss out. So we say goodbye here to some things that we liked. A perfect lover
loves someone else more perfectly. Another species goes extinct forever. An old growth
forest is cut down to make toilet paper. A promising nation is lost to lack of vigilance.
Your species flirts with its own extinction. We may face hard truths that can’t be denied.
Sometimes we need to have a good cry, and then get up the courage to change whatever
things we can. Where bitterness and rancor do little to help this, it isn’t inauthentic to cut
our losses with our swords and part ways with them.
Helplessness and finitude can be our big problems here. We want to live in the largest
world we can manage, but this world isn’t made for our feelings, or limited brains, and
it’s easy to feel or perceive too much. Somehow we must come to grips with the news of
the world, and crucial decisions made by lowest common denominators. We can’t have it
all our way, much can’t be helped at all, and much of it is out of our hands. We still have
reasons to try, instead of just praying, but try telling that to your woe. And this immense
frustration drives much of the bad philosophy that tells us why to just let it be. Sebastien
Chamfort suggested: “Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty years can never have loved
mankind.” The idealism of this card can be individualistic or cultural, but even the rugged
individual needs some inspiring peers. The world’s suffering won’t diminish any time
soon, but for us it’s still largely optional when we know we are doing all that we can. And
we can always not cooperate, not participate, disobey bad laws in civil ways, and vote by
how we live and spend our wealth.
We have to move on and divest ourselves of the things that hold us back. We have to
see the bad for what it is, if we’re honest. We have to make choices and these will negate
some options. Each decision means opportunities forgone. It’s the cost of living, but it’s
still a bargain. Nietzsche said: “let my sole negation be turning aside.” Angry negation
and denial do more damage than this. Therefore, we simply part ways at the crossroads,
acknowledge our incompatibilities, and lose the friends we are better off losing. We find
that even love must have conditions, and sometimes it must be tough. It’s this or dwell in
our suffering. We need to grieve our losses as part of our nature, but grief does not need
to own us for life. There are plenty of other fish in this tree.
We should also not forget there are sacred forms of sorrow and sadness, and reasons
for having tragedies as well as comedies up on the marquee. We are finite and mortal, or
for some, all that we’ve loved and learned will be lost to the next incarnation. We can do
existential nausea over this for a while, and wallow in our weltschmerz. We can explore
where our meaninglessness and senselessness take us. We can have our crises of faith,
our dark nights of the soul, and our sloughs of despond. How long is art, how short is
life? But there is nothing wrong with the longing of the Portuguese saudade. Or the
Japanese mono no aware: the pathos of things, awareness of impermanence, or wabi-
sabi, the acceptance of transience or imperfection, or yugen, the mysterious grace of a
world beyond our ken. The fact is, we are lucky to be alive and prone to be ingrates about
it. We are Vonnegut’s Bokonon’s lucky mud that got to sit up.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 12, Separating or Standstill, imagined as Heaven and
Earth moving in different directions, and the wise and the foolish moving in different
directions, and the problems of saying goodbye to good things gone bad and the good
things we cannot have. What we thought was true or wanted to be true was not. Next?
Key Words:
abandonment, absence, abstraction, alienation, baffled hopes, bereavement, betrayal,
bleeding heart, blues, coming apart, decay, delay, departure, deprivation, detachment,
disappointment, disapproval, disarray, disengagement, disharmony, disintegration,
disjunction, disorder, disruption, dissension, dissonance, distances, divergence, division,
divorce, emotional discord, estrangement, goodbyes, facts of failure, failed dreams,
farewell, finitude, grieving lossses, heartache, heartbreak, helplessness, incompatibility,
intervention, interruption, isolation, lament, letting go, loneliness, longing, looking aside,
loss, melancholy, mourning, moving on, negation, numbness, painful truths, partition,
powerlessness, pulling apart, rejection, removal, rift, rupture, sadness, saudade, seeing
too much, shism, segregation, separation, settling for less, severance, sorrow, splitting up,
stagnation, standstill, tragic drama, trying times, vulnerability, wabi-sabi, weltschmerz,
yugen.

agony, aloofness, angst, apathy, aversion, bleeding heart, confusion, decadence, denial,
despair, disintegrity, disloyalty, distraction, divisiveness, divorce, error, failed dreams,
hatred, heartbreak, indifference, mental anxiety, misunderstanding, pettiness, quarreling,
self-defeating negativity, small-mindedness, unhappiness, world suffering.
Components:
Three plus Swords. Expansive thought, visionary about the possibilities. The possibilities
are far greater than the reality could ever be, and so opportunities are foregone. Cognition
and affect are at odds and may be overthought. We will need to set higher or narrower
standards, leave some things behind, perhaps even our suffering. Reason and emotions
conflict. Conditional and tough love.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Neptune in Air Signs and Houses. Wants affiliation with other minds, or hive
mind. Moving through mental and therefore cultural relationships. Too much of
identification with the human cultural experiment might lead to understanding how few
are really contributing, and a sense of isolation or smallness.
Qabalah: Binah in Briah. An ocean of pure possibilities, as seen from a tiny little boat.
This is too much for us, but we lose some jetsam and sail on. We can’t do nor learn to do
this in safe harbors.
Yijing: Gua 12, Bi, Separating, Standstill, Stagnation. Da Xiang: Kun (3) below, Qian
(Swords) above; “Heaven and earth do not interact. Separating. The young noble
conserves virtue and avoids trouble, not allowing himself the luxury of compensation.”
Heaven and earth are moving in different directions. This is often mistranslated as
‘Obstruction,’ but it's closer to abandonment. “Separating oneself from inferior people,
those not worth the young noble’s loyalty. Greatness departs, smallness arrives.” Mind
necessarily moving away from portions of reality for reasons of self-protection. Sensing a
necessary conditionality to our loves, our likes, and our wants.
Four of Swords
Retreat, Distancing, Reframing, Perspective
Image: The RWS deck shows an embattled knight out of armor, in horizontal repose in
a religious sanctuary, seemingly recuperating or otherwise recomposing himself.
Alternately, a warrior, perhaps only recently turned anchorite as evidenced by torn robes
and bandages, recuperates near the mouth of a mountain cave, sitting Zazen. His four
swords are still within reach, one being more immediately at than the others. If there’s a
chance he’s still a warrior, he could be reading Sunzi now.
The Four of Swords is sometimes subtitled Rest from Strife, but there is a larger
dimension to it, specifically, larger dimension itself. It’s an adjusting of the boundaries
with which we frame our worlds to optimize our perceptions. This is frequently called
reframing. In psychology, cognitive reframing is “the process of identifying and then
disputing irrational or maladaptive thoughts,” or rethinking a problem in other terms and
from other views or perspectives. It’s a type of reflection used to transcend points of view
that are proving to be less than optimal. For the person taking this rest or retreat, it’s the
ability to step back or out of what they have been doing to find some new or different
approaches. For the one embattled, it might be a furlough, or strategic retreat, or rest from
strife, or even a rethinking of the need for battle itself. For others it might be a sabbatical,
or sabbath, or other form of time out. Perceptions, and thoughts based on them, change
with how they are framed, even when situations from which they derive don’t change at
all. Less than optimal fixed frames can include narrow-mindedness, nearsightedness,
small-mindedness, and shortsightedness. Altering these at will is a metastrategy, as with
the Two of Swords. We refer our ideas to a more comprehensive or informative frame of
reference.
The Four combined with Swords suggests composing or recomposing the mind, the
cultivation of poise, equanimity, or equilibrium. The word strategic in strategic retreat is
important here. This is not about finding an artificial mental stability that is too delicate
to admit disturbance. It’s also not about escaping or fugue, or going to one’s happy place.
It might mean getting out of a trap, or finding refuge or sanctuary. It’s a refreshing of our
browser. It’s a re-scaling of our frame of reference, usually in order to see a little bit more
of the ground or context surrounding a figure, to try to see what might be missing in the
current view, by looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes we back up far enough to see
that what we have been obsessed with was never important at all.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 33, Distancing or Retreat. It depicts a mountain standing
tall under heaven, making it also not so very tall. This might suggest our own mountain-
and-molehill image. One of the metaphors used in the lines is military, but this and others
apply to any situation that we might be advised to back or move away from. It’s common
for people to leave a situation by making themselves and everyone around them unhappy
in order to get pushed out, often leaving only resentments behind. The optimum retreat is
a simple disengagement that will leave no such mess for others to clean up. Freedom-to is
better than freedom-from, but both can usually be achieved. We have a choice of point of
view or perspective. We are permitted to choose among options for the path that best
serves our longer ends and objectives. In battle, of course, we call call this slippery or
crafty, but here it’s whether you win or lose that counts.
Reframing is recontextualizing. It’s like looking through a zoom lens and having the
freedom to change composition. It’s the paradox of finding stable mental formations by
liberating ourselves from fixed ideas, dogma, and toxic beliefs. The Fours want some
form of stability, but they still permit changing the scale at which we look at things. This
especially includes changing our time horizons. Today we have politicians with two years
or less worth of vision, making hundred-thousand year promises about storage of nuclear
waste. Much human endeavor looks quite different under the aspect of evolutionary or
geologic time, and our failure to see from this angle might help put us out of that picture.
Patriotism is another example, since mighty nations come and go like the seasons. And
conscience requires a better vision of what a higher law might say. A frame with more
ground and less figure lets us see our problems from more or multiple sides. And fractal
self-similarity gives us analogs at multiple scales. Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter: we
take steps back to make better leaps. Or to make better choices in life.
Zhuangzi wrote: “Men of great wisdom, looking at things far off or near at hand, do
not think them insignificant for being small, nor unwieldy for being great.” There are
different measures to use in sizing something up. Tiny little molecules are some of our
hugest discoveries, while some of our greatest achievements will be nothing in ten-
thousand years. Love only lasts forever for the span of a handful of decades at most. We
change the universe of discourse the better to master the space around an idea. We don’t
want the space too big either, or else we dismiss real problems. Like Goldilocks, we
manage our perspective to find the thing that’s just right. We look for optimums here:
problems don’t fill the whole screen, but they don’t vanish into the background.
Key Words:
abandonment, abstention, acquiescence, adjusting perspective, alternatives, ark, asylum,
backtrack, backup, big picture, breadth, broad-mindedness, caution, ceasefire, changing
perspective, circumspection, collecting the wits, composition, composure, contemplation,
context, convalescence, departure, discretion, disengagement, disentrapment, distance,
distancing, economy, equanimity, equilibrium, escape, evacuation, exit, expansiveness,
extrication, fallback, figuring it out, frame of reference, harbor, haven, higher order
thinking, holding back, inaccessibility, keeping a distance, mental consolidation, mental
rebalancing, neutralizing, optimization, perspective, pragmatism, problem solving,
proportion, reassessment, reconsideration, recontextualizing, recuperation, reevaluation,
reflection, reformulation, reframing, refuge, regrouping, rejuvenation, relief, renewal,
replenishment, reservation, reserve, resort, restabilizing, restating criteria, rethinking,
retreat, retirement, review, revisioning, revival, sabbatical, safe distance, safe space,
sanctuary, scale, scaling down or up, self-preservation, solitude, stepping back, strategic
suspension, strategic withdrawal, time out, treaty, truce, universe of discourse.

being enmeshed, entangled, or implicated, cognitive inflexibility, denial, dismissiveness,
dogma, escapism, evasiveness, fear, fixed frames, fugue, guarded advance, flight to
happy places, pedantry, precaution, rigidity, shortsightedness, stubbornness, running
away, toxic beliefs.
Components:
Four plus Swords. Composing and balancing the mind. Four boundaries make a frame of
reference with an inside and an outside. Thought can be put in order, but it wants to be an
order that works, so the boundaries are for reference, not for protection. Rigid beliefs will
need too much defending when negative feedback suggests error. The mind needs both
firmness and flexibility.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Jupiter in Air Signs and Houses. A sense of personal identity that’s founded
on perceptual and cognitive experience, on how we see things, over which we can learn
some control by expanding our perceptions and mastering our perspectives. For Jupiter,
this includes the including the Olympian or Jovian view, equanimity, patience, and
equilibration. We can reconsider what we do mentally in order to optimize our worlds.
Higher-order thinking.
Qabalah: Chesed in Yetzirah. Self-stabilization in the world of form will want form that
keeps learning. An objectification of form in multiple dimensions allows it to be studied
from different angles and at different scales. Figure implies ground.
Yijing: Gua 33, Dun, Distancing, Retreat; Da Xiang: Gen (4) below, Qian (Swords)
above; “Beneath the sky is a mountain. Distancing. The young noble is distant from the
common people, not with ill will, but with reserve.” The mountain stands high against the
horizon, but heaven is not diminished by this. Choice of distance and scale. “Success.
Little reward in persistence.” If what we are doing isn’t working as it should, we should
be doing something differently. We are missing information that might be available from
a larger picture and more complete context.
Five of Swords
Surprise, Trust, Shenanigans, Learning Curves
Image: Four young boys have just lost their swords in a game played with an older
boy. Marked, sharked and dejected, they slink away while the older boy gathers up his
spoils. Something about them told the winner beforehand that they would make likely
victims, and this is usually some sign of overconfidence or unrealistic expectations. Now
they have new ideas to process. It is left undeclared which figure represents the querent,
one of those who has just learned a lesson the hard way, or the one who has offered this
instructive, if expensive, experience.
The pictorial Five of Swords depicts a pop quiz here at the School of Hard Knocks,
education the hard way, with winners and losers, but potentially losers all around in the
long term. The teaching seems thus: I’ll teach you a thing or two, or I’ll teach you a
lesson you’ll never forget. Mental patterns are involuntarily shifted. In the RWS deck,
and most of the others, we see the outcome of a confidence game, which, as the name
suggests, requires somebody’s confidence to fail them. The winner triumphs at the
moment the loser expects to claim his victory. He does this by counting on his mark’s
naive assumptions to lead him across that line where exceptions start proving the rule.
The card is not about this defeat or failure, but the process that led to this, and what we
do afterwards with our fresh, raw, real-world lessons. Ultimately, this is about the
confidence we have in our mental constructs of reality, that allows us to move through
life more courageously, without being paralyzed by doubt, fear, and mistrust, and how
this sometimes will fail us in rude encounters with reality. The energetic force of the Five
disturbs the clarity and certainty of the Swords, and the reality of the rocks dulls those
razor-sharp edges. The mind sometimes needs to learn to unlearn and to steer well clear
of having things all figured out. It’s often a positive learning opportunity for those able to
learn and salvage some kind of win-win outcome here. Wisdom from experience can still
restore some balance if we can cut our investments in ideas that don’t work.
We have to believe that the world is not out to do us harm if we want to get anything
positive done. We need to believe in things like natural justice, and a basic goodness in
humankind. Trust is a precious currency. But we need these beliefs to bend and bounce a
little. The pain that we feel when our expectations are violated is the fault of the
expectations. These will betray us if we fail to keep an eye on the reality of things. Many
of us start out with some patently ridiculous assumptions that get passed around almost
universally as vapid platitudes: god works in mysterious ways, everything happens for a
reason, there are no accidents, this is the best of all possible worlds, you karma’s gonna
get you, love is all powerful. The game assumes that someone has learned some incorrect
lessons in life. With illusions like this, it’s no wonder we get disillusioned. The real world
is way beyond morals and ethics: bad guys win, good guys lose, lousy things happen to
good people, and cosmic justice is a fantasy. Ten million Native Americans did nothing to
deserve their genocide. There is no god with special plans for me and you. If we happen
to succeed, it’s not because we were too good, pure, or important for failure or injustice.
We just managed to do something right and had a little luck. Mischief and misbehavior,
treachery and betrayal, force us to adapt, or just as often, maladapt. We reassess our
picture of the world, but too often we only tack on random amendments to the larger
illusions we start with. We sometimes need to revamp the whole thing.
Mohammed is said to have said: “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel first.” This is the
right formula to optimize the Five of Swords. We cover more of the bases. The Yijing
counterpart is Gua 25, Without Pretense, Innocence, The Unexpected. The natural history
of nature, life, mammals and primates has given us a natural ethic and crude intelligence.
Without an excess of painful conditioning, this gives us original mind and an instinctive
goodness, what we fall back on when we are artless and guileless. We already know how
to be true without looking it up in a book. When things are going well, we can proceed as
if the world was good. The savage might not always be so noble, but he’s born with the
same nature you have, so you know a little of what he might be up to. We reinforce this
naturalness culturally with the presumption of innocence and the benefit of the doubt. We
give special license and privilege to people of proven goodness, and special stigmas to
our degenerates. To let us move still further forward, our reputations precede us. Then we
do what we can with the dark side when this is encountered. No matter how kind and
sincere we may be, life comes with no guarantee. We have only this from Louis Pasteur:
“Chance favors the prepared mind,” and a correlate: probability favors the good and the
kind. It’s at least enough to tip the odds a little in favor of goodness and kindness.
Oliver’s Law asserts: “Experience is something you do not get until just after you need
it.” We likely do not need to worry about running out of surprises, or humbling blows to
our egos, or challenges for our many mental defenses. We have new lessons in store, even
when we can learn from others’ mistakes. We will have big and shocking plot twists,
involuntary new insights, lessons we may not understand for decades to come, and some
that will never make sense. It may be all but impossible to maintain any innocence, but
we might yet find ways to stay open, and just the right measure of vulnerable.
Key Words:
accessibility, adaptive learning, adjustment, assumptions, artlessness, being corrected,
being edited, being tested, caught unawares, certainty, codes of ethics, codes of honor,
cognitive adaptation, confidence backfired, credence, credulity, cunnng, deception,
disappointment, disillusionment, dissimulation, element of surprise, embarrassment,
failed expectation, faith, good faith, guilelessness, imperfection, inadequacy, innocence,
insecurity, integrity, knowing better next time, learning by surprise, learning curves, live
and learn, loss, lost innocence, lost trust, mischief, morale, naiveté, narrow expectations,
openness, overconfidence, plot twist, pop quiz, presumptions, relearning, reorientation,
rethinking, revelation, revising conceits, revocation, school of hard knocks, shenanigans,
slings and arrows, surprise, trust, tuition, uncertain outlook, uncertainty, undeserved
lessons, unexpected outcome, unfairness, unpredictability, upset, violated expectations,
vulnerability.

ambush, bad judgment, being marked, betrayal of trust, blow to ego, coercion, con game,
credulity, danger from liars, deceit, defeat, failure, embarrassment, false accusation,
gossip, gullibility, humiliation, hurt feelings, injustice, lies, malice, pop quiz failure,
rudeness, rude awakening, shock, slander, treachery, trickery, unfairness, wounded pride.
Components:
Five plus Swords. Kinetic energy is applied to structured thought. Things move forward
well when all is as predicted and presumed. But surprise may bring blunt force trauma to
the delicate or unrealistic idea, cracking one’s beliefs and assumptions. The need to adapt,
process new data, or adjust mental pictures when experience suggests change.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mars in Air Signs and Houses. An appetite and naive enthusiasm for the
mental world. Piqued by lessons and stimulated by learning but confused by the need to
unlearn. The will trusts thoughts and perceptions for a guide, but one might be overly
confident or ‘know too much that ain’t so.’
Qabalah: Geburah in Yetzirah. Force and severity applied to the world of form will lead
either to adaptive resilience or to failure. This is only ‘just’ in the sense that you ‘just’
have to get it right.
Yijing: Gua 25, Wu Wang, Without Pretense, Innocence, The Unexpected. Da Xiang:
Zhen (5) below, Qian (Swords) above; “Beneath the sky moves thunder. The creatures
interact without pretensions. The early sovereigns flourished according to season and
nurtured the myriad beings.” Life beneath the sky. Probability for success has been folded
into the genes. But there are no guarantees. We simply live and learn. “Most fulfilling.
Worthwhile to persist. For the one without integrity there will be suffering, and not much
reward in having somewhere to go.” We play the odds and probabilities here, which favor
the ethics and intelligence that we have been born with, a natural and original mind that
somehow stays able to learn.
Six of Swords
Comprehensiveness, Exploration, Reintegration, Organization
Image: The RWS deck depicts a woman and child being ferried across water, whether
by a husband or ferryman, with six swords in the boat. We see them from behind. New
land lies ahead. Several clones imply a perilous journey ahead, or else the boat and
figures are seen head on as the perspective is on the past. It is unclear whether they are
leaving a troubled situation or a limited one. In many interpretations, the card may be too
broody or mopey. Alternately, six warriors, with their swords behind them, having a
parley in a circle around a fire, near a ferry across a river. The mood is engaged and
peaceful, while their hair, skin color and dress suggest they may be from different, even
hitherto warring tribes. There is a parity here, and some tension that’s in the process of
being dissipated.
In the RWS deck, the Six of Swords begins a series of easily misunderstood images,
culminating with the Ten. These cards all imply at least a slice of the meaning pie, but the
meanings suggested by number and suit are in each case quite a bit broader. Here, the
woman and child, or family if the ferryman is father, might be leaving troubles behind
them, or otherwise making a passage from difficulties or unsatisfying conditions. It could
be flight, or a seeking of refuge. They could also be reestablishing their social, cognitive,
and perceptual worlds following a challenge they got from the fives, and broadening their
understanding of the world. This could be what recovery groups call a geographic cure:
thinking that past patterns can be escaped by moving someplace else. But these are lesser
implications. More broadly, these characters are enlarging their world, extending their
horizons, expanding their context, transcending an outgrown niche, or simply exploring a
larger one. New ideas are needed to complete the picture. The ready swords imply they
are bringing their wits along with them. This may be more of a case of ‘freedom to’ than
‘freedom from,’ even though some dissatisfaction or unpleasantness might still drive the
move. As child leaves crib, and young adults leave home, the sage leaves nations behind
him. We expand and then reintegrate in a more expanded context.
Since we are dealing with the Swords, the mental world, the culture in which we are
immersed might be our biggest factor and context here. The change is much more than
geographic. We may be expanding, or perhaps upgrading, the society around us, or the
company we keep. We burst out of the bubble of local or parochial culture. We may even
make it all the way to global culture and find some collective common ground on those
farther and foreign shores. This is a good card for anthropology and sociology, or
comparative cultural studies. And if we really want to look for who we are, we can look
into primatology, and even zoology. Mark Twain wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these
accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by
vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” We learn to suspend our
judgment until more of the facts are in. Human is as human does, and we have to go see
what we do. Books will only take us so far in showing us the way we actually live. Thus
do the academics, in towers behind the high walls, know so little about us. The tourists
also learn little, who bring their high walls along, as a sort of a shell. The maintenance of
this shell, and the insecurity that requires it, is an industry unto itself. But we speak here
of going more native. We want to fill in the lacunae on our maps. If the maps say ‘here be
dragons,’ we need to go there and see that. Of course, ‘wherever you go, there you are’
has us wondering how much we can change, or how much we want to.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 13, Fellowship With Others, depicts a fire under the stars,
where we have gathered for hundreds of thousands of years, inventing our language and
telling stories. This is one of several places where the Yi suggests the benefits of crossing
the great water. The phrase means different things in different contexts, but here it means
to leave the familiar behind and seek out the larger family. We get beyond ethnocentrism,
xenophobia, and anthropocentrism, to find our common ground. We get beyond our belief
systems, collective associations, and mass follies to find etiquettes and ethics that we
might all be able to share. We get beyond mutual endorsement and admiration societies to
discover cultural diversity and creative cultural hybridization. We get good help and
perspective from others. Our more usual search for like-mindedness can preempt a
chance for expansion by way of variety. If there is a superior race, it is still yet to come,
and it will mix the best of our separate, present-day traits.
Krishnamurti sums this card up with: “you must understand the whole of life, not just
one little part of it.” Beyond the socio-cultural elements to this card, we have also the
personal cognitive world. This is still a departure from the familiar for greater familiarity,
and an infilling of the mind with things it is missing. It’s a rounding out of the big picture,
that we cannot get by staying in one place, at least metaphorically, or by minds remaining
at smaller sizes. We need the larger world even to grasp our own private psyches. And
perhaps we suspend judgment and belief until more facts are in. Crowley called this card
Science, a word that derives from knowing how. We can add some more depth to this
term now by adding the implications of interdisciplinarity and consilience: that is, the
card represents a more comprehensive view of the world, not scattered and cut up into
countless smaller disciplines, but integrated into a whole, and then tested against practical
challenges. Holistic thought or thinking is not as simple-minded as one might imagine
from reading the new age material. It is only simple in that when it all comes together or
integrates, things might reappear as elegance or a simple-seeming gestalt.
Key Words:
accord, alloy, assimilation, alliance, bigger and better worlds, breadth, broader horizons,
broadening perspective, change of scenery, coalition, common ground, commonality,
completing the picture, comprehension, comprehensiveness, consensus, consilience,
consensus, context, cultural broadening, cultural diversity, cultural exchange, cultural
exposure, departure from the familiar, discovery, education, embrace, escape, excursion,
expansion, expedition, exploration, exposure, extended family, extension, familiarity,
filling in the lacunae, fraternity, freedom from, freedom to, fresh perspectives, higher
order, horizons, human association, improved circumstances, inclusion, incorporation,
integration with a larger world, interdisciplinarity, internationality, journey abroad,
mental infill, moving on, multiculturalism, networking, new channels, new context, new
horizons, open system, organization, outward bound, overview, perspective, pilgrimage,
reaching out, reconnaissance, rite of passage, rounding out life, science, scope, simple
passage, social organization, social transition, sojourn, systemization, systems thinking,
universalization, holism.

broken negotiation, cultural limitation, delays, dislocation, displacement, divisiveness,
ethnocentrism, exile, fragmentary understanding, fragmentation, geographical ‘cure,’
intolerance, lost passport, misoneism, narrow-mindedness, parochial beliefs, patriotism,
refugees, seeking asylum, stalemate, unacceptable proposal, xenophobia.
Components:
Six plus Swords. The assembly and integration of a more expansive and comprehensive
world view. The word science works here only if the various disciplines are working
together. Thinking in wholes and systems, putting a larger picture together, rounding out
the curriculum, figuring it all out. The search for holistic patterns and elegance.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sol in Air Signs and Houses. Identifying ourselves with our awareness and
recognition. The mental stimulation of experience, and figuring this out, as the ignition of
the self. Working with and integrating information, gaining perspective. Attention to
novelty with a will to understand. The social aspects of life, particularly education and
communication. Work towards a broader sense of belonging may require an appreciation
of diversity while in search of common ground.
Qabalah: Tipareth in Yetzirah. Balance, harmony and beauty in the world of forms. Ideas,
formation, patterns and natural laws. Integrating and organizing the various formulae into
working models of the world.
Yijing: Gua 13, Tong Ren, Fellowship With Others, Fellowship With Men. Da Xiang: Li
(6) below, Qian (Swords) above; “Heaven accompanies flame. Fellowship with Others.
The young noble, according to kind and family, distinguishes the beings.” Fire under the
stars, where our fellowships gather. “Fellowship with others on the frontier. Fulfillment.
Worthwhile to cross the great stream, and worth the young noble’s persistence.” The
search for broader fraternity and coalition. Crossing cultural boundaries and networking.
Thinking globally, acting locally.
Seven of Swords
Strategy, Ingenuity, Problem Solving, Self-Interest
Image: A shadow warrior has entered a crusader encampment by stealth and is making
off with five enemy swords. He spots two guards in conversation and contemplates taking
their too. No guts, no glory. This is a man with a plan. It’s almost certainly not approved
in advance by all parties concerned. He may or may not get away with it. Whether you
want him to or not may depend on where your loyalties lie.
It seems to be up to the readers to decide if they are to identify with the character in the
picture or with those on the other end of his sneaky plan. Seeing common interpretations
like deception, trickery, theft, dishonesty, etc., it seems that most tarot writers identify
with the victims here, overreact to the RWS design, moralize on this image and jump to
self-righteous value judgments. With the preconceived notion that anything tricky is bad,
they get busy shaming the subject for committing a stealthy act. This misses the point of
the Seven of Swords entirely. This scene is about situational ethics, and amorality, not
good or bad karma. What the subject is doing is no more immoral than the swordsman
Kyuzo stealing guns from the bandits in the Seven Samurai. Would anyone have thought
it wrong to steal Nazi guns? Besides, this is bing fa, the art of war here, and you’re
supposed to use crafty surprises, avoid confrontation, and win without combat.
The Seven of Swords is about our self-ish thoughts. The Seven wants its Victory, or
Netzach, it wants to survive first and then thrive all it can. The mind, as Swords, is set to
the task of figuring out how to do this, doing problem-solving behavior, vicarious trial-
and-error, running mental scenarios, choosing the best of the ones which might work and
projecting their outcomes. We start with what we need, and then work on what we want.
A nursing mother feeds herself first. When oxygen masks drop from the airliner ceiling,
we put our own on before we help our children. There is nothing inherently wrong with
selfishness, or acting out of self-interest, except for when it’s done badly and people and
other life forms get hurt. Even the Buddha admitted that we are selves for now, and that
these need our attention. That doesn’t mean we aren’t also one with everything else and
interconnected and such. But if we want to survive and interconnect, we need strategies
for survival. If we want to have our needs met, we have to negotiate a world that can kill
us in a heartbeat and keep right on going as if it didn’t care. We just figure out how to get
what we want without getting hurt, and hopefully doing no harm in the process. We take
our steps in accord with our best projections of success. This plan is being tested against
a harder reality, but more is at stake here than the plan.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 10, Respectful Conduct or Treading. It uses the amusing
image of someone about to tread on the tail of a tiger. The measure of his success is in
whether or not he gets bitten, or eaten. This will not be known until after he is done. He
wants his accomplishment to be without consequences or disastrous en-tail-ments. If
there is to be any divine guardianship here, it will be on terms not his own. This is only
accomplished with a great deal of respect for where he is and how he comports himself.
Steps may be taken in accord with projections of success, but correctness is situational
and the real element of risk is largely proportionate to deviation from natural law, not
from the plan. The steps are bold and sometimes heroic ones. It is not a place for glib
appraisal, or fascination with the mystique or romance of taking bold and heroic steps.
We want to set aside anything that leaves us with an inadequate quantum of attention,
effort, focus, or perseverance. The world standing between us and success has powers
that need to be respected and weak points to exploit. We don’t want to confuse the two.
To per-form means to move through a form. This form, Swords or Yetzirah, can be any
of a number of things: a plan, a plan B, a protocol, a scheme, a strategy, a ruse, a trial, a
game, a myth, and the list goes on. We make these to guide us in our adventures. What a
form is not, however, is the reality it proposes to model. In the distance between the two
lies our possibility for error. We use our mental flexibility and resourcefulness, our
ingenuity and subtlety, to get the two to line up or coincide, to find the right track that
follows them both. Ultimately, however, the facts of the matter are more important than
our vision and ideas. Not many people truly perceive this. We cannot count the men who
have marched to their deaths behind lies that they have told themselves or let themselves
believe. Thoughts and beliefs are bad masters and leaders. Being true to ourselves wants
a better selfishness, to let us abandon the ideas, rules, peer pressures, and expectations as
soon as they no longer serve us. We experiment with variable attitudes and convictions
and think what needs to be thought. This, too, can be a bold step to take, especially when
there are witnesses, but according to Stuart's law of retroaction, ‘It is easier to get
forgiveness than permission.’
Key Words:
action’s meetness, actualizing, alternative tactics, anticipating problems, artfulness, bing
fa, boldness, canniness, challenge, circuitous means, cleverness, conscientiousness,
contrivance, counting coup, craftiness, cunning, daring, designs, difficult success, ends
and means, enlightened self-interest, espionage, expectations, expedient thinking, exploit,
exploitation, foresight, forethought, game plan, gamesmanship, hazarding, ingenuity,
intrigue, inventiveness, Kobayashi Maru, legitimate shortcuts to victory, living by wits,
making own rules, maneuvers, mental flexibility, opportunism, performance, plan of
action, practice, pragmatic amorality, prediction, problem-solving, procedure, program,
protocol, reality check, risk assessment, ruse, scenario, scheme, self-ishness, shrewdness,
situational ethics, speculation, stratagem, strategy, stealth, subtlety, tact, tactics, tempting
fate, testing faith, testing karma, testing limits, tests, trials, vicarious trial and error,
wiliness.

arrogance, betrayed confidence, cheating, chicanery, consequences, deceit, deception,
deviousness, dishonesty, double dealing, futility, guile, hasty decision, inconsideration,
insolence, lost cause, plan may fail, pettiness, powerful opposition, questionable advice,
scheming, self-doubt, suspicious activity, unrealistic designs.
Components:
Seven plus Swords. Wanting victory, success, or thriving means making the mental forms
or ideas serve our ends. Executing a plan or scheme in order to come out victorious or on
top. Expedient thinking. Situational ethics are relative to which side you may be on. The
how of getting what we want. Risk is proportionate to deviation from natural law.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Venus in Air Signs and Houses. Wants and their emotions are reviewed
mentally. Behavior is understood first in terms of its likelihood of success. Versatile,
investigative, innovative approaches to solving problems. May understand ethics well,
but not for the sake of obedience. Knows the way around, especially around obstacles.
Qabalah: Netzach in Yetzirah. Victory or success attained through use of forms, such as
ideas models and plans. Problem-solving behavior, strategies for self-preservation and the
fulfillment of needs and wants.
Yijing: Gua 10, Lu, Respectful Conduct, Treading, Conduct. Da Xiang: Dui (7) below,
Qian (Swords) above; “The sky above, the lake below. Respectful conduct. The young
noble distinguishes high and low to steady the human purpose.” We modify what we
think and believe according to human purpose. “Treading on the tiger’s tail. When it does
not bite one, success.” Treading carefully, with circumspect behavior, we measure the
correctness of our actions by their outcomes.
Eight of Swords
Restraint, Interference, Entropy, Distraction
Image: In the RWS deck, an attractive, seductively dressed, and barefooted young
woman stands fairly loosely bound and blindfolded, with eight swords stuck into the
ground before and around her. She is being kept from both adventure and meddling. The
owners of the swords are absent, off doing who-knows-what. The woman is loosely
bound and not suffering here. Her bindings could be easily cut with the edges of the
standing swords, so she has what she needs to escape. There is a chance she is playing
along here and simply waiting to be the next priority. Ironically, the problem here may be
too much freedom, in need of restraint or constraints.
Here again the RWS card gives the reader a choice of which character to identify with.
But none of the writers I have seen on the tarot have made any significant comment on
what appears to be the eight men who tied this poor woman up before setting off to take
care of other business. Consequently, the suggested interpretations tend to cluster around
censure, restriction, restraint, temporary durance, or domination. Clearly she seems to be
some sort of victim here, and could not have tied herself up like this. Levi comments,
“Woman enchains you by your desires; master your desires and you will enchain her”
(Vol. 1, p. 4). Restraint, in fact, is one of the most central or core meanings of this card,
but this really centers around self-restraint, or self-control in the face of seductions,
diversions, or distractions. In particular, given that the Eights typically concern mental
organization, structure, systemization, intelligence, and predictability, and that the
Swords concern the tools of the mental world and the utility of thought, these distractions
would pull us away from our higher mental pursuits. More than a little interestingly, the
Yijing counterpart, Gua 44, Dissipation or Coming to Meet, also depicts a seductive
woman as a primary threat to our more cerebral pursuits. It should not be forgotten that
this woman is a metaphor for anything which might leave our clearest and tidiest
thoughts in shambles and maybe ourselves in pitiful ruin. I submit that the subject of this
card can also be the ones who have tied this metaphor up, for their own protection,
exercising self-restraint, to get on with other pursuits.
The mind, which is well-represented by the Eight of Swords, is able to dwell in a world
entirely of its own imagining. There are no theoretical limits to conjecture or theory itself,
or to our flights of fantasy, but various forms of self-limitation are available. The mind
won’t get all the possibilities surrounded. The card is sometimes called ’shortened force’
perhaps because cutbacks are to be made here before unlimited permutation, attenuation,
extenuation, entropy, and randomization turn the whole mental system into incoherent
and useless white noise. We need to leave or put some things out of the mind if the mind
is to hold itself together. Just as vampires must be invited into our homes, we learn to do
this with the thoughts and information that we allow into our heads, and show our
uninvited guests the door. Pieces of information arrive with equal weight and we must
assign them value or they don’t get sorted for relevance or priority. This is the point of
looking for core meanings. These are reference points, standards, and measures of value
and relevance. Without them we are mentally promiscuous, dissipated, scattered, not
knowing when or where to stop. There is much talk and ado about nothing, as nothing is
true, everything is permitted, and anything goes. The high noise-to-signal ratio leaves us
with little more than apophenia and pareidolia with which to make meaning from
nonsense. People will then believe anything they read or anything they are told. We are
also inclined to get lost in our maps, having long ago left and lost the real terrain to which
they were made to refer. These become tautological realities, true in their own right, by
their own definition, with no need to refer to anything else. We see a lot of this in occult
studies, particularly with the over-elaboration of structural elements. Ideas are not all of
equal value, and most are ghafla, mindless distractions. Too much attention is paid to
fussy detail at the expense of the principal and more important points. We always have
many options, but the best ones, by definition, are limited. Not all available ideas are
equal in value.
Selection works in a mind’s evolution as well as it works in nature. We learn to rule
our thoughts and learn critical thinking skills. Sometimes we need to be told we can’t do
or think all the things we want to do or think, at least not yet. We budget our attention to
enrich our minds with higher quality stuff and more effective cognitive tools. Constraints
are not just good things in systems theory. We bind ourselves to our better purposes, like
Odysseus passing the Sirens, staying focused, resisting distraction. Meanwhile, the crew
of his ship has their ears stuffed with wax. We wait for the right time and occasion to
allow our thoughts and opportunities to ripen. We draw lines and hold them. We use
Occam’s razor, or our eight razor sharp swords, to slice away the superfluous. Restraint is
not imprisonment. Editing is not an insult. Criticism is not a bad attitude. Simple systems
and algorithms can give a complex mind what it needs. All of this having been said,
however, there is still great wisdom in making or saving some extra room in the mind, for
wild ideas to run around and play in.
Key Words:
accepting limitations, avoidance, beguilement, boundaries, carefulness, caution, censure,
chance, clearer heads prevail, complication, composure, constraint, criteria, critical
thinking skills, culling, curtailment, deferred gratification, deviation, disempowerment,
dissipation, distractions, diversions, drawing and holding a line, economy of thought,
energy wasted, enticement, entropy, exclusion, extenuation, fighting disorganization,
forbearance, gleaning, hazard, inhibition, insinuation, interference, intervention,
intrusion, luck, managing system leaks, mental coherence, negative entropy, Occam’s
Razor, parsimony, patience, persuasion, preference, prioritizing, randomization,
randomness, resisting distraction, resisting restriction, restraint, seduction, selection, self-
censorship, self-control, self-discipline, self-imposed restriction, self-possession,
simplification, tangent, tautology, threat of randomization, time out, undermining
influence, unexpected encounters, use of upper head, voluntary limitation, winnowing,
won’t power.

accidents, arbitrary censure, betrayal, confinement, cynicism, disquiet, drastic measures,
entrapment, ghafla or mindless distraction, hypocrisy, ill-directed action, incapacity,
indecision, insinuation, involuntary restriction, much ado about nothing, overreaction to
the bait, pettiness, randomization, scandal, scattering or dissipating forces, slamming the
doors, paranoia, temptation, trusting in whims, turmoil, white noise.
Components:
Eight plus Swords. The mind minding mind is runaway mind, able go anywhere and do
anything, with not much to ground it. Enthusiastic investigation opens too many doors
and questions. We need to limit our minds with patterns of preference and critical skills.
We learn how to stop or say no.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mercury in Air Signs and Houses. Thoughts here are relatively free and
unfettered by our emotional and practical needs. Not so much feedback-oriented as
cognitively proactive, leaving the subject able to live in a rationalized, cognitive world all
its own. Can usually use some grounding experience or practical limits to thought.
Qabalah: Hod in Yetzirah. Complex organizational systems still need forms that allow an
adaptive response to reality. They are useless when they occupy only themselves.
Systems are not systems without boundaries and constraints.
Yijing: Gua 44, Gou, Dissipation, Coming to Meet. Da Xiang: Xun (8) below, Qian
(Swords) above; “Beneath the sky is the wind. Dissipation. Rulers issue commands and
decrees in all four directions.” The wind will undo the commands. Reiteration, repetition,
and redundancy are a hedge against entropy here. “The woman is powerful. Not at all
useful to court this woman.” If this referred to an empowered or liberated woman, the
Chinese words nu and zhuang would be reversed in the text. Instead, this refers to
someone to whom one surrenders power. Restraint awaits the right time and occasion.
This is an error of interpretation made frequently, and it’s most ironic, given the subject.
Any purely mental experience can justify itself without reference to self-preservation.
Nine of Swords
Conflictedness, Fixed Ideas, Adaptive Cognition, Unlearning
Image: A dreamer sits bolt-upright in bed, as if awakening from a nightmare in a cold

sweat, both hands to his face and wearing a look of horror. An arrangement of nine short
swords or daggers on the wall behind seem to point inward towards him, forming an aura.
One suspects this character might be clinging subconsciously to an outdated, toxic, or

partial idea, and it festers in his sleep. Dreams are often of our unresolved issues kept on
standby. He might not even be aware of this conflictedness when awake, except for a
general sense of anxiety, stress, or unease.
Traditionally, this card can refer to a number of unpleasant emotional states of mind:
despair, anxiety, suffering, cruelty, tribulations, angst, shame, resentment, helplessness,
guilt, regrets, desolation, doubt, crises of faith or confidence, or demons in general. It
suggests unresolved troubles, complications, conflicts, quarrels, and other miscarriages.
One might well ask what all of these wet emotions are doing in a card in the suit of
Swords. The answer to this must eventually come back to cognitive structures and the
psychological problems that errors in thinking or perception might lead us to. This also
suggests that these problems have either been buried or else have gone unnoticed,
allowing them time to fester, to awaken us later with bad dreams. Mind runs amok and
life makes no sense. While emotions are not some hydraulic fluid that’s somehow
conserved in its quantity, requiring channels, outlets, catharsis to vent or release, it’s still
the case that repression, suppression, or stuffed emotions do not solve problems, but drag
them along, beneath the threshold of awareness, where awareness gets its power and
problems do the most damage. To correct this condition, the unpleasant emotions must be
seen as information leading back to the problem, as friendly signs or reminders that we
have gone off track. What is it that we have ignored for too long? Thoughts and reality
are two different things. If you need to give up one or the other, give up the thoughts or
let them adapt to reality. We need an ability to unlearn, to replace faulty parts in our
cognitve edifice, to maintain a nimble and healthy mind.
Careless or sloppy learning is one usual suspect. As discussed under Numbers, the
Nines symbolize states that have come into their fullness, with little room remaining for
more, other than maintenance and adaptation to ongoing changes. This implies that the
mind is full, or processing as fully as it it is able. This in turn implies that when the mind
is troubled and confused, we might think to switch tactics and start preferring quality
over quantity of information and its processing. In theory, this will enrich us. Some claim
to not care, openly disliking critical thought as being ‘too negative,’ citing a preference
for emotional happiness or popularity instead, but then they show puzzlement when their
happiness turns inevitably into trouble and confusion. Their reasoning is now automatic
and out of their control. Questioning everything on the way into the mind should have
been ongoing. Now there is much catching up and unlearning to do. The big problem
here is that our views of the world are interconnected, and built up on a foundation that
includes early experience, basic assumptions, and core beliefs. We build with what is at
hand, often before we have seen or learned better ways. The mind is a bricolage, with
outdated stuff embedded in important places. Errors accumulate and compound each
other. It’s hard work rebuilding foundations, but it’s never too late to start being more
choosy about letting our minds fill up with unexamined data and unquestioned beliefs.
We want a better criterion of truth than the simple convincingness of ideas. Beliefs that
cannot be questioned, or faiths and convictions, are how we get viruses in our minds,
toxic memes that spread out to the horizons of our perceptual worlds, where we ought to
be learning new things instead of twisting what we see there to suit our mental diseases
and pathologies. Fixed ideas may promise comfort and security, but the deception catches
up. Beliefs are self-serving, self-maintaining cognitive loops. Sometimes we know them
by bad names: presumptuousness, prejudice, dogma, propaganda, and fanaticism. But
more often we take pride in having them: we have the answers. Well, how is that working
out? Getting into lots of fights? Nightmares? While absolute relativism, where all ideas
are equal, is the sloppiness just discussed, the other wrong-headed extreme here is
advocacy, adversarialism, partiality, partisanship, or polemicism, all from the fixed idea
that admits no second opinion. This is the theme of the Yijing counterpart, Gua 06,
Contention or Conflict. Strife and resistance, or unpleasantness in general, is information,
not something to die for. We navigate better when we can use this simply as data, and
adapt our thinking as we move along.
Suffering is information that can lead us to its own cessation. For this we need adaptive
cognition, with continuous questioning, revision, and unlearning, even of some of our
most basic assumptions. This is especially true of challenges to our identity, beliefs, or
sense of belonging. This is a basic teaching of the Buddha. With life comes a great
capacity for self-deception and a host of mechanisms to assist in its practice. It isn’t easy
to live life counter to this. Generally speaking, our choice is suffering or diligence. Most,
it seems, choose to suffer, rather than admit and shed error, because this is a lot of hard
work. Even those claiming to be on a path to the light will scornfully scold those who
discriminate and select the superior things to learn. But this aversion to judgment only
leads to bad judgment. We don’t need the teacher within if we know the learner within.
We don’t need the answers if we have the right questions.
Key Words:
accommodation, adaptive cognition, adversarialism, antagonism, antipathy, assertion,
competitiveness, compromise, concern, conciliation, conflict, conflictedness, cognitive
bias, contention, contradiction, cracks in the paradigm, disagreement, discrepancy,
disparity, dissent, dissonance, doubt, editing, excessive response to problems, facing
facts, friction, inappropriateness, incongruity, inconsistency, internal contradiction,
judgment, lack of selection, maladaptive thought, mid-course correction, modification,
negativity, overreaction, philosophical overhaul, pragmatism, presumption, questioning,
reconsideration, rectification, reconsideration, reexamination, reformulation, reification,
relativity, re-sentiment, resistance, revision, rigorous honesty, selection, self-doubt, self-
perpetuating belief, skepticism, supposition, suspicion, uncertainty, unexamined
alternatives, unlearning, unresolved troubles, vigilance, worry.

adaptive failure, angst, anxiety, arrogance, cognitive dissonance, crisis of faith, crisis of
confidence, cruelty, demons, denial, despair, discord, dogma, dread, fixation on relative
truth, fixed ideas, hauntings, ideologues, incoherent thought, inconsistencies, infidelity,
inflexibility, loops of thought, lying, malice, mental complications, nightmare, obsession,
partiality, pitilessness, psychological crisis, repression, quarrel, rationalizing, regret,
repercussion, resentment, self-deception, shame, slander, stinking thinking, stubbornness
of thought, suppression of evidence or feedback, tautology.
Components:
Nine plus Swords. Foundations and fundamentals that support structures in the cognitive
and perceptual world. Basic assumptions, postulates and premises, and how these affect
the ability of the completed structures to function in a world of change. Stable, well-
founded cognition must be adaptive and continuously question its own truth. Trouble here
is simply evidence of trouble, evidence that something needs to be changed.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Luna in Air Signs and Houses. At home in the mental world, in the head, and
enthused by ideas. The senses serve intellect before the emotions. Impersonal feeling but
still feeling for humanity. A model of the world makes a more comfortable home than the
world, until it fails. Will think first, and then act on evaluation. A mobile mind, but not
moved by sense or concrete reality.
Qabalah: Yesod in Yetzirah. Reification, thought becomes the thing. A world in itself that
is dependent on the adaptive functionality of its working parts. A foundation in change
must also be able to change and adapt, or risk an accumulation of error and a subsequent
crisis of correction.
Yijing: Gua 06, Song, Contention, Conflict. Da Xiang: Kan (9) below, Qian (Swords)
above; “The sky together with water is contradiction in movement. Contention. The
young noble, in undertaking the work, appraises beginnings.” Revisiting the early
postulates and premises when there are multiple points of view to choose from. “Being
true, yet opposed. Wariness in the middle is promising, at the end, unfortunate.
Worthwhile to meet a mature human being. Not worthwhile to cross the great stream.”
Without questioning ourselves, or using resistance as data, we will subject ourselves to
hostilities, and even mutiny by the crew of selves within.
Ten of Swords
Attrition, Wearing Force, Micromanagement, Finitude
Image: The RWS deck shows a man alone, face down, stuck in the back with ten
swords, and this does not leave him among the living. No single wound seems to be a
mortal one. It looks as though he had turned his back on insignificant threats, reprisals, or
things that he thought could be put behind him, and transcended or ignored, perhaps out
of arrogance or pride. But things caught up with him. The Sufi Inayat Khan might have
called this “a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.” But
he would have called this a positive development, since now you can move on to the next
great thing. The first of the twelve steps is admitting defeat, for now at any rate.
Sometimes it takes destructive force to unseat overlearning or a stubborn way of thinking.
Commentators on the RWS deck are often very quick to point out that this is only a
metaphorical death, although there is still plenty of ruin, affliction, grief, bankruptcy,
desolation, troubles, misfortune, dashed hopes and dreams, and the utter defeat of hope or
intention. There are similarities here to the Tower, but this is in the mental realm. The
most significant aspect is that the damage is cumulative, a death of a thousand cuts, not
one mortal or devastating wound, but a death by attrition. As a Sword card, it warns of a
potential failure of the mind, a failure of the intellect to cope with the ‘slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune.’ We have many handy metaphors that might be applied here: an
accumulation of thought or theory can collapse like a house of cards. A final straw breaks
a camel’s back. A government grows too complex and the center can no longer hold. A
boxer takes one punch too many. A lapsed alcoholic might say ‘I was run over by the
caboose.’ Environmental damage reaches a tipping point and a system collapses in a
cascade failure. By the Peter Principle, a man gradually rises in his job to his level of
incompetence. In sum, this is the climax of something a long time in coming, a function
of accumulation and not a sudden event. This suggests the question of why this outcome
was not foreseen and acted upon. One might well answer with the frog in the hot water
metaphor, even though this doesn’t really happen in reality. The frog got the hell out
when it was actually tested. But many humans are not this bright. Paradigms die hard,
taking lots of blows on the way down.
The Ten of Swords is the wearing force of excessive detail, an erosive process, by the
abrasive grit of the sands of time. We are slowly worn down or detailed to death. An
architect, probably while praising himself, once coined the phrase “God is in the details.”
It wasn’t long before someone countered with “the Devil is in the details,” which soon
became a lot more popular. Whichever may be the best, it’s awfully crowded down there
in those details, and really hard to work around those two. The Yijing counterpart, Gua
09, is Raising Small Beasts, or Taming Power of the Small. A modern English equivalent
of this amusing title might be ‘herding cats.’ It speaks to the diminishing returns of
fussing over details, advocating a simplification and streamlining of our character or
being, a smoothing of rough edges that we get by moving to a larger scale or more distant
time horizon, a ceasing to sweat the small stuff. This principle is often applied in politics
as devolution, the transfer or delegation of power to lower or local levels. This is also the
ombudsman with vertical mobility through a world of layered bureaucrats. The trifles,
irritants, and back-breaking straws still do their work of fine-tuning, but this is seen to
have its place in self-regulatory processes. This is also about our ultimate finitude as it’s
seen from high above: our species going extinct is a galactic trifle, as is our glorious
Sun’s burning out. Eternity, for man, is the briefest flash of all.
Micromanagement makes existence overly complex. The mind will never surround or
comprehend a reality seen at this scale, where all it is is little things adding up to take us
down. We want the view with the most information for the least effort. Our lives, our
minds, our cultures grow and elaborate themselves into Rube Goldberg contraptions. At
some point, only hive mind can take control. This is great for self-organizing systems,
made of elements that are ’fast, cheap, and out of control,’ like insects. But it’s not as
promising when decisions need to be made that will determine the fate of the world, like
nuclear disarmament or the destruction of the environment. We don’t want the averaged
behavior of insects to make these kinds of decisions. We want to have more components
with higher perspectives, longer horizons, and authority instead of helpless anonymity.
Hyperextended systems eventually collapse, in parallel ways to crashes in populations,
which fall to below their long-term sustainable levels. Sometimes the standard models
just disintegrate with a single unwanted datum. A bubble bursts or a market collapses. A
delusion ends, or a way of thinking suddenly gets abandoned. Sometimes we simply hit
bottom and decide we have now had enough. Sometimes this is a very good process, a
quick conclusion to the ill-conceived, and saves us dismantling something noxious one
bit at a time. Dead-wrong ideas invalidate themselves, gone the way of phlogiston. To
paraphrase Max Planck, science progresses one funeral at a time. In the best revolutions
in science, the newer, simpler, more elegant paradigm is already waiting in the wings, to
take the sting out of letting go. Besides the devastation, the Ten of Swords is also this
large-scale rethinking, the finding of simpler, more versatile schema, like an aerodynamic
mobility through the levels of awareness, like the vultures thermaling high above the
wasteland, looking for signs of life to erase.
Key Words:
abrasion, attenuation, attrition, bother, collapse of the standard models, comeuppance,
complete rethinking, complexity, cumulative changes, effects, and errors, deconstruction,
demise, details, devolution, diminishing returns, diminution, disintegration, do-over,
effortlessness, erosion, exaction, extinction of a bad idea, failure of imagination, final
indignity, final straw, fine adjustments, fine grit, finitude, gradual adaptation, herding
cats, hitting bottom, hyper-complexity, hyperextension, inevitability, insignificance,
irritants, large-scale rethinking, minutiae, non-essentials, outdated principles, overhaul,
overload, overthinking, overview, paradigm failure, polishing, ravages of time, redo,
refinement, relative importance, rescaling, revolution, simplification, streamlining, subtle
persuasion, summing it down, surrender of answers, sweating the small stuff, systemic
collapse, technicalities, tipping points, troubles add up, unlearning, unsustainable
thought, watch your back, wear and tear, wearing force, weathering.

back-breaking final straws, backstabbing, bankruptcy, bubbles burst, cascade failure,
collapse, conceptual gluttony, dashed hopes, death of an illusion, death of a thousand
cuts, detailed to death, disregard, entropy wins, exasperation, frivolousness, fussiness,
heedlessness, hitting bottom, micromanagement, overconfidence, routinization, ruination,
stereotypy, system crash, trifles, triviality, troubles add up, turning back on realities,
undoing, vexations.
Components:
Ten plus Swords. Overthinking things. The Ten in the world of ideas will take the whole
system too far. Things grown overly complex or complicated means too many moving
parts to be managed and maintained. Maladaptive cognition. A superior order allows
lower levels to manage themselves with a minimum of supervision or control.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Pluto in Air Signs and Houses. An overabundance of thought brings a strong
sense of limitation, finitude and deeper time. Major systems of thought collapse of their
own weight, as with scientific revolutions, to be replaced by more elegant paradigms.
Qabalah: Malkuth in Yetzirah. The fullest manifestation of the system of thought may be
viewed at varying scales. As Malkuth suggests, things have gone too far, one is down in
it, where small things can be overwhelming. Sometimes only broken shells remain.
Yijing: Gua 09, Xiao Chu, Raising Small Beasts, Taming Power of the Small. Da Xiang:
Qian (10) below, Xun (Swords) above; “The wind travels high in the sky. Raising small
beasts. The young noble trains and refines his character.” The original concept of
streamlining, working with the fine grit of time to knock down the rough edges and
simplify life. “Fulfillment. Thick clouds but no rain from our western horizon.” Don’t
sweat the small stuff. Fuss as you might, there are greater perspectives to take. Simply do
what it takes to help the details to take care of themselves.
Princess of Swords
The Princess of the Rushing Winds, Lotus of the Palace of Air
Correction, Vigilance, Parrhesia, Truthfulness
Image: The RWS card shows a young adult Page holding a sword upward and ready
for something he appears to be either seeing or looking for. His look is serious, but not
angry. Storm clouds and a flock of birds are in the background. Alternately, a fair, lithe
young princess is shown with her sword in mid-swing, lopping the head off an idol that
someone has left on her family's shrine. She might be expressing impatience with the way
things are hiding themselves from change. Still learning her swordsmanship, training and
sparring with diligence, she might be a little inexpert still, but she is not swinging this
weapon carelessly. She intends to be a Queen of Sorts or Swords. Finding out what’s
wrong in the world is as important to her as learning what’s right.
The Princess of Swords is known to most commentators as a young woman (or a page)
with a precociously penetrating mind. She can also represent communiques of news and
information. She is quick, vigilant, assertive, inquisitive, challenging, astute, iconoclastic,
adroit, feisty, insightful ahead of her years, and ready for the unforeseen. You might have
met her in a coffee house near some college campus, or out rousing the rabble, planning a
demonstration, or a more ambitious revolution, an en garde to the forces maintaining the
status quo. Youthfulness and rebellion go together, of course, not yet lulled into sleep and
obedience by consensus, peer pressure, or economic insecurity. As Jefferson noted, one
generation has no right to bind [or bankrupt] the next. She is simply editing the past for a
new generation. She stands behind the cutting edge, and, word to the wise, she’s a little
young for diplomacy. She will speak truth to power. As for causes, whaddaya got? I once
saw a very young lady of about eight preparing for a day of hard play, and I overheard
her saying to her father, “I don’t want to wear my princess dress today, Daddy. I want to
wear something I can get blood on.” I’m certain that this was the Princess of Swords.
Perhaps it’s the fixed idea that rouses her ire the most, the general rule that won’t admit
the exception, the letter of the law that won’t admit the spirit, the law that won’t look at
true justice or the reasons for its own enactment, the old that won’t look at the new, the
stagnant that won’t let in the fresh, the liberal idea that’s become an institution. She will
play rough with entrenched beliefs. ‘Fixed’ is an odd word. When you fix something it’s
supposed to get better, but it’s just not so with ideas. The Yijing’s counterpart is Gua 18,
Detoxifying, or Work on What has been Spoiled. It is built on the images of wind,
stopped and stagnating, at the base of the mountains, as with a smoke-filled temperature
inversion, and that of a poison or bad medicine that was made by trapping venomous and
poisonous creatures together in a bowl and letting them fight it out. Many cultural things
fit these images of stagnation, pathology, atrophy, festering, and necrosis: bad or unjust
law, senseless behavioral norms, entrenched political corruption, organized crime,
dogma, ethical decadence, fixations, and obsessions. Circulation, jolts, exposure, whistle
blowing, exposés, outspokenness and openness are the cures for these toxic conditions, or
stirring things up. Sometimes even a little rage or outrage is in order. Simple resentment
will get nothing done. Neither will resignation or just letting it be. The Princess will not
deny herself the courage to change the things she can.
As a Princess, her foundational task is to get her ideas set up on the right foundation,
and then the ideas in her closest surroundings, the cultural context she needs to mature
within. This will help her develop an honest identity. This is her domain and her right,
and she need not be shy about it. She has rights to all premises and postulates, her data’s
base, to know how things work and why, and why things resist correction. The best time
to question is youth, so there is not as much to unlearn later on. She has a right to right
wrongs, even the ones entrenched in tradition and legacy. It would not be surprising if she
did some damage when thumping the family idols to see whether they rang hollow or
true. She might destabilize things just to see what happens. Negation is going to be
needed, and criticism too. These are things that the swords are good for: getting to the
point, cutting through rubbish and lies, interrogating with pointed questions, and getting
confessions from liars. The meaning of cynicism has rotted much over the years. In the
old days it meant taking a stand against arrogance, insisting on excellence, and practicing
parrhesia, outspokenness and candor. This might be a little bit tactless and blunt, but it
isn’t what the word cynic became. We find the limits of things, where they fail tests of
their truth. We want to find fault and weakness. These are not found by making no noise,
and they are not found by conformists or polite, smarmy flatterers. This is a force of
correction.
Negation will takes us part of the way. When the worst of the lies and delusions are out
of the picture, authentic investigation can begin and we start to get constructive, and offer
unasked-for second opinions. The Princess will speak her mind, hard questions first, and
then her opinions. She is no friend to the information being examined, although perhaps
she hopes truth will forgive her some day. She needs to recognize problems invisible to
others, due to their familiarity. The platitude might get cut down or cut off in mid-air. But
all of the slicing and dicing has construction for its aim, ideas demonstrated and proven,
and set on solid ground, a place to take a stand.
Key Words:
breath of fresh air, calling bullshit, candor, caution, challenge to fixed ideas, changing of
minds, circumspection, clarification, clearing the air, conscience, conscientiousness,
constructive criticism, correction, criticism, critique, curiosity, cutting edge, cutting the
crap, deconstruction, defiance, demonstration, detective, discernment, destructive logic,
diligence, discernment, discovery, exactitude, examination, espionage, exposé, force of
negation, forethought, forthrightness, frankness, freshened perspective, getting to the
germane or point, glasnost, Greek Cynicism, grounded knowledge or thought, hard facts,
heedfulness, honesty, iconoclasm, incisiveness, incorruptibility, independent thought,
inquisitiveness, intelligence gathering, interrogation, investigation, judgmentalness, kids
nowadays, negative feedback, no nonsense allowed, openness, outspokenness, parrhesia,
pragmatism, purging, questioning authority, radical reform, reading fine print, rebel,
rebellion, redemption, reenvisioning, reexamination, reform, reformulation, regard,
rejuvenation, remedial action, revitalization, rigor, rigorous honesty, rousing the rabble,
sentry duty, skepticism, speaking the mind, stirring things up, suspicion, testiness, testing
limits, uprightness, ventilating, venting, vetting, vigilance, whistleblowers.

conformity, blind obedience, chip on shoulder, corruption, cynical negativity, decadence,
deceit, defensiveness, degeneration, disease, dogma, fixations, fretting, hypocrisy, hyper-
vigilance, indiscretion, intolerance, pathologies, powerlessness, resentment, rot, secrets
aren’t safe, stagnation, tactlessness, toxic ideas, unpreparedness, vindictiveness.
Components:
The Earthy part of Air. The condensation or materialization of the idea, grounding ideas
for realism, applicability, and practicality. A down-to-earth set of theories and rules of
behavior, with proper cautions against rigid or fixed ideas. “The most valuable insights
are methods” (Nietzsche).
Correspondences:
Astrology: Caput Draconis in Air Signs and Houses. Cultivating foundational principles,
constituting ideas, cognitive foundations, premises, first principles, core beliefs and
assumptions. Candor or honesty used for a basis, integrity of thought, edification, rigor.
Challenge to ideas that need it.
Yijing: Gua 18, Gu, Detoxifying, Work on What has been Spoiled. Da Xiang: Xun
(Swords) below, Gen (Princess) above; “At the base of the mountain there is wind.
Detoxifying. The young noble stirs up the people to fortify character.” Wind is stopped
short at the base of the mountain. An inversion or stagnation, wanting refreshing. “Most
fulfilling. Worthwhile to cross the great stream. Before the beginning, three days, after
the beginning, three days.” Things need to be in their proper place in context, not stuck in
isolation. Purging of the stagnant may be needed. Calls for broader context, stimulation,
fresh air, reform. Even the shortest moment is six days wide.
Prince of Swords
Prince of the Chariots of the Winds
Exploration, Extrapolation, Intellect, Reasoning
Image: The RWS card depicts a knight in armor, visor up, mounted on a white war
horse, charging into the wind with sword drawn. Alternately, a fair, young prince is
shown in mid-leap from the back of his rearing war horse, wielding a sword with both
hands. He is practicing skills, speed and agility with an intensity similar to battle, or
typical of male youth.
Modern tradition describes the Prince of Swords as a brave, skillful, dashing young
man. He is heroic, clever, restless, adroit, assertive, independent, quick, witty, creative,
idiosyncratic, persistent, relentless and competitive. Ill-dignified, he is rash, brusque,
importunate, impatient, careless, shallow, and lacking in staying power. Commentators
err somewhat in overemphasizing his haste, as he is capable of far more thoughtful and
deliberate paces. Yet he may be in a hurry due to time wasted in error. Sometimes what
seems like haste might only be quick-wittedness, or to stay with the sword symbol, his
rapier wit, enjoying the exhilarating thrill of a nervous system operating at capacity. Also,
due to the common misinterpretations of the swords, writers may also attribute an
aggression, quarrelsomeness, or even violence, that is by no means ever-present, even
though he might be suspiciously quick to respond to stimuli. Response time is often as
helpful as prowess in such mental athleticism.
Ultimately, as the airy part of air, this is the mind within the world of the mind, the
entertainment of thought by more thought. As the Prince, it is his duty to explore this
world, to understand how the mind works and then to work it. The frontiers here, those he
is charged to go beyond, are endless, and so his explorations are up to and beyond his
own limitations. Still, he is tasked with carrying these ideas out, elaborating the premises,
varying the themes, exploring the what-if’s with alternate assumptions, extrapolating,
projecting, ramifying, permuting, inventing, and following ideas to logical conclusions,
including reductions to absurdity. He may assume too much about this applying to the
real world.
At the mind’s least useful level, thoughts have little structure, no rules of construction,
no hierarchy of meaning or value, the monkey mind’s internal chatter. Information and its
deft handling are mistaken for intelligence and intelligence for wisdom. This is not unlike
turning the mind over to some French philosopher for deconstruction, or to a cloistered
academic competing with his peers. The human mind serves only itself. Intellect and
information exist for their own sake. Many believe that all thoughts are true, at least to
their mind of origin. Everything read can be believed if it meets expectations. And others
believe that all is inane, pointless, and aimless, false, and pre-refuted, ‘a tale told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Here we have tautology, sophistry,
cultural dilettantes, cleverness for its own sake, and to no small extent, peer-reviewed
academia, sucking up for tenure. There is harmlessness here too, solving puzzles, jousting
and sparring, jesting and satirizing, gymnasiums for training the mind. One only hopes
that the eloquence and articulation found here can find something useful to do in the end.
The whole point in moving all over the place is to visit and investigate the world from
multiple angles or alternate points of view. We don’t stick with one view of things and we
stay wary of beliefs and convictions. We don’t just think once and then stop: we think at
least twice. And taking a second look at things is the core of the word re-spect. Revisiting
ideas also gives us a chance to unlearn before an error takes root. Leaning is an ongoing
process. This ongoing effort to penetrate the world is the core of the Yijing’s counterpart,
Gua 57, Adaptation or The Penetrating. We reconnoiter before going in, assess before
following through, optimize our approaches and occupy niches with fitness and respect.
Of course we contradict ourselves: we have choices of frames and perspectives. We have

devil’s advocates too. And minions. We are legion.
The Prince is not a Ronin or sword for hire. He wants a higher throne than sophistry
can give him. In the end, he will need to reduce his thoughts to meanings, to touchstones,
paragons, and points of reference, to useful behaviors and methods, to the sciences and
technologies, to arts and humanities. He needs to learn critical thinking skills to question
himself as well as the world, to arrange his thoughts according to value, to pick his battles
well, to assess the worth of his programs, to subordinate his knowledge and serve his
higher purpose. To do this his thought must have feeling. Many will go wrong here with
emotional commitment to rigid convictions, fanatic belief, bluster, bravado, and ego
involvement. Beware the terrible, swift swords of the misguided crusaders and zealots.
They have learned nothing useful. The critical thoughts are best trained first on our own
delusions.
Key Words:
access, acumen, agile mind, ambiguity, ambit, analysis, appraisal, assertion, cleverness,
complication, comprehension, comprehensiveness, contradiction, criticism, derring do,
development, devil's advocate, discrimination, edification, education, elaboration, elastic
mind, eloquence, enthusiasm, examination, experimentation, expansion, exploration,
exposure, extension, extenuation, extrapolation, familiarity, fitness, fluid dynamics, fresh
pathways, ingenuity, insight, intellect, intelligence, interrogation, investigation, irony,
jousting, knowledge, learning, meaning, mental, penetration, persuasion, projection,
quest, questioning, ramification, range, rapidness, reasoning, reckoning, reconnaissance,
reconsideration, references, relentlessness ,research, resilience, restlessness, rethinking,
rush, shrewdness, sitreps, sparring, spectrum, study, subtle persistence, subtlety, survey,
teaching, vicarious trial and error, vision, wit, wittiness, wordmeister.

absurdity, argumentativeness, belligerence, contrariness, crusader, deception, delusion,
dilettante, dissimulation, error, evasiveness, excess cleverness, extravagance, fallacy,
fanaticism, faulty premise, haste, hypervigilance, ideologue, illogic, illusion, impatience,
imprudence, impatience, indecision, misconception, not picking battles, overthinking,
preconceptions, rationalization, ridicule, sarcasm, scatteredness, self-deception, slippery
thought, sophistry, specious reasoning, superficiality, tactlessness, tautology, vacillation,
want of criteria or principle, zealotry.
Components:
The Airy part of Air. Breeziness, but the wind only blusters part of the time, with calmer
periods between. Air is even slipperier than oil, mercurial and dynamic, yet it has weight
and occupies space. The doubling asks what air is responding to, to an environment or to
itself?
Correspondences:
Astrology: Aquarius Ascending, as the Fixed Air sign, Ruler: Saturn. The experience is
referred to thought and idea, wanting resolution, clarification, and consensus. Seeks
social and natural order and organization. Creative, inventive, progressive, determined,
forward thinking. Ideas are given a telos or goal, a vision of being made real or true.
Yijing: Gua 57, Xun, Adaptation, The Gentle, The Penetrating. Da Xiang: Xun (Swords)
below, Xun (Prince) above; “Subsequent winds, adapting. The young noble sets forth the
higher purpose in carrying out the work.” Both green wood and the wind probe first for
openings and subsequently follow through. “Adaptation, in little successes. Worthwhile
to have somewhere to go. Rewarding to encounter a mature human being.” Rethinking or
thinking twice will allow the mind to find and examine options before moving forward.
Intelligence is more subtle than fixed ideas permit. The role model, like the purpose, sets
a hierarchy of value for reference.
Queen of Swords
Queen of the Thrones of Air
Accession, Transmission, Challenge, Versatility
Image: A fair and very serious or solemn Queen invites the reader to approach her
with her left hand, while holding an upraised sword in her right. She’s the woman in
charge, both intimidating and encouraging, and she’s ready to transmit and share some of
her power with you, you poor, lucky bastard. She has a lot to offer, but it’s at a high price.
Service is in the future, not in the past: this is a challenge, and not a reward, and if you
accept the dare to strive for greatness, expect big changes in life, and brace yourself, and
gird your loins.
This is one of the most misunderstood images in the RWS deck and its clones, and I’m
not sure whether any of the Tarot writers have noticed that this card depicts a knighting
ceremony, a transmission of license or authority, and a call to step up to a higher level of
excellence. Most commentators manage at least to see the solemnity and seriousness of
the Queen’s expression, but most seem to take this for deep sorrow and loss, or perhaps
widowhood. Her strong character may have developed in hardship, knowing reversal and
misfortune. Traditionally, she’s independent, regal, perceptive, demanding, disciplined,
severe, driven, assertive, intimidating, penetrating, cold, pragmatic, exacting, versatile,
liberated, and complex. She’s a good judge of character, but she wants it demonstrated.
She’s epitomized by the goddess Athena or Minerva, or an Amazon, or a Valkyrie, or a
Viking shield maiden. She can also be an ice queen, complete with vagina dentata. She
might make difficult and unpopular decisions without regrets. She is most emphatically
not Guanyin, the goddess of compassion. Nor is she Venus, though many commentators
suggest that she loves to dance. She has an elastic mind, but it’s used to gain victory, not
to vacillate. Today, she might wear a suit in the boardroom, or something really hot in
leather. Either way, she is not to be trifled with. This is the other side of the Earth Mother,
not the nurturing Empress or Queen of Pentacles, but the one who lets the unfit of all ages
get selected out of the gene pool for good, the one who saves her compassion for future
generations. She calls to the best that’s within us.
This is a call to step up, with courage, daring, commitment, and accountability. It’s an
intensification and an exigency, a renaming of this time and place with a word of power, a
new and higher standard or frame of reference. There are no masks or flattery here. This
is a great chance to learn to swim in water way over your head, in a do-or-die sort of way.
Compromise and halfheartedness are ill-advised. Posturing and pretense will not survive
this. If one is composed of multiple selves, it is time to pull these together. Stepping back,
note that all of life is like this. When time stretches out, things seem more relaxed, when
time gets compressed, things intensify. But those who know or remember that life is short
have a more urgent air. They will want to keep their wits close to hand, and make better
use of their sense of mortality and finitude. Memento mori. But even the slow times can
often use higher standards. If choices in life must be narrowed, why not find some kind of
compelling reason for choosing the best we can find? Sometimes we only need to retitle,
rename, or reframe a situation as having a more vital importance.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 28, Greatness in Excess or Preponderance of the Great,
depicts a heavy storm, a surcharge of weather, that could lead to complete inundation.
The roof could come down under these lively loads, the rivers rise and bridges wash out.
Dispatchers will be called and first responders summoned. Emergency means that you
really want to emerge from the far side of this. It is something interesting to go through,
and best to go all the way through. We don’t always know what to expect, except that we
will be greeting something greater than ourselves. This is a peak experience, a stretching
of limits and envelopes, an unleashing of abnormality. Once again, stretched out in time,
this is just life, our education. Scrunched together, it’s a pace we didn’t bargain for, but
that serves us right for bargaining instead of preparing. Minds encounter a broader world,
and strategies, a less predictable one. Perceptions change and laws mutate. We want to
get to the point and see clearly without much philosophy. Much behavior may be
disallowed. Halfwits will not do well. The Queen is a better ally in times of adversity,
when she hasn’t let us grow lazy and slack.
Stepping up to be tested is the way to get an education, not sitting in back of the class,
guarding unearned self-esteem and fearing pressure from peers. We toughen up under
scrutiny, think and get real fast. Higher bars and standards are set, and the ante goes up.
It’s a waking up in a hurry, and a time to walk the talk. It’s not enough to get it right: we
want it exactly right, and then to ace the dismount. Critical and crisis come from the same
word, a decisive turning point. Once again, this Mother Nature is the force of selection,
the half of evolution that below-average folk would rather not be aware of. But the fitness
that selection rewards is not what the unfit think it is. Fitness is fitting best into the niche,
a sensitivity and an intelligence, and only a little to do with brute force and competition.
This too may seem cruel to the weak and the average, but this is a Queen we are serving
here. She does not want our half measures. Seek and take wise counsel.
Key Words:
accession, arete, assignment, attainment, austerity, being tested, best judgment, calling,
career, challenge, clarity of focus, cogency, command, communication, connections,
contacts, crisis, crisis management, critical juncture, criticality, delegation, demands,
determination, discernment, discipline, dispatch, double dare, effectiveness, emergency,
employment, enlistment, exaction, excellence, exigency, expedition, extremity, fitness,
forte, guardian, higher standards, imperative, insistence, intensification, justice, mandate,
mature intelligence, merit, no nonsense, notice, objectivity, pressure, recognition, raising
the bar, reconsideration, recruitment, resourcefulness, responsibility, savvy, selection,
self-control, self-determination, seriousness, severity, stepping up, strictness, summons,
superiority, taking responsibility, tough love, transfer, transmission, transmittal, trial,
turning point, ultimatum, upping the ante, urgency, versatility, vivification, walking the
talk, worth.

artifice, averages, bigotry, compromise, cowardice, deceit, elitism, evacuation, flattery,
half-heartedness, half measures, hardship, intimidation, irrelevancies, lowest common
denominators, malice, mediocrity, meh, narrowness, nonsense, posturing, presumption,
privation, prudishness, severity, ultimatum.
Components:
The Watery part of Air. The watery expression of Air includes waves and pulses in the
ocean of atmosphere, the transmission of fluid dynamics, as pressures move from high to
low. It’s also the adaptability of the fluid air to the form it wraps around, its conditions,
movement that is precise and without delay, even more quickly than water responds.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Gemini Ascending, as the Mutable Air sign, Ruler: Mercury Prometheus.
Concern for the broadening of horizons and relationships, branching out, perceptual
mobility, social involvement. Access and accessibility, curiosity, intelligence, association,
patternment, encoding. The power of the word and its recall. Second nature, second-
handedness, vicariousness, picking knowhow up from others.
Yijing: Gua 28, Da Guo, Greatness in Excess, Preponderance of the Great. Da Xiang:
Xun (Swords) below, Dui (Queen) above; “The lake rises over the trees. Greatness in
excess. The young noble stands alone and undaunted, and steps back from the world
without sorrow.” Bubbles and structures under the lake. Adapting in a hurry may be the
only hope. “The ridgepole bends. Worthwhile to have somewhere to go. Fulfillment.”
Storm proofing. Life is contingency. We mutate accordingly. We allow that there is
something else that we might change into when we encounter things greater than we are.
King of Swords
Lord of the Winds and the Breezes, King of the Spirit of Air
Proficiency, Repertoire, Resourcefulness, Expertise
Image: A fair, powerful king sits on this throne, leaning forward with both hands on
the hilt of his broadsword. A look of intense concentration on his face shows he is about
to deliver a judgment or plan. Few will call this merely his opinion. There will probably
be no appeal. He has the wisdom of experience, and knowledge of conflict and its costs.
Exemplars of this character would include Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone,
Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot, and Solomon, threatening to divide the
baby.
The King of Swords has a lifetime of learning behind him, and is now a grownup man
with a grownup mind. He is described by commentators as determined, authoritative,
professional, commanding, experienced, educated, judicious, skillful, rational, assertive,
discerning, tactical, analytical, accomplished, articulate, respectable, philosophical, and
tough-minded. He might be an diplomat, a dean, a doctor, a lawyer, or a judge, but he
also might be an autodidact who needs no certification to be seen as an authority in his
field. He can be a self-made man who has earned his position and identity. He can make
hard choices like the Emperor, but he can and will explain them. He is, in Castaneda’s
terms, ‘a man of knowledge, claiming knowledge as power.’
All four Kings have specific life lessons to learn, that will pull their whole character
together to optimize the best qualities of their suit. This King wants adaptive learning and
thought. He must grasp that even what there is to be known evolves while we are learning
what used to be true. He cannot be a know-it-all, but must retain a degree of humility
when it comes to his lifelong learning. Pedantry and inflexibility get broken by forces of
change. Arrogance just gets embarrassed. Authority is a thing for authors, and people find
out when you don’t really have it. It’s good to move around, to flex our better judgment
and try out our different attitudes. Even the path that’s most proper to us takes turns and
winds around obstacles. To truly follow that path is to keep the same goal but also keep
changing directions as needed. Purpose and nimbleness function as a team.
This is what we become with our lifetime of educational experience, our database of
knowledge and algorithms, the tricks that we’ve picked up on the way, our contacts and
repertoire, our assembly of methods and strategies, our masteries and our proficiencies,
our cognitive and attitudinal toolkits and skill sets, our collections of knowledge and wits.
These slowly become second nature. We do not need to accumulate everything that we
need to get by, and the eclectics have the least crap to carry around in their heads.
Sometimes it’s enough just to have the right connections, or to know the way to the
useful resources. This accumulation of wisdom is analogous to momentum and is as good
as accumulated mass or energy. Knowing how to take hold of a thing when we need it is
as good as owning the thing. We learn to interact and cooperate with our environments,
even while we are making changes to them. In particular, the Swords are most concerned
with our social and technological surrounds. The King must know how things work, from
natural law to black markets. Where he cannot be fully informed, at least he knows a guy.
He wouldn’t think himself above having consigliere with superior knowledge or wisdom.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 32, Continuity or Duration, embodies this dynamic of
interactive adaptation while maintaining a sense of purpose and direction. Even if we are
disciplined, we still have the freedom between disciplines. If we are learned, we can still
admit error and do some needed unlearning. This means to know our own anti-cognitive
processes, that defend what we have already learned from the newer and better wisdoms.
Thoughts are for using and not for defending. It’s not vacillation to change when change
is made for the better, especially when the culture or world keeps changing. The model
for the Gua is the weather, which only seems to come and go, but in fact is a dynamic
system of climate circling the globe. This Gua works in larger contexts, as does a king
over larger realms than the palace. He is connected to the culture at large, and to history.
Perseverance here is not always predictability, or continuing a sameness: it’s continuously
upgrading our life skills.
This King is in an interesting position in that he is arbiter of the rules and laws that he
is also charged with making. Hypocrisy here sets a lousy example, so he must be careful
with ethics. Principles, standards and justice mean something here, but so does their right
application, which returns us again to adaptive flexibility. He can stay true to ideals and
long-term goals while modifying his means to those ends. The law has both letter and
spirit, and the king must make both work together. While most law takes a worst case
scenario and generalizes this to all times and places (just to be fair), the best government
is still that which governs the least. This asks for integrity and conscientiousness from the
King. Consistency, then, is a bit more important than constancy. Over a long reign with
many changes, the principles evolve to continue to make sense.
Key Words:
accomplishment, acumen, adaptive principles, adaptive thinking, adroitness, alliance,
assertion, big picture, command, comparison, compass, competence, comprehension,
connectedness, connections, consistency, constancy, content, continuity, coordination,
cultural continuance, decisiveness, determination, diplomacy, discernment, disciplinarian,
discrimination, doctor, earned authority, enforcement, ethics, experience, expertise,
informed intelligence, ingenuity, integrity, intellect, interactivity, judgment,
judiciousness, jurisdiction, jurisprudence, knowhow, leadership, learnedness, lifelong
learning, logical counsel, mastery, maturity, mental dexterity, mental prowess, being
plugged in, polymath, principles, profession, professional ambition, proficiency,
qualification, repertoire, resilience, resourcefulness, seniority, skill, skill sets, standard,
superiority, versatility, wisdom.

arrogance, authoritarians, bluster, condescension, contempt, disconnection, domineering,
guild monopolies, haughtiness, hypocrisy, inflexibility, malice, pedantry, pomposity,
prejudice, protectionism, pursuit of a matter to ruin, rigidity, rule bound, ruthlessness,
sarcasm, self-glorification, self-importance, severity, suspicion.
Components:
The Fiery part of Air. The force of the climate, as weather, seems to come and go, yet this
is inter-connected, with the trade winds, storms, and doldrums. Consistency is more than
constancy, and self-succession more than sameness, as truer measures of endurance. That
invigorating spirit of the tempest is also present in the gentle breeze. Brainstorming.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Libra Ascending, as the Cardinal Air sign, Ruler: Venus Lucifer. A personality
configuration characterized by mental leadership, passionate thought and a sense of
justice that is not watered down. Will take the potential of an idea and bring it about, but
without insisting it go through no changes. Applied intelligence, evaluation, mediation,
appraisal. Fair, impartial, judicious, diplomatic.
Yijing: Gua 32, Heng, Continuity, Duration. Da Xiang: Xun (Swords) below, Zhen
(King) above; “Thunder and wind. Continuity. The young noble makes a stand without
changing bearings.” The dynamics of climate and its traveling storms. Dynamic balance
in change. “Fulfillment. Nothing is wrong. Worthwhile to be persistent. Worthwhile to
have somewhere to go.” Keeping to to the path or vow, holding true throughout the outer
or superficial changes, may yet allow for substantial changes if the spirit, principle, and
ethics of the matter remain consistent.
Pentacles
Ace of Pentacles
Root of the Powers of Earth
Seed, Realization, Preconditions, Gestation
Image: A coin-like disk is held up from below, engraved with a five-pointed star, the
form of Solomon’s Seal, the Pentagram or the Pentalpha of Pythagoras, the top point up,
each point engraved with an elemental sigil. This is an item consecrated to an incipient
future, whether as a talisman to invoke a force or an amulet to ward one off. It may be
seen as a medicine shield. This is also the first stage in the progress of a thing, the first
seed or cell. This is a new beginning, although the seed comes from the consummation
and ripening of something that went before. The true beginning is further back, as atoms
come from exploding stars.
Traditional interpretations of this card suggest such things as material gain, prosperity,
profit, attainment, perfection, security, contentment, comfort, and invocation of aid. But
it’s far too soon in the progression from Ace to Ten to be seeing any real fulfillment or
watching any rapid progress. This situation still needs more cultivation and care. There is
potential to be nurtured, or raw talent to be developed. This is about basics, putting first
things first. The Ace of Pentacles speaks to the conditions needed for an idea to become a
reality, a proposal to become a business, an invention to become a prototype, a seed to
become a plant, or an egg to become an animal. It is not wealth, as many would have it,
but it may be an opportunity for wealth. It might be the core of a good idea, or a need for
a new beginning. It behaves like the seed particle that a raindrop or snowflake forms
around. A set of necessary and sufficient conditions acts as a cause for an increase in
existence, attracting material and promoting development, growth in layers of accretion,
without much internal force or substance to drive the process at first. Slowly, energy
freezes into physical form, verbs slow down into nouns, light cools off into thingness.
Materialization should not imply a lack of light or spirit, merely an investment, and that
just for a time. When we look closer, the mystery of it all still shines through the ordinary.
Three conditions must be met for things to come into being, or for entities to come to
life and thrive. Prohibitive conditions must be out of the way. Supportive conditions must
be in place. And the necessary information must be present to inform the new formation.
Getting to the beginning, a crack appears in the sidewalk and the seed of a weed washes
in. A promising niche opens up and little is there to stop it from being exploited. There
may be a need for a thing to occur, a problem that wants a solution. The new thing is
somehow enabled or allowed into being. Some real-world potential has its prerequisites
and preconditions met. Zoning allowances and site conditions permit a house to be built.
The feasible or viable thing is offered a niche in which to take root. The new thing may
be welcomed by society because there is trust and good faith. Sometimes the obstacle is
the young thing itself: perhaps it’s overly complex, or lacking in humility, or lacking in
parsimony. Perhaps security is too big an issue and the thing won’t let its shell come
undone. Here, all but the essential and the germane might need to be surrendered. We
might need to want even less than what we now have. The word capacity can mean both
emptiness and power. When the prohibitive conditions are out of the way, it can mean
both at once.
Next, a thing will need support to get started. The seed wants to land in good soil. The
business plan wants some demand and investors. The patent wants some venture capital.
The research project wants a grant. The new crop wants a field. The new field wants a
down payment. The new life wants its wherewithal. The poker winnings want an ante.
Resources must not only be available: they need to be available at a sustainable rate of
use, and one hopes for lots longer than the life of the thing. The thing wants purchase, as
in a place to begin, a place on which to stand, a basis, an environment to sustain it. The
mountain peak wants a base much wider than itself, and it may have to give up some of
its height to get this. This is the image of the Yijing counterpart, Gua 23, Decomposing or
Splitting Apart, whose core meaning is stripping away the inessentials to get to essence
of things. Things not germane are expendable now. In lightening up, we carry on with
less, but with a greater stability or greater potential. A breakdown in prohibitive or
superfluous conditions that still leaves the essentials intact is what we want in order to
move forward.
Finally the thing wants the needed instructions. This is the DNA, the prospectus, the
patent, the blueprint, the business plan, the discovery, the mission statement, the brief
statement of goals and objectives, some common sense and basic business savvy. This is
compact information, like the constitution sets the form of a government, or the zygote
implies the adult. While evolution and life produce the myriad beings without holding
this essence or plan in advance, it has still become part of the process.
Key Words:
abridgment, affordances, ante, antecedent, award, base, basics, beginning, building block,
buy-in, capitalization, claim staked, clay, conception, consolidation, constitution, core,
cornerstone, crystallizing, curtailment, deposit, down payment, embryonics, endowment,
essentials, feasibility, fertile eggs, fertile ground, formation, founding, foundations,
fundamentals, germ, germaneness, germination, gestation, getting ready, gift, grounding,
groundwork, implementation, incubation, initial investment opportunity, job offer, laying
claim, manifestation, materiality, necessities, offering, opportunity, parsimony, patent,
planning, potential, preconditions, preparation, prerequisites, purchase, raw material, raw
talent, realization, real-world potential, requirements, reward, root, rudiment, security,
seed, seed money, shield, sigil, simplification, source, stabilization, stake, start-up capital,
substance, substantiation, substructure, support, sustainability, sustenance, underpinning,
underwriting, utility, venture, viability, weal, wherewithal, windfall, zygote.

avarice, baggage, corruption, discontent, failure, false security, fool’s gold, frivolousness,
greed, haughtiness, impatience, inessentials, insignificance, irrelevance, opportunity cost,
opulence, over- exploitation, overindulgence, priorities reversed, unfitness, unsuitability,
usury, unsustainability, waste, wealth frozen or immobilized.
Components:
Ace plus Pentacles. Ideas begin to materialize, congeal, solidify, or take tangible shape.
Invested energy will be disproportionate to the mass of a product. A royal battle is fought
between titanic animals for the sake of tiny DNA molecules. Massive amounts of energy
potential and information are invested in tiny bits of matter. The stigma gets pollinated,
the egg gets fertilized.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Saturn in Earth Signs and Houses. Shows a concern for security, order,
reliability, practicality, and economy. Down to earth and discriminating. Ambitious but
patient and prudent, not overreaching security concerns.
Qabalah: Kether in Assiah. Idea condensing, congealing, crystallizing into concrete form,
verbs turning into nouns, energy turning into mass, light freezing into solid form or fuel.
Yijing: Gua 23, Bo, Decomposing, Splitting Apart. Da Xiang: Kun (Ace) below, Gen
(Pentacles) above; “The mountain depends on the earth. Decomposing. Superiors are
generous to subordinates, confirming their positions.” The towering mountain surrenders
some of its height for the sake of a broader, more stable base. “Not worthwhile to have
somewhere to go.” It is a time to shed things not needed, dead weight, shells, husks, or
overburdens. Getting down to the germane, or the seed to the germ that sprouts.
Two of Pentacles
Harmonious Change, Interplay, Dynamic Equilibrium, Affirmation
Image: The RWS deck and most clones depict a juggler handling two pentacles, which
travel the path of a lemniscate or infinity symbol. In the background, two ships ride
waves on different aspects of a sine wave pattern. Alternately, a large stone, once roughly
spherical, has split in two. A jagged crack divides them. The figure vaguely resembles the
Taijitu. Into and through the crack a wild flower has sent its roots. Other alternatives
could depict two separate material objects functioning together to create an outcome,
maybe meshed wooden gears or block and tackle pulleys. The interplay does most of the
work. The reality is the process.
The Two of Pentacles is sometimes titled harmonious change, and is said to suggest
such properties and things as agility, flexibility, juggling, multitasking, financial dexterity,
profitable partnership, difficult or challenging situations, precarious balance, full hands,

handiness, sleights of hand, changes of occupation, getting with the rhythm of change,
harmony in mid-change, a playful approach to change, stimulating developments, coping
with competing demands, and the deftness needed to handle two situations at once. In
simpler terms, things are in motion here and want some skillful handling, as distinct from
mishandling, if one wants any say in the outcome.
Things have a way of working themselves out. Each thing has its own way, which may
or may not be the same as the ways some others have. There are learnable or predictable
responses to the interaction of internal forces with environmental conditions. In the West
this is called natural law, in the East, the Dao or the Way. A thing following its original
nature has a natural behavior. This has been symbolized by an uncarved piece of wood,
which, unlike an unformed lump of clay, will have a natural grain, suggestive of natural
inclinations or an inherent direction. Looked at naively, this makes even inanimate things
appear to have intent, or to be operating according to some plan or purpose. When we
learn the way of things, we begin to see where things seem to want to go. Our lives get a
lot easier when we want these things to go that way too. When we want to change their
direction, we learn a little more about different responses to different conditions and then
add those to the mix in necessary and sufficient quantities. When we choose a new path
for a thing without due regard to givens or the facts of existence, our lives become more
challenging. It’s best to want rivers to take the most direct downhill route, one that snakes
between its obstacles. Such a path is also taken by weather, lightning, roots, and the
young. One who acts with this knowledge appears to have mastered things, but he is
merely obeying their discoverable natural laws.
The Two is best understood here as the before and after of change, even when there are
yin and yang, heaven and earth, checks and balances, ups and downs, men and women, or
rights and lefts in play. The world just isn’t as simple as yin-yang theory would have it,
although this simplified model can sometimes help us to manage our worlds. Our ups and
downs can be leveraged. If we buy low and sell high, we can even profit in the bear
markets. It’s important to understand the interplay and the inter-regulation of what we
may perceive to be opposites. Simplicity emerges from that, and direction. Patterns of
alternation are the rhythms of the world and its concert. The harmonies interconnect us
when we can be in tune with them.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 11, Interplay, often incorrectly called Peace. This depicts
Heaven and Earth moving together in concert. Contrary to popular belief, the original
Yijing preceded any sort of Yin-Yang theory by many centuries, yet this Gua diagram is
the closest the original Changes comes to having a Taijitu, the familiar Yin-Yang symbol.
In this chapter, the interplay of forces is energetic, productive and highly creative. In
humans, one type of this intercourse makes human children. In the text we are advised to
move with the way things are moving. A willingness to adapt and go with the flow allows
us to harness the world’s inertia, the direction and momentum it already has. This way,
the world is inclined to move with us instead of against us, which can often be mighty
convenient and a most productive arrangement. And if we need to steer things the tiniest
bit, we have some energy already saved up from mostly not fighting the world.
The idea here is to get things done by cooperating with the world and its natural laws.
Because of the synergies involved, things can get relatively energetic or dynamic here.
This is why Peace is such a poor name for the Yijing counterpart. What to do may be
clear, and even simple if we are seeing shining paths, but change is still inclined to be
dynamic and demanding of a fuller attention, as implied by the RWS juggler. We make
our best luck here by capturing available opportunities and using the world’s momentum
or inertia as our primary source of kinetic energy. This is like imbalance, but in a forward
direction instead of side to side. Thus we lean into the change, and get up to speed, when
it is hanging back that would overwhelm us. To go the way things are already going is not
doing, but it’s not doing nothing.
Key Words:
accommodation, accord, acumen, adopting ambient energy, affirmation of path or career,
agility, agreement, alliance, alternating polarity, ambivalence, assent, balance, balanced
books, centeredness, change, circulation, concurrence, conducting forces, cooperation,
coordination, correspondence, creativity, dance, Dao, dynamic adjustments, dynamic

equilibrium, dynamism, emergent simplicity, enantandromia, exchange, flexibility, flow,
fluctuation, going with the flow, grace, graceful transition, greazed grooves, gyroscopics,
harmonious change, harmony, harnessing available forces, interaction, interchange,
interplay, inter-regulation, knack, leveraging ups and downs, manipulate to advantage,
momentum, multitasking, natural law, nimbleness, optimizing, particles as waves, poise,
process orientation, progression, quickening, quickness, reconciliation of opposites,
relatedness, rhythm, smooth runnings, stabilizing change, steady state ecology and
economy, suppleness, synergy, time’s arrow, transformation, transition, ups and downs
used together, versatility, vitality.

adversarialism, balance mismanaged, blundering, clumsiness, concern, disagreement,
discord, dualism, extreme swings, false joy, fumbling, illusion, imbalance, imperfect
vision, inconsistent action, isolation, manic depression, out of control, out of touch,
polemics, recklessness, sleight of hand, struggle to keep up, ungainliness, worry.
Components:
Two plus Pentacles. Directed materialization, the dynamic movement of change through
time, making use of the dynamic tension of opposites, in concert. Direction into forward
motion. Organized progress. The weaving of forces together. A natural grain or direction
of things which can look like intention but often is not.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Uranus in Earth Signs and Houses. Finds a higher order in the material,
challenged to find new methods and applications in working with powers that be.
Approaches appear original but they come from reading the way things work. Problem
solving and pragmatic behavior. May sense the more efficient pathways by finding lines
of least resistance. Established methods are less important than optimum results.
Qabalah: Chokmah in Assiah. Wisdom in the material. There is what looks like a telos or
purposefulness in the world of matter, but this belongs to higher forms of life. Across the
spectrum, the way of things is obedience to natural law.
Yijing: Gua 11, Tai, Interplay, Peace. Da Xiang: Qian (2) below, Kun (Pentacles) above;
“Heaven and earth interact. Interplay. Their heirs enrich and complete heaven’s and
earth’s natures, confirm and reciprocate their proper order, supporting and protecting the
people.” Division and disconnection unplugs beings from an infinite power supply in the
momentum of the universe. We reconnect and heal this. “Smallness departs, greatness
arrives. Promise and fulfillment.” We learn what we can of the natural law and accept the
forces around us to live life with the greatest effect.
Three of Pentacles
The Great Work, Participation, Contribution, Tikkun
Image: A master craftsman is putting the finishing touches on an ornate temple piece,
featuring a sculpted triptych of symbols. A monk and a nun look on. The artist is not of
their order and might even be fully secular. He might do this as a donation or he might
take money or trade. His name will not be signed here since the work is being dedicated
to something higher than himself. The work will probably outlive him.
Traditionally, the Three of Pentacles refers to a spectrum of kinds of work that we do

in the world, but always on a level above drudgery and tedium, and preferably higher
still, on the level of journeyman or master. This is to be inspirational or meaningful work,
work that goes beyond itself, that isn’t done when the day is done. As such, common
interpretations speak to skill in work or trade, craftsmanship, material endeavors, gainful
employ, beneficial arrangement, collaboration, cooperation, commission, working with
others, sponsorship, patronage, contribution, growth, building, expansion, development,
material increase, prestige in a vocation, mastery, dignity, and renown. A combination of
key words for the Three and the Pentacles suggests “understanding the material,” which
might be taken in the sense of knowing the possibilities of the medium in which we work,
and also understanding what it means to be living embodied in this material existence.
For the secular and apophatic mystics, this material world is our home, and its nature is
our nature. Alan Watts wrote, “You did not come into this world. You came out of it, like
a wave comes out of the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” Similarly, the highest that
one can rise in Zen is everyday suchness, and the highest circle of attainment in Zen’s
Oxherding Pictures brings us back into the world, with gift-giving hands. Nobody here is
getting free from the chains of matter and flying off to join ascended masters in all-white
spirit realms. This is the secular sort of mysticism that even real scientists like to explore.
And it’s the grounded and earthy understanding of this card. There is a sacredness in the
ordinary that’s worthy of a reverent respect. This is what we put into our higher work, a
dedication and consecration to higher states and purposes, to the best that’s within us.
This is dignity and humility both. Mohammed explained why: “Because Allah has no
other hands than yours.” We pay our rent in this world, out of reverential respect and
gratitude. We elevate and redeem the lowly material. The Kabbalists call this Tikkun,
mending the world. The Hindus call the work Karma Yoga. This is service by which we
heal the false or illusory divisions between matter and spirit, and in this service there is at
least enough selflessness to broaden our sense of who and what we are, confirm our
character, expand our time horizons, and share our influence in the grander scheme of
things. Alchemists declared the The Great Work to be the Transformation of Mankind,
perhaps one seeker at a time, changing from lead into gold. As such, the work is cultural
as well as material, and the culture in turn will reshape our material world.
We get here by coming home, by finding and knowing our place and settling right in.
This is Wendell Berry’s home world, and we belong here as well. We own ourselves and
possess what little domain we might have. This is our sacred trust, our own dominion and
our responsibility, and we are its stewards. It’s ours to accept and approve. If we practice
good nichemanship, if we manage to fit in here, then we have the fitness that Herbert
Spencer and Charles Darwin praised as a key to evolution. It’s to be noted that to accept
our place in the grander scheme of things is not an end to our more ambitious behaviors,
but only a place to begin. Acceptance is not the same as approval, it’s merely to start out
with the facts. We can still make things better by our dedicated service and consecrated
works and contributions. The Work is meant to inspire.
This card is about participating in the world as though we belonged here, about getting
involved, partaking in wholeness, working at creation and coevolution, expanding and
extending ourselves in the process. The common ground is the work we need to do to
belong here, to participate more fully in this world. We not only accept our place in the
grander scheme, we own it in ways that give us a sense of duty to leave the world a better
place. We chop wood and carry water and find our nobility in this. Worth has more value
here than gain. Honest labor and labors of love confirm our place in this world. From this
place we make our art and other contributions. We realize and materialize our spirit; we
don’t help it to escape.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 02, Accepting or the Receptive. There is a bit of
stoicism to the chapter as the endurance and perseverance of the mare is celebrated. It
speaks of tolerance, contentment, patience, accommodation, and affirmation as free
assistance to our sense of belonging. But this is also the place that we begin from, the
capacity or power of possibility. Existence gives us a lot of givens, and a lot of raw
material. To the extent we can accept this as a great gift, with gratitude, it’s ours to work
with, our raw material.
Key Words:
acceptance, accepting, allowance, appreciation, attending, augmenting the given, being
useful, building a better world, calling, caretaking, collaboration, collective growth,
commission, competence, comprehension, consecrated work, constructive endeavor,
contribution, cooperating, coordinating, dedicated work, dedication, demonstrating
ideals, development, doing our share or part, donation, embrace, employment,
endorsement, extension, generous action, gifting, gifts, givens, giving back, grant,
grounding, grounds, helpfulness, honest work, higher purpose, higher work, inspiring
others, integration, involvement, karma yoga, labors of love, largesse, lasting quality,
naturalness, noble endeavors, occupation, partaking in creation, participation, paying our
rent, persistence, potential, presence, raw material, realism, realization, right livelihood,
sacred space, service, setting examples, simple dignity, simplicity, sponsorship,
stewardship, substance, support, taking part, teamwork, the Great Work, tikkun, tolerance,
transforming mankind, understanding, undertaking, upholding.

absence, cheap ideas, contempt, denial, disjointed existence, disrespect, dissociation,
drudgery, escapism, frivolity, fugue, half-heartedness, idleness, indolence, ingratitude,
mediocrity, narrow vision, pettiness, settling for less, slacking, slipshoddiness, sloppiness,
thinking small and short term, whining, wrong livelihood.
Components:
Three plus Pentacles. Understanding the material world, understanding the earth and our
place in it. Realization, an exteriorization of inner realities, three-pointed foundations as
the stablest. Development, expansion, to accept and embrace our physicality, expansion
and growth in plan or potential.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Neptune in Earth Signs and Houses. Enacting, realizing, or grounding of
vision, idealistic use of money or resources. An earthing of the mystical, spirit become
practical. Getting down and dirty and soiled in the best sense. Functional wholes. Secular
mysticism. Wanting a sense of tangibility. A demonstration of ideals, setting of examples
and making of models.
Qabalah: Binah in Assiah. Understanding the material world, knowing our place here and
getting involved. Tikkun as redeeming or mending the world.
Yijing: Gua 02, Kun, Accepting, The Receptive. Earth. Da Xiang: Kun (3) below, Kun
(Pentacles) above; “The earth’s capacity is acceptance. The young noble, with a tolerance
of character, upholds the outer world.” Upholding the world, accepting the givens as
givens, tolerating our conditions until they can be changed, gives us all the ground we
need to make a stand. “Supreme fulfillment, rewarding the mare’s persistence. The young
noble one has somewhere to go. To lead is confusion, to follow is to learn mastery.
Worthwhile west to south: find companions, East to north: forgo companions. Secure the
certain good fortune.” From the humblest of our beginnings come the noblest endeavors.
We need nothing extraneous to our natures to express ourselves. We begin with what we
already have, by accepting the place we start out from.
Four of Pentacles
Security, Consolidation, Unassailability, Authenticity
Image: The RWS deck features a man holding on to three pentacles and balancing a
fourth on his hat, appearing to be using everything that he has to hang on to what he
owns. The image is a little silly and it seems to imply little more than insecurity and
miserliness. Maybe a better alternative would show a hard-working man wrestling a huge
stone into place, the fourth of four cornerstones for a house. Indications are that the house
will be small, humble, well made, and built to last many generations.
The Four of Pentacles is usually interpreted either in terms of the RWS image or else
meanings cast in terms of power. Those who call this card mundane or earthly power
don’t understand what the word power means. In physics, it’s the rate at which energy is
transformed to do work. It has next to nothing to do with this card. The image of the
miser, on the other hand, has led to such associations as ownership, property, possession,
establishment, love of wealth, acquisitiveness, surety, satisfaction. realism, fortification,
stockpiling, banking, savings, holding on, holding back, clinging, cleaving to what one
has, gain of money and influence, physical materials and skill in allocating them.
Matter, materialism, and the material world have long been the target of verbal abuse
by the spiritual and religious folk. But there is another whole wing of philosophy that
sees the spirit as emerging from this. Laozi suggests “those who are most mature keep to
the substance and do not dwell on the sham, keep to the fruitful and do not dwell upon
the flower.” (DDJ 38). The secular mystics and scientists like their terra firma. Existence
precedes essence. If they even have gods, they tend to be chthonic. They want to build on
foundations, constitute their theories with evidence, and reason from ascertainable and
even unassailable facts. The Four of Pentacles concerns the building of something real,
tangible, authentic, or palpable. It asks for engineering, infrastructure, and maintenance.
It seeks surety, soundness, and reliability. Because failures here cannot be dismissed as
readily as errors in the mind, there are concerns for getting things right, working within
realistic limitations, and defensibility against the real-world forces inclining things to
entropy. As Stewart Brand pointed out, this doesn’t mean that something like a building
can’t learn things over time and change form. Stability is often misconstrued as stasis.
Conservatism is a characteristic of this card, but we aren’t speaking here of the fiscal
politics and moralizing practiced by aging, fearful, and ignorant imbeciles. However, this
is the opposite of revolution. Conditions of necessity and sufficiency must be met. There
is concern for things that endure the ravages of time, for traditions worth keeping, for
buildings worthy of having brass plaques, for bridges that don’t fall apart in the wind. We
don’t want haste with the basics: if these aren’t stable, nothing on top of them is. Security
is a big deal here: not the kind that leads to smugness and complacency, but the kind that
lets us concentrate on higher endeavors. We have safety nets and margins, protective
buffers, contingency plans, plans B and C, fallback positions in place, devices that blink
and beep at us when things are going wrong, and two means of egress from most of our
rooms. There is also concern for conserving, as in resource conservation, working to
minimize our waste. This way we have something left over, for our distant descendants to
enjoy and rely on.
As implied in Smith’s depiction of the miser, much conservatism can go over the top
and waste available resources. There are many examples of this. The status quo it defends
may have little or nothing to recommend it when seen against greater horizons and better
possibilities. We might design something for worst-case scenarios, and then to be fair,
generalize these designs to all things instead of staying specific, thereby wasting massive
amounts of resources. We might keep standing armies, rattling their sabers, instead of
hidden militias. The prison guard is stuck behind the bars as well. Erring on the side of
caution is still erring. And risk still has much to teach us, from our earliest years on up.
We want to be safe and comfortable without alarms and locks everywhere. But we might
have some use remaining for schools and playgrounds where children can learn the
harder lessons and get their much-needed owies and bruises.
It is said that telling the truth is better because we don’t have to remember as much. A
corollary is that self-assuredness is more assured if we are not overreaching ourselves.
Being real is a safer position than being hyperbolic. As the Bard boasted: “my mistress’
eyes are nothing like the sun.” We have a huge reservoir of abundance in what we already
have. We need only to learn to want this. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 15, Authenticity.
The word Modesty accurately translates this chapter’s title through most of the text, but
the text is ironic, and its meanings consistently speak to our misunderstanding of the idea
as self-effacement, which is another form of vainglory. This is really about the bestowing
of honor, not about dismissing it, respecting and appreciating things for what they truly
are, without flattery or exaggeration, without cynicism or deprecation. It’s about accurate
assessment or estimation, and curtailing the superfluous. It’s all about optimizing, not
minimizing or maximizing.
Key Words:
accumulation, acquisitiveness, assurance, authenticity, banking, bonding, bonds, bracing,
buffers, certainty, collateral, concretion, confirmation, conscientiousness, conservation,
conservatism, consolidation, constitution, contingency funds, cornerstones, credibility,
defensibility, dependability, due regard, economy (its original sense), embodiment,
enclosure, equity, establishment, firmness, footing, fortification, foundation, framework,
frugality, groundedness, guardedness, holding one’s own, holding steady, infrastructure,
insurance, inviolability, keeping it real, nest egg, net worth, order, parsimony, possession,
property, reliance, reserve, respect, reticence, safe space, safekeeping, sanctuary, savings,
security, security deposit, self-containment, self-evidence, self-possession, solvency,
soundness, stability, stabilization, stable platform, stewardship, structure, substance, sure
thing, surety, terra firma, touchstones, unassailability, unruffledness, warranty, weight
underside (an aikido concept), what’s truly yours, withholding.

attachment, avarice, bankruptcy, bondage, covetousness, entrenchment, fear of loss,
greed, grieving losses, hoarding gains, indecision, inflexibility, insecurity, insolvency,
instability, miserliness, obsession, overestimation, over-protectiveness, possessiveness,
quantifying self-worth, rigidity, stubbornness, suspense, underestimation.
Components:
Four plus Pentacles. Expansiveness contracted again around the most stable and genuine
elements, around the core, root, or foundation of a thing. Care with the cornerstones for
structures to come. Cautious establishment. Embodiment, incorporation, consolidation,
constitution.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Jupiter in Earth Signs and Houses. Will tend to a realistic self-image, self-
confidence in the real and palpable. Identity sought in the tangible, obvious, and
manifest. Gratitude as grace. Self-edification as meeting real needs. Self-referential or
setting limits from within.
Qabalah: Chesed in Assiah. Settling, consolidating and cohering in the material world.
Stable configuration in manifestation.
Yijing: Gua 15, Qian, Authenticity, Modesty; Da Xiang: Gen (4) below, Kun (Pentacles)
above; “Within the earth is a mountain. Authenticity. The young noble diminishes the
excessive and adds to the deficient, appraising things with fair allocation.” Many
translators fight the real meaning, reading: diminish the great, augment the little, weigh
and make things equal. But it doesn’t mean this at all. A mountain inside the earth is what
it is, a mountain and also not much. “Fulfillment. The young noble gets results.” This is
about appreciating things for exactly what they are, not making them less, not making
them more.
Five of Pentacles
Patience, Endurance, Resilience, Recovery
Image: In the RWS deck, a man on crutches and a shabbily dressed woman trudge
through snow, past the lighted stained-glass windows of what appears to be a place of
worship. There is no visible door, but they might see one soon, once they get a bit further
or turn a corner. There is hardship here, but they are also missing something, or failing to
notice a reason for hope. Most variants and clones depict distress, especially endured in
winter. A bright future is not currently visible, and it takes an effort or a special insight
for hope or reassurance to overcome despair.
The Five of Pentacles is often called material trouble or worry. The energetic force of
the Five has disrupted the balance found in the Four and things are knocked off of their
course, or fortunes are reversed. As such, most associations indicate an unpleasantness of
circumstance that might take some time to escape, typically loss, anxiety, destitution,
impoverishment, setbacks, adversity, unemployment, overextension, privation, delays,
poverty, dry spells, stretched resources, challenging circumstances, indigence, strain, or
riding out the winter. Short-term relief remains a possibility, with a refuge or sanctuary, or
even a temporary home, but the real light at the end of the dark tunnel is generally
thought to be some distance away, asking for endurance, faith, or patience. An inability to
see any short-term solutions is sometimes implied, and ironically, this is due to the
nearsightedness brought about by the nearness or immediacy of this distress. If they only
knew better, the half-frozen urban homeless could just as easily be eating mangoes while
camping in some tropical forest, on roughly the same budget. As Gandhi suggested, “to a
hungry man, food is god.” We can see no further in time or space. We only see our toil
unrewarded and rewards too long deferred.
There is probably no more fortunate time in the life of an alcoholic or drug addict than
the moment in time known as ‘hitting bottom.’ It’s at this point that the alternatives to
utter failure come into view. The moment when multiple options are seen and felt at the
same time is known to the Buddhists as samvega. Sometimes we have to reach this state
or point before we have any true choice. It’s here that we turn our lives around. The Earth
just creeps past this point at the winter solstice, but it does this every year like clockwork,
and we count on spring’s return. When we can understand this during our lowest lows,
some gratitude will also help turn things around. Poverty can assume a cloak of voluntary
simplicity, and even a freedom from burdens.
The sense of time is important in this card. When a force is applied to material, the
discontinuities of the response are a function of mass or inertia. Matter responds more
slowly than energy, and recovers more slowly. We are but lightweights and inertia is not
on our side. Forces applied to our little lives can lead to large dislocations, while forces
like seasons applied to the Earth take time to show and time to rebound. The Sun reaches
its nadir on the winter solstice, but the cold has only begun. The recovering light takes
time to catch up, to warm an enormous mass. Sometimes inertia resists change as long as
it can, and then yields suddenly, as with landslides and earthquakes, but more often the
large-scale change is more continuous, while our small adaptations to this proceed by fits
and starts. Then life wants buffering, to meet our short-term needs amidst the long-term
changes. This is the worried relationship (and its cycles of viciousness) between the
family farmer and the local bank. We try our best to survive with rainy-day planning,
savings, reserves, stockpiles, caches, nest eggs, and safety nets. These estimate the
distance between real and ideal. Sometimes we ask for trouble by insisting on unreal
ideals, and get far enough off course and out of balance that we fully deserve our
extremity. And sometimes it’s just bad luck that intervenes and nature does some
selecting. But we find a way through.
The turnaround ‘out there’ may be some time in coming. The longest, darkest night at
least gives us hope when we know it’s the longest and darkest. Sometimes we know when
a bad trend reverses, when the bottom has been reached, or when we will take no more.
Then we can turn our perspectives around ahead of the cycles and seasons. We can have
turnarounds in attitude when worry proves maladaptive. The homeless, the pilgrim, the
bum, the sanyassin, the drifter, and the monk all have roughly the same material
resources and the same size load to pack for a journey. Those with some inner freedom
can change the weather by moving out from under it. Poverty can become simplicity.
Thoreau didn’t suffer at all at Walden Pond. We just need some trust in the great wheel’s
turning, some kind of minimal faith that swings of circumstance will average out on an
acceptable course. Whether time hurts us or heals us, we have to know that spring is just
ahead, even when it’s the end of the current spring.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 24, Returning, which specifically speaks to the winter
solstice and cycles of time that are longer than short-term concerns. This is more about
coming around full circle, or moving through the cycles of things, carrying the lessons
learned with us, and not so much about quitting and turning back, although turning back
is something to do when wrong turns have been discovered. The core truths will survive
any such change or digression, and things will eventually return to their proper place.
Nietzsche suggested that ‘a loss rarely remains a loss for an hour,’ a fine observation on
our opportunistic adaptability that can help to replace the moronic ‘everything happens
for a reason.’ The Yi observes something similar in a few places: what we really need is
restored within seven days. If it doesn’t come back, we didn’t need it. Readjustment is
gradual. We just need a little endurance and patience.
Key Words:
adaptability, beginning anew, buffering, challenging circumstance, coming around slowly,
cultivated insecurity, cycles, deep cycles, demotion, determination, dislocation, distant
hope, dry spell, economizing, ends not meeting, endurance, extremity, faith, fortitude,
frugality, hardiness, hitting bottom, homecoming, hope, humility, inevitability of cycles,

insecurity, low point, making do, making ends meet, meeting basic needs, missed boat,
nadir, natural cycles, patience, perseverance, persistence, physical adjustment, pluck,
readjustment, reappearance, reassurance, rebounding, recompense, recovery, redirection,
refuge seen, rehabilitation, reinstatement, reintegration, reliance, reorientation, reserves,
resilience, restitution, restoration, restraint, retrenching, rock bottom, samvega, sanctuary,
shelter, simplicity, simplification, solace, squeaking by, stamina, staying alive, staying
power, steadfastness, subsisting, surviving, tenacity, trust, turnaround, turning a corner,
turning point, unsettling, winter solstice.

adversity, anxiety, bankruptcy, dark nights, deprivation, dereliction, despair, destitution,
discomfort, disadvantage, drought, failure, famine, hardship, hopelessness, humiliation,
impoverishment, inadequacy, indigence, insecurity, insolvency, loss, monetary anxiety,
nearsightedness, neediness, pessimism, poverty, setback, strain, trouble, overextension,
unemployment, worry.
Components:
Five plus Pentacles. Force meets inertia. Insecurity. Matter is slower-moving than energy.
Earth changes more slowly than we do, so we often must wait for reality to catch up to
where we wish it to be. Adaptive pressures working in longer time scales. Inertia, gravity,
or weight as material force.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mars in Earth Signs and Houses. Will asserted through concrete achievement.
Matter takes up massive amounts of energy, so results are usually slow in coming, asking
much of ambition and effort. Must learn about the longer view. Endurance, patience,
persistence, perseverance. Stubborn, determined.
Qabalah: Geburah in Assiah. Corrective force applied to the material. Things falling into
place or moving through cycles, effecting changes that require adapting.
Yijing: Gua 24, Fu, Returning, Return, the Turning Point. Da Xiang: Zhen (5) below, Kun
(Pentacles) above; “Thunder dwells within the earth, to Return. The early sovereigns, on
the day of winter solstice, closed the frontier pass gates; merchants and travelers did not
move about; the rulers did not inspect the domains.” We wait it out in the best available
place, our home or sanctuary. “Fulfillment. Exit and enter without anxiety. Companions
arrive without fail. Turning around and returning is the way. The seventh day brings
return. Worthwhile to have somewhere to go.” Things out of our control are moving
along at a pace that may not suit us. We may just need time and more suitable attitudes.
Six of Pentacles
Economy, Investment, Discretion, Resource Management
Image: The RWS deck shows a gentleman standing, with scales in hand, giving alms
to two kneeling beggars. It’s important to note that the giving here is measured, perhaps
implying that there is something other than unconditional generosity happening here, or
some kind of quid pro quo. He is not giving them all they want or could use. Results of
this giving may be weighed as well. Alternately, a well-to-do merchant stands behind a
paymaster's table weighing out six stacks of coins for disbursement. Two men wait for
their share, looking unequally wretched.
It is easy to mistake the gesture shown on the RWS card as an act of largesse, charity,
or unconditional generosity. The presence of the scales is given too little attention here.
He is not giving all that he can afford. Rather, he is doing the least that he can do, and
giving just barely enough to keep this part of society moving along. He is taking care of
business. What these poor souls absolutely need is also what they are best able to receive.
There is an economic floor beneath which we might be called less than human. In many
places, this is called the poverty line. Maslow would define it as the point below which
we do not get our basic survival needs met. Once these basic needs are met, we fortunate
beings have more discretion in what we do with ourselves. The aim of the common
welfare is to fare well, and a society as a whole cannot do this with poverty dragging
whole segments of it down. The costs in health care, childhood adversity, and lack of
education are enough to drag the whole civilization down. Elevating ourselves to at least
a level where the most basic human needs are met is a wise, long-term investment,
perhaps on a par with education in wisdom. To do more than this, however, runs afoul of
other principles, like self-determination and personal responsibility. As Nietzsche (TSZ
23) offered: “For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep
modest as a giver.” So, for the traditional card meanings, some that remain are material
success, prosperity, vigilance, philanthropy, opportunity, gift, favor returned, obligations,
repayment of debt, responsibility, give and take in balance, patronage, parsimony, safety
nets, and investment in the public welfare. This card is not so much about the giver or the
doer, but more about what gets given for what gets accomplished.
The Six of Pentacles is economy in the original sense, before it meant profligate waste,
planned obsolescence, and runaway fiscal policy. Investments are reasoned, measured,
and methodical here. We exercise our discretion and prudence. At the same time, no
wealth or welfare exists without circulation and its multiplying effects. So we look out
here for the perfect compromise, between maximum system stability and its optimum
productivity. Resources are apportioned and allocated with vigilance and care. In leaner
times we make allowances, budget our outlays, and ration our consumption, while still
circulating what we can. The Sixes symbolize the formation of coherent systems that
begin to self-organize and self-regulate. In the material world of the Pentacles, we begin
to see Adam Smith’s invisible hand start to do some of its card tricks.
The Pentacles, being of earthly nature, have mass and inertia, and tend to move more
slowly than the other elements. The resource and capital outlays that we make here will
take some time to manifest their results and returns. There are long games and end games
involved here. This is what warrants the measuring and calculation, particularly where
resources are limited. With both public welfare and public education, the results might be
a full generation away. Some of the long-term costs of our endeavors could be seven
generations or seven millennia away. Sometimes it’s a tragedy that all this is entrusted to
politicians and others endowed with less than two years worth of vision. This warrants
special concern for material equilibrium and a steady-state economic model over a
growth-for-growth’s sake model. First we cover what sustains us and keeps us going.
First you put on your own oxygen mask, then tend to those you are trying to save. The
physician first heals himself. We don’t get extravagant here: it’s a conservative card.
Long-term endeavors mean we will be more or less blind to the outcome, relying more
heavily on our models and rules of thumb. The profitability of our speculations requires
us to store our energy within the environment in the form of long-term investments. We
trade the fish we are given for tuition to fishing school. The rewards are postponed and
we find that we must buffer our fortunes against the more day-to-day ups and downs.
The word invest means to clothe, cloak, cover, or surround, to make your thing wear
vestments. We are doing this with our energy here and tying it up in savings. The Yijing
counterpart is Gua 36, Brightness Obscured or Darkening of the Light. This is analogous
to damping down a wood stove, lowering the flame and banking the coals so the fuel
burns more slowly and the fire lasts through the night. Only prior experience, such as
history, will suggest what we can expect when morning comes. This too is a regulation of
expenditure for longer term ends and objectives. We cover and guard our investments
with methods and management practices. We withhold our energy as needed, as the
card’s benefactor weighs out his contributions. Several of the Yijing’s lines use the image
of covert operations, the cloak of investment, and the dagger of shrewdness. In corrupt
times we hold ourselves back for self-preservation, perhaps withdrawing our consent and
support, while trying not to martyr ourselves, as we quietly work towards better days that
may or may not come, and invest our energies in more distant outcomes.
Key Words:
accounting, allocation, allotment, allowance, apportionment, attention, banking, budget,
camouflage, carefulness, cloaking, conditional giving, contingencies, covert operations,
damping, diet, discretion, durable assets, economic floor, economy, effective altruism,
end game, endothermic processes, exchange, expense, favor returned, flywheel, frugality,
general welfare, guarded expensditure, hidden motives, investment human capital,
investment in public welfare, long game, long-term investment, maintenance, material
success, measured or calculated approach, method, microloan, mutual benefit, noblesse
oblige, obligations, opportunity, outlays, parsimony, patronage, philanthropy, postponed
rewards, practicality, prosperity, rationing, redistribution of assets or wealth, regulation,
reintegration, repayment of debt, reservation, resource management, rational spending,
sacrifice, self-preservation, self-regulation, service, solvency, sound investment, sound
judgment, soundness, steadiness, stealth, sustenance, system outputs, system yields,
underground operations, vigilance, welfare, wise investment.

bad debt, deficit spending, dependency, dissipation, excessive expenditure, extravagance,
impatience, instant gratification, indignity, indiscretion, misplaced generosity, ostentation,
poverty maintained, prodigality, prosperity threatened, sunk costs, throwing good money
after bad, tokenism, unwise investment, selfishness, tactlessness, usury, wastefulness.
Components:
Six plus Pentacles. Intelligence realized, making matter of light, a social photosynthesis.
Realistic system parameters, homeostasis, preserving stability, settling down. A system
has learned something and components of reality are working together. System outputs or
yields are intelligently maintained. The least energetic part of a physical cycle, but energy
is put into the system expecting some eventual output or improved organization.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sol in Earth Signs and Houses. Inclined to a worldly sense of participation, an
identity based in more tangible realities and their organization. Practical, conservative,
concrete, evidential, conscientious, discriminating, reliable, methodical. More interested
in appreciating beauty than in being beautiful.
Qabalah: Tipareth in Assiah. The real world self-organizes into a system that learns to
regulate inputs and outputs for stability and homeostasis.
Yijing: Gua 36, Ming Yi, Brightness Obscured, Darkening of the Light. Da Xiang: Li (6)
below, Qian (Swords) above; “The light goes within to the heart of the earth. Brightness
Obscured. The young noble manages the multitude using darkness, but with intelligence.”
The sun goes down for the night and we endure the darkness with vigilance and care.
“Warranting difficult persistence.” Covert intelligence that risks no opposition and wastes
no energy in self-expression is used here to symbolize restraint and watchfulness, so that
minimal resources are used to maximum effect.
Seven of Pentacles
Assessment, Stepping Up, Accession, Follow Through
Image: A young man takes a break or breather from working in his garden. He leans
on his hoe and daydreams that the fruit on the bush in front of him has turned into money.
Seven large coins appear, but it isn’t harvest time yet and there still remains much work
to be done, and the odds are that rewards will be proportionate to the labor invested. The
break he is taking may be a midcourse appraisal, and evaluation of progress to date, with
an eye to improvement of probable outcomes. It wouldn’t be at all timely if this were just
goofing off.
The RWS version of the Seven of Pentacles is fairly clear about this being a break in
the work, but leaves open the question whether the break has positive, negative, or
neutral value. The hope is that this labor will eventually be converted into something
nourishing. But resources are finite and we want the best return. The book commentators
tend to lean towards the negative readings: anxiety, dreamery, delay in growth, inertia,
hesitation, relaxing efforts too soon, unprofitable speculation, premature worry,
unrealistic hopes, unrealized success, failure, or fear of both failure and success.
Sometimes this is a simple re-evaluation of goals, or a questioning of the effort in terms
of worth, or of the time and labor invested. It nearly always has something to do with the
pursuit of reward or profit, and the break is always taken before the end of the labor
required. More broadly, the symbology of the Seven with that of the Pentacles suggests,
simply, wanting stuff that has some value. This will almost certainly involve some
investment of labor. A little more narrowly, this could be one of those get-rich schemes
where you get adequately compensated for a lot of hard, honest work. You want stuff
that’s not ready to be yours yet. You aren’t yet done with the tasks you need to do to get
this. It might be preferable if everything was right here already, and free for the taking,
but it’s just not working out that way. Nothing is often the preferred price for something,
but this is a way of thinking that often leads to crime.
The getting of stuff that has some value is described by economics. The more value it
has, the more it will tend to cost. Of course, if you want to work less, you can also learn
to want less. Now, the really good stuff takes a lot of work. This is on average, of course,
as luck and privilege poke some holes in this theory. So on average, this becomes a
question of whether this most excellent thing is worth the cost of obtaining it. We assess
our costs and risks against our benefits and rewards. And it’s still permitted to do this
assessment halfway into an effort, and perhaps to cut losses or sunk costs early and bail
out. It’s also hard to be sure of the future, even with the good Tarot cards. Our motive is
profit, our hope of reward. Work is either the best or the only guarantee of success. But
there is also working smart, and often information can be as good an input as energy.
Sometimes this warrants taking a break, to look for a better or easier way, and sometimes
this time is wasted and diminishes our returns. We speculate that rewards will be worth it,
but the nature of speculation is that sometimes we lose. This is one of the costs of our
anticipated profit that we don’t like to think about, but remembering adds to our savvy.
As with most of the Pentacles, things tend to move slowly here, being made of material
instead of wishes. The fruit takes time to ripen. We have plenty of time on our hands to
count up our unhatched chickens and weigh the next year’s harvest. But this doesn’t get
the work done. We can’t just jump to these kinds of conclusions. Ongoing assessment,
management on the fly, tracking investments, and mid-course corrections are all a part of
the budget with any good long or end game. But we step back to stay with it. Dreams and
extraneous thoughts only help when they open the mind to better ways to get the job
done. We don’t want to waste past efforts in present inaction. Slacking off too soon will
compromise our momentum, follow-through, and elegant dismount, and those cost lots of
points in the final score. But we also don’t want to burn out. Much time and dedicated
work may lie between here and rewards, unless the rewards are intrinsic.
The key to sustained motivation is value, and to value, relevance. Work worth doing is
worth commitment and diligence because intrinsic rewards want more than half a heart.
We want to want in moving ways, in ways that drive us forward, whatever the Buddhists
might say. The earth is unresponsive to wishes and prayers. The Yijing counterpart is Gua
19, Taking Charge or Approach. It’s core meaning is in the word accession, stepping up
to a challenge. It’s one of the twelve seasonal Gua, specifically, the season to get dirty
and sweaty, to get the ground plowed and seeds planted before the season has passed.
While this depicts a time a little earlier in the growing season than the RWS card, it is
still about the work to be done between beginning and end of the effort. And it also refers
to the perils of standing too far back too soon to observe: the Eighth month is
Contemplation, which in this untimely season suggests more unfortunate outcomes. This
coincides with taking a break. The sentence yuan heng li zhen is used here, as it is in a
few other places. Because these are also the first words of the Yi, all sorts of hyperbolic
metaphysical meanings have been proposed, but its literal meaning is straightforward: the
greatest fulfillment rewards persistence. The best things in life are the ones that we work
hard for.
Key Words:
accession, acquisitiveness, assessment, assignment, calculation, commitment, cost-
benefit analysis or assessment, dedicated effort, deferred gratification, delayed feedback,
deployment, diligence, earnings, efficient management, endurance, energy input, energy
investment, engagement, evaluation, follow through, gainful employ, groundwork, hard

work, implementation, incubation, industriousness, industry, information input, ingenuity,
inventory, labor, long game, long-term plans and prospects, management, negotiation,
oversight, patience, perseverance, persistence, planning, productivity, profit motive,
progress report, promotion, proportionate reward, querer (want), realism, reassessment
ongoing, re-energizing, re-evaluating, remuneration, renewed effort, responsibility,
rewarded effort, ripening, risk assessment, risk taking, second wind, slow progress,
speculation, steadiness, stepping back, stepping up, striving, survey, taking charge, taking
stock, time to fruition, tracking investments, trans-seasonal prospects, venture, wanting,
work.

abandonment of effort, anxiety, character building only, cutting losses, delay in growth,
discounting the future, farmers’ uncertainty, greed, impatience, indolence, jumping to
conclusions, laziness, little gain for much labor, lack of endurance, premature dividends
or harvest, resting on laurels, unprofitable speculation, unrealistic hops, shortcut, success
unfulfilled, sunk costs, suspicion, unproductive distractions, unwise investments, wishful
thinking, worrying over gain and loss.
Components:
Seven plus Pentacles. Wanting stuff of value. Wanting more than what is here. Desire for
gain or success. What will we give for what we want? Acquisitiveness applied to material
gain. Profit motive. Self-interested acquisition weighed in terms of net worth: value
against expense. Demand for supply. Time horizons apply: do we plant trees for the
grandchildren, or seek a more immediate gratification?
Correspondences:
Astrology: Venus in Earth Signs and Houses. An acquisitive nature, wanting tangible
realization, not promises and hopes. Self-interested. Takes on the challenge of combining
ambition and patience, having to learn the value of hard work and deferred gratification.
Experimentation, speculation. An appreciation of the sensible.
Qabalah: Netzach in Assiah. Victory or success in the material world. Obtaining what we
really need, then getting what we really want.
Yijing: Gua 19, Lin, Taking Charge, Approach. Da Xiang: Dui (7) below, Kun
(Pentacles) above; “Above the pool is earth. Taking charge. The young noble instructs
and plans without exhaustion, accepts and secures the people without drawing
boundaries.” It’s a time to put heads down, get dirty and sweaty and get done what needs
to get done. “The greatest fulfillment rewards persistence. To arrive in the eighth month
would be unfortunate.” Quit contemplating and get to work. It’s time to commit to the
effort. Even the right kind of oversight can lead to the wrong kind. It’s not the time for
congratulations or self-admiration.
Eight of Pentacles
Diligence, Conscientiousness, Pragmatism, Thoroughness
Image: An apprentice sits at his bench, absorbed in his work on a set of eight sculpted
jade pentacles. A shelf above him holds the first seven of these and he nears completion
of the eighth. Although they seem identical, we get a sense that each is ever-so-slightly
better than the next. This is more than manufacture or mass production, even though
work may be done pursuant to a model or mold. Care is included.
The RWS deck captures the core meaning of the Eight of Pentacles well, and unlike
many cards, it’s difficult to misinterpret. One of the Buddha’s final words, appamada,
also sums it up with a meaning that combines heedfulness, diligence, conscientiousness,
care, and even a little bit of zeal. Adding the Buddhist and Pali term vinaya, meaning
discipline, practice, and education, could round out the core meaning of this card. The
Buddha even called out eight stepping stones on the path to liberation. Combining key
words for Eight and Pentacles, we have intelligence applied to material affairs, the taking
of rational steps, one at a time, towards practical ends. Other traditional meanings include
prudence, employment, apprenticeship, promotion, skill, commissioned work, candor,
frankness, honesty, modesty, covering bases, preparation, training, regularity, earnings,
planning ahead for the future, orderly progression, going step by step, long preparation,
applying oneself, thoroughness, incremental gain, set-asides for rainy days, graduated
tasks, banking, hedging, calculation, and paced efforts. Progress is graded or measured.
Although the focus of the work is on the matter at hand, a more distant future is kept in
mind and distractions are set aside for the sake of these more distant goals. One plans for
long-term development and thinks the steps through carefully.
We have the idea here of starting out small and humbly. We have a modest approach,
but this is a means to one day being able to take some pride in our work, maybe even
great pride. It’s a bold sort of humility that seeks competence, proficiency, or mastery. No
matter how precocious we may be, cockiness and smugness won’t take us to the heights.
We observe those who are further along, practice with those who are better than we are,
train with those who are quicker. We pay some dues and log some late nights and long
hours. We listen to people who tell us where we’ve gone wrong or off track. We learn
some dumb-seeming prerequisite stuff, like how we are holding the pencil all wrong, or
how we aren’t sitting correctly. The one not rolling his eyes at all this is the one who will
go the farthest. We will earn our self-esteem and not work for praise or flattery. If we do
it right, at the end of our long-term commitment, we can hope to find students as good as
we were. As Nietzsche wrote, “He repays a teacher badly who remains only a pupil.” We
will want to be competent students if we want to be competent teachers. Consciousness,
conscientiousness, and conscience will all blend into the same right attitude. Doing things
right takes more time. The final two percent of the work, the polishing and honing, might
even take as much time and effort as the first ninety-eight percent. We have to care about
quality, and the standards will rise as we go.
Education and edification both apply here, but they aren’t the same word. Education
means to lead out of, which is simply being led out of not knowing how. Edification is to
build an edifice in our minds, an organized structure of skill sets, tools, and techniques,
and we must construct this one piece at a time, often according to a plan or curriculum.
Perhaps we do models and prototypes first. We are graded on our progress here, to learn
where we stand, to learn how far we still have to go, and to keep any self-esteem real. We
upgrade ourselves, learning slowly but well. We may use the word ‘perfecting’ as though
we might one day be perfect, but any true master knows better, or will show you by
making mistakes of his own. Still, there is something that might be called mastery, even
well shy of perfection, that gives us examples to build towards. Now note that creativity
has yet to be mentioned here. We are more likely in vocational tech, not art school, but
even if we were, we would still be studying technique and techne first, until it became
second nature. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 46, Advancement or Pushing Upward. It’s
built on the image of wood underground, sprouting and rooting itself, constructing or
assembling itself one molecule at a time into something big and sturdy. The name of the
chapter, Sheng, means both measure and taking incremental steps. This long and patient
effort happens one day or one step at a time.
Key Words:
accretion, accumulation, acumen, ambition, appamada, apprenticeship, articulation,
assimilation, attention to detail, care, career, consistency, constitution, craftsmanship,
cultivation, developed skill, development, diligence, discipline, doing it right, economy,
edification, education, exercise, fine details, finishing touches, follow through, gain in
small sums, gradual build-up, gradual mastery, graduation, habit, heedfulness, honing,
human capital, improvement, industry, lifelong learning, long-term investment, measured
progress, method, paced efforts, paced progress, patience, paying dues, perfecting skills,
personal bests, personal growth, place of learning, practicalities, practice, pragmatism,
precision, preferment, preparation, prerequisites, preset steps, procedure, productivity,
proficiency, promotion, protocol, provision, prowess, prudence, qualification, recursion,
refinement, repetition, rising standards, rites, routine, second nature, self-betterment, self-
improvement, self-surmounting, skill sets, skillfulness, staging, steady improvement,
stepping stones, steps, taking the time, thoroughness, trade school, tradition, training,
upgrade, vinaya, votech, work in progress, working knowledge.

boredom, carelessness, conceit, counterfeit, cut corners, crudeness, drudgery, fussiness,
halfhearted effort, haste making waste, heedlessness, hurry, hypocrisy, impatience,
incompetence, indifference, ineptness, lack of ambition, lapse, OCD, over-specialization,
overthinking, pedantry, regression, retrogression, shallow mastery, sloppiness, tedium,
unconcern, unwarranted pride, unearned self-esteem.
Components:
Eight plus Pentacles. Intelligence and ordering applied to material affairs. Practice as
both a verb and a noun. Working knowledge, knowhow. Taking rational steps, building
up, practical capital. Calculation, specialization, pragmatism. Experienced self-
organization, fine-tuning the organization.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mercury in Earth Signs and Houses. One’s thoughts are practical, carefully
chosen, fact-based. Inclined to reason from hindsight rather than forethought. A
conservative and earthbound mind. Concentrated, methodical, workmanlike, precise,
reliable, diligent, realistic. Serious, dedicated, thorough, prudent, earnest.
Qabalah: Hod in Assiah. Splendor in the material world, the organization of the material
into an impressively functioning whole. The wisdom of the body.
Yijing: Gua 46, Sheng, Advancement, Pushing Upward. Da Xiang: Xun (8) below, Kun
(Pentacles) above; “Within the earth wood grows. Advancement. The young noble is
accepting by nature, collecting the small things as a way to the noble and great.” The
young tree constructs itself one molecule at a time, and yet might one day dominate a
landscape. “Most fulfilling. Productive to encounter a mature human being. Do not
worry. To go boldly southward is promising.” Have ambitions as big as you want,
realized one step or day at a time. Laozi’s “journey of a thousand Li begins underfoot.”
Measured or graded progress, as if by steps, rungs, or grades.
Nine of Pentacles
Resilience, Capital Management, Reserves, Diversification
Image: An elegantly dressed, middle-aged woman of means inspects the grapes in her
vineyards. Nine full purple clusters hang on one of the vines. Her posh estate lies beyond.
A small, hooded falcon accompanies her, possibly symbolizing an ability to rise above or
to see past her present boundaries. She is in a position to take care of her higher order
needs. This is a point of culmination, not a permanent state. Some degree of readiness for
change ought to be seen in the image. If this is going to be sustainable, there will be more
resourcefulness here than meets the eye.
Commentators emphasize the encouraging aspects of this card, with interpretations like
material gain, stability, accomplishment, favor, plenty, sufficiency, equity, ripeness, being
fully funded, comfort, abundance, having means, resources, prosperity, productive living,
realized gain, wherewithal, harvest, and a cultivated or cultured life. There is, however,
frequent mention of security issues related to the maintenance of such prosperity, a need
for good management or administration of capital and property, or needs for discernment,
vigilance, circumspection, foresight, and safety provisions. We want to maintain some
fluency in our affluence. If we have that in a psychological sense, we can move in any
direction we want. It’s the emotional equivalent of material solvency: not being needy or
indebted. This is how to keep winning where others would lose.
Well-being and being well, welfare and faring well, are dreams come true, or seem to
be. But things are not always what they seem. The Nines still imply all the challenges of
building reliable foundations in a world that’s always changing, and so meanings of this
card should speak at length to the problems of adaptive resilience in the built and home
environments. Yes, the woman here appears to be enjoying a bountiful harvest. At the
same time, however, there are reasons why those nasty old bandits don’t raid pretty little
farms until after the harvest has been brought in and sold off. There are explanations why
systems enjoying vigorous growth resist rot until they stop growing. Anticlimax follows
the climb. Rewards and satisfactions, once gained, are subject to change. It’s difficult to
‘have it made’ forever. True fortune is to roll well with fortune: the good life must be
dynamic to handle any vicissitudes.
A rigid sense of security is inclined to invest too much in expecting the worst. We get
overspecialized and inflexible. We need keys to leave the house. We build Maginot lines
that wind up guarding the thieves. Wealth should expand the options, not narrow them.
Fixed assists, attitudes, and behavioral responses limit the ways we can move in a crisis.
Although we haven’t been truly self-sufficient since we left the trees and the caves, some
measure of self-reliance will give us a broader range of responses, as well as a broader
perspective. Most items in the first aid kit will hopefully never get used, but we have to
admit that it’s worth the investment. The odds are good that we never recover the money
we spend on insurance, but this leaves us more ready for our unexpected events, and the
sense of assurance and security has some value of its own.
Clearly, having plenty of means and wherewithal affords us a plenum of resource from
which to draw. Extra supplies are cached, the granaries and cisterns are full, rainy day
savings bring interest. There are pressures in economics-driven societies to spend all we
have, and then some, and many simply submit here, then count on help from others when
things go wrong. Discipline, character, and maturity resist this with a little restraint. This
is like practicing, or having fire drills, or developing an immune response. Values are for
practicing. Responsibility is remaining able to respond, having not squandered one’s
safety margin or buffer. Maturity looks to what’s truly important, and this is continuity
rather than sameness. Things come and go. They are tools, not parts of ourselves or
beings with rights. We have a versatility in being able to put one thing down and pick up
another, and this includes our attitudes as well as what seem to be lifestyles. Such a
stance gives us meetness, the ability to meet the world on its own terms, known to others
as fitness. In this way, too, the situation can be more than it seems. We may look like one
thing, but we can also be many others. We look like we can survive one kind of hardship,
when in fact we can dance around many. We can also note that the strength and resilience
of an ecological system is in its depth and diversity, in its depth of field, in its redundancy
of functions, and in a broad portfolio of available responses to stressors. This is a much
different and longer-lived kind of richness than having static piles of wealth.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 07, The Militia. Most translators call this the Army, but
in doing so they miss more than half of its meaning. The model depicted throughout the
lines is that of an ad hoc force, a grassroots militia, that disappears into the populace
except when in training or when called up to meet real threats. Other than the Swiss army,
and perhaps some guerrilla forces, this has little resemblance to the standing armies we
know. The title, Shi, also means teacher, and this speaks to experience, maturity, the
discipline of training, and a familiarization with optional responses. And above this too,
we have a metaphor for resourcefulness, preparedness, and adaptive resilience in general.
The two Bagua or trigram images depict a groundwater resource to be drawn on as
needed. It’s a metaphor for mobile responsiveness, for solvency and liquidity in life, for
strategic security, the hedging of our bets, and the diversification of our portfolios.
Key Words:
ad hoc organization, adaptive fitness, adaptive resilience, affluence, aptness, assurance,
biodiversity, bounty, broad base, cache, capital management, circumspection, coalition,
collective assets, contingency plans, culmination, cultivation, curve balls, discretion,
diversification, diversity, foresight, full granaries, fulfillment, guardianship, hedging bets,
immunity, independent means, instruction in options, insurance, inventory, liquidity,
maintenance, material discipline, means, meetness, mobile wealth, moveable assets,
perpetuation, plenum, portfolio, preparation, preparedness, prosperity, protean nature,
provision, provisional security, rainy day savings, readiness, ready reserves, redundancy,
refinement, regimen, reservoir, resilience, resourcefulness, restraint, rewards, robustness,
rounded lifestyle, security, self-containment, shape shifting, solvency, stability, strength

in numbers, sufficiency, tolerance, versatility, vigilance, ways and means, wherewithal.

bad faith, carelessness, complacency, deception, extravagance, heedlessness, inflexibility,
fixed assets, fixed behavior, fluctuations of fortune, lack of diversification, Maginot lines,
miscalculation, monoculture, overlooked need for resilience, overspecialization, rigidity
of response, ripeness precedes rot, profligacy, roguery, threats to safety, unexpected
challenges, unpreparedness, unreadiness, waste.
Components:
Nine plus Pentacles. Establishing a system on secure foundations in an ever-changing but
normally slowly-changing world. Preparedness to work with the actual facts and adapt to
hold on to our gains. Maintenance of a stable state is still a dynamic process.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Luna in Earth Signs and Houses. At home in the physical world, in the senses.
Responds in grounded, steady, matter-of-fact ways. Context, home and local environment
supporting the good life. Material resourcefulness. Reserved, secure, stable.
Qabalah: Yesod in Assiah. Foundations in the material world need to be site specific and
cover local conditions, including anticipated changes and extremes in conditions.
Yijing: Gua 07, Shi, The Militia. Da Xiang: Kan (9) below, Kun (Pentacles) above;
“Within the earth there is water. The Militia. The young noble is tolerant towards the
people and cares for the multitude.” The people are analogous to a reservoir or reserves
maintained underground. Resourcefulness, or the ability to respond to contingencies.
“Persistence. A mature person’s good fortune. No blame.” There is need for experience
with many alternate scenarios for the sake of readiness. The militia symbolizes a protean
society, led by our experience. Shi also means teacher. Maturity understands what is
important, has priorities straight: not sameness but continuity. We shape-shift for the sake
of resilience and adaptive fitness.
Ten of Pentacles
Legacy, Foundation, Civilization, Philanthropy
Image: A coat of arms, consisting of ten Pentacle tokens arranged as the Tree of Life,
adorns a window, through which is seen a garden vignette of family life among the
landed clans. Four generations are represented at the gathering, and a couple of hounds,
maybe symbolizing loyalty and breeding. The clan appears to intend to stay here for
centuries. Success will depend on what they hand or pass down, including the savvy and
wisdom to maintain their good fortune. There is more than one lifetime’s worth of wealth
here. What’s all this for?
This is another card whose core meaning is both well-represented by the RWS deck
and difficult to misinterpret. Traditionally, its meanings range around wealth, inheritance,
ancestry, prosperity, accumulation, husbandry, estates, social position, tradition, surplus,
affluence, heritage, domain, dynasty, legacy, establishment, pensions, savings, lineage,
trusts, descent, family solidarity, wills, archives, permanence, traditions, embarrassments
of riches, and cumulative cultural achievement. The Ten suggests that the accumulation
has gone about as far as it can without changing into something else, but of the Tens, this
is the one most likely to take a long time to do so. The Pentacles cast the scene in terms
of material wealth. With the accumulation of mass come gravity and inertia, to resist the
weaker forces for change. The card also speaks to the lifestyles that come along with this,
particularly to those of noble or established families and their progress through time.
Cultural inheritance is also strongly implied.
This is the card of the mound builders, the movers and shakers, and the makers of the
ruins of ancient civilizations, the ones we find in their elaborate tombs. Compared to the
mountains that these mounds mimic, the pyramids of Egypt are transient ephemera, but
humans have to try building big shit to confuse their distant descendants. Also implied
here is socioeconomic stratification, or strata at least, and a nobler class of family. But
this often passes quickly in the longer historical stream. When it does, the fields need to
be leveled off again. Them that’s got need to lose, inheritances are taxed to death, rights
of first possession are forfeit, copyrights and patents expire ahead of their time, and any
wealth that remains gets distributed all around. There are worthy places to go after we get
to the top, but over the top isn’t one of them. Accumulation finds a way to recirculate.
For large parts of our human history, stratification has been a plague on humankind,
with power and wealth passed down to entrenched and unearned privilege. And of course
the spoiled rich kid that squanders the family fortune is both tragedy and cliché. But at
times nobility has worked out well and been of good use to the species, far better than the
equalitarians can admit. The key to how it has worked, when it has, lies at the heart of a
true meritocracy and noblesse oblige or noble obligation. Thomas Paine wrote, “When
we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” And
just a short time later, Thomas Jefferson praised a ‘natural aristocracy,’ marked by merit,
good character, and conscience, a real worthiness to inherit the things we’ve handed
down as a culture and civilization, and a strong sense of duty to serve, and to leave the
world a better place for our having been alive here. There is nothing inherent in the order
of things that suggests that this and wealth cannot go together, except in the adage that
power corrupts. What we want here is a genealogy of character, of beings who are worth
something to this world.
We cannot agree on who first said this: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors;
we borrow it from our children.” But Dietrich Bonhoeffer added, “The ultimate test of a
moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children.” Good stewards understand
that being a worthy heir is the same thing as being a worthy ancestor. This insight and
inspiration was in fact the whole point of ancestor worship. This will mean being the
actual treasure that we are handing down, or “being the change we want to see in the
world,” the passing of good character to future generations, as well as a habitable world.
Sadly, our parasitic species is now failing badly at this. As trustees and stewards, we
would take up the world and the commons as a usufruct, a borrowed wealth that must not
be diminished, and practice a true conservation, a true sustainability, and not what this
deluded and myopic culture thinks these words mean. This would indeed be the great
work, of the transformation of mankind. Such trustees and stewards would be the only
heirs truly worthy of all of these cultural and economic riches. Wealth piled this high will
not rest. The best among us spend it, pass it down again, to build a better world, and
establish foundations and philanthropic trusts, award grants and endowments, re-energize
the energy stored in material and currency, making both destiny and new traditions. We
conserve and protect the land and oceans and their non-human inhabitants. The great
work is inter-generational, work to be done in deep time, by lineages of humanity.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 26, Raising Great Beasts, or Taming Power of the Great.
The Junzi, a young member of the noble class, receives his instruction in social duty and
ethical training, and is encouraged to get some exposure outside the noble household and
beyond the great stream. This is the term so frequently translated badly as ‘superior man.’
Throughout the book, in fact, the Junzi is encouraged in his noble obligations or noblesse
oblige. This is a steward of the land and a caretaker of the people. The job requires a lot
of work, service, and sacrifice, but this is as much the inheritance as any wealth received.
To assist are great stores of accumulated riches and culture, as symbolized by a mountain
full of heaven. This is another way of saying that we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Key Words:
achievements, accumulation, advantage, alliances, ancestry, archives, becoming a worthy
ancestor, benefaction, civilization, civilizing forces, common inheritance, conservation,
consolidating gains, culmination and beyond, culture, cultural engineering, cultural
legacy, cultural progress, cumulative wealth, curating, deeper time horizons, discipline,
domestication, dynasty, endowments, endurance, establishment, estates, family line and
solidarity, foundations, founding, future generations, good works, grants, great work,
harnessing, heritage, husbandry, inheritance, investing in potential, lasting structures,
legacy, lessons and uses of history, limits to growth, links to past, long-term commitment,
longevity, meritocracy (the real kind), mound builders, natural aristocracy, passing
culture down, pedigree, pensions, philanthropy, posterity, privilege, prosperity,
redistribution of wealth, resources and capital, restraint, schooling, social position, social
engineering, stewardship, storehouses, tradition, treasures, trusts, trustees, usufruct,
worth.

betrayal of trust, disengagement, disowning obligations, dissipation, frivolity, gambling,
irresponsibility, libraries unread, loss of inheritance, self-indulgence, self-gratification,
shortsightedness, squandered wealth and opportunity, tragedy of the commons, unearned
sense of entitlement, wastefulness.
Components:
Ten plus Pentacles. The building of the world. Great accumulation. With the mass come
gravity and inertia. Culmination, the most likely Ten to last at least temporarily, long term
embodiment. Things appropriate to earth might be made to last through lesser cycles as
only earth can do. Structures resisting entropy. Regenerating the world, picking up the
pieces. The great work of the transformation of mankind.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Pluto in Earth Signs and Houses. This is generational accomplishment and
accumulation. An overabundance of material in need of a use. Inheritability of process.
Persistence in time. Production, wealth, incorporation. Plutus as a Greek god of wealth
was etymologically related to the Roman Pluto, who was also a god of riches. Pluto is
not, however, a real planet.
Qabalah: Malkuth in Assiah. Full extension into the material world, taking matter as far
as it can go, which means reuse beyond accumulation, redemption and Tikkun, a mending
of the world and a lifting up of the Shekinah, the divine bride.
Yijing: Gua 26, Da Chu, Raising Great Beasts, Taming Power of the Great. Da Xiang:
Qian (10) below, Gen (Pentacles) above; “Heaven dwells in the midst of the mountain.
Raising Great Beasts. The young noble makes use of large stores of knowledge of prior
ideas and past deeds, with which to develop his character.” Heaven in the Mountain is the
accumulated treasure of culture and civilization as well as economics. “Worthwhile to be
persistent. To not dine at home is promising. Worthwhile to cross the great stream.” The
young of the noble class have a duty and noble obligation to serve, to help to make the
world a better place than it would have been without them. The common man will not do
this, and this is what makes him common. Wealth and the wealthy need to get beyond and
over themselves.
Princess of Pentacles
Princess of the Echoing Hills, Rose of the Palace of Earth
Stillness, Concentration, Centering, Mindfulness
Image: The RWS deck shows its character standing, holding a pentacle at eye level
and engaged in an act of deep contemplation. Alternatively, a simply dressed, barefooted
young princess practices a motionless, self-enclosed dance pose or yoga posture, one
which suggests that her pose is about to unfold in full flower and graceful motion. She
works within a stone circle. Some decks show her reading a book, indicating study, but
even when there is a pentacle present, she is only attending one thing at a time. She may
also be standing, holding a round object like a ceremonial drum or medicine shield over
her belly. Deep concentration is the rule, regardless of design. As to character, we have an
intent, introspective young lady searching for a remarkable woman inside her.
The Princess of Pentacles is among the least frivolous of the court, wanting nothing to
do with nonsense or distraction. She is sometimes also said to announce communiques in
business and practical information. She’s known to most commentators as turned inward
in a sincere quest for who she really is. She’s described as absorbed, reflective, diligent,
appreciative, honorable, deliberate, careful, mindful, thrifty, methodical, conscientious,

steady, authentic, brooding, entranced, subdued, attentive, quiet, patient, trustworthy,
solid, sensible, and sometimes pregnant, at least with her possibilities. She’s
characterized by concentration, introversion, groundedness, honesty, respect, economy,
and her raw potential. She may be studious, but she will learn best by doing. She’s not
one to push the envelopes or get wild. Suggested vocations include curator or archivist,
due to her reliable character and the respectful care that she shows.
This card starts the development of the Earth element as a personality type. As the
‘earthly part of earth,’ this begins with the search for the core of being, the most germane
or essential parts. We can examine who we are from a lot of different points of view or
angles, and we get most of our detailed and complex information from observing how we
interact with our environments or contexts. This is not that. This is the view within, even
more than the view from within. It’s getting the sense of who we are, without the without.
We even have sets of nerve endings for this, the vestibular and the kinesthetic senses, for
example, and some say that even consciousness is simply our sense of the central nervous
system as it interacts with our chemical compounds. We withdraw in search of a palpable
essence, not an etherial thing, but a substance, an original nature, a heart or core, seeking
touchstones and cornerstones, and even the wisdom of stones. We reach for where the
ground is, for terra firma, for tathata or suchness, or yathabhuta, reality-as-it-is. We
reach for an in-derstanding. And we can often find it right in the middle of the ordinary,
just under the surface of things, a treasure that was only hidden by our inability or refusal
to see, our lack of respect, a word which means to look again. In skipping over the
obvious and wondering where reality is, we miss out on the wonder itself. This presence,
that can be rightly considered sacred, or even divine if we don’t take that too far, is called
the Shekinah by the Kabbalists, and is sometimes regarded as divinity’s bride.
This persona was called the brink of transformation or transfiguration by Crowley, and
brooding, ‘as if about to become aware of secret wonder.’ There is a readiness here to
transition into something even more special. This might be regarded as the emergence of
sentience, consciousness, and spirit out of material form. A butterfly about to emerge
from a chrysalis phase would be another model, or an egg about to hatch, or a seedling
ready to sprout. Michelangelo spoke of freeing the form that was latent in the marble.
The Daoists speak of pǔ, the uncarved or unworked piece of wood that still contains all of
its original raw potential, but nevertheless has a grain or original nature that a proper
respect will work with instead of against. It is not, in other words, pure possibility. This
card’s quest for self-discovery is like this. Of course we can become much of what we
imagine, but not all of this is true to our inmost, authentic nature. While this isn’t a form
in the sense that Plato would have misunderstood it, discovery still means to uncover, and
this may have much in common with morphogenetic fields, at least as it's understood
scientifically in developmental biology: a predictable shape that will find its expression.
This is also the vision quest, and the search for a totem or magical name.
The parallel to Buddhist mindfulness practice is clear enough, in both its vipassana and
samatha forms, as well as to many of the yogic practices, and such meditations as weight
underside in aikido. We go deeper into our sense of the real. The French jamais vu is the
opposite of deja vu: you know you have been here before, but you would also swear that
this is the very first time. This is the fresh look we seek here. The novice with entheogens
invariably asks, ‘have you ever really looked at your hand?’ The counterpart in the Yijing
is Gua 52, Stillness or Keeping Still, symbolized by mountains repeated, stillness over
stillness, and their resemblance to a spine. The text fairly clearly describes some ancient
Chinese form of yoga or meditative practice, although we do not know its name. This is
regarded as a necessary practice for a time and place, but not a thing to take around in
public, and not a round-the-clock practice, except for some lingering authenticity and
equanimity, or meditation in action.
Key Words:
anchoring, absorption, authenticity, availability, balance, basis, beginner’s mind, being,
brooding, centering, concentration, conscientiousness, containment, core learning, deep
thought, delimiting boundaries, dependability, diligence, emergent mind, equilibrium,
focus, forthrightness, getting real, gnōthi seauton, groundedness, groundwork, honesty,
immanence, inherence, inner strength, integrity, introspection, introversion, knowing

yourself, latency, learning what you have, gestation, groundedness, jhanas, matters at
hand, meditation, mindfulness, ordinariness, original nature, parsimony, patience, peace
and quiet, poise, positioning, potential, preparation, prepossession, presence, principle,
quietude, rawness, readiness, realism, reduction, reflection, respectfulness, rootedness,
rumination, sacredness in the ordinary, security, self-containment, self-discovery, self-
examination, self-restraint, settling in or down, silence, simplicity, single-mindedness,
stability, steadiness, straightforwardness, steadfastness, stillness, studiousness, study,
suchness, things in themselves, time out, vipassana, vision quest, yoga.

addiction to fantasy, alienation, aloofness, catatonia, degradation, dissipation, distraction,
escape, evasiveness, fear of rejection, fugue, humorlessness, inattention, insensibility,
monomania, narcissism, fear of coming back out, prodigality, solipsism, stagnation,
withdrawal.
Components:
The Earthy part of Earth. The earthly expression of earth is stillness and silence, being all
by itself and sufficient unto itself. Down to earth. It’s symbolized by the spine of a
cordillera or range of mountains, and the spine of vertebrates too, even including the
associations of having a spine with courage and character. “First there is a mountain, then
there is no mountain, then there is.” Balance and equilibrium, stable states.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Caput Draconis in Earth Signs and Houses. The search for the most reliable
manner of being and growth, growth on sure footing. Finding our true or original nature,
then growing into who we are, and not out of it. Filling in the boundaries of potentiality.
Self-containment and self-respect.
Yijing: Gua 52, Gen, Stillness, Keeping Still. Da Xiang: Gen (Pentacles) below, Gen
(Princess) above; “Adjacent mountains. Stillness. The young noble contemplates nothing
outside of its place.” A range of mountains, or cordillera, resembling a spine. Attending
to matters at hand, the near and the relevant. Being present, being here now. “Stilling
one’s spine. Not grasping one’s own being. Moving through one’s courtyard, but not
seeing other people. No blame.” The possibility of blame indicates that this is a practice
done for a time, not one continued forever. But there is a time and place to get centered in
the core of our being, to learn who we are to begin with. It is not an end.
Prince of Pentacles
Prince of the Chariot of Earth
Steadiness, Reliability, Predictability, Endurance
Image: The RWS deck show a knight mounted on a workhorse, holding a pentacle,
and surveying his agricultural lands. A variant of this might replace the pentacle with a
surveying device like a handheld transit or clinometer. Alternately, a muscular, hard
working prince labors in his fields, bare chested and sweating behind a plow, drawn by
his noble workhorse. The activity is not beneath him as his robust health will attest. His
satisfaction is a job well done. The pentacle could appear on the workhorse's tack. He is
looking towards the horizon, but only to read tomorrow’s weather or inspect the fence for
damage, not to daydream.
Were this a modern Tarot and, per Crowley, the princes drove chariots, this one might
be found on a John Deere or a D5 Cat. But he might still have a rotary phone on a
landline. From one angle, you might see some plumber’s butt crack. This is a pretty
conservative fellow, and not some fancy Prince Charming. As discussed elsewhere, the
moving around that princes do is more circumscribed for him, and much of his
exploration may be a reexamination of the known. As far as exploring and exceeding the
boundaries, as the princes are charged to do, the Prince of Pentacles might only be riding
out to fix the fence or bring in strays. He might have a reason to go into town, but he’s
not so wild that he’d go without a reason. He is a simple, predictable man, who knows his
goals well in advance, and a dedicated, reliable man, who can be trusted to finish a job.
He is said to be slow to anger, but furious if roused, and he is not forthcoming about his
feelings. Commentators also describe him as persistent, patient, consistent, methodical,
industrious, sensible, practical, hard working, capable, steadfast, conventional, cautious,
stable, responsible, stubborn, and even bull-headed. He is notable for perseverance and
practicality, and a slow-but-steady pace for getting things done, the right way, the way it’s
always done.
The Prince’s life is fairly well mapped out by the conventions of the world around him.
He is rooted in the land and has a good sense of his place, but he may be too wrapped up
in his work to see its beauty or sense his good fortune. Local concerns are the boundaries
of his world. The Prince isn’t much of a reader, in part due to his time constraints, so he
may be prone to adopting simple and ready-made ideas, often in the form of platitudes,
propaganda, and quotes from the holy books. He may adopt ideologies that are not in his
own best interest. He is not the sharpest hammer in the box, and may come off as simple-
minded instead of single-minded. He will tend to believe what he has been told to believe
by tradition. He can be convinced of untenable ideas even when evidence to the contrary
is right in front of him. His values are traditional and his ethics are probably unexamined.
He follows protocols but may not know what the word means. He is set in the ways that
things are done. But despite his lack of rebelliousness and self-direction, he nevertheless
represents Jefferson’s yeoman farmer ideal of civic virtue and incorruptibility. And he’s
the salt of the earth. Even when he is wrong, he is innocently and honestly wrong. And he
isn’t just honest because he’s too dull to be crafty. He does what he can to be genuine. He
usually shows good, common sense, except with politics and religion. Do not even try to
convince him that there is a world outside of his country, or thoughts outside his beliefs,
unless you want to hear some mighty strong opinions. He simply cannot see, much less
question, his errors. Any good wisdom that he carries around will be of the folk variety.
Maybe other wisdoms can be smuggled into his mind through this particular door.
The Prince also has his own brand of intelligence, of a concrete operational sort. If a
thing was manufactured before he was ten years old, you can be certain this guy can fix
it, or even build a new one from scraps. He is a handy man. He knows how things work
and how they go together, though he probably holds no patents. He may have good
business sense but isn’t very risk prone, so he may avoid new lessons. His math may be
limited to striking bargains, inventory, and counting time and seasons, but he has that at
least. He can probably design a barn better than any architect, and can certainly build one
better. An obedience to natural law takes some smarts and savvy, with enough of a
knowledge of nature not to fight it. It may take a while to unlearn a traditional way of
doing things wrong. You can trust him to do what he knows, but not to find any error in
that.
In short, if a task falls within his range of skills, you can rely on this Prince to complete
it, and do a solid, workmanlike job. A handshake is almost certainly the only contract
you’ll need. He will not abide any dishonesty, frivolity, whining, or shenanigans. Great
achievements can be built here with humble parts and long days. A lot of time might be
consumed in the process. Thoroughness and quality mean more than efficient production.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 53, Gradual Progress, symbolized by a tree growing slowly
on the mountain, slowly securing a patch of rough ground all its own and eventually
becoming a landmark. It’s a long process, wanting a steady and reliable effort. It is also
symbolized by the wild geese or swans, who mate for their very long lives and move
through routines long-ago established by evolution. This is a long-term commitment, and
a slow but still progressive conservatism, which advances by degrees, the gradual school
of character development.
Key Words:
accommodation, adopted values, boundaries, capability, circumscription, common sense,
concrete value, confines, conformity, conservation, conservatism, consistency, constancy,
constraints, conventions, cultivation, day to day progress, dedication, dependability,
determination, diligence, due process, duty, endurance, establishment, fidelity, handyman,

hard work, honesty, implementation, incremental growth, industry, knowhow, labor, long
haul, long- term commitments, long-term goals, loyalty, method, morality over ethics,
naive realism, patience, perseverance, persistence, practicality, predictability, procedures,
realism, regulation, reliability, responsibility, routine, rules, salt of the earth, security,
sense, sensibility, simplistic realism, stability, standards, steadfastness, steadiness, steady
progress, stoic endurance, sweat, thoroughness, traditional values, trustworthiness,
usefulness, workhorse, works in tangibles, yeoman farmer.

bigotry, carelessness, dogma, dogmatism, drudgery, dullness, ignorant rustic, impatience,
inertia, inflexibility, insensitivity, intolerance, lack of determination, lack of overview,
misoneism, narrow-mindedness, outdated methods, overconfidence, plodding, simple-
mindedness, sloppiness, stagnation, stereotypical behavior, stubbornness, tedium, tunnel
vision, workaholic, working at a loss, working in a rut, xenophobia.
Components:
The Airy part of Earth. An airy or formative expression of Earth, practical knowhow,
fruit-bearing, productivity. An ultimately intelligible reality in the plowed field, the
cycles and seasons of a greening earth and budding life. Nature’s rules, earth becoming
intelligible, articulation of the four seasons. A suitable template for biomimicry in such
fields as land planning, holistic management, and permaculture design.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Taurus Ascending, as the Fixed Earth sign, Ruler: Venus Hesperus. Personal
experience is referred to practicality and physical sensation. Processes of consolidation
and substantiation. Perseverance, work, and worth. Methodical attention to growth. Tends
to be strong, stable, thorough, unassuming, set in ways. May be dogmatic, bull-headed,
stubborn. A heavy or ponderous energy.
Yijing: Gua 53, Jian, Gradual Progress. Da Xiang: Gen (Pentacles) below, Xun (Prince)
above; “On top of the mountain there is a tree. Gradual progress. The young noble abides
in excellence and character to raise the social norms.” We may be just being ourselves,
doing our best and minding our business, but this is a position from which to set a good
example. “The young woman’s engagement is promising. Worth the persistence.” The
metaphor ties in with the subsequent image of the wild geese mating for life. The
formalities and protocols established by society or evolution keep us busy for life. If we
want to progress in this manner, progress is made one step at a time.
Queen of Pentacles
Queen of the Thrones of Earth
Reciprocity, Symbiosis, Coevolution, Responsiveness
Image: A dark, prosperous queen occupies a throne set amidst an oasis of abundant
plant and animal life. She belongs to this landscape, and at its center. She is exotically
beautiful, moderately zaftig, and bedecked with gifts to celebrate her beauty, including
the large precious stone or pentacle that she holds in her hands and admires.
Alternatively, she could be hosting a feast at an outdoor table, surrounded by community.
She’s the beating heart of this home.
The Queen of Pentacles is known as a big-hearted woman, perhaps of some means,

with immense funds of affection, a woman combining dignity and grace with the sensual
and erotic. She is a fine example of the bountiful earth and the compelling stimulations
which drive life to glory and abundance. She enjoys conceiving babies as well as raising
them. She’s a force of nature in her home and local environment. She’s a little different
from the Empress as an Earth-mother type. More than just being a human instead of a
demigoddess, she is more participatory or involved, a little less ethereal, has a bit more
hair and smells more like a real woman: just the right amount of sweaty. And her
fingernails are often broken from work in the garden. She can change her own oil and flat
tires. She wears rustic with some class, and sandals in three seasons. Her life is largely
outside of herself, in circulation, in the garden, or with family and community. She has
many moods, but most are easygoing. Commentators also describe her as sensible,
compassionate, sensuous, lavish, gracious, supportive, nurturing, generous, charitable,
hospitable, forgiving, responsive, accessible, resourceful, and caring. She is known for
cooperation, liberality, enrichment, relatedness, familiarity, fecundity, abundance, and a
love of nature. The manner of her interaction and interdependence might be described as
mutualism, symbiosis, or reciprocity.
There is a sense in which this queen represents the opposite of the Queen of Swords
with respect to the primary evolutionary processes. The latter is unquestionably a force
for selection, and sometimes can be quite harsh and cold, while the Queen of Pentacles is
more experimental, tolerant, nurturing, supportive, kind, warm, obliging, pleasant, and
encouraging towards diversity. She is not, however, a loose woman. As a patroness, she
puts resources into circulation, spreading the wealth and well-being, to grow more wealth
and well-being. But some of the wealth she shares might be yours, after she’s persuaded
you to part with it.
There is a little more to her than this, though. This card has a strong resonance with the
mutable earth sign of Virgo, which is ruled by Mercury Epimetheus, hindsighted analysis
or reasoning from precedents, and also is symbolized by the virgin, who will do very
little sensuous procreating until she uncrosses her legs. But the connotation of the virgin
here can be a little misleading. Yes, she is choosy and sets her standards fairly high, but
once she affirms a choice, she has better reasons than most to move forward, and a better
chance of success. This queen is generous because it pays extremely well. She has
figured this out. She knows the value of free markets and open exchange. Spreading the
wealth is a very practical way to amplify wealth. Diversity in a system is depth, strength,
and resilience in that system. Even the very roots of sexual reproduction had this practical
effect, which furthered our evolution immensely and led to this becoming a natural norm.
This also made the world a lot more interesting and fun than just splitting ourselves in
two. There is much more to giving and altruism than self-sacrifice. The world is a great
tat and quo for the bargain price of our tit and quid. What goes around comes around,
often multiplied in the process.
So the Queen is not a loose or simple woman. She is ready to respond to someone or
something worthy and authentic. She is ready to explore or exploit what’s available to her
senses, and she’s apt to regard sensation as a good enough door to the truth. She will
appreciate the variety and texture of it all, how all of the differences work together and
weave themselves into a whole. Having a nobler understanding of the material, she will
want enrichment rather than riches, comfort rather than comforts. She is moved more by
persuasion than reason, and a promise of mutual benefit more than her own reward. She
will see the reality in the exchange itself, not in the goods exchanged. Interrelationship
and interconnectedness form strong threads that make for strong fabrics, especially of her
family or community. Her life is in the weaving of this. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 31,
Reciprocity or Influence. One of its images is the alpine lake, high on the mountain, and a
young woman on top of a young man, and what these two pairs have to give to each other
to mutual benefit. The distances between them are crossed, sometimes at some length or
with difficulty, but the reward is a renewal of life. Congress or coming together is for
mutual purpose and welfare, for symbiosis and synergy, for meeting each other’s needs,
and sometimes even creating new beings.
Key Words:
affection, affinity, agreeableness, altruism, amenity, association, attraction, belonging,
care, caretaker, coevolution, combinations, commensals, common interests, community,
complements, congress, congruity, conjugality, conjunction, creature comforts, devotion,
embrace, enjoyment, eros, Gaia, gardening, dissemination, diversification, earthy grace,
embrace, enjoyment, familiarity, fertility, flowering, forming bonds, fruition, gardening,
generosity, greatness of soul, healthy combinations, home, home economics, homemaker,
hospitality, incentives, incitement, inducement, influence, interaction, interwovenness,
kindness, liberality, love of nature, making sense, mutualism, mutuality, natural nurture,
nutrition, oasis, patroness, persuasion, pleasantness, plenum, productive interaction, quid-
pro-quo, readiness, reciprocity, recombination, relationship, resonance, resonating,
responsiveness, sensuality, sharing the wealth, stimulation, stirrings, support, symbiosis,
synergy, texture, tit-for-tat, warmth, webs, worldly love.

codependence, consumed by lifestyle, fear of intimacy or rejection, isolation, nothing left
for herself, mistrust, monologue, monomania, moodiness, overindulgence, responsibility
neglected, self-indulgence, mistrust, selfish motives, sequestration, stinginess, suspicion,
suspiciousness, toxic combination.
Components:
The Watery part of Earth. Mutability of the material, the ability of one form to assimilate
another, as in absorption, digestion, or incorporation into larger wholes. Inner meaning of
the physical, beauty in the material, color, texture, richness, flowering. Fertility,
irrigation, living soil, oasis, the valley spirit. Growth, interconnectedness. Puts the fluent
in affluent.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Virgo Ascending, as the Mutable Earth sign, Ruler: Mercury Epimetheus. A
mind inclined to nutritious or rewarding relationships. Selective, but once the standards
are met, approaches may be made with confidence and promise. A sensible approach to
wealth as enrichment. Discriminating and sensible, alert, thoughtful.
Yijing: Gua 31, Xian, Reciprocity, Influence. Da Xiang: Gen (Pentacles) below, Dui
(Queen) above; “Up on the mountain there is a lake. Reciprocity. The young noble is
open to welcome the other.” The alpine lake, alpine life, a young woman and a young
man, with much to give to each other. “Fulfillment. Rewarding to persist. To court the
young woman is promising.” There will most likely be challenges and distances to cross,
with great diversity being involved, but rewards will be proportionate. Follow that bliss
and scratch that itch.
King of Pentacles
Lord of the Wild and Fertile Land, King of the Spirits of Earth
Heedfulness, Conscientiousness, Savvy, Realism
Image: The RWS deck shows the King on his throne, holding and contemplating a
plate-sized Pentacle, symbolic of the wealth he has managed to accrue. Alternately, an
obviously prosperous but unpretentious king is sitting cross-legged on a dais, something
in the attitude of a Buddha, but contemplating the coin of the realm in multiple stacks,
which he is apportioning for disbursement. He ponders the projects he is funding. He
could also be seated behind the desk in his counting house. He needn’t appear like he’s
handling the filthy lucre himself, but he must look like he could cut you a huge check, or
tax you by just as much.
The King of Pentacles is thought of as a wise and careful ruler, worldly, more real than
regal, but with ample enough gravitas, possessed of a steady temperament and a good
fund of patience. He has the economy’s pulse. He’s a man of quality and substance. Each
of the kings comes truly into his own when he has mastered an important life lesson. For
this king, this is the courage to risk resources in just the right amount. Too much caution
and conservatism could leave him with too few resources to provide for the needs of his
heirs and the common good. On the other end of the lesson is the ability to know when to
stop and declare that enough has been gained to meet all reasonable needs. Failing at this
also fails his heirs and the common good. When he finds the sweet zone between these,
the King is an influential man, a patron or sponsor who benefits the world. He gets most
of his savvy from experience, and yet very little from devastating losses. He is often
called competent, consistent, realistic, stable, accomplished, down to earth, enduring,

steadfast, methodical, equitable, considerate, disciplined and worthy. He is a bondable
character, although his word is as good as a bond. Modern politics has given a lot of
horrible associations to several of our best words: conservative, liberal, and libertarian,
for example. Setting aside the morons in office who call themselves by these names, this
king is a compassionate conservative for the sake of his liberality towards his people. He
is a builder of both infrastructure and social coalitions, and is a responsible steward of his
resources, economy, and culture, and a patron of the more promising causes.
Having some mastery of the material element, the competent businessman provides a
good metaphorical model for this king. He makes guarded but sound investments, with a
well-diversified portfolio. He is not a believer in getting rich quickly by taking foolish
risks. He practices real economy in the older sense of the term, with practical capital and
resource management. Capital is invested wisely, not mistaken for income, and resources
are used only at their rates of replenishment. He is sure to have his contingencies covered
carefully, and at some expense that might not be fully recovered. The cost of a little extra
insurance is apt to be his greatest financial risk. He likes the tried and true, and the bonds
and blue-chip investments over stocks and futures. While not overly speculative, he is apt
to be a good, savvy reader of signs and trends that escape the notice of others. He follows
the plan and does all the math, or at least the basic arithmetic. His wealth is apt to build
its momentum slowly, like a freight train. The best way to secure our optimism here is by
doing things correctly. He knows where he is going, but he usually has a good map, with
little terra incognita.
The King is not without ambition or entrepreneurial spirit. He is simply not in a hurry,
not one for getting rich quickly or taking big risks. Others around him may be liquidating
their resources and capital, calling them income instead, still overspending wildly and
piling up crushing debt to justify the printing of increasingly worthless currency. Our
King’s humbler ambition takes the longer-term view, still valuing quality and durability,
and even saving a little of the wealth for future generations. He’s still driven to succeed,
but he has a somewhat calmer and less deluded vision of success, where real needs are
met in the least harmful ways. As a mover and shaker, he might move and shake a little
less, but what needs doing gets done. Slow, steady progress, while not inexorable and
unrelenting, is at least harder to stop, just as a firm, steady character will tend to be
unimpeachable. It’s the exaltation permitted by surety of footing, compelling example,
realistic attitudes, and level-headed respect for the powers in play. But like a goat
climbing a mountain, this requires a kind of nearsight for the sake of surer footing, a
heedfulness that likes to know exactly where it stands, and a humility that remembers
how vulnerable life can be to earthly forces like gravity and inertia. Power will slip from
the most competent hands when reality loses its status. But the up side to this humbler
realism is that the goat gradually gets to the top of the mountain, where the grander views
await.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 62, Smallness in Excess or Preponderance of the Small.
Its lessons are cast in terms of reducing inflated expectations. It better represents the idea
of humility or modesty than Gua 15, which usually receives this title. One of the primary
metaphors is that of a high flying bird submitting to gravity, one of the ways that earth
expresses its power. In evolutionary terms, the smaller creatures that proliferate here are
r-strategists: it’s up to them to take enough care to survive in a world that can kill without
caring. Realism and a proportionate caution are skills for success and survival. We are
conservative in our desire for self-preservation, and then acquiring all that we need for
success beyond that. We grasp our proper place in the larger picture and scheme of
things. The King of Pentacles isn’t really the undisputed master of his realm: he serves.
He’s simply trying to make his position work as well as it should.
Key Words:
accomplishment, acquisitions, acumen, astuteness, attention, attentiveness, blue chips,
bonded investments, business, capitalizing, carefulness, caution, coinage, collateral,
common sense, competence, confidence, concern, conscientiousness, conservation,
conservatism, consideration, consolidation, constancy, constraint, contingencies covered,
counsel, covered the bases and basics, deliberation, details, determination, disbursement,
discernment, discipline, diversified portfolio, due regard, durability, effects, endowment,

enterprise, evenness, exactitude, forecasts, givens, grasp, gravitas, grounded priorities,
heedfulness, humility, investment, laws of averages, levelheadedness, local activity,
lowering expectations, monitoring, nearsight, needfulness, nichemanship, objectivity,
planning, practicality, pragmatism, precision, preventive care, prudence, realism, realistic
ambition, reliability, reserve, responsibility, savvy, scrupulousness, security, solvency,
soundness, status, surety, steadfastness, steadiness, tenacity, vigilance, vulnerability,
wariness, watchfulness.

airy speculation, anonymity, avarice, cold calculation, conceit, corruption, deluded
grandeur, diffidence, exaggeration, fearfulness, flights of fancy, grandiosity, heedlessness,
hyperbole, impatience, inattention, ineptitude, mediocrity, misinterpretation, miserliness,
negligence, overreach, recklessness, self-importance, stubbornness, timidity, triviality,
wasted talent.
Components:
Fiery part of Earth. Gravity, potential energy and inertia as earthly forces, leading, when
built up, to quakes and volcanism, tectonic movement that builds mountains at a normally
slower than visible pace. Flight comes about by understanding gravity as a law. We obey
the powers that be in order to succeed or surmount them. Finding the exceptional in the
ordinary. Wanting the ground underfoot.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Capricorn Ascending, as the Cardinal Earth sign, Ruler: Saturn. A serious but
sanguine temperament that likes and appreciates hard realism. A concern for due regard.
Content with steady growth or advance along with the confidence of being on terra
firma. Knowing where one stands, sure-footedness. Patience, discipline, proficiency.
Yijing: Gua 62, Xiao Guo, Smallness in Excess, Preponderance of the Small. Da Xiang:
Gen (Pentacles) below, Zhen (King) above; “Over the mountain there is thunder.
Smallness in excess. The young noble, in conduct will exceed in respect, in loss will
exceed in sorrow, in practice will exceed in economy.” Thunder from the mountain. Err
on side of caution, but still try not to err by much, “Fulfillment. Worthwhile to persist.
Appropriate for minor concerns, not suited to great concerns. The flying bird bequeaths
this message: if not adapted to heights, then adapt to remaining below. Much promise.”
Respect for the powers that be permits appropriate achievement. Excess is not a healthy
long-term objective for finite and vulnerable beings.
Trumps
The Fool
#0, Beggar, Jester, Joker, Le Fou, Le Mat, Il Matto, El Loco,
The Spirit of the Aethyr
Naiveté, Openness, Thoughtlessness, Childishness
Image: A young man with some androgynous features holds a carefree stance at the
edge of a cliff, apparently unaware of the danger. One leg off the ground is being batted
at by a playful, knee-high wolf pup. His gaze is slightly upwards, as if drinking in the
distances. He appears to trust powers other than his own wits for survival. Snow-capped
mountains in the background indicate alpine terrain. He wears a knee-length, patchwork
dervish robe and a flower garland with a feather in his hair. He carries a green walking
stick or wand over his shoulder, with a small bindle (bundle) bearing an obscure symbol
tied to the end. If this carries a cup, a knife and a talisman, he may be unaware of their
magical significance. These meager possessions are all that he appears to own, or even to
need. The precipice is the same one the Hermit will stand on later. He is sometimes
accompanied by a companion dog or crocodile, make of this what you will, but it might
just be foolishness.
The Fool is the original wild card, and appears to have been a contribution from the
Tarot back to the 52-card deck, as the Joker, in the 19th century. He did some evolving
along the way, though, having begun as a beggar or loser card. He is about as ambivalent
as cards get, but this is primarily around one axis: whether or not it is foolish or wise to
adopt this character or his superpowers in the present context. Having expectations of
consequences to our actions can work in opposite or unpredictable directions. He has
neither dignity nor a need for it. There is no future, so there is no fear.
There are a couple of characteristics that are sometimes attributed to him that just do
not fit at all. He is not a trickster: he lacks the understanding or wits to stay a step ahead
of himself, much less others. Neither is he the blank slate that was once thought to
characterize each of us before we begin to individuate. He has the basic set of foolish
human characteristics, such as modes of self-deception, a lack of self-restraint, and a
difficulty with deferring his gratifications. He is still a puer or child. At least in his
inexperience, his mind is in no way closed. Further, one of the great lessons life has
learned in its aeons is the value of play, having fun and just fooling around as among our
greatest teachers, at any age, not just before our first seven years are up. Play also may
give us a resilience that seriousness lacks. Like a drunk falling out of a wagon, we bounce
better.
The Fool is celebrated in many ways in human tradition, particularly in religion. Most
famously, perhaps, we have ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ (Mat 18:3). Zen speaks of Beginner’s Mind
or chūxīn. Associated from early on with the element of Air, he is the original airhead.
Breathing in the air is the root of the word inspiration, and breath itself is the second
meaning of many words in many languages that also mean spirit: pneuma, spiritus,
ruach, prana, and to some extent, the Chinese Qì. The Sufis sometimes refer lo living the
holy life as ‘Being breathed by Allah.’ Zhuangzi references the importance of letting
breath take us when he says ‘The breathing of the true man comes from his heels.’
The journey that the Fool is on, as suggested by his bindle and staff, does not yet have
any goal, so this isn’t really a quest, unless it’s simply a quest for an unforeseen vision.
His is a journey of discovery, but not a journey to discover. Regardless of the randomness
of the ‘fool’s journey’ idea in Tarot lore, this card is the start of a real journey. It’s merely
one where the next steps aren’t known. True discovery is almost always unexpected, and
often requires a detachment from any hoped-for outcomes. He remains clueless as to
what it is he is after, and is far more drawn than driven forward in his movements. He is
in the wind, and is at its mercy for direction. He is on walkabout, Zhuangzi’s xiāo yáo
yóu, wandering free and easy. He is letting life be zì rán, just so of itself, or purely
spontaneous. His transcendence will be without any map or intention, except perhaps to
follow his bliss. Ecstasy and enthusiasm may tell him that he is on the right path, but this
could be just before he stumbles over the edge. The objective world, with its suggestions
of consequences, offers no guidance. There is nothing here to call wisdom. There’s only
live and learn. It’s a roomful of monkeys eventually typing Shakespeare, and it's a sea full
of microbes eventually evolving into us. But it’s also life taking nearly four billion years
to learn how to think, and then believing in the Bible. He is not on a quest to be who or
what he truly is, because, like the rest of us, he makes this up as he goes along. Original
nature does not set our goals. It only pushes us out there.
Entering into this card’s state, we set aside what we know, suspending our disbelief and
hopefully belief as well. Nothing is precluded from experience. We are ready to admit all
possibilities or approve of any hypothesis. It’s often what we know that keeps us from
what we might know, so we sometimes need to reboot or reshuffle the deck. This also
happens when we use elucidogens. Perspective is refreshed or renewed. Our trust in the
unknown may be unwarranted going in, but the openness can free us from preconceptions
and cognitive biases that keep us from what we are better off knowing. And much of the
time we may need to risk the unknown in order to grow. We gain access to what’s
missing, and our access is often unfettered, like the historical fool’s access to the inner
court and circle of the king. He has the power to nonplus, disarm, or deflate the royal
hubris. He can speak truth to power and still keep his head. He comes at life sideways
instead of head on, and as long as he is almost certainly harmless, he’s refreshing and
entertaining.
In a way, the Fool is the happier side of universal injustice. He might enter a state of
grace or inherit vast wealth and territory without doing any of the work prescribed for
such rewards. Sometimes he seems to exist to annoy the religious, sometimes to annoy
the atheists. More often than not, it’s just that the world is a safer place than our fears
would have us believe. The law of gravity is always in force, but most of the time we
don’t have that far to fall. Society cannot praise him for his success, and much of the time
must use the dismissive epithets, like bliss ninny, or mooncalf, to be certain he represents
nothing important to matters of real consequence. But he is an algorithm of sorts. He had
it worse in the earlier days, when zero was new, and still illegal in places ruled by the
church. He is like a big What If? Or maybe WTF?
Aside from injury and death, the downside of being a fool is ignorance and delusion.
This is the fool we don’t want. The laughter here is not the laughter of great wisdom, and
getting the joke that is life in its cosmic-sized context is not always funny. We practice
witlessness, heedlessness, recklessness, and indiscretion. We can’t tell a nugget of real
wisdom from a vacuous platitude. We will sometimes step right over the cliff, and this
doesn’t work like it does in cartoons. We are taught to look both ways because of what
our deaths might do to our families. Unawakened man ultimately suffers. When we don’t
know right from wrong there are still some who would excuse us, claiming we aren’t
responsible, but these folk are showing they have the same problem. We are accountable,
and it really does matter which way we go when we stand at the beginning of our future.
Butterfly wings can do real damage.
Key Words:
abandon, absurdity, amazement, artlessness, beginner’s mind, bewilderment, blind luck,
blithe spirits, boundlessness, breaking open the head, cheerful indifference, childishness,
clarity of conscience comedy, credulity, curiosity, detachment, disinhibition, dreaminess,
drivel, ebullience, eccentricity, entertainment, enthusiasm, expansiveness, exuberance,
faith, fantasy, folly, fooling around, freshness, guilelessness, indifference, inexperience,
inner child, innocence, intuitive reactions, irrationality, lateral thinking, leap of faith,
letting go, levity, lightheartedness, monkeying around, naiveté, naturalness, nonchalance,
non-rational impulse, nonsense, novelty, openness, optimism, passivity, play, positive
nihilism, puer, resilience, random numbers, randomness, silliness, simple-mindedness,
simplicity, spirit, spontaneity, submission, surprise, suspended disbelief, the unexpected,
thoughtlessness, traveling light, trust, unawakened man, unknowns, unsullied optimism,
walkabout, whimsy, wild card, wonder, zero, zì rán.

airhead, apathy, blundering forth, carelessness, credulousness, delirium, denial, disregard,
disconnectedness, false start, fascination, frivolity, gullibility, heedlessness, ignorance,
incompetence, indiscretion, infatuation, insanity, intoxication, irresponsibility, mania,
manic states, meaningless waste, negligence, pitfalls, recklessness, seekers unable to find
anything, simple-mindedness, stupidity, thoughtlessness, twaddle, vacuousness.
Components:
The Fool and the World, as nothing and everything, may be the two purest symbols in the
Trumps. As Zero, this Trump manifests no particulars. It also has no force of its own, but
is moved as if by currents of air or wind. Submissive and passive, it shows us the ways of
sensitive chaos.
Correspondences:
Astrology: The system here offers no astrological counterpart to the Fool. This dismisses
the more traditional assignment to Uranus (which is given here to Judgment, displacing
poor Pluto). The connection to Uranus is often justified in terms of its unpredictability,
eccentricity, or apparent originality in the behavior of both. But this is conflating two
very different kinds of unpredictability. Uranus acts under power and higher purpose. The
radical effect that it is said to have on people’s lives is due to their living so much at cross
purposes to power instead of living in tune: they get knocked sideways when they come
across it. The Fool lacks this kind of force. His unpredictability is rather a function of his
unknowing and lack of self-direction. He is more like a leaf in the wind, and willing to be
blown away.
Qabalah: The Mother Letter Aleph, for the element Air as the middle of a triad, flanked
by Water and Fire. Air as spirit, pneuma, spiritus, ruach, prana and Qì.
Yijing: Hsiao 0, Yin. This association was a challenge. The only diagram in the Yi that
seems to be as little imbued with self-direction as the Fool is the simple Yin, the purely
passive element, wholly at the mercy of any force acting upon it.
The Magician
#1, The Mountebank, The Juggler, Il Bagattel, Le Bateleur, The Magus of Power
Communication, Semiotics, Instrumentality, Perception
Image: A wiry, lithe, bright-eyed young man prepares to demonstrate the Magician’s
craft to unseen witnesses. He stands behind a table, altar, or other platform, the field of
attention, his right hand raised high, bearing a wand pointed straight up, his left hand
stretched to the table, with five finger tips touching the surface. He wears two robes, the
inner one is white with a golden Caduceus on the chest and a serpent belt, the outer is
scarlet and flowing. A hat whose broad brim hints at infinity's lemniscate completes this
deliberately distracting outfit. Red roses and white lilies obscure his feet. Arranged on the
table are a silver cup, a short sword and a circular talisman. Off to the side, out of play,
are his book of spells, a lamp, and a writing quill. To orchestrate miracles, or another
person’s perceptions and experience, is no mean feat. His concentration is showing.
Every twitch will have a purpose. The witnesses here have paid for some ‘real magic,’
assuming that these two words go together.
The Magician, like the Fool, underwent an upgrade of his character with the advent of
the occult Tarot. Earlier versions showed a street hustler or trickster. This is not to say
that the modern version should be trusted. If he is not you, then he might well be a few
steps ahead of you. This character has long been associated with the practices of Hermes,
Mercury, and Thoth, and the higher understanding of magick and the esoteric. Magic, the
entertainment without the k, remains a useful metaphor here. The word comes from the
Indo-European magh, to be able, and was adopted by the Zoroastrian Magi, who might
have been seen demonstrating ‘miracles.’ The card is often associated incorrectly with
power or magical powers, as is the popular understanding of witchcraft. This is merely
the working knowledge or knowhow that allows the magus to direct power, and perhaps
enabling an attitude of empowerment. The power is not his.
It’s important to remember that Mercury was the messenger between the worlds, now
often called planes or dimensions. Here, he translates ideas from the world of thought
into the world of action. Here too is his use for nested analogies, giving mobility between
frames of reference and universes of discourse. Translation means that he understands
both languages: that of the linguistics, semiotics, and correspondences of ideas in the
mental world, and of the techne, technology, art, and craft in the walking-around world.
He connects the two with his knowhow and his practice. Scire, the root of science, is
usually glossed too broadly as ‘to know,’ but it should retain connotations of knowing
how, and of the Indo-european skey, to split or dissect. It’s a kind of knowing that’s
already leaning towards action. The Magus is a scientist in this sense at least, whereof it
is said in Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.” The technology here would include psychology.
Language has always been a big part of the Magician’s repertoire. Words and names
are handles. He knows what he wants, how to spell it out in his spells, and how to bring it
about. He needs the name of the beast or demon in order to tame it. His patron deities, as
if they were, were also the inventors of language. Language is an important component to
both cognition and communication, covering an enormous territory, hence Mercury’s
winged feet and Thoth’s Ibis wings. He delivers messages, and gets the meanings and
experiences across the gulf between theory and practice. Also important to this idea is
having a command of more than one perspective. Multiple points or angles of view allow
him to fine-tune the message or experience to optimum effect. In the analogy of stage
magic, this can involve illusion, impression, persuasion, suggestion, redirection, and
misdirection. It’s important that he have all of the puzzle pieces, including the audience’s
perspective. The magician must discriminate between illusion and truth while other
observers may not, and he must see through his own illusions. This might give him an
advantage in understanding the nature of illusion itself. Enter James Randi, Penn, and
Teller as well-known debunkers.
There is always more than meets the eye here. The Magician works with the limen, the
threshold of subliminal awareness, controlling the subtleties and complex nuances. He
cannot fixate on a single point of view. Control of perspective is control of perception.
Having multiple perspectives may have an interesting effect on ethics, making them
almost necessarily situational, and possibly leaving the actor amoral, at least with respect
to consensual norms. Separate realities may be played against each other. Anti-cognitive
processes like cognitive bias have their uses where the nature of truth may still be up for
grabs. But perhaps the most salient aspect of alternative forms of a truth is that such a
condition permits a choice of preferred conditions. The Magician thus has freedom to
choose his own state of mind, so that when the work comes around to what is called High
Magick, or the Great Transformation, he has learned a thing or two about transforming
himself, or shape-shifting. The real power we have is in changing our own minds.
For the Magician, knowledge isn’t something to be gathered and stored for its own
sake, or just for the comfort of knowing, much less of believing. Even the most purely
cognitive aspects of this card will see the known primarily in terms of its applicability.
Knowledge here is useful or instrumental. The best insights are methods. The practice
here is to gain familiarity, and this in turn is for the sake of repeatability, and therefore
predictability, just like the scientist’s goal. It’s not just a coincidence that this art is also
associated with divination, the extrapolation of projected outcomes from limited data
sets. Knowledge must prove itself, so at some point reality becomes an aid to discernment
or assessment. It isn’t in the Magician’s interest to assert things that cannot be
demonstrated. Knowledge here is also creative. Insight reorganizes perception,
knowledge reconfigures the system. Understanding needs to learn the ways of natural
laws, encoding them in recognizable, communicable, and practical forms. Knowing how
things work underscores prediction, and good prediction is needed to implement our
intentions.
There is also something to be said about the fun to be had in using one’s wits to their
fullest potential, the hedonics of thinking at a lickety-split tempo, even perhaps thinking
circles around others when they have come and paid to be fooled. Wittiness, cleverness,
or nimbleness of phrasing can also be a trap of course. But there is much to be enjoyed in
a mind that is working well. There is also an evolutionary advantage in the ingenuity,
adaptability, and resourcefulness that are characteristic of this card, and this may have led
to some of the neuro-chemical reward systems in the inherited brain. Even the Buddha
identified such states as worthy forms of pleasure, naming them cittalahuta, cittamuduta,
cittammannata, the agility, pliancy and efficiency of consciousness.
Key Words:
abstracting, access to options, acumen, adaptability, adroitness, agency, agility, analogies,
articulation, assessment, augury, awareness, calculation, channel, cleverness, cognition,
cognitive command, communication, concentration, conducting experience, connection,
correspondence, craft, craftiness, creative problem solving, delivery, dexterity, diction,
directing, discernment, divination, elucidation, enacting, expedients, experimentation,
finesse, flexibility, focus on task, go-betweens, illusion, implementation, improvisation,
ingenuity, intermediary, instrumentality, intelligence, interchangeability, knowhow,
language, manipulation of elements, mathesis, means, medium, mental advantage, mental
discipline, mental training, mentalism, message, messenger, metaphor, moving between
worlds, negotiation, nimbleness, nuance, operation, perception, perspective, persuasion,
practice, precision, prediction, problem solving, protocol, ready wit, reconfiguration,
repertoire, resourcefulness, savvy, science, semantics, semiotics, signs, skill, spellcraft,

spelling, subtlety, subliminal operation, suppleness, symbols, tact, trade secrets, training,
translation, transmission, techne, tool use, trickiness, versatility, wit, wizardry, wording.

charlatans, cockiness, confidence games, cunning, deception, deceit, decoys, distraction,
evasiveness, exploitation of another’s blind side, failure of imagination, fallacy, fallacious
reasoning, false expertise, hidden methods, illusion, inattention, indecision, intrigue,
misapplied skill, manipulation, misdirection, narrow-mindedness, pranks, propaganda,
self-deception, sleight-of-hand, sophistry, tricksters, unanchored skill, vulgar trickery.
Components:
The Magician is a fairly straightforward symbol. Portmanteaus may be made with his
associations to Mercury, Hod, and now Xun, and second-tier astrological associations to
Gemini and Virgo, and the 3rd and 6th Houses. All suggest investigation, penetration of
the world with the mental faculties.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mercury; Kokab. Mentation, the structure of perception and communication,
the nervous system, information and networking, logistics, discernment, assessment,
association, making connections. Nimbleness, quickness, dexterity, cleverness, craft,
precision, mental agility, the trickster and illusion, analysis, creative problem solving.
Cognitive tools, repertoire, skill, familiarity, repeatability.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Beth. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Beth with various
other Planets, with little agreement among them (See Kaplan’s SY on that matter).
Yijing: Bagua 3, Xun, Wood/Wind, The Gentle, Penetrating, Xun is the symbol for the
versatility and plasticity of the mind, the ability to approach a situation from all available
angles in order to find and occupy a niche, to fit into or conform to the scheme of things.
Its second symbol is wood, specifically green wood of roots and branches, which
explores its environment, finding the paths of least resistance, in order to extend its reach
and assimilate the little, specific pieces of that environment into itself. Wood is also
thought of as a little boat, which gets about by penetrating water and working with the
currents. A sensitivity to place and detail, and an ability to grow both by learning and
dissemination of information is implied by both of these symbols.
The High Priestess

#2, La Papessa, Juno, Isis Veiled, The Priestess of the Silver Star
Mystery, Unknowing, Sacredness, Subliminal States
Image: The RWS deck shows a priestess dresses in blue, seated between two columns,
Jachin and Boaz, wearing a lunar diadem on her head and holding a scroll of the labeled
Torah on her lap. Alternately, a woman sits cross-legged on a dais between the two
columns of a Torii. She guards a temple gate. A strung recurve bow with a nocked arrow
lie within easy reach. Her gaze is alert, but composed and serene. Only her eyes are seen
clearly. She wears a translucent robe and veil, the cool white of starlight, or great heat at
great distance. And she wears a silver headband with a crescent moon, and a silver key
over her heart. There is a very disturbing suggestion that her beauty is better than human.
So too with her aim. On her lap is a white scroll, but the scroll is blank (and definitely not
the Torah), perhaps kept handy for poets and painters. Her gifts are not verbal. She is
virginal, or at the very least, she is way out of your league. And you are not going to get
any real access to that book of hers. What she teaches us is to ask more interesting
questions, fine tuning a better sense of wonder.
Names for the High Priestess go on and on: Indwelling Glory, Gate of the Sanctuary,
Queen of the Borrowed Light, Psyche, Eros’ bride, Spiritual Bride of the Just Man, and
Diana the Huntress. She is the woman withheld, unrevealed, and unpenetrated. Her book
or scroll may also be called the Book of Science, Torah, or the Akashic Record, all those
things men dream of knowing while already pretending to know. Many incorrect things
are said about her. Secret, occult, or esoteric knowledge are common errors. Most books
assert that some secret knowledge is to be found here. We don’t require knowledge for
clarity. She isn’t knowledge any more than the Magician is power: she’s what we do not
know. Fertility is often mentioned, but this whole idea is a really bad fit with virgo
intacta. She is only fertile in theory. An important distinction may now be drawn between
secrets and mysteries that was not there in the beginning, when mystes meant an initiate
sworn to secrecy and silence. Now we can say that a mystery will open itself to someone
who is both ready and worthy. Secrets are held by the culture or the cult, and many have
heard them or had them revealed. The Hierophant deals in those. The Priestess holds
deeper mysteries than this, many still beyond any human comprehension. If you come
away from her with answers, you’re doing it wrong. She also babysits for the mother of
the nine Muses, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, a fundamental function of the
subconscious, where much of our potential knowledge is indeed occult or occluded. But
down in those depths, it isn’t gnosis or knowledge at all. There is no inner teacher deep
down in there. There is, however, a learner deep within. Our emergent awareness has no
hindsight for its origins.
The Priestess is a channel of sorts, not of knowledge, but of the wisdom of unknowing,
where knowledge should not even try to go. She is the stimulation or draw of mystery, the
stimulus to discovery, the need to listen, the need to ask better questions. She inspired
Einstein’s credo about mystery and awe. Wonder heightens our perceptions, not knowing
wakes us up. There are messages and lessons for us here, but they are not answers. We
might, for example, need to settle for learning to be true instead of learning the truth. The
larger reality here is not for wrapping heads around: it’s just too big for that. With all the
stuff beneath the surface, and all the stuff beyond our horizons, and all the unknowable
pasts and futures, it’s just sad that we can be so pretentious to think that we can have all
the answers. But it’s great that we can go looking into the darkness and listening into the
silence, despite the lack of reflections and echoes. There are mysterious wisdoms to be
had and touched that never will be packaged, inscrutable things that we nevertheless can
still play with, and states so altered that we have to alter ourselves just to go there. It’s
gift enough that we are drawn to these. Mystery doesn't need solving: it just needs to be
left to work its magic, take us down deeper, and open us up. Mystery teaches with
questions. If you’re getting answers out of some version of Torah, you’re doing it wrong.
Then what comfort is there here? Is there a home for us? What wisdom is there in such
an insecurity in our knowledge? We certainly don’t belong in such a sanctuary as long as
we are full of ourselves, still smug and pretentious in what we think we know. Nobody
who believes the Priestess holds knowledge for us should be allowed past the gate. We
must even forget the hope that the Priestess knows what we don’t. She’s not a fount of
wisdom but its guardian. This is also no place for the dilettante, the dabbler, or the hasty.
This isn’t welcome here. We need to earn some value or worth and raise our standards out
of respect. There is no unmerited knowing. This is a sacred space. The wisdom here is
not transferable. We make ourselves ready and worthy. We will not be given any
undeserved secrets. She is not there to offer you wisdom, she will not read to you when
you finally reach her, not even from the subtext. Some think it needful to bring some
religion along, but this is the same error as trying to enter with answers. Yes, the place of
unknowing is sacred, but that does not make this the house of some god. Nature is
wonder and divine enough. It’s worthy of reverence, but that does not mean that some
deity stands behind it. It’s worthy of gratitude, but this does not require someone to be
grateful to. All of these props only signify lack of humility, despite what they pretend to
be. Even the wisest of us must drop the pride we have in our present degree of wisdom.
Making ourselves at home here is as simple and difficult as running into the ocean or
jumping into the lake. It’s best to get naked first, and sincere, and then we simply
commit. The cold isn’t so ethereal after all, but we still must abandon our reason to make
the leap. The otherworldliness was only the view from the previous world. Now it’s just a
richer and deeper world, and a lot less crowded with pilgrims and seekers.
Key Words:
abyss, altered states, apophatic mysticism, attunement, awakening, awe, channels, cloud
of unknowing, commitment, conditional wisdom, consecration, cryptomnesia, depth,
desire for the unknown, dignity, divining, dowsing, dreaming, elusiveness, enigmas,
gateway, gnosis, hazarding, humility, immersion, implication, incomplete information,
inscrutables, intuition, inviolability, listening and hearing, longing, lucid dreaming, merit,
muse, mysteries, native heuristics, neti neti, oracles, pending new revelations, personal
subconscious, psyche, purification, questioning, reflection, respect, reverence,
sacredness, sacrifice, sanctity, sanctuary, sincerity, sophia, sounding depths, stimulus to
discovery, stirrings, subconscious, subliminal exploration, subliminal states, submission,
subtext, subtleties, thirst for wisdom, thresholds, tidal pull, uncertainty, unfathomable
mystery, unknowing, unknowns, unlearning, unpretentiousness, veils, venerableness,
veneration, visions, wonder, worth, worthiness.

bedazzlement, deceit, delusion, distraction, ghafla, glamor, hidden agendas, inattention,
insincerity, intellectual conceit, misinterpretation, misoneism, muddling the waters,
mystification, mystique, obfuscation, passionate despair, premature claims to answers,
pretensions, seeking to know too quickly, self-deception, self-denial, shallow knowledge,
superficiality, vivisection of mystery.
Components:
The High Priestess is a fairly straightforward symbol. Portmanteaus may be made with
her associations to Luna, Yesod, and now Kan, and second-tier astrological associations
to Cancer and the 4th House. All suggest a world of feeling rather than thought, of affect
rather than cognition, and that fulfillment is a function of our ability to open up, our
ability to be fully present, and our worthiness to receive. She is the purest conception of
the moon (Crowley), the darker side of which is addressed by the Trump of the Moon.
Like the moon, continuous change is the rule, a fluctuation in states.
Correspondences
Astrology: Luna; Lebanah. Readiness, responsiveness, sensitivity to impression, nurture,
the cumulative past, including the ancestors, inherited and accumulated functions and
behavioral forms, the embodiment of feelings as soul, apperceptive mass and perceptual
inertia. Nourishment, assimilation, growth, absorption. The ability to receive. Memory,
imagination, dream as basis.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Gimel. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Gimel with various
other Planets, but with little agreement. Crowley has a plausible association with Gimel, a
camel, as a means to cross the abyss.
Yijing: Bagua 2, Kan, Water, Exposure, the Moon. Kan is water in action, cutting a river
canyon or filling a pit, symbolizes a fluid response to context, the deliberate changing of
self and shape to meet needs and necessities. From above, the human perspective, there
arise feelings in the pit of the stomach, and a pounding of the heart, when one wishes to
cross this tricky ground, the challenge ahead. The point is, of course, that the teacher is at
work below, patient yet opportunistic. The solution to the problem ahead is not a single
leap in a single direction, but a series of risks, decisions, and choices. These will call
upon memory, second-hand if not first, and concentration, meaning to locate oneself
around something central, such as one’s courage, heart, or balance.
The Empress
#3, L'Imperatrice, Isis Unveiled, Isis-Urania, The Daughter of the Mighty Ones
Flourishing Life, Procreation, Reward Systems, Pleasure
Image: A dignified, warm, approachable woman sits in a comfortable chair in what

seems to be a paradise garden. She is full-figured, approaching the middle of childbearing
years, and of a current pregnancy. Her robe sports all the colors of optimism, but the
dominant color of the card is a deep green. She holds a sheaf of wheat. She wears a string
of pearls, and a crown of 12 golden stars over long, wavy hair. Her royal feet are bare. By
her side sits a medicine shield, her only protection. A hawk perches on an arm of her
chair, stretching its wings. A stream cascades over a background falls and winds through
the garden past her feet. Fruit trees and herbs grow in the background, wheat and corn in
the foreground. She is immensely satisfied, grateful to be a well-used woman. These are
not difficult times.
The Empress is Good Nature, that part of nature not trying to kill and eat us, but she’s
also the one being kind to the predator who might. She’s life in its procreative, positive
mode, expanding and experimenting. This is life out in the open, in broad daylight, not a
card of undercurrents and hidden meanings. Seeking secrets and omens seeks too deeply.
She is the accessible goddess, the one we touch whenever we touch flesh. This is sensible
nature, beauty even in the most ordinary, importance even in the small. We enjoy our
earthly paradise here, cherishing the world, not flying our spirits high above it like kites,
but living down deep in the juices of life. And that the glory of the world is transient is
reason to make the most of it while it lasts, not to dismiss it to look for something eternal
instead. She is a medicine woman as well, healthy and healing, and knowing her herbs.
She is also Gaia, mother of the material, moist, warm, and worldly, and Isis unveiled, not
even a little bit shy. She is the woman clothed with the sun, not from the book, but as
feminine sexuality dignified. She is Ceres, goddess of grain, and a life lived close to rich
soil. She’s a goddess of love and ripeness for love. As the Dineh chant, ‘With beauty all
around me, I walk.’
We reunite with nature and with our own half-forgotten natures here. We reconnect and
interconnect with all our relations that our culture has hidden or taken away. We struggle
against this culture to participate in the flesh again. Warren McCulloch wrote, “But we, to
little State and transient God, gave all our souls and let our loved ones bleed. Thus have
we bought again the vanquished grace of nature’s moral law. Again we come out of our
lesser loyalties, in tears, to build love’s well-earned city in the rich sod.” Our nostalgia
and our longing for real community can be found here in this Trump. Our ecosphere, our
biosphere and its biodiversity, the authority of nature and natural ways, the emergence,
renewal, and decay of life, are what pass here for the divine, an emergent divinity,
creating with materials at hand, creating with living accomplices, not the divine come
down from on high with mysterious plans and purposes. Mary Oliver wrote, “You do not
have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the
desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
This is evolution before selection, but make no mistake, selection will happen. Part,
and eventually all, of this explosion of life and gifting of birth will be mulch and food for
other parts. Nature’s basic disaster plan requires too much and too many. To encourage
the breeding we have elegance, beauty, exuberance, and orgasms. Mother Nature nurtures
exceptions and the exceptional, but she also brings forth the miscreant and the good-for-
nothing parasites. Superabundance stocks the food chain and the unfit and misfits become
food of the fit. Overgrowth needs pruning. Prosperity doesn’t happen without regard to its
consequences, but happens because there will be. We at least take some comfort here:
everyone alive has descended from a very long line of survivors. While nature is not a
protective force or a guardian, we have it in our nature to keep going, and today at least it
is home. In the end, the most help is for those who help themselves, but loosely, with
laws like averages. Dark nature, all red in tooth and claw, may or may not be nearby, may
or may not forgive our little experiments. But that’s what life is.
The Empress card means affection and contact, nurturing and compassion, comfort and
reassurance. She is that great bag of tricks that life has learned to play on us with juices
like oxytocin and dopamine and limbic kinds of love that make use of our basic emotions.
In fact, she is all of the juicy tricks that life has learned, to help us satisfy our needs and
wants, the inborn reward systems, the pleasures we have when we’re on our way, and the
jubilant rejoicings we have on arrival. And, of course, to get us there, we also have our
hungers and thirsts, our passions and desires, our preferences and tastes, our values and
standards, the powers that draw and attract us. She is elan vital and its joie de vivre. She
is the strategy by which we bargain and negotiate our way to success, but she is more
persuasive than rational, more seductive than straightforward. The driving force is self-
interest, that wants to learn the way from deluded to enlightened forms. She is more fun
and playful than serious and calculating, even when she takes her calculation seriously.
She is pathesis, knowledge gained through feeling, knowledge that only takes form when
stratagems succeed.
Key Words:
abundance, accessibility, accommodation, acquisitiveness, affection, affirmation, allure,
appreciation of beauty, approval, attraction, beauty, bloom, care giving, caring, Ceres or
Demeter, charm, comfort, community, compassion, connections, consensual pleasure,
consummation, contact, contentment, deep ecology, delight, desire, ecosystems, elan
vital, embodied cognition, embrace, emotional sustenance, enchantment, encouragement,
enlightened self-interest, enlivening, Epicurean hedonism, eros, exchange, externalized
nature, exuberance, fecundity, fertility, fleshiness, fleshy parts, flirtation, flourishing,
fruitfulness, gardening as an analogy, generative forces, gratification, gratitude, gratuity,
growth, hunger, idleness, incentive, indulgence, interconnection, interdependence, joie de
vivre, juiciness, limbic loving, living networks, maternal drives, medicine, mutuality,
nourishment, nurturing, opening up, openness, overgrowth, oxytocin, passion, pathesis,
persuasion, physis, pleasure, procreation, proliferation, reassurance, reciprocity, rejoicing,
repose, richness, ripeness, sensuality, sensuousness, taste, thriving, tolerance, transaction,
unfolding, vivification, warmth.

barrenness from restriction, codependency, complacency, crass materialism, decadence,
dissipation, dullness, excess, idleness, indifference, infidelity, over-consumption, over-
dependence, overly unconditional, overprotection, pruning overgrowth, self-indulgence,
parasitism, promiscuity, seduction, smothering influences, squandering, superficiality,
tantrum, vacillation, vanity, wantonness, waste.
Components:
The Empress is a fairly straightforward symbol. Portmanteaus may be made with her
associations to Venus, Netzach, and now Dui, and second-tier astrological associations to
Taurus and Libra, and the 4th and 7th Houses. All suggest an enhanced appreciation of
the world spread out before us and desires to be satisfied according to our tastes.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Venus; Kokabet or Nogah. Aesthetics, the creativity of perception, attraction,
the beholder's eye, the endocrine system, chemical communication, desire, satisfaction,
personal hydraulics, hedonics, hunger, appetite. Valuation, motivated love. Valences, the
readiness to combine, chosen responsiveness, acquisitiveness, interrelation, cohesion.
Good attitude as a personal conquest, the ability to satisfy desire.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Daleth. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Daleth with various
other Planets, with little agreement. Some meanings may be taken from the birth canal as
the doorway into existence, the comings and goings through the gate of manifestation.
Yijing: Bagua 6, Dui, Wetland or Pool, is a symbol of the pooling or collection of selves
which constitutes a person, with particular reference to how this feels, on and beneath the
surface. This feeling is a community, of wants and needs, desires and hungers, tastes and
preferences, each jostling, striving and bargaining, in a kind of marketplace, for purposes
of satisfaction. The Chinese had no problem with hedonism, as the Greeks defined it, so
long as this pursuit of happiness was in accord with the due mean and good balance. This
accord was indicated by the persistence of joy and serenity. Discord and frustration might
be called symptoms of bad taste, poor choices, and ingratitude. A good life is rewarding:
rewards should be enjoyed.
The Emperor
#4, L'Imperatore, L'Empereur, Jupiter,
Son of the Morning, Chief among the Mighty

Sovereignty, Immediacy, Decisiveness, Authority
Image: A mature, bearded man sits half-comfortably on a cubic stone, his right foot
resting on his left knee, figuring a four. Between his foot and his left hand he absently
spins a small globe. In his right hand he holds a long scepter, capped with a crux ansata
or ankh. He’s wearing light armor, a breastplate with the sign of the ram, a battle helmet
that doubles as a crown, and a scarlet cape. His garb is not new, nor is it ceremonial. He
is intently busy supervising a great deal of activity occurring below his position of
vantage. The background terrain is relatively rough and barren. One gets the idea that
below him this is being transformed dramatically, that this was his idea, and that little
time elapsed between the idea and its large-scale implementation. Perhaps his idea of
doing well, or doing good, is doing much, and without needless delay. He values his time.
His regalia varies between decks. Sometimes his scepter is capped with a globus
cruciger, or orb and cross, of Holy Roman Empire infamy, and sometimes this is also the
form of the globe in his left hand. Other decks have him holding a sword, to add some
extra confusion. He has guards to do his swordplay for him.
The Emperor is the like-it-or-not fact of concentrated secular power, and the
inclination of human alphas, particularly males, to seek such positions. Not surprisingly,
this is the feminist’s least favorite card, with the Hierophant close behind. This social role
has been with us for ages, even defining some ages. It continues to evolve, and now it co-
evolves with democratic ideas and corporate influence. The throne itself might still be
ascended by divine right of birth, conquest, arrogation, or inherited wealth, and its
occupant may range from despotic tyrant to powerless figurehead. If imperious enough,
he can start a war, at the cost of far too many lives, just for something that he thinks is a
bright idea. It is one of humanity’s great and fatal weaknesses that it has not learned a
reliable way to govern its own collective behavior. Democracy can only be thought
promising by failing to account for the intelligence and insecurities of the average voting
citizen. Otherwise, it will simply be mob rule in slow motion and peer pressure writ large.
Importantly, for our purposes here, popular committees cannot make executive decisions
with the speed and clarity that energetic and confusing times call for. This sort of ship
frequently requires a captain with at least some protection from mutiny.
The key to success here may be twofold: we find a way for merit to rise to power more
easily than corruption, and we find a way, as a matter of course, to depose a rising tyrant
before he gains too much power and armor. Privilege, prerogative, and entitlement need
to be forfeited for specified breaches, even when one is safe behind the legal walls that
those in power can build. But once again, for our purposes here, this leader has a use, and
a service to perform, and needs some benefit of the doubt. He is the father of his people
and the only one who can make the hard choices at the speed at which they need to be
made. Knowing that he may be more inclined to strength than wisdom, we still give him
one more chance to show his character. We can only hope he finds the need to delegate to
helpers more skilled than himself at the various aspects of ruling, including wisdom. We
can hope that he is strong enough to meet and negotiate with rivals and peers, and to
respect his subjects and underlings. We can hope for some feminine counsel, or someone
else to openly question his judgment, someone not bound to agree. We can also hope for
increasing numbers of women on the throne.
The Emperor is a symbol, of course, for sovereignty and self-mastery, for dignity and
autonomy, for service to higher purposes, for obedience to our own self-made laws, for
holding faithful to the prime directives of beings, for taking charge when everyone else is
confused, for finding courage where needed, and stepping or ‘manning’ up when this is
called for. Sovereignty is a divine right, even without a divinity, and even if all that you
rule is yourself or the smallest of empires. This doesn’t always need to be done alone, but
it needs to be done from the center, where the creating gets done and responsibility gets
taken. Authority is for authors. Leadership at its most basic level is service, even when
acting alone and leading our selves. Having a commanding presence is sometimes the
only commanding that needs to be done, and being a compelling example, the only
compelling. Nietzsche asked, “Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I
hear of, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.... Many a one hath cast away his final
worth when he cast away his servitude.... Free from what? Free for what?”
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 55, Abundance. Perhaps the best Western equivalent is
‘be careful what you wish for.’ This is the peak experience, as busy and confusing as life
gets, overwhelming to ordinary folk, demanding the clarity and decisiveness of quick and
competent judgment. The diem has to be carped. Tunnel vision is a recurring theme in the
text, and the end of these tunnels may be where the only light is. Options are limited and
actions are taken with limited recon and intel. There isn’t the time to carefully examine
alternative points of view. There is only objectivity and objectivism, no time for
subtleties and ramifications. The thing held in focus may be all that is not a distraction.
Peripheral vision is limited, the big picture is absent, time is short, and presence of mind
is a must. If advice can be taken at all, it had best be on the run and right to the point.
Immediacy requires that responsibility begins and ends here. This too may be a metaphor,
for life down deep in the clutter of selves that we are, and all of the business and mischief
that these can get up to. One of us needs to take charge and find a way to some daylight.
Key Words:
achievement, ambition, assertion, assertiveness, assumption of right, attention, audacity,
authority, autonomy, birthright, challenge, clout, cogency, command, competence,
concentration, conquest, constraint, control, conviction, creating order, decisiveness,
decree, determination, dignity, direction, directness, dispatch, dominance, dominion,
edict, efficacy, efficiency, emphasis, enforcement, entitlement, example, excellence,
execution, executive ability, executive decision, exemplar, fearlessness, fiat, firmness,
focus, goals, governance, government, immediacy, initiative, intentions manifested, job
one, jurisdiction, laying down the law, leadership, legislation, limited options and paths,
management, mandate, mastery, meritocracy, objectives, opportunity for advance, order,
overview, patriarchy, patronage, pioneering, polarization, preeminence, prerogative,
presence of mind, pressing affairs, pressure, prioritization, priority, privilege, proficiency,
purpose, purposefulness, reconnaissance, resolve, role model, rule, self-determination,
self-education, self-mastery, self-respect, self-rule, shining path, sovereignty, stress,
structure, summary justice, superiority, supremacy, tactical strike, taking charge, tests of
ability, urgency, virility, willpower, word of a sovereign as law.

abuse of authority, abuse of power, armor, arrogance, authoritarianism, autocracy, blind
ambition, bullying, butt-headedness, coercion, conceit, cruelty, despotism, dictator, ego,
high-handedness, hubris, impatience, indecision, inflated ego, inflexibility, insensitivity,
jealousy, lost focus, rage, rashness, rigidity, impetuousness. isolation, micromanagement,
peripheral distraction, polarization, presumption, rashness, severity, stress, stubbornness,
temper, thick skin, tunnel vision, tyranny, volitional paralysis.
Components:
The Emperor is assigned to the first of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
He, in its turn assigned to Aries and the 1st House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Cardinal/Angular and Fire in Astrology, as well as
Li (Cardinal) below Zhen (Fire) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Aries, Nissan; Cardinal/Angular Fire, First House; Patron: Mars. The Spring
thunder, the seed germinating, quickening. The primal spark, burning to exist, prime
directive of beings, feedforward movement. The spirit of enterprise, initiative, vim and
vigor, drive, impetus, adventure, courage, spiritedness, willfulness. The coherence and
persistence of identity, self-reliance. Boldness and urgency. Personal sovereignty as a
birthright, self-assertion, self-assumption, and self-definition.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter He, the first of the twelve and the beginning of the Zodiac
attributions, traditionally assigned to Aries. The Window symbolism can suggests that the
self of Aries and the First House is a unique point of view or outlook on the world, a
locus of opportunity, and an alternate means of egress.
Yijing: Gua 55, Feng, Abundance. Bagua Li (Cardinal, Angular) below, Zhen (Fire)
above. “Thunder and lightning, coming as one. Abundance. The young noble executes
justice and carries out judgment.” A time of much busyness, hustle, confusion, crowding,
multiple choices, complexity. “Fulfillment. The sovereign approaches this. Do not be
anxious. It suits the sun to be at midday.” A culmination or zenith. Many demands on the
attention, a challenge even to the sovereign. Tunnel vision of daytime stars, or polarized
light. Directions may be limited to one, exigency and execution.
The Hierophant
#5, The Pope, Il Papa, Le Pape, The High Priest,
The Magus of the Eternal, Triumphant and Eternal Intelligence
Education, Accreditation, Mentoring, Culture as Library
Image: A mature man, with a graying beard, wearing a long, flowing brown robe and
sandals, sits on a park bench between a deciduous tree and an evergreen. This is a temple,
school, or academy, and he is fielding questions from two thoroughly unalike students
seated on the ground before him. Between them, on the ground, lay two keys. He is
showing them a many forked branch, maybe as an analogy, to which he points with the
first two fingers of his right hand. This is an ambiguous gesture: it could be a benediction,
an “ah, but” or a “slow down.” He appears to be trying to find right words, and wears an
amused expression. This question might send him to the library. He still has a recognized
institute behind him. The original Pope here became a Hierophant, interpreter of doctrine,
a gatekeeper to arcane knowledge, and a mentor. The original Hierophant was the chief
priest at the Eleusinian Mysteries. His successors interpret sacred mysteries and arcane
principles. We have no more use for a Pope.
We have de Geblin to thank for the name ιεροφαντης, the one who shows us what is
holy, according to our need and readiness. Before this was the Pope, our father confessor,
whose truth was somewhat more standardized. And yet, over the centuries, it appears that
what this teacher has to offer has grown increasingly exoteric and even commercial. We
have many challenges here, not the least of which is that human beings are not equal in
their ‘spiritual’ wisdom or understanding, and more controversially, are not equal even in
long-term potential. Muhammad is credited with saying, “Speak to each in accordance
with his degree of understanding.” People must progress at their own pace, young or old,
dim or bright. And yet at the same time, we live in societies where we require at least
some consensus on the core curriculum and the universe of discourse, if not on its precise
content. Our minds require structured learning and enough of the common culture to live
together. Second-hand wisdom needs to be conserved between generations, so teaching
(pedagogy) and well-paced education are necessary. This can be done well by good
mentors, or badly by pedants and proselytizers. The Hierophant can refer to either. The
more gifted among us are normally left to fend for ourselves as autodidacts and eclectics.
We will crack open that box of pretty rocks and gems that everyone gets and is told to
treasure and worship, toss out the fool’s gold and paste, and the box, pocket the good
stuff and move on with lighter loads. At least these days we are put to death less often for
our heresies. We do philo sophia. We love that wisdom. In the Buddha’s words, “You
should train thus: we shall be wise men, we shall be inquirers.”
Any shared spiritual ‘truth’ will be parochial to some degree. There will be middlemen
to keep the gates and keys, and they may or may not any have real contact with the truths
locked up inside. They are occupants of a place, not the essence of the place. There will
be exaggerations for impact, and lies told for comfort, and profit in even the most sacred
of scrolls. There will be many things lost in translation and transmission, including the
first person and due credit to fallible human authors. Pay no attention to the man behind
the curtain. There will be accounts of what happens to those who fall short with the
teachings, and to those who lack the good sense to join in, and many depictions of the
bliss that comes with belonging. It seldom really matters if the ritual or ceremony has no
more inner content. Most people want others to do their thinking for them, as long as they
don’t have to know this. One must be blessed by someone duly licensed to bless.
Believers get stuck in the rhetoric, parroting without understanding, languishing in the
lingo, with the wisdom reduced to vacuous platiturds pretending to be knowledge. The
pros and cons take their marks. Someone is minding the valve that regulates the flow of
wisdom, but given what we know of the human capacity for real wisdom, this is all
probably just as well. We still need the consensus just to get along, even when belief does
not seem to be helping, even when we align with beliefs that are not endemic to our
nature. The flock will demand some sense of order, and the outliers will have something
else. Most will still crave a fixed sense of identity, belief and belonging. It really isn’t so
surprising that this sort of pedagogy produces more permanent disciples than graduates,
innovators, and teachers. But for the latter, getting up to speed with the cultural literacy,
with the aid of a teacher or mentor, is still a necessary step for all but the fiercest of
autodidacts. Still, getting that badge, certificate, or accreditation can be a big investment
of wasted time.
Yet there is one kind of person who makes sense of this whole apparatus, and redeems
all the time and expense. This is the young noble one, hungry in mind and spirit, still full
of potential and questions. The Hierophant exists for him or her, if not in patronizing
ways, then at least in avuncular ways, in loco parentis, as mentor, with special counsel to
offer and an abiding concern for the generations to come. Such students and seekers are
excellent long-term investments. This will only take the young one so far, to a certain
degree or grade, to a point of graduation or some accreditation. They may not need to pay
dues to the guild in the end, but it doesn’t hurt to be licensed to bless. We have a great
wealth of memes in our cultural libraries, of nuggets and gems of wisdom, both in and
out of original contexts. Even some religions can lack a little in foolishness.
Most of the cosmic wheels have already been invented as well, and others have offered
instructions in lighting the cosmic fires. We can make good use of our earlier years in this
part of the world, finding giant shoulders to stand on. It rarely hurts to ask for some help
or guidance, By-the-book education need not be a problem when we know that it was
fallible people who first wrote the books. We learn a language in our studies that others
can speak as well, and this lets us share what we can, and help where we are able. This is
where rebellion and iconoclasm are not productive. The good student doesn’t need to
become a believer. He can simply place himself in a place of learning, and avoid the need
to reinvent fire-making and the wheel. He can admit that others are better educated and
have things to offer. Many will resist this and insist on the democratization of knowledge,
where all perspectives are equally valid. This is flunking the grade and faking diplomas
with crayons.
The patience required to associate and synch up with resonant Taurus, from Astrology,
and Wood, from Yixue, means the student becomes part of a very long process of growth,
a co-author and a co-conspirator in an ever-evolving culture. Nietzsche offered, “One
repays a teacher badly who remains only a pupil.” But first we must have teachers to help
us to grow ourselves, past all the pat and premature answers. As David Haselkorn noted,
“Teaching is the essential profession, the one that makes all other professions possible.”
Bless the teacher or mentor who primes us first with hunger and teaches us first to take
charge of our learning, both in the how and the why of it. Then the prescribed
progressions are just the food, not the diet. Then education begins as it should, with a
subject learning, not with subjects taught. We get self-directed behavior, instead of
generalized prescriptions and proscriptions. There will be frustrations. The academy will
permit only one creative idea per paper, and this must be defended, and often approved
by others for whom the idea is new. Ideas must be supported by other people’s ideas. One
is not supposed to think for oneself, only as a collective. But we try to keep our eyes on
the real prize.
Key Words:
academy, accepted practices and processes, accreditation, adopted values, advisors,
apportionment, arcana, by-the-book education, ceremony, channel of transmission, code
of practice, codification, cognitive templates, common ground, comparative doctrine,
conformation, conformity, consensual realities, convention, counseling, cultural literacy
and memory, curriculum, dhamma-vinaya, discipline, doctrine, edification, education,
exotericism, explanation, formal learning, formalities, formats, formulae, formulaic

learning, grades, gradual enlightenment, graduation, guidance, guilds, help from one’s
superiors, indoctrination, initiation, institution, instruction, legacies, licensed knowledge,
lore, mental discipline, mentoring, methodology, neoteny, orders, orthodoxy, paced
revelation, parochialism, parsed knowledge, paths, patience, procedure, professional
guidance, protocol, ritual, routine, sanctification, sanction, secrets withheld, secure
knowledge, solid growth, standardization, students, subject matter, teaching process,
tradition, training, translation, transmission, tribal elders, tutoring, vested authority,
wisdom vehicles, zones of proximal develoment.

abdicating self-rule, adulterated teachings, anachronism, arguments from antiquity and
authority, cliff notes, collective delusion, condensed books, condescension, conformity,
conspiracy theories, conversion vs transformation, cultural error and delusion, dogma,
empty ritual, groupthink, gullibility, intolerance, koolaid communion, loads of bull,
middlemen claiming primary access, misinformation, mystification, mystique, outdated
thought, overgeneralization, pedantry, procrustean beds, repressive doctrine, rule by
convention, shallowness, spiritual authority, stereotype, suppressed diversity.
Components:
The Hierophant is assigned to the second of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, Vau, in its turn assigned to Taurus and the 2nd House. By way of this, we can
make a portmanteau study of the components Fixed/Succedent and Earth in Astrology. In
the Yijing, Fixed Earth is one of the Four Xiang, Shao Yin, which might be represented,
only with some stretch, by two of the Wu Xing, Wood and Earth.
Correspondences
Astrology: Taurus, Iyar; Fixed/Succedent Earth, Second House; Patron: Venus Hesperus.
Wealth and valuation, roots and anchoring, weight, substantiation, stabilization. Means
and tools, productive uses of time, sustenance, investment, acquired resources. Deriving
the measure of worth. Budgeting and management. Invested work calling for good choice
of goals and values, self-appraisal, self-assessment. Wherewithal, attachments, securing
the self, foundations, groundedness.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Vau, the second of the twelve Zodiac attributions, attributed
to Taurus. Reaching for some meaning here, the nail is an implement to affix things, nail
things down, and to hang things on.
Yijing: Xiang 1, Young or Shao Yang, Wood and Earth. The Four Xiang or Emblems
have been assigned in this system to the four Kerubic or most elemental signs of the
Zodiac, the Fixed Signs of each element. Xiang 1, Young Yang, is problematic as Wood
and Earth. This is an uncomfortable forced fit of the Chinese Scale of 5 or Wu Xing, to
the Scale of 4 Greek Elements. Wood and Earth are both relatively passive processes of
consolidation and substantiation. But wood grows actively and has its own kind of
intelligence. We have the idea here of gradual pressure for penetration, as the root splits
the rock, a paced learning that eventually adapts itself. We also have growth by accretion
and integration.
The Lovers
#6, L'Amoureux, L'amore, Gli Amanti, The Lover (singular), The Two Paths,
The Children of the Voice; the Oracles of the Mighty Gods
Transition, Expansion, Branching Out, Moving On
Image: In the original versions of this card, a healthy young man stands in the card’s
center, in between two women. The woman on the right appears to be his own youthful
age, the one on the left, older and more careworn. This latter would be his mother, about
to give him away to his future bride. A high priest, hooded and robed in gray, stands
behind them, with arms outstretched in a gesture of blessing, sanctifying the couple’s
transition into a new life of greater breadth. Other versions of this Trump show the young
man trying to decide between two potential partners, one young woman representing the
world of the senses and the other the world of the spirit, the profane versus the sacred. In
either version, Cupid is frequently seen with drawn bow, ready to pierce the heart of the
woman about to be bride, or of the young man while he’s looking at one or the other. In
the RWS deck, the card depicts a hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, perhaps between
Adam and Eve, presided over by the angel Raphael, the healer, and features a tree of life
behind the man, and a tree of knowledge behind the woman. This is the only place Waite
preserved the idea of choice. For a majority of clones and variants after this, the card
remains a sort of valentine, far from the original exhortation to make up your mind,
commit to one path, and leave another behind. These are very different versions, and even
the core meaning is driven by which of these is preferred. The original meaning is
assumed here. The path taken means that another was not. But all suggest a life-altering
transition based on a choice to be made between two worlds or lifestyles.
Even before the Lovers card took on its now-traditional associations with the zodiac
sign of Gemini and Mutable Air, it was never really about two people in love, whether
this was a fraternal, platonic, romantic, or erotic love. It was always about a change or
transition from a younger, smaller, or denser state to one more developed, expansive, or
rarified. As we mature, we are gradually drawn into larger and larger worlds. Child leaves
crib, youth leaves home, groom and bride start a new family, extending their clans, and
the sage leaves his nation behind, and maybe even his species, to live in a greater world.
Such thresholds are one-way crossings into more expansive environments. We are drawn
irrevocably outward. Although we may revisit our younger states from time to time, we
do so as permanently altered entities, unable to truly come home again. We can’t get the
worms back into the can. This Trump is a transition from childhood into adulthood, from
the familial and familiar life into a life richer in unknowns and surprises. Our education, a
word that arose from ex-ducere, to lead out of, is how we prepare for such transitions, in
advance of the restlessness, allurements, attractions, appetites, compulsions, temptations,
desires, and loves that would draw us out there, with or without the education in advance.
This is the crossroads, where the mischievous spirits are so wont to loiter. But we face
facts: when is making a choice or vow not the same as giving something else up? We
must foreclose some of our options as we move forward through life.
Since its association with Gemini, this card is more about the mutability and changes
that learning, experiences, and perceptions bring to us, the long-term alterations that our
minds undergo. But this is still best symbolized by our closest human relationships and
the cluster of social needs that pervades Maslow's pyramid at all levels, those for family,
belonging, affiliation, love, sex, and the esteem of others. We will strive to overcome our
original and fundamental sense of separation to seek a higher integration with something
transpersonal, beyond and greater than ourselves. We still try to find a sense of wholeness
alone, and not let our needs and our neediness overtake us, but only some kind of love,
someone or some thing we can love, can move us out of ourselves, where the reality of it
all will outlive us and not flicker out of existence when we do. To reach for this, we must
also be somewhat less than whole, and sometimes be exactly a half. This is life reaching
and branching out into higher dimensions. The poor, deluded Pharaohs thought that the
pyramid’s shape would capture the eternal. Yet what lives the longest is the humble bush,
that branches outward and survives by spreading its seeds around. But lest there be the
confusion that often catches up with such lovers of larger life, this is not a reaching out
for something more general or something more abstract: that way be mostly platitudes
and experience with little content. This is reaching out for more of the specific, real loves
and relationships, encountered one at a time, single acts of kindness, the little things in
life, and hence all the multiplying branches of the bush. We still retain some coherence
and identity as we expand.
In choosing the bigger worlds, we expand ourselves into unknowns and the unfamiliar.
A decision made in thin air becomes a path in reality. We make bargains and contracts
with strangers. We risk complete immersion in the strange. We commit to life-altering
choices, from which we can never come all the way back, even when skilled at
unlearning. We are changed in critical ways, especially by significant others. We risk
becoming someone else entirely and losing our comforting mindsets. There are choices
and errors that will have to be paid for, and high opportunity costs for all we forego. We
don’t all have the courage for this, even knowing that a larger world most likely means
more to be gained. We have to trust that if this is not in our nature, then learning and
adapting can become our second nature. We have to have something as potent as love, or
mad desire at least, to overcome the fear and mistrust.
The Yijing counterpart is Gua 59, Huan, Scattering or Dispersion, Wind over Water,
which is perhaps the most mystical of the chapters and one of the few that mentions the
establishment of temples. One way to understand this is ‘seeding the world’ with what
used to be a smaller, denser version of you. It’s change to a higher state of being which
shares the same symbolism as Omar Khayyam’s line, ‘I came like water, and like wind I
go.’ It’s also literally about the energy moved around in changes in states of matter,
melting, evaporation, and sublimation. Much further wisdom may be gleaned here from
Rumi and M. Eckhart. We are becoming a part of something larger, returning the bits of
stardust that were gathered together in our making. There is a sense of surrender here,
and often a terror that precedes it, death threats to the human ego that we try to block out
with our fairy tales. There are trust issues involved at all levels in this card, and issues of
commitment and courage. But what we have to gain is immense.
Key Words:
allure, ambivalence, approach-approach conflicts, attractions, branching out, broadening,
change of state, childhood’s end, choice, choosing a path, commitment, complements,
consecration, conversion, coupling, crossroads, diffusion, dispersion, discriminating,
divergence, diversifying, dyadics, dynamic choices, ego death, embracing paradox,
expansion, familial relationships, familiarizing, force of attraction, going to seed, greater
embrace, halves uniting, hermetic marriage, hieros gamos, higher states, higher union,
immersion, involvement, letting go, liberality, making new contacts, metasolution, moral
choice, moving on, networking, opening channels, opening up, outreach, overcoming
separation, personal finitude, progression, ramifications of choice, relationship,
remaining whole, reunification, rite of passage, sanctification of choice, scattering,
significant others, simulacrum fidei (conjugal faith), spreading outward, sublimation,
transcendence, transformation, transit, transition, transpersonal outreach, trial and error,
trust enough to surrender, unfolding, unfurling, unification, wholeheartedness.

conflictedness, contradiction, dissipation, distractedness, either-or logic, entanglement,
envy, fascination, fickleness, fragmentation, fugue, holes in need of filling, infidelity,
immaturity, indecision, interference, living elsewhere, living in the third person, neurotic
fears, opportunity costs, over-extenuation, pressured decision, regret, shallow relations,
superficiality, temptation, triviality, vacillation.
Components:
The Lovers is assigned to the third of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Zain, in its turn assigned to Gemini and the 3rd House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Mutable/Cadent and Air in Astrology, as well as
Kan (Mutable) below Xun (Air) in the Yijing. The 3rd house is about laying groundwork
for future life. Gemini being an air sign, the choice here has a rational component,
between wants and needs, between desires and practicalities.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Gemini, Sivan; Mutable/Cadent Air, Third House, Patron: Mercury Promet-
heus Diversification, education, branching out, exploration. Gaining familiarity, siblings,
social involvement, access and accessibility, networking, broadening of horizons and
relationships. Versatility, adaptability, curiosity, inquisitiveness, orientation to novelty,
opening channels.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Zain, the third of the twelve zodiac attributions, traditionally
assigned to Gemini. A sword is a stretch at best, but a sword could be used to represent
distinction, duality and choice, also as a tool for cutting the cord and apron strings.
Yijing: Gua 59, Huan, Scattering, Dispersion, Dissolution. Bagua Kan (Mutable, Cadent)
below, Xun (Air) above. “The wind passes over the water. Scattering. Early sovereigns
made offerings to the divine and founded ancestral shrines.” In a Sufi story, a little stream
was terrified of crossing a desert, but the only way to do it was to let the sun evaporate
him and come back on the far side as rain. “Fulfillment. The sovereign approaches his
temple. Worthwhile to cross the great stream. Worthwhile to be dedicated.” This is the
Yi’s approach to the unitive, oceanic or mystical experience, letting go, changing to a
higher state, and the enthalpy that this involves or liberates. Sublimation, dissolution,
evaporation. Metasolutions to problems, rising above. Surrender and reintegration with a
higher unity. Going to seed.
The Chariot
#7, Lo Carro Triumphale, the Triumphal Car, The Charioteer, Il Carro, Le Chariot,
The Child of the Powers of the Waters; the Lord of the Triumph of Light
Security, Confidence, Self-Control, Augmentation
Image: A warrior princess, young adult, stands in a war chariot drawn by unmatched
horses, in the process of leaving a fortified city behind her. She wears a six-pointed gold
crown over her long, golden locks, holds a long staff in her right hand, and wears light
battle armor, its epaulets suggesting the waxing and waning moons. Her chariot, canopied
over four posts with star-spangled blue, bears a crest with a winged orb over a joined
lingam and yoni. She seems to be passing through a triumphal procession, or perhaps a
sendoff. She seems confident, self-possessed, and ready for the next exciting chapter. Her
world is with her, contained both as a vehicle and a well-arranged shield. Note that her
sword is not drawn or bloodied, her armor not dinged, her chariot not damaged, and her
horses not yoked or reined. In many decks, these are sphinxes, one black, one white. Nor
is it obvious that the horses are ready to pull in the same direction. Is the driver’s seat just
a little too comfy? The canopy is shade and sunscreen, but what else justifies the weight?
This is either a ceremonial event or a demonstration of readiness. Deployment to the front
lines of battle does not appear to be immanent, and it seems a little premature for a
triumphal parade. It might at least be a victory over not getting started.
Like several of the other Trumps, this one has gradually moved away from its earlier
associations in response to assigned astrological correspondences. The newer affiliation
with the sign of Cancer has pulled the Chariot away from earlier associations with the
planet Mars. There remain martial applications for the Chariot, obviously, but the primary
focus shifts to its defensive capabilities and armor, thus leading to greater confidence, and
away from attack and offense. Power and momentum are now more secondary aspects of
this card, while security and control or self-mastery are brought to the fore. Is Phaeton up
to the task of driving the the Sun god’s chariot? Can he hold or manage his horses?
There are some important solar aspects to this card’s core meaning. The tie to the sign
of Cancer suggests the summer solstice and the early days of summer. This is also a time
when the animals molt, surrendering the protection that they can no longer afford to
carry, or shells that they have now outgrown. The Yijing counterpart, Gua 49, Seasonal
Change or Revolution, also has strong ties to this image of shedding the old and
encumbering weight, or renewal and lightening up. Fire in the Lake also means the time
for the lake to overturn, where its bottom layer upwells to the surface. We are stirred into
motion again, but we want to stay able to move with the time, to advance or retreat
accordingly. All of these point out a fundamental question with the Chariot card: what
compromise is to be made between the security of the Chariot’s defenses and its mobility
and effectiveness in pitched battle. We don’t want a slow-moving, horse-drawn tank any
more than we want a warrior fighting naked.
When we unpack this image as a metaphor, we look at psychic structure as a vehicle
for moving through life. We might even find Arjuna down in there. We are born with a
wide array of potential defenses: some help and some don’t. We live and learn which is
which. Here we want to strip this vehicle down, to optimize our adventure, losing things
like parts of the ego that do us no good at all. We don’t want ideologies that prevent us
from changing direction. We don’t want convictions that blind us to our errors. We want
brakes as well as forth-going power. We want to travel as lightly as we possibly can, and
yet we might still want the cup-holder option and the corrosion-resistant undercoating.
How at home do we want to be in our journey through this life? The hotels want us to
fear going native, the villagers want to see Peace Corps with backpacks. The trick with
incarnation is being at home in our skin and as little else as we need to get by and away
with. There is carry-on luggage and then there is baggage.
Armor gives us a comfort zone, a way to withstand the onslaughts, a refuge and a safe
space, a tiny little home kingdom to rule. It’s the circle a witch draws around her to keep
the damned demons out. We protect our softest spots, where we want to get fondled, not
stabbed. This is all like adding a second skin. But the problem is, only the first skin has
senses. We can make ourselves so secure and protected that all we get now is numb. We
get senseless and unreachable when we go too far. The persona or mask we put on to deal
with the outside world has a hard time changing expression to show how we really feel.
It’s the opposite of naked, or simply-girded loins, and just as problematic. The chariot
stays in the middle of that road, but tries to avoid the ruts.
Aside from protection from actual damage, the Chariot gives us self-confidence and
courage, a sense of being prepared or ready. We have moved the locus of conquest back
to the outer boundaries of self and now try to conquer our doubts, insecurities, and fears.
We don’t need the blind and senseless heroics, but we do want the kind of audacity and
daring that comes through the battle still breathing and still having slain at least a couple
of errors and faults. We might even hope to transform our fears into power, or adrenaline
at least. We pull ourselves together like harnessing those horses and reining them in, and
get our selves moving all in the same direction. What we draw on for encouragement will
work best in the end if it isn’t a lie or a myth, but we do what we can here. That part of
the task might come down to what best encourages the horses. After courage, we learn to
command ourselves, to direct the team of selves within, to harness our beasts and even to
bind our demons. We can even learn to manage our moods and their swings, to pull those
contradictions together and get some control over where we are going in life. Nietzsche
suggested (TSZ-49): “Do as you will, but first be able to will. And love your neighbor as
yourself, but first be able to love yourself.” The Chariot gives us a very small kingdom to
rule, but within that lies more sovereignty and nobility than most of us can carry.
Key Words:
aegis, affective mastery, amenities, approach-avoidance decisions, armor, ascendancy,
assurance, at homeness in motion, augmentation, comfort zone, command, confidence,
conquest, courage, daring, defense, driver's seat, effective personality, emboldenment,
emotional self-control, enabling conditions, enduring change, facing challenges, fear
transformed, harnessing affect, hides, incarnation, lessening vulnerability, lightening up,
risk management, mobility, mood management, new departure, new venture, opposite of
naked, optimizing one’s effectiveness, overcoming, perseverance, personal momentum,
personal victory, portability, preparedness, preventative measure, prophylaxis, protection,
protective layers and skins, pulling it all together, readiness, reinforcement, resolution,
restraints, risking the new, safety, sanctuary, security, self-confidence, self-conquest, self-
control, self-defense, self-mastery, shells, shield, support, surmounting emotional issues,
taking charge, taking reins, teamwork of selves within, triumph, venture, victory,
vulnerability, willingness, winning ways and attitudes.

anxiety, calluses and callousness, chariot as clunker or lemon, complication, defensive
walls, defensiveness, disorganization, emotional baggage, fear, fragility, hardened
exterior, hauling the past around, hypersensitivity, implicit dilemma, incapacity, inflated
ego, inhibition, insecurity, insensitivity, internal conflicts, numbness, over-anticipation,
overcompensation, over-insurance, overwhelmed, presumption, reaction formation, scar
tissue, self-delusion, self-importance, thick-skinned, thin-skinned.
Components:
The Chariot is assigned to the fourth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Cheth, in its turn assigned to Cancer and the 4th House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Cardinal/Angular and Water in Astrology, as well
as Li (Cardinal) below Dui (Water) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Cancer, Tammuz; Cardinal/Angular Water, Fourth House, Patron: Luna.
Home and security, defining the limits of environment. Sensitivity and its limits, the
readiness to feel, extending the feelings as much as bruises and armor allow. Closeness,
belonging, connectedness, nearness, vulnerability. The creation of worlds permitting
feeling without damage. Self-importance relative to smaller worlds and limited activity.
Accumulated environment, things brought home and arranged. Parental influence,
protection, nurture, intimacy. Chosen influences, limited commitments. Fourth house as
feeling at home.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Cheth, the fourth of the twelve zodiac attributions, tradition-
ally assigned to Cancer. (GD: Cheth, Fence, Value 8. The fence as a protective boundary
works very well with this trump and contributes to its meaning. Both keeping things in
and out, defining a working space, fencing out distractions, delineating a domain.
Yijing: Gua 49, Ge, Seasonal Change, Revolution, Molting. Bagua Li (Cardinal, Angular)
below, Dui (Water) above. “There is fire in the lake. Seasonal Change. The young noble
organizes the calendar and clarifies the time.” Dealing with obsolescence, anachronism,
aging institutions. Revolution as the revolving of the earth and rotation of the seasons,
action is best keyed to timing. “Complete the day and then be sure. Supreme fulfillment
is worth persistence. Regrets pass.” The Chinese character derives from a hide and
seasonal molting, shedding protective layers. Metamorphosis, divestment, stripping to a
minimum needed for the season, optimizing function. Security weighed against
effectiveness. This would focus on the Chariot’s mobility and usefulness, wanting to
minimize the armor.
Strength
#8, Fortitude (Andreia), Force, La Forza, La Force, The Force, Lust,
Daughter of the Flaming Sword
Empowerment, Character, Integrity, Life Force
Image: A young woman stands behind a large male lion, leaning over his shoulder to
close his jaws with her hands, maybe preparing to climb onto his back if all goes well
here, but one thing at a time. First the enchantment. She has long, red hair and wears
nothing, except flowers around her head and waist. A lemniscate halo is above her head,
suggesting higher order activity, or sub specie infinitatis. Her strength, like the lion’s, is
relaxed, in gentle reserve. The background is wilderness. In the foreground are two
thighbones, gnawed in half. She has met the lion on his own turf. Her smile dawns as
apprehension meets with success. This is a rite of passage, her own, without witnesses,
and a radical reassessment of her relationship to the world, an honest test of whether
wisdom is, in deed, power. Of three approaches to the beast, these being conquest,
domestication, and partnership, only the third will leave our enchantress with a truly
great, unspoiled, unbroken familiar. The higher strength here is not in the woman but in
the pairing.
This card evolved early on from the image of a man in an adversarial relationship with
a lion, usually seen as Hercules and the Nemean lion, forcibly subduing or even killing
the beast, to that of a beauty, finessing or whispering her beast into a familiar
relationship. In parallel, the idea of force has evolved from violence into a higher
understanding of Fortitude, Andreia, as a cardinal virtue. The technical difference
between force and power isn’t commonly understood. As a sensory metaphor, we begin
to understand force as the resistance we feel to applied muscular effort. But power is
energy out, not energy input. In physics, power is the rate at which energy changes form,
measured in terms of effect or work accomplished. The sense of resistance that we relate
to force usually means a loss of power. It’s when things happen with less applied effort
that we have power’s highest measures of efficacy. Assuming that the young lady can do
something useful with her new friend, her familiar, or her totem, she is in fact more
powerful than Hercules. The ‘conquest’ or repression of the lower self, of the baser
instincts, or the control of our brutal and bestial natures, so often found in descriptions of
this card, presents us with an inferior solution to the problem of power: it’s a deficient
way of looking at things, given what might be accomplished by befriending the beast
within. Strength is an integrated being, not spirit over mind or mind over body. The
working parts are working together, not through control but cooperation.
The beauty of this card will be missed by those still inclined to the old dualisms of
matter versus the spirit, or animal nature versus higher human culture, or nature versus
nurture, or libido versus superego. All of these names for our lower and higher aspects
are places that parts of us fall on the fuller spectrum of who we are. Bringing all of our
parts together and coaxing them into all moving in the same direction is called integrity,
from integer, being one person undivided. This is a fundamental dimension of character.
Consider that intelligent nature has kept life going longer than the human mind has. The
beast within only wants some more intelligence, not control. The wild, unruly, dark, and
primitive beast within is not that at all, and it doesn’t need to be sublimated. Humans
would do far better to behave as morally as animals.
Somewhat broader than fortitude as the classical virtue, this is Strength to get through
the good times as well as the hardships. This is virtus, excellence, courage and worth,
distinct from an artificial practice of virtue. Virtus comes also from deep down inside. It’s
just too dark-aged and medieval to continue to punish brother ass for holding us back
from the spirit, or to blame our devils for the failures of our angels. Great portions of our
strength and motivation come from our flesh and it’s error to think of brute strength as
beneath us and bestial, dark, unruly and primitive, ever ready to burst through the thin
veneer of our civilization and wreak havoc on the world, with creatures from the id and
libido run amok and tearing us apart. It’s probably our tameness that’s doing most of our
damage. Look what civilized man has done to the savages, and the lands and life that they
had preserved so well for so long. The savages fought from time to time, but they never
killed thousands and millions at once. If ideology isn’t completely to blame, then it’s also
what happens when we cut ourselves off from our deeper selves. The beast within is not
subhuman. It only wants some intelligence, not ignorance, and not the whip. Then we
cultivate this as strength. Nietzsche offers, “It is precisely as tame animals that we are a
shameful sight and in need of the moral disguise.” We’ve long been wrong about who the
beasts and the monsters are. They are not natural expressions of primitive life. They come
from being what the Chinese would call bùdào, off the course that is proper to our
original natures.
Effort is an issue here, and much light is shed on this topic by Master Yoda’s advice:
“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.” There is power just in simplicity and sincerity.
Few men have ever wielded the political power of Gandhi. There is power in leverage,
and in being at the right place at the right time, and in pausing to take a few deep breaths,
and in stepping back from overreaction to recover a little dignity. The so-called weaker
sex drives half of the human economy with the power of persuasion. Martial arts like
aikido can do powerful things with the effortless. And of course wu wei, the Daoist not
doing, gets everything done in its time. Mary Oliver had this powerful advice: “You only
have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Power here means simply to
maximize or optimize the results we get for our effort. The fire itself, the force or elan
that drives us all, is effortless. This is sunlight getting free again, a liberation from fuel,
just happy to dance around on that log. Given all of this, it’s wise to find things to do that
the whole of us wants to do, lion and lady alike. We can call this living wholeheartedly.
Strength as virtus works on all of the planes of our being and can draw them all back
together, finding our innate strengths and joining them into a single entity. Spirit may as
easily be voluptuous and erotic. Our deepest urges, as joys of life, and even the means to
make life, are holy and sacred as well. Great energy means great hunger. Sport and
lustiness celebrate light just like the flame on the log. Our passions can deliver us into the
heart of the mysteries. Of course we need to learn to make choices between some
emotions and rule a few of them out. Jealousy costs us the thing we want to hold. Anger
isn’t power or strength if it breaks things. That list goes on and on. But we make our
choices by deciding what we want, and by looking at what has failed to work, by what
forces have failed as power. Through this we learn Strength.
Key Words:
ability, acceptance, adventure, alignment, andreia, applied passion, aptitude, ardor,
befriending your animal, being true, biological exuberance, brio, challenge, channeled
emotion, character, cogency, combining forces, competition, confidence, conquest of
resistance, continuity of layers, cooperation, courage to live own life, creative energy,
cultivating strength, dé, determination, discharge, doubtlessness, drama, dynamics,
eagerness, elan vital, emergence, empowerment, endurance, enthusiasm, exercise,
exothermics, expansion, experimentation, expressiveness, extension, externalization,
extroversion, exuberance, familiars, force of character, fortitude, guts, hazard, identity,
immodesty, impulse, instinct, integration, integrity, intelligent nature, joie de vivre,
leverage, libido, life force as sacred, liveliness, magnanimity, metabolism, moral force,
natural rights and duties, non-reflective self-awareness, outward pressure, outwardness,
passion, pathos, play, presentation, pride, procreative urges, progeny, radiation, relish,
risk, robustness, shamelessness, singlemindedness, spectrum of identity, sportsmanship,
stalwartness, strong feeling, sunniness, surplus, sway, symbiosis, synergy, tempering
severity, thrill, totem helpers, transformation, trust, uprightness, using all of oneself,
using all the event, verve, virtus, vitality, wholeheartedness, wholeness, working
relationship.

abandon, aggressiveness, civilization as veneer, conflictedness, desires suppressed,
disconnect, disintegrity, domination, exaggeration, excessiveness, exploitation, failure,
failure of nerve, guilt, helplessness, immodesty, incompetence, impotence, infighting
selves, inhibition, inner schism, insensitivity, power abused, rage, reaction, reactivity,
repression, shame, suppression, tools of another’s power, tyranny,
Components:
Strength is assigned to the fifth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Teth,
in its turn assigned to Leo and the 5th House. By way of this, we can make a portmanteau
study of the components Fixed/Succedent and Fire in Astrology. In the Yijing, Fixed Fire
is one of the Four Xiang, Tai Yang, which may be represented by the Wu Xing of Fire.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Leo, Av; Fixed/Succedent Fire, Fifth House; Patron: Sol. Dynamic expression,
externalization, adventure, outwardness. Abundant energy, exuberance, sport, celebration
of identity, play, liveliness. The internal pressure to be more in order to burn more or give
more. Satiety or surplus as a motive force or a calm of strength. Procreation, granting
creation a life of its own. Pride, assurance, confidence, life force.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Teth, is the fifth of the twelve Zodiac attributions, in the
Golden Dawn tradition related to Leo. Teth is a Serpent. Suggestions compare this
serpent to the fiery kundalini energy, the sacred life force, connecting the chakras, and to
this energy uncoiling like a snake, emerging from containment, as metabolism liberates
photosynthetically stored solar fire.
Yijing: Xiang 3, Old or Tai Yang, Fire. The Four Xiang or Emblems have been assigned
in this system to the four Kerubic or most elemental signs of the Zodiac, the Fixed Signs
of each element. Xiang 3, Old Yang, is only problematic as Fire because it comes from a
forced fit of the Chinese Scale of 5 or Wu Xing, to the Scale of 4 Greek Elements. Still, it
works better than most and there are meanings to be mined here: flame is ascending,
changing, discharging, vitalizing, leading, externalizing. Implications include expansion,
ardor, impulse, enthusiasm, exuberance, and cogency.
The Hermit
#9, L'Eremita, Le Capuchin, El Gobbo (Hunchback), Father Time, The Veiled Lamp
The Magus of the Voice of Light, the Prophet of the Eternal
Inquiry, Higher Standards, Discretion, Renunciation
Image: A world-wizened old man, with long, white hair and beard stands at the edge
of the same precipice seen in the Fool. This may be moments later, or his own life later.
The air is colder, thinner, and cleaner up here. He wears a coarse, brown, cowled monk's
habit, belted with a rope knotted three times. He leans on a simple, uncarved staff in his
left hand and holds out a simple candle lantern with his right. The light is partly shielded
by the sleeve of his robe. As an Arabic proverb has it, “If it’s dark enough, one candle is
plenty.” His face expresses serious questions, as though secure in knowing he now owns
the puzzle’s pieces, but he has yet to complete the puzzle. Time flies. His lantern does
very little to light the valley below, especially in daylight. Perhaps it signs welcome to a
single, promising protégé. There is a small serpent at his feet, just because. Does the old
one still have exuberance and laughter? Only if the truth he has built up here allows it.
The end of his quest is a question. Some old versions of this card show him as Father
Time, with an hourglass instead of a lantern. Others depict Diogenes, the original cynic,
looking for an honest man. Still others simply call him a Capuchin or Franciscan monk,
with the knots in his belt representing his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Nobody provides a better entry into this card than Thoreau in Walden: “I went to the
woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and
see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all
the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not
life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its
lowest terms.” Other than the true hermit, perhaps nobody lives the life more completely
than the Theravada Buddhist renunciate, because he also gives up the comforts of belief.
His quest is in fact vipassana bhavana, a mindfulness training for insight. But the Bhikku
still has his Sangha. In this card we have someone here who has renounced the traps and
trappings of culture in order to get at the meaning of life. He is as serious in this quest as
humans can get: he has to be to forego the persistent demands of the social needs of a
highly socialized primate. This doesn’t mean he is antisocial, only extra-social or asocial,
wanting removal of cultural and linguistic distractions. In the end, Lily Tomlin noted,
“We're all in this alone.” This negates the conventional wisdom that all meaning is in
relationship, at least for the time spent here.
The duration of this quest is not known. It could be permanent or indefinite retirement,
a one-year sabbatical from ordinary life, or a two-year pilgrimage like Thoreau’s. One
might assert that the Hermit can also be a walking-around attitude with which to move
through daily life, but this is simply called introversion. Fundamental to the adventure is
the setting of high personal standards and goals, and the renunciation of any aspects of
life that distract from this. The Hermit raises the bar here and makes big demands on
himself, trying to set aside all that isn’t seminal and germane. The thing he gets most of is
time, in frightening amounts at first, but soon enough the days will be plenty full again.
The word contemplation means ‘with time.’ There is also plenty of silence here, in which
to hear himself think, and if so inclined, to hear that still, small voice. Some search their
souls, others search for them. This is an analog of sensory deprivation and ganzfeld
experiments. Jung suggested that the “animation of the psychic atmosphere [becomes] a
substitute for loss of contact with other people.” The mind abhors a vacuum, but he still
must be careful so the desperate mind won’t fill that with hallucination and fantasy,
unless that is the kind of vision that he has set out in quest of. He puts himself where the
hidden can speak and the dim can be seen, but where society is unable to offer
suggestions of what should be heard and seen.
A few commentators have recognized Prudence (Phronēsis) in this card, completing
the set of four cardinal virtues contained in the Trumps. This means taking a great deal of
care in what goes into the mind, on the cybernetic axiom that ‘garbage in means garbage
out.’ The Hermit manages his inputs with care. Critical thinking is an important part of
the process. Thrift and parsimony are used here at all levels, with Occam’s razor proving
useful on the fuzzy ideas. He needs to be suspicious of what his mind can do. He might
be especially wary of the kind and quality of the questions he asks, since these not only
frame the answers: they also establish a universe of discourse that can leave the best
answers out of the frame. The spirit of inquiry is philosophia, the love of wisdom. When
it’s real, it’s a lifetime commitment to learning. Edification, then, is the long and patient
building of a mind, with ambitions of some height for the views and therefore concern for
foundations. We grow one molecule at a time, build one piece at a time, and fill up one
drop at a time. This is why he is picky. He is not just a seeker, but a finder as well. He is
an autodidact, first-personing his knowledge, high-grading the teachings as if they were
ore, reinventing wheels at times, being deprived of sounding boards and stereopsis, or
other perspectives. Who knows what he might learn? The fellow who wrote the Kama
Sutra was a celibate hermit too.
The Yijing counterpart, Gua 04, Inexperience or Youthful Folly, examines the process
of inquiry, beginning with taking the care to ask the right questions with the right amount
of respect. The book takes the role of the teacher or mentor, but ultimately this has to be
the ability to learn, the learner within instead of the teacher. While Waite suggests that
this is a card of attainment instead of a quest, we have to suggest this is wrong. Many of
the Hermit’s commentators stress the need of this character to broadcast his doctrine, and
view his lantern as a signal for students to come. We can only ask of these authors: “What
part of Hermit, or what part of leave me alone, did you fail to understand?” He’s not
about to proselytize or be loose with the pearls. He’s not there to be your guide. Any
leading here is done by example. Nevertheless, we almost have to believe that he might
entertain an especially promising seeker or two. This goes along with setting high
standards. It might also be useful to mention that other hermits might be around in this
neighborhood also, with whom he might on occasion share the belly-laugh scene from
old Chinese paintings, perhaps with Han Shan himself.
Key Words:
abstention, assay, attention to detail, autodidacts, carefulness, choosiness, close reading,
cognitive housecleaning, coherence, concentration, criteria, critical thinking, cultivation,
deliberation, discernment, disconnecting, discretion, discrimination, distancing, earned
revelation, eclectics, elder knowledge and wisdom, elevation of standards, erudition,
essentials, examination, exploration, farsightedness, filtering input, first-hand wisdom,
focus, germaneness, guardedness, high standards, honesty, independent investigation,
independent thought, inquiry, insight, introspection, introversion, isolation, learning,
learner within, learning how to learn, meaningfulness, measure, mindfulness, moment of
silence, narrowcast, own counsel, own terms, personalizing, perspective, pertinence,
place of learning, privacy, private path, probing, prudence, prudent assimilation, questing,
questioning, raising the bar, reassessment, redrawing the personal world, re-evaluation,
reflection, relinquishing, renunciation, reserve, retreat, revaluation of values, rigor, roads
less traveled, sabbatical, sacrifice, sagacity, samma sati, scrutiny, seclusion, seeking and
finding, selectiveness, self- awareness, self-examination, self-guidance, self-knowledge,
self-possession, self-reliance, self-scrutiny, separateness, silence, simplification, slowing
down, solitude, sorting out, soul-searching, specification, specificity, study, time out,
unlearning, vipassana bhavana, vision quest, voluntary simplicity, watchfulness, wisdom,
withdrawal, worthiness.

abdication, alienation, boredom, coldness, concealment, deadly seriousness, desertion,
dissociation, distractions, escapism, estrangement, flight, forgetting to laugh and play,
fugue, fussiness, hiding out, ignorance, ignoring counsel, insulation, isolation, loneliness,
misanthropy, narcissism, regression, over-seriousness, self-deception, solipsism.
Components:
The Hermit is assigned to the sixth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Yod, in its turn assigned to Virgo and the 6th House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Mutable/Cadent and Earth in Astrology, as well as
Kan (Mutable) below Gen (Earth) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Virgo, Elul; Mutable/Cadent Earth, Sixth House, Patron: Mercury Epimetheus
The work of self-acceptance, qualification, standards, cutting back on options, pruning.
Self-care, self-improvement, self-critique. Clear identity and identification. Relevance,
germaneness, pertinence, meetness, congruity. Fitness, aptness, consonance. Admission
of qualified experience. Usefulness and aptitude. Concern for nutrition, assimilation,
digestion, what is absorbed and used to build our selves, what is to be acceptable.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Yod, the sixth of the twelve zodiac attributions, traditionally
assigned to Virgo. The Finger symbol is a stretch, but some association to seed or germ,
the seminal and the germane is useful.
Yijing: Gua 04, Meng, Inexperience, Youthful Folly. Bagua Kan (Mutable, Cadent)
below, Gen (Earth) above. “At the foot of the mountain emerges a spring. Inexperience.
The young noble proceeds to fruition by nourishing character.” This chapter concerns the
spirit of inquiry and investigation, symbolized by a youth who must learn to ask the right
questions. “Fulfillment. It is not I who seeks the young and inexperienced, the young and
inexperienced seek me. The first consultation informs, while the second and third show
disrespect. Disrespect deserves no information. It is worthwhile to be dedicated.” The
Yijing here takes the part of the elder sage, whose wisdom is being sought out. Early
development, education, guidance. Inquiry, questioning, questing, discovery. Gradual
fulfillment is like a pool fed by a spring. Learning and unlearning, training the mind like
a wild vine.
The Wheel
#10, Wheel of Fortune, Ruota Della Fortuna, La Roue de Fortune, Chance, Fate,
The Lord of the Forces of Life
Equanimity, Composure, Eventuality, Full Circles
Image: A wheel occupies most of the card. It has eight spokes and an axle the length
of its radius. But the wheel is not on a cart. It only goes around, widdershins, the way the
Earth really turns, not the way Sol seems to go. Three figures ride on it's circumference,
representing the temporal scale of three: Hermanubis rising, Typhon descending, and the
Sphinx on top, for the moment. Old versions show a king on this merry-go-round, with
regnabo, regno, regnavi [et] sum sine regno (I shall reign, I reign, I have reigned, I am
without reign) inscribed in the appropriate places. Intoxication with today’s success may
become tomorrow’s hangover. The corners of the card are occupied, from lower left,
widdershins, by the four kerubs of the bull, lion, eagle and human, representing the
elements, and marking the midpoints of the four seasons. These figures can be found on
the World card as well. Other than traveling nowhere and being useless, most wheel
metaphors apply. This Wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna, who spins it at random,
changing the positions of those on the wheel. When it spins out thread, this is done by the
three Fates, to whose decrees even Jupiter, the king of the gods, is subject, and must
adapt as Jovially as he can. It comes around to this: “You've got to ask yourself one
question: “‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
Samsara progresses, but in the end it goes nowhere. We are always in a season that
always passes. Much of the nonsense in human religion is spewed in explaining the
vagaries of fate and fortune, and advice on rolling with these vagaries is a central or axial
question in most human systems of thought wherever answers are packaged. This is often
entangled with issues of merit and justice. What we get is supposed to be connected with
what we deserve. Sometimes past or future lives are invoked to balance the karmic
accounts, or account for unfairness in this life. In the Mid-East, Mohammed offered a
wise compromise: “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel first.” In the far East we roll with it:
“Junsei nana korobi, Ya oki” (Such is life: seven times down, eight up). The Yijing
(Zhouyi 11.3) suggests moving towards the center: “There is no level without a slope, no
going without a return. It is difficult to persist with no errors. Do not worry: these are
certainties. Find happiness in nourishment.” Buddha was also centrist, urging upekkha,
equanimity, tolerance, or balance of mind, understanding both that our problems must
work themselves out, and that sentient beings must work themselves out of their own
problems. But the formulae that we’ve been given by others for hindsight, insight, and
foresight may fail us here. Lowered expectations may be advised, and in the end,
adjusting our attitudes in the act or on the fly may be where the best wisdom lies.
Readers are generally told by Tarot books that good luck is on its way here. This might
be because our being upbeat will tend to better our odds, or maybe because when systems
get more energetic they like to move towards order. Momentum rolls the wheel towards
resolution of forces already in play. If the outcome of a sequence of events is less than a
cycle away, then angular momentum will bring it around. Effects emerge from preceding
causes. But these are not always meaningful connections, and they certainly aren’t always
reasons. It might have been better if Carl Jung had never given the word synchronicity to
weak-minded thinkers. Except in classical physics, accidents are common. But people do
love their platitudes, maybe as much as they fear their freedoms. For these, things may as
well run on fortune and fate, with destiny being something that sweeps you up instead of
a way you step into, with purpose being some grand and mysterious puppeteer’s plan for
your soul. This we know: that the universe is big, and most of it will go wherever it will,
mixing randomness up with natural law. Many of the rhythms and cycles are almost fully
predictable. But tiny little parts of it are subject to our modification and agency. As if to
provide an alternative for the vapid ‘everything happens for a reason,’ Nietzsche noted
how life is just opportunistic: ‘A loss rarely remains a loss for an hour.’ This lifts us out
of the puppet mentality regarding our fates and fortunes. It has to be accepted that some
fortunes are predictable, others whimsical. We don’t have to approve, but there it is.
Maybe all we can do is play the odds and proceed as though character were destiny.
Many systems offer their ways for coping with our ups and downs, explaining life’s
comeuppances as some kind of natural consequence. But they fail, and not only in Vegas.
There is no cosmic system, and not another to beat it. The facts seem to be that bad things
happen to good people, and good things to bad. Our problem here is called the excluded
middle. The simple minds want simple, black-or-white answers, but life calls for more
complex minds than this. Fortune behaves like a deity eager to teach. The teachable few
learn quickly but the rest never seem to grasp it. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” as
Louis Pasteur suggested. And “perfect sincerity offers no guarantee,” as Zhuangzi might
add. We live and work in a world of probabilities and play the odds as best we can. Some
rules of thumb can give us some advantages, ‘buy low, sell high,’ for instance, but these
don’t give us a vision of what is to come. Good behavior, on average, leads into a better
life. But crime and corruption do pay, especially when our governments are criminal and
corrupt. And here you are reading a book on Tarot. This might help, but if you think it’s
going to predict your future or tell your fortune, well, good luck with that. That learning
what we can, and working with the odds, is the best that we can do is not a reason to give
up. It’s simply what’s done by people who do the best that they can do. We gamble and
hazard best guesses. And we sometimes must enter and play to win.
Clearly, the center of the wheel is host to the least disturbance. Being wholly ‘under
the circumstances’ is like being out on the ever-changing circumference, with perpetual
ups and downs, and periodically beneath the wheel. To occupy the center, as with
Buddha’s upekkha, can have a couple of meanings here. It doesn’t require an inattention
to the rim, which is con-centrated on the center as well. Pathos or apathy remain choices
here. There is a center in feeling that feels something of everything, but there is also a
numb one that regards its numbness as winning. The response or reaction to a change is
what matters more than its nature, and the center is almost always the place where all the
best choices are made. The helmsman needs both left and right turns to steer the boat a
straight course. The high-wire artist needs to use left and right in exactly equal
proportions, which is only done from the center. The moment is the center of time, from
which the cycles of time are best understood. Be these long cycles or short, this is the key
to patience. Things always happen in season, so we only need the patience to pick the
right season. Change is best undergone, if not with detachment, then at least with an
overview, with deeper horizons in time. Anxiety and discontent are myopic. Not seeing
the big picture is often the same as not seeing full circle. Fortune isn’t predictable, except
in those places fully subject to science. We learn and guess what we can. We can bet on
the probability that events will occur in their usual sequence. We can be the best beings
that we can be, hoping to tip the odds in our favor. But if we want to formulate truths, we
don’t want nearsighted views of the wheel to come to terms with our fortunes, and the
greater time horizons are longer than our lives. At least the greater perspectives make our
little problems and our ups and downs seem small, and perhaps not worth the worry.
Key Words:
acceptance is not approval, accident, balance, big picture, center, centeredness, centering,
chance, circumference, circumstances, clockworks, composure, comprehension in view,
con-centration, confirmation, consequences, controlling reaction, culminating, cycles of
need satisfaction, destiny, equanimity, even- mindedness, evenness, eventuality, fateful
turn of events, fates, fortuitousness, fortune, fruition, gambling, happiness, hazarding,
imperturbability, inevitability, in the cards, issue, levelheadedness, luck, magnanimity,
manifestations in time, necessity of cycles, odds, opportunities, oscillations, outcomes,
overturning, overview, patience, perpetual motion, pivoting, poise, possibility, potential,
predictability of fortune, presence of mind, probability, randomness, range of possibility,
recognizing inevitabilities, resilience, rewards, rhythm, right time and place, ripe destiny,
rolling with cycles, round trip, samsara, seasons, self-possession, sequiturs, serendipity,
serenity, serenity prayer, speculation, stillness, stoicism, synchronizing, time frames, time
horizons, the hand you’re dealt, TOs and FROs, turning point, turn of the cards, turns of
events, unfolding events, upekkha, ups and downs, venturing, what goes around, wheel’s
still in spin, windfalls.

anxiety, apathy, chasing the dragon, compulsive gambling, detachment, fatalism, fate,
fortune telling, going in circles, gullibility, hedonic treadmill, inconsistency, injustice,
interruption, intoxication, mischance, mishap, myopia, non-sequiturs, overreliance on
ideas of providence, powerlessness, suffering, undergoing, uncertainty, underneath the
circumstances, unfairness, unfortunates, vicious cycles, victim mentality, vicissitudes,
ways the cookie crumbles, wishful thinking.
Components:
The Wheel is a straightforward symbol. Portmanteaus may be made with its associations
to Jupiter, Chesed, and now Gen, and second-tier astrological associations to Sagittarius
and the 9th House. All suggest moving to a higher order of perception, one that’s more
comprehensive relative to the details, getting above the small stuff.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Jupiter, Zedek; The higher power of grace, majesty and command. Self as the
sum of one’s extensions, expansion, diastolic awareness, exploration. Self defined from
within in positive terms. Internal cohesion, confirmation, what we get away with. The
bestowing virtue, equanimity, sitting pretty, being on top, balance, equilibrium, poise.
Association with Jupiter as the greater benefic or fortune may be partly responsible for
the the Wheel’s often cited prediction of good or improving luck.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Kaph. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Kaph with various
other Planets, with little agreement. Regarding the Palm of the Hand, we might note that
the Jews, from long before Kabbalah, were no strangers to palmistry for the telling of
fortunes.
Yijing: Bagua 1, Gen, Mountain, Stillness. Gen, as mountain, is a symbol of individual
existence, solid and real for practical purposes, but only insofar as its foundation upon a
greater reality is secure, which requires that the basis be broader than the summit. Here,
security, composure and balance are inseparable. From below, the human perspective, the
big picture is grasped only when one is on top of things. Until the work is done to get to
this lofty place, the mountain is an obstacle, or limit to the grander view. To be great
means to be greatly grounded. Mountains are also thought of as the centers of the world,
hubs, poles, axes and reference points. And, of course, they are home to the gods. This is
half of the third dimension, things, as islands in time. As discussed earlier, Gen can be
represented by either Jupiter or Saturn. As a force of equilibrium, equanimity, stability
and a higher, or less needy, kind of love, this is Jupiterian or Jovian, and as such can be
associated with this Trump. As a force that stops us or brings us up short, it is Saturnian,
and this aspect doesn’t really apply here.
Justice
#11, Justice (Dikaiosynē), La Giustizia, La Justice, Adjustment,
The Daughter of the Lords of Truth: the Holder of the Balance
Social Contract, Accountability, Objectivity, Conscientiousness
Image: The goddess Dike is shown seated on a throne, wearing the robes of the duly
appointed arbiter. Her hair is long and fair and she wears a crown. In her left hand she
holds the scales of Libra, weighing evidence. In her right hand she holds a double-edged
broadsword upright, symbolizing both the enforceability of her decisions and the ability
to correct bad or distorted truth. She is neither blind nor blindfolded here. The seriousness
of her expression indicates how little of what is put before her will go unnoticed. She is
emphatically not a cosmic principle, except to the extent that survival among others may
also require a respect for the way that the greater world works, the laws that apply to all
things. A presumption of objectivity and objective truth presupposes much. Two different
points of view may or may not be both or equally right. Getting at the truth may require
complex analysis in more than one dimension, assurance of accountability, and divorcing
reason from emotion.
Our ideas of Justice have done some evolving. Themis, a daughter of Uranus and Gaia,
was the first goddess of greater or cosmic Justice, of divine law, and divine justice as the
consequence of breaking that law, but not of rewards for obedience. Dike, her daughter
by Zeus and also named Justice, is the goddess in this card and of the human moral order
and forces of correction. A number of commentators will still identify her as divine or
cosmic Justice, but this is not correct. She is also sometimes confused with Astraea, the
goddess of purity. Dike is here to help humans get along with each other, whether their
law was born of divine mandate, natural order, social contract, or a practical utility. The
blindfold, sometimes seen in her form, is supposed to symbolize objectivity, her being
without bias or prejudice, and perhaps a fair hearing as well, but it is also an unnecessary
handicap to fair witnessing. Stereopsis or retinal disparity requires that the pictures from
two eyes or points of view be combined in order to construct perceptual depth. It is not a
question of which view is correct, but one of what the differences between the two views
can tell us. It’s not a good idea to lose such a useful metaphor behind a blindfold. Here is
an appeal to higher level of comprehension.
The early human justice that arose with urbanization and politics nearly always used
the supernatural as the force that justified local enforcement. Appeals to cosmic justice
used the power of superstition to bring subjects into line. The order seen in nature was
interpreted as the kind of law that human rulers decreed, but writ a little bit larger. Good
consequences were called rewards, and bad ones, punishments. Kings and Pharaohs were
just the bailiffs here, divinely appointed but not the first or final word. This point of view
will take an idea like karma and conflate it with retributive justice, and possibly go even
one step further and see all misfortune as earned, although perhaps in previous lifetimes.
We are now moving slowly towards a combination of laws derived from natural order
and our own social contracts. This starts to hold the derivation of law itself up to scrutiny,
and calls into question the excessive and unjust laws that pervade our systems of justice
in proportion to our corruption. Accountability is the core of Justice. Grievances are
heard and redressed. The civil law covers the nuisances, torts and properties, and criminal
law, force, fraud and theft. Between them we hold ourselves up to standards of ethical
action and the meanings of the words that we speak when making contracts with others.
Justice is also the question of getting to objectivity, when given at least two different
sides of a story. Our modern systems are dismal failures at this. We get two excessively
expensive adversarial champions, each presenting an exaggerated half-truth as the whole
of the picture, threading their arguments through legal loopholes and around the rules of
evidence and court procedure, either to a group of peers who are not allowed to question,
or else to some old guy in a silly wig talking in outdated language. This sort of justice
only encourages crime and encroachment. The rule of law becomes the rule of lawyers. If
we want this card to mean real justice, rightness, fairness, impartiality, some retribution
for the guilty, and some restoration for the injured, then it’s about time to start looking for
something closer to mediation or binding arbitration, where positions can be more simply
and honestly explained and intelligent outcomes more fairly appraised, where the spirit or
the intent of the law and the mitigating factors can be taken into account. Fairness and
one-size-fits-all approaches have failed to prove themselves to be the same thing. Justice
is supposed to begin where aggression is arrested and cooler heads prevail. True justice is
like the part of the brain that combines the two views from the eyes and sees more deeply
into the matter at hand.
With equal respect and attention, we structure our relationships according to the ways
we evolved to get by with each other in groups, and to the contracts, spoken and not, that
we’ve adopted to take ourselves further than troops of primates can go. The larger the
group, the more we tend to specialize in our roles, the more we need clearer boundaries
defined, the more we need to read the fine print. This is organ-ization, specialization, and
specification of function. It fails to function properly when clarity cannot be maintained,
or respect for what we have given up is forgotten. Rights and duties are not opposites, but
reciprocal functions. Our duties are the upholding of the other’s rights, including rights of
creatures not human, and even those of unborn generations. This is fairness. It’s the right
to redress when rights are stepped on, and the duty to submit to corrective measures when
found to be stepping on others. We do unto others as we would be done by, and then we
add an ‘or else.’ The Yijing counterpart is Gua 37, Family Members, picturing groups of
people living behind the same door, trying to live together while maintaining their rights
to be different and special, all while settling their differences. We acknowledge the other
with respect, and re-spect means to look again, to examine more clearly and closely, to
look in more depth for the truths, with multiple points of view.
Key Words:
accountability, adjustment, agreements, appeal to right, arbitration, artificial conscience,
arrangement, attitude adjustment, awaiting judgment, being held to standards, checks and
balances, comeuppance, commitment, compromise, conscience, conscientiousness,
consequences tied to decisions, consideration, cooler heads prevailing, corrective action,
counterpoise, deliberation, diplomacy, due consideration, due process, dyadics, ethical
standards, equity where equality is lacking, equilibrium, ethical inquiry, evaluation, fair
hearing, fair play, fair treatment of others, fair witness, fairness, fine print, force arrested
or in abeyance, great levelers, higher law, honest assessment, honesty, impartiality,
judiciousness, just desserts, justification, law, making life work, measured responses,
mediation, mitigating circumstances, moral compass, objectification, objectivity, probity,
proper weighting, reconciliation, recourse, reciprocity of right and duty, recognition of
others, redress of grievances, relationship, relativity, resolution, respect, restitution,
restoration of stability, restorative justice, rights and duties, rigor in judgement, rules of
the game, second party, seeing both sides, seeing oneself from outside, social contract,
spirit of law, stereopsis, subjugation of action to thought, treaty, vindication, what is due,
what we deserve.

adversarialism, bad rule and laws, bias, bribery, defensiveness, exaggerated half truths,
excessive standardization, false accusation, frivolous suit, grievances ignored, hypocrisy,
inequality before the law, injustice, intolerance, laws unclear and unevenly enforced,
legal loopholes, legislated morality, letter-of-law mentality, liars, litigiousness, passive
aggression, prejudice, procedural obstacles, recusal, retributive cosmic justice, rule of

lawyers, self-righteousness, suspicious severity, unjust laws.
Components:
Justice is assigned to the seventh of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Lamed, in its turn assigned to Libra and the 7th House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Cardinal/Angular and Air in Astrology, as well as
Li (Cardinal) below Xun (Air) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Libra, Tishrei; Cardinal/Angular Air, Seventh House, Patron: Venus Lucifer.
Encounter and relationship, objectification of the dyad, recognizing the significant other.
The dynamics of harmony and perspective. Accommodating ambiguity and ambivalence.
Interpersonality, interdependence. The economics of interaction, appraisal, appreciation.
Marriage, partnership, alliance, face-to face encounter, eye-to eye exchange, interfacing
of liberties. Contracts, contractual arrangements. Trust, pledge, good faith. Arbitration,
mediation, diplomacy, tact.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Lamed, the seventh of the twelve zodiac attributions, in the
Golden Dawn tradition assigned to Libra. The ox goad is a useful addition, as an
implement for urging, guiding, directing, regulating behavior, keeping the beast on the
path, poked right and left.
Yijing: Gua 37, Jia Ren, Family Members, The Family, Bagua Li (Cardinal, Angular)
below, Xun (Air) above. “Wind comes forth from flame. Family Members. The young
noble speaks with substance and acts with consistency.” The influence of the flame is
carried outward by the wind, out the door, into the palace, across the stream, around the
world. It is managed for clarity and harmony. “Rewarding the woman’s persistence.”
Familial roles are specializations that need to function together as a whole in working
relationships. It is not a competition but a functioning society. Ranks and rights are not
tied together. Moral or ethical boundaries and practice propagate outward beyond the
door and down through the generations. This warrants conscientious management, at the
center, before things move out of hand. “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that
rules the world” (William Ross Wallace).
The Hanged Man

#12, L'Appeso, L'Impiccato, Le Pendu, Il Traditore (Traitor)
The Spirit of the Mighty Waters
Acceptance, Surrender, Letting Go, Samvega
Image: A young, blonde man hangs suspended by his left foot from a living tree, used
as a gibbet or gallows. His hands are behind his back, his legs form the same figure four
seen in the Emperor, but reversed. He doesn't seem to be suffering, rather, he has an aura
of transcendent ecstasy. The tree could be the ‘world tree’ of legend, here in the shape of
a Tau cross. The subject has in some way volunteered to undergo a trial, an initiation, or a
renunciation. He may have ‘turned himself over’ as if to some higher power, or as though
emptying himself to prepare for a major change. He is ‘taking no stand’ of his own, but
simply submitting. This could be a dream or vision quest, or a rite of passage. The card
demands trust before such an act of surrender. The earlier versions and titles of this card
suggest a less voluntary submission to this rite or ordeal, or ‘volunteering’ for it by way
of making bad choices. Hanging a debtor by a foot for public disgrace was one of several
punishments called baffling. He would be humiliated into better behavior in the future.
Others saw a traitor being punished, although back then traitor simply meant one who
betrays a trust. Still, most figures, including those receiving some punishment, do not
appear to be suffering, and in fact seem to be grateful. Some are even glowing with a
nimbus or halo, either for the chance to redeem themselves or for a chance to transcend to
a higher state of awareness.
The image of the Hanged Man may imply much from cultural lore, from Buddha and
the Bo Tree, to Zhuangzi’s Bao Jiao, Jesus, Judas, Peter, or even Houdini. These are not
central to the modern image, although Odin hanging from the world-tree, Yggdrasil, for
nine days to discover the runes comes close. This is not a named figure. It’s possibly an
act of expiation, someone atoning for a sin or a crime, whether driven to this by contrition
or penitence, or involuntarily receiving a punishment. If this is redemption, it would
imply a debt to be paid that soon will be. If this is correction, it appears to be welcome, or
even a relief. Maybe there is hope that humiliation becomes humility, as dignity and pride
are stripped away. It may be time for sober reflection, a time to admit, as is done in 12-
step recovery, that ‘my best thinking brought me here,’ and begin the rehabilitation, now
that the bottom has been reached, now that how low you can go may be known a bit
better.
But atonement is only one account of this image. More centrally, it’s the welcoming of
a chance to change our ways, or quite literally, our point of view, as our world is turned
upside down. This might also be a voluntary act of sacrifice, though most of our thinking
regarding sacrifice is wrong-headed. Giving something up to get something better is not
sacrifice at all. Sacrifice as a trading up in value is just buying something cheaply. The
word means to make sacred, and it isn’t about getting at all. It’s about saying thank you
instead of asking for more. The Hanged Man could be offering himself up for the benefit
or use of the others, for some idea of a higher power, or for a higher purpose, something
greater or something more long-lived than himself.
This card could also refer to a needed time out, a temporary suspension of our goal-
directed activity. This might be a bit extreme without having a higher purpose or end in
mind, like Buddha’s vow under the Bo Tree, to not to move again until enlightened. But
even simple delays, detours, and changes of plan can provide perfect times to broaden our
perspectives. Turning ourselves around, resetting our priorities, re-evaluating our values,
or checking out surprising new orientations, can be radical, life-changing events. Such
tests of our patience and understanding can show us how free our minds can be, and how
flexible our directions. We can move ourselves around as if we were water. Central to the
attitude needed here is acceptance. Like water, we accept the place we find ourselves in
and submit ourselves to its shape. We accept reality as it is, instead of what we wish it to
be. This is not the same thing as approving of reality as it is, or wanting things to stay this
way. This is merely starting our process of adapting from a place of more perfect realism,
so that if we do decide to change things, our efforts are based on the facts of the matter
instead of our fantasies and delusions. We may even find unexpected advantage in having
our course redirected.
This is also the card of our higher unitive or oceanic states, the mystic’s truth, the great
embrace, attunement to cosmic rhythms, an infinite plenum as our source and destination,
and together with this, the prerequisite dissolution of our ego, and perhaps even human
exceptionalism. The self must stop its endless fussing over itself. The fake mysticism of
the new age cannot get over its narcissism. We must lose our self-importance, humble
ourselves down to an appropriate size to really get the perspective. There still remains the
question of how much reason or logic we’re allowed to pack for the trip. Certainly for the
duration we must let go of our baggage and luggage, our burdens and our parcels, our
prior beliefs and disbeliefs, in order to get where we’re going. There are goals that
require a self, and selflessness costs us these, at least for a time. It doesn’t matter if
annihilation of the self is in the beloved divine or in the tortured calculations of
astrophysics. At least we get a break from our smallness and may find something great
where we might be of some service. The more serious among us can take a shamanic
route and break our heads open with elucidogens. Mescalito, Teonanacatl, Mother Aya,
Alice D. and the Bwiti all have lessons for us if we have the courage to simply lay back
and welcome the learning. We don’t want to try this without some good guidance and
reasons to trust the process, but to really know the water we need to melt ourselves down.
The Yijing counterpart used here is Bagua 0, Kun, Accepting or The Receptive.
Not all of our surrendering needs be so grandly transpersonal. Sometimes this just
means waiting a little longer than you’re prepared to wait. Maybe it’s minor revisions in
thinking that cease to be scary. Just a little loss of self, or a little gain in unselfishness,
can help change a mind going bad, or off in the wrong direction. The search for deeper
meanings seems like such a scary thing to those who can only be upright and full of
themselves. Sometimes it just helps to turn over and dump this stuff out. Changing our
minds, breaking our habits, upending old patterns, reversing our attitudes, flip-flopping
our opinions, rethinking all that we are, thinking outside the box, reprogramming our own
minds, will no doubt get others to point and wag their fingers and tongues, like they do at
that poor guy hung upside down in the plaza. And yet this can get us unstuck. The only
real humiliation and shame is when we prefer old errors and faulty perspectives to a little
social discomfort.
Key Words:
acceptance, accounting errors, acquiescence, atonement, between worlds, breaking habits,
broader perspective, change of plan, circumspection, compliance, concession, conversion,
cooperation, corrective force, counterintuitive tack, deliverance, detachment, devotion,
dissociation, emptying the cup, endurance, expiation, forbearance, giving without getting,
humility, inevitability, interference with plans, letting go, limbo, losing self- importance,
malleability, metamorphosis, new angles, new point of view, new perspective, offering
up, opening up, opting out, outside the box, passivity, patience, pause, penitence, places
of learning, powerlessness, putting oneself last, quitting, realignment, reconsideration,
redemption, reexamination, rehabilitation, relinquishment, renunciation, reorientation,
reprogramming, resetting priorities, resignation, respite, restraint, rethinking, reversing
direction and perspective, re-view, rite of passage, ritual offering, sacrifice, samvega,
service, shamanic journey, sobering reflection, submission, subordination, surrender,
suspending belief, suspending disbelief, suspense, suspension, taking another side, trial,
turnaround, turning it over, uncertainty, undergoing, understanding, upending patterns,
vision quest, waiting is.

control, delay, detention, empty ritual, enforced sacrifice, failure to commit, fixed points
of view, frustration with progress, half-heartedness, helplessness, humiliation, impotence,
imprisonment, inanimacy, lack of reward for ordeal or trial, martyr complex, narcissism,
narrow mindedness, ordeal, pride, punishment, shame, shaming, stagnation, stripped of
dignity, stubbornness, suffering, time out, uncertainty, victim mentality.
Components:
The Hanged Man is a pure conception. Out of his association with Neptune, he might be
thought to have some meanings in common with Pisces and the Twelfth House. The new
correlation made here between Water and the Yijing Bagua Kun, Accepting, symbolized
by the Earth, requires some explanation. The civilization that birthed the Bagua did not
live by the sea. The oceanic experiences that are symbolized in the West by big water
were symbolized in China by the good Earth. Still, the idea of acceptance or embrace is
very much common to the Hanged Man, Mem, and Kun.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Neptune. Self as a wake through chaos, the complex and mysterious universe,
a place where impressions are left, writ in water. One’s reference feeling within greater
environments, life, region, world. Processes of universalization, embrace, acceptance,
dissolution, dreaming. The edge of measurability, the undefinable, the ineffable, doors of
perception, unification, compassion. Failure of definition and fact. Ocean and Gaia in the
blood. The Roman god Neptune was pissed off a lot, astrology’s Neptune, not so much.
Qabalah: The Mother Letter Mem, for the element Water as the part of a triad, with Air
and Fire. Mem, as representing the sea, works well with the idea of acceptance and
embrace.
Yijing: Bagua 0, Kun, Accepting. Kun comes close to the conception of Earth which we
know as Gaia, the great Mother. Since the ocean did not play a very important part in the
lives of the ancient Chinese, those aspects of life which in the West accrued oceanic and
aquatic symbols were represented in China by symbols of the Earth: these include unity,
fecundity, understanding, tolerance, embrace, plenum, capacity, and the mystic’s truth.
And of course there are the more “earthy” meanings of basis, ground, substance, support,
substratum, accessibility and as many gifts, simply, yet conditionally, provided, as one is
capable of accepting. The dimension is breadth, the range of the possible, or the field of
options with an infinite number of paths. The point here is complete acceptance of the
world as it is, with what it has to teach.
Death
#13, La Mort, Il Morte,
The Child of the Great Transformers: the Lord of the Gates of Death
Closure, Finitude, Importance, Transformation
Image: The grim reaper, on a pale horse, under the banner of a rose, moves through a
field of skulls that once belonged to both royal families and peasants, all equal in status
now. For an alternate image, the royal family, king, queen, prince, and princess, pose for
a portrait as mummies from a thousand years hence, all of them wearing the half-hideous,
half-hilarious grimace, the look of surprise, the embarrassed silence. The once-fine cloth
hangs tattered and brittle, jewelry gleams in the gloom. The hands of two young children
explore the leather and bone. The insects have done their work, the rotting flesh no longer
bubbles and flows: the rotting was still life. Few of us can ask the question “Could I die
right now, satisfied that I had lived?” with real courage instead slippery words and
discomfort.
Almost invariably, both commentators and readers will backpedal away from this card
in a reading, beginning with a quick and reassuring apology like, “This doesn’t predict
death or disaster so much as some kind of change or transformation.” Most of humanity
is just as quick to back away from this subject, which in fact is a driving force behind
much of human culture, especially religion. And of course the fear of death authors gods
and spins lies like nothing else on earth, from those with no clue as to what this Death
really is or means. But a Tarot reader here is doing the querent a disservice in not
allowing this card to impact the reading with at least some emotional force. This is an
opportunity to feel death’s nearness, its relevance, its inevitability, and its finality. In
Castaneda’s words, it’s a chance for sassy, immortal, irresponsible, important beings with
the sense of having time to use Death as an advisor. On failing to deal with our death
directly, one can choose from a vast array of metaphysical foma and live a life twisted by
fear. But this will not insure one a noble place among the ancestors. Buddha tried to take
the subject head on by teaching anatta, no soul, that there may be a rebirth of some of
your component factors, and even some memory, but there is no spirit that reincarnates
from one life into another. He taught the need to face this possibility, to give us the
urgency and the diligence that we need in order to live our lives more skillfully. Even the
harder-core Theravadans can get pretty squirrelly and apologetic when this subject comes
around. But with that said, we can set ourselves a challenge, while staring into this abyss,
to find the perfect life to live, no matter what is true beyond this. It would seem that a
full, rich, and optimized life might satisfy all the contingencies and possibilities. It will be
likely that such a life would have a deep connection with something greater than
ourselves. We can ask Mr. Death for advice on this when we see him pop up in a reading.
He will not give us vapid, mealy-mouthed platitudes.
If we are to become heroes in life, it’s important that we each make our hero’s journeys
down into the underworld, to meet and learn from this great shadow, to dance the danse
macabre, to bargain for Persephone’s return to the light, to feel the death wish Thanatos,
to come to know heaven and hell, all in order to conquer our fears without the aid of lies
and delusion. All of the present will one day be mulch, as detritivores eat up the past. In
the great old-growth forests and climax ecosystems, life and death are equals. Destruction
becomes renewal as it clears the way for new life. To run from this is to run from what
we are. We’ve pretended for too long to be beings of light from outer space that come to
get dirty in order to get clean again. We make up strange explanations for how this light
can be that ignorant. And this illusion of alien nature has made a real mess of our home
world here, the ground of our being, and the prospects for all our descendants and other
relations. This is the price of our cowardice in facing our finitude. Seneca asked, “You
want to live, but do you know how to live? You are afraid of dying, and, tell me, is the
kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?” Death would have us ask the
big questions, to cut it all down to the barest of bones: what is important, really? The
meat won’t survive, but some contribution or legacy might. Then we let the outdated and
outgrown decompose into soil again.
Finding a way to closure, of a matter ending or ended, is urged by this card. Mourning
and grieving are done by the wisest among us, but there comes a time to let the gone be
gone, to let the dearly departed depart, and the outdated and outgrown die, to let go, to
have nothing more to lose now, and get on with the living again. Even if the refreshing
new life or next transformation has so far failed to make the slightest appearance, we
clear the way first, unhaunted by things not let go. Our costly, embalmed corpses, clung
to and kept from decay, are resting in error, not peace. Descansos are our milestones.
Change is the proper way to greet death, not fighting or denying the inevitable, but seeing
all things, including ourselves, as merely part of the larger process or procession. It’s not
about the far side of transformation, but about what precedes it, the way we face change
in the present and have our say in its progress, and the way we’ve let go of old baggage
and burdens, that we might step more lightly into this world of renewal. What’s left of
life is most of it. We stay present by keeping life current.
Death should at least metaphorically scare the crap out of us, to show us how little time
we have to make the most of this life. We want it to urge us to reach down deep inside, to
call upon every resource we can. We want to feel its power, to see what it’s done for and
to us. We want the motive to let go of dead weight. We want the encouragement to place
some hope in the future, and make our contributions, through our work and art, and our
children. We want to rage and not go so gently. It’s the fear of death that’s the thing to be
feared, while it’s death that can give us the courage to live. The inevitability of death
means our debt for life is already paid: what we do now is spend life before it gets taken.
This is the treasure we bring back from our time down below with the shadow. That we
have much living to do, and not all the time in the world, suggests that we decide what’s
important, what is worth keeping with us, and what we need to let go or set free. We stop
killing precious time. We high-grade the ore of life. It’s a moving-day yard sale, maybe a
little bit sad and nostalgic, but we lighten up. We get our priorities straight. And it may be
a good thing after all that the reaper has no respect for the self, that in the end we can
only continue in larger continua, involving our ancestors and heirs, and other lines less
mortal, like the great work of mankind’s transformation, or other faces of higher purpose.
Key Words:
anatta, ancestors and heirs, art of dying, artes moriendi, bare bones, becoming soil again,
bucket lists, cessation, children and fame as longevity, closure, completion, conclusion,
continuity, culmination, decay, decomposition, degeneration, detachment, detritivores
have to eat too, digging deeply, elimination, endings, eulogy, expiration, facing fear and
finitude, finality, great levelers, grieving, impermanence, impersonality, importance of
living, inevitability, keeping life current, leave-taking, legacies, limited time, limits,
living lives less mortal, memento mori, metamorphosis, motivation, mourning, moving
on, mulch, new chapter, obsolescence, old growth, outgrowing the old, permanent loss,
plot twist, prioritization, process thinking, profound change, pruning, purging the trivial,
reaching down deep, recycling, release, remembrance, renewal, resistance to change,
revaluation, salvage, selection, seriousness, shedding, space for the new, task undone,
termination, Thanatos, things not yet accomplished, transformation, transition, transits,
transpersonal dimensions, truer measures and values, unfinished life, urgency, using
death as an advisor, wabi sabi, worlds to come.

anxiety, apathy, avoidance, careless values, clinging to the moribund, corruption allowed,
cowardice, decay, degeneration, delusion, denial, dragging the past, ego, failure, fear, fear
of change, half-hearted change, hoarding of life, ingratitude, insecurity, involuntary
change, lethargy, life unlived, powers of hell, regret, resignation, stagnation, tasks still
undone, thinking to kill time.
Components:
Death is assigned to the eighth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Nun,
symbolized by a fish, in its turn assigned to Scorpio and the 8th House. By way of this,
we can make a portmanteau study of the components Fixed/Succedent and Water in
Astrology. In the Yijing, Fixed Water is one of the Four Xiang, Tai Yin, which may be
represented by the Wu Xing of Water.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Scorpio, Cheshvan; Fixed/Succedent Water, Eighth House; Patron: Mars. Our
self-importance, import and the emotional means for its amplification, reaching within,
intensity, resourcefulness. Libidinal worlds, deep drives and power sources, sub-surface
self or selves, undercurrents, hidden communities of subliminal motives. Resources for
survival, facing the end and beyond. Emotional ability as potential energy, stress, the
energy of steam. Reserves and reservoirs, regenerative abilities, latent faculties, source-
taping behavior. Property, inheritance.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Nun, the eighth of the twelve Zodiac attributions, attributed
to Scorpio. Nun is a fish or water snake, a creature of the sub-liminal world, life down
deep and at one with its context, available if you know where to fish and with what.
Yijing: Xiang 0, Old or Tai Yin. The Four Xiang or Emblems have been assigned in this
system to the four Kerubic or most elemental signs of the Zodiac, the Fixed Signs of each
element. Xiang 0, Old Yin, is only problematic as Water because it comes from a forced
fit of the Chinese Scale of 5 or Wu Xing, to the Scale of 4 Greek Elements. Still, water
works as water. It is deeply emotional, internalizing, absorbing, resourceful, valuing, and
comprehending. Experience is felt as personally relevant, internal, private, intense and
important. The form it takes or finds itself in isn’t as important as where it has come from
and what it is becoming.
Temperance
#14, Temperance (Sōphrosynē), La Temperanza, La Temperance,
The Daughter of the Reconcilers: the Bringer-Forth of Life
Synthesis, Synergy, Emergence, Transcendence
Image: A transcendent, but still human figure, with some angelic characteristics, fair,
sporting a pair of useful-looking white wings, faces the reader but with gaze intent on an
alchemical act in progress at hand, to create a successful blend of animus and anima. She
(arbitrarily) straddles the bank of a stream, right foot in the water, left on the land,
grounded in both feminine elements. She pours water from a silver cup in her left hand
into a golden cup in her right. A long, simple white robe is her only attire. This bears a
triangle within a square embroidered on the breast. A golden, solar disk adorns her
forehead. Behind her, the stream winds upward into cloud-shrouded high country. To the
witness, the highlands behind are open. Above her head spans a rainbow, the spectrum or
continuum between dualistic, black-or-white extremes. She may be cutting wine with
water. This may be the original act depicted in this card, which has remained fairly
constant in design. But this is not abstinence, as more modern meanings of temperance
suggest. The word means ‘to moderate, bring to a proper or suitable state, to modify some
excessive quality, to restrain within due limits, to mix correctly in due proportion,
regulate, or manage.’ In this, the idea has ancient support from both the Stoics and the
Epicureans. We take a hand in the quality of our own experience. This sovereignty could
be represented by the crown that appears in the card’s background. She might also be
mixing measured amounts of the right ingredients in some due proportion, culminating
the alchemical ideal of turning lead into gold, darkness into light, or ignorance into
wisdom.
Moderation for its own sake is a fairly new meaning for Temperance, and abstinence is
an incorrect one. Temperance (Sōphrosynē), as one of four cardinal virtues, has always
involved restraint and self-control or self-management, but this is not for the purpose of
muting or damping down our experience. Rather, we are optimizing our lives by learning
to combine life’s various elements in better, more effective proportions. Temperance is a
Middle Path, not unlike the Buddha’s majjimha patipada, or Middle Way, between the
extremes of self-mortification and sensual gratification, or nihilism and eternalism. It’s a
search for the golden mean, ne nimium, not too much, of any one side. There exists an
etymological connection to the word temperament, which back in the Renaissance times
concerned balancing the four humors. There is also an earlier, less clear etymological root
in the word tempus, or time, which might suggest that proper timing, with both patience
and readiness, or synching our operations up with the rhythms that be. Doing things in
their due season is also an important side of this virtue. Taken together, these aspects
seem to imply a looking ahead to better outcomes than might be had if absent this virtue,
and the requisite learning and techniques involved in directing such improved outcomes.
This in turn implies a kind of science. Higher aims, higher purposes, transcendence of the
current conditions, or sublimation of baser or coarser forces, may also be implied. We
take charge of preconditions and raise ourselves on purpose.
The list of ingredients or properties which might be combined or better combined with
this card is long. It would have to include such complements as head and heart, light and
force, yin and yang, sanguine and melancholy, image and energetics, angels and demons,
fire and water, electricity and magnetism, physical and spiritual, flexibility and firmness,
male and female, thesis and antithesis, and perhaps even wine and water. The important
thing to remember is that the desired outcome is not the enhancement of either side of the
pair at the expense of the other, nor something so simple as compromise or conciliation,
but a tertium quid, a third thing, and frequently one that exists on some higher kind of
level than the inputs. When the outcome is on the same level we have a simple synthesis,
the reintegration of a dualism, the resolution of a paradox, the settling of an argument, the
balancing of an equation, the solving of a puzzle, even the genetics of a child. The third
thing here can usually be understood with a knowledge of the constituent parts. When the
outcome is on another level we have synergy, something greater than the sum of the parts.
When this is wholly unlike the parts, we have what is called emergence. The color blue,
emerging out of the structure of the eyeball and the activities of the brain, is a classic
example of emergence. Consciousness may well be another. Some emergent properties,
like blue, are wholly unpredictable from a knowledge of the parts. This is called strong
emergence. Others, like chemistry emerging from physics and molecular structure, might
be extrapolated given adequate knowledge of the inputs. This is called weak emergence.
Arthur Koestler tried to define creativity itself in terms of the outcomes of juxtaposing
dissimilar matrices or combining disparate elements, satisfying the preconditions or
doing the setup that allows the results to happen. We might have a good idea of what to
expect in the outcome, in which case we have techniques to put the parts together, or we
might just want to see what will happen, in which case we have an experiment that might
move us closer to science some day. On an internal level, we can learn to take charge of
own internal states with a kind of alchemy, and then to take aim at more suitable or
interesting states, like blending reason and wonder, for instance. Or memory and
forgiveness. We can take a thing like a craving, add some understanding, and emerge
with an intention. We have the power here to change our minds, to liberate ourselves by
making altogether new states of mind. We can also manage our cognitive resources
according to higher and longer purposes. We can use this for self-direction and agency,
instead of just being the results of our old internal conflicts. We dissolve our parts and
recombine them: this is the alchemical formula of solve et coagula.
The higher aim of this card is transcendence, liberation from lower or prior conditions,
releasing tension and pressure, freeing our potential, raising ourselves and making things
better on purpose, aiming a little bit higher. It is a kind of science. An important part of
this, however, is letting go of the antecedent conditions. One who casts spells combines
an image with a charge, but the spell must be cast away or let fly, and then forgotten. As
the Bard noted, “Peace, sisters, the charm’s wound up.” The archer combines his aim
with the tension in his bow, but he isn’t much of an archer if he tries to hang onto the
arrow. The Yijing counterpart is Gua 40, Release or Deliverance, the letting go that
follows a building up of tension. Like the link twixt Temperance and Sagittarius, this also
uses images from archery. It also speaks of forgiveness. The Chinese character pictures a
tool used to untie knots, hence undoing the knots that we’ve tied ourselves into, or the
solving of our puzzles and problems.
Key Words:
admixture, aims, alchemy, alloying, amalgamation, amelioration, balanced temperament,
blending, breeding as an art, calculated results, coalescence, combination, composition,
compounds, concoctions, consummation, control of preconditions, coordinating cognition
and affect, coping skills, creative visualization, deferring gratification, dispatch, due
proportion, emergence, energy of fusion, experimentation, extrapolation, far horizons,
golden mean, great work, higher aims or aspirations, higher education, higher learning,
higher standards, ingredients, integration, joining, juxtaposition, knowing when to stop,
liberating creative energy, measured action and response, metacognitive behavior, middle
path, moderation, modification, negation of either-or, negotiated outcome, optimization
of available forces, optimum combinations, prearrangement, proportionality, putting it all
together, recombination, reconciliation of opposites, rectification, regulation, resolution,
resolving, right timing, salvation, self-management, self-mastery, skillful combination,
solving puzzles, sōphrosynē, spell casting, sublimation, subordination to higher purposes,
symbiosis, synching, syncretism, synchronization, synergy, synthesis, temper as blending
of humors, tempering extreme states, theory becoming practice, timing, transcendence,
transformation, transmutation, using extremes to create a third thing, verification.

adulteration, apathy, cacophony, clash, competing interests, compromise, contamination,
corruption, dispassion, dissonance, discord, excess, excessive moderation, imbalance,
impatience, incompatibilities, inept handling, internal discord, nullification, numbness,
oil and water, unfortunate combinations, win-lose issues, wrong ingredients, wrong
timing, zero sums.
Components:
Temperance is assigned to the ninth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Samech, in its turn assigned to Sagittarius and the 9th House. By way of this, we can
make a portmanteau study of the components Mutable/Cadent and Fire in Astrology, as
well as Kan (Mutable) below Zhen (Fire) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sagittarius, Kislev; Mutable/Cadent Fire, Ninth House, Patron: Jupiter. The
quest beyond the known, extrapolation and reaching. Horizons, distancing, abstractions,
breadth, the big picture. Cross-cultural journeys, vacations, sabbatical leave. Exposure,
unfamiliarity, open-mindedness, understanding. Release, transcendence, going beyond,
the human potential. Exploration, discovery, panorama, overview. Aim and release, the
dynamics of delivery, realizing the vision, higher wisdom. The search for what survives
change. Reorganization, reformulation, redemption.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Samech, the ninth of the twelve zodiac attributions, tradition-
ally assigned to Sagittarius. I can’t make much sense of Samech as a prop or support,
relative to the meaning of Temperance. Not all of these symbolic alphabet associations
are useful without an excessive stretch of the imagination.
Yijing: Gua 40, Jie, Release, Deliverance. Bagua Kan (Mutable, Cadent) below, Zhen
(Fire) above. “Thunder and rain create. Release. The young noble pardons transgressions
and is broad-minded regarding offenses.” Tension from opposing forces builds up and
releases. Liberation, relief, letting go of stress. “Worthwhile west to south. Without a
place to go, a coming return is promising. With a place to go, promptness is promising.”
Resolution of things out of order or in the wrong place. Readjustment, disentangling,
reconciliation, synthesis, alleviation, sublimation, redemption, forgiveness. Delivery,
deliverance, dispatch, discharge.
The Devil
#15, Il Diavolo, Le Diable, Dweller on the Threshold without the Mystical Garden,
The Lord of the Gates of Matter: The Child of the Forces of Time
Nearsightedness, Ignorance, Delusion, Fear
Image: A large, horned satyr, in the neo-mythical figure of Baphomet, the Sabbatic
Goat or Horned Goat of Mendes, is squatting on a stone plinth or pedestal, his right hand
raised in some wicked benediction mocking the Hierophant’s gesture, his left hand
holding a torch pointing downward. He has the obligatory inverted pentagram on his
forehead, pointing to his third eye. Chained to the base of his pedestal are a naked man
and woman, seeming to suffer greatly, but one notes that the chains around their necks are
loose enough to slip off at will. For an alternate image, a mean-looking, goat-foot demon,
not Pan, sits atop the far railing of a small wooden pen or corral amidst a pastoral setting,
taunting a smaller human couple, naked and cringing against the nearer railing. With one
hand the demon entertains a huge erection, leering lecherously at the humans, perhaps
about to break out in sadistic laughter, while his captives worry over who will be
sodomized next. One may get the idea that they were out here building a pen to contain
their goats, and this demon happened by, looking for sport. Out of fear and myopia, the
humans accept domestication without contract, trapped in a self-limited reality, rather
than simply hopping the fence, for this god has waxed mighty in his role as scapegoat. He
has become all of the enemies gods, and all of their enemies guilts and fears. But he’s
only a fantasy, not the real evil. The real evil is simply human blindness, obsession,
ignorance, delusion, fear, cowardice, and voluntary bondage, having turned pathological
and against this life, perhaps all life, and this world.
Along with the Tower card, this was the last card to join the present deck. To begin
with, there are a couple of things that this card is not. The Devil is not the evil here,
although evil puts down important roots into the pathologies represented here. Nor is the
Devil card a depiction of Cernunnos, Faunus, or Pan, the hoofed, satyr god embodying
the forces of nature and sexuality, the pagan and hairy side of ourselves, the Earth god,
groom of the Mother, lord of the world’s libido. However, it may still depict a caricature
of Pan made into a scapegoat for our human failures. This is the Devil that’s painted by
human immaturity, the Bogeyman conjured to frighten children into obedience. He’s the
enemy that leaders like to use to control their subjects. He’s the adversarial attorney who
wants us to see only one side of things. He’s our saintly perversion, turning us contra
naturam, against our own nature. He’s our demonized flesh and our sensations, our
denunciation of the very material that brings us into being. He is Saturn, lord of our
limitations, twisted into Satan the liar. He’s mankind’s bedeviling characteristics and
influences. Sometimes in doing his worst, he does us great favors. And sometimes a
minion, as advocatus diaboli, makes excellent arguments against anthropocentric human
self-righteousness.
We look at the limits to our vision here. In our ignorance, we act and react on limited
information, but do so with an arrogant certainty. It’s not matter that drags the soul down:
there is nothing inherently wrong with matter or the material world. But it does have the
problem of being opaque. We have a hard time seeing past what’s right in front of us. Our
vision is limited by the nearest surface and horizon. All that we see are the limits to our
vision, and so what we see is too often all that we get. This is what culture builds on,
forgetting the far horizons, so that limited human culture becomes the whole world. We
live by fake needs and false assumptions. We live for the latest fashions and fads. We
move according to short-term trends. We get bewitched and fascinated by trinkets and
baubles. We judge by surface appearances, facades, and hypocrisies. We are glamored.
This is the core of the Yijing counterpart, Gua 22, Adornment, showing the light of the
flame blocked at the foot of the mountain, lighting up the valley and the local terrain, but
nothing else. This leads to the advice to make only small and local decisions, to enjoy the
adornments, but to understand their limits. This connection will be more challenging to
someone who has understood this as Wilhelm’s weak idea of Grace. But the core problem
is nearsightedness, with possible slips into a more pejorative short-sightedness. These
goatish images, however, from both this card and Capricorn, suggest that nearsight can
still be useful, as the goat must know precisely where he stands, with total concentration,
if he is ever to get to the top of the canyon wall, where the big views await. Local activity
is only a prison when context, the big picture or far horizon is lost.
In a way, a fearful reaction to this card is itself the core meaning. The self-reflexive
and negative emotions like fear, intimidation, guilt, and shame have all cemented a
generally appropriate place in primate and human evolution, but they are also easily
perverted and subverted. It starts at the edge of self, as fear for the boundary comes with
the boundary. Of these, fear may be the most easily played, and enemies most easily
painted. Nietzsche suggested that “everywhere that a culture posits evil, it gives
expression to a relationship of fear, and thus a weakness” (WTP p. 530). Then, by way of
naming these devils, the culture attempts its conquest. Thus, when we want to understand
a culture’s weakness, we might first take a look at its devils. In the West of the
Abrahamic religions, evil is often the material world, nature, gender differences, the
flesh, sensuality, eros, and sexuality, and then secondarily, all of those cultures that
disagree with ours, the ones we wish to conquer. An antipathy to life is the first weakness
here, then our approach to diversity. Our cultural paranoia is playable in both its
delusions, of persecution and of grandeur. Our devil is our own shadow, which, as Jung
explains, “personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself
and yet is always thrusting itself upon him directly or indirectly: for instance inferior
traits of character and other incompatible tendencies” (CW 9 i, par. 513). At bottom, the
Devil is our cowardice, fear, shame, and delusion, born of our ignorance. Then we can
find no better way to excuse our failures to than to simply imprison ourselves and claim
helplessness, to blame our compulsions and addictions, temptations and seductions, our
fate and circumstances, our puppet masters and upbringing, our victimizers, our diseases,
tyrants and devils, as just the way things are. We chain ourselves, but still hold the keys.
Liberation is in large part a question of where new light is shed, and bigger pictures for
bigger minds. We get outside the hall of mirrors, we come to understand our projections
and reflections on the surfaces of things. We stop running from the material from which
we emerge, and understand our problem was not loving matter or life enough. Perhaps we
find the courage to confront our demons. Alcoholics might call alcohol called cunning,
baffling, and powerful, although it’s none of these. The problems are in us. Neither will
their fears let them see that a cold-turkey withdrawal is no worse than the next two
scheduled hangovers. Victim and disease mentalities abdicate our power to change, even
where they might hold some truth. Remember that the biblical Satan is a lawyer, wanting
you to see only his own side of things.
“Get thee behind me Satan” really means that he still has value, but that we are finally
ready to lead. Ironically, the Satanists, by taking on the point of view of the adversary or
the other, in whatever psychodrama they play with whatever cultural props, wind up with
a richer picture of things than the ones who fear their devil out of their fear of a god. It’s
really all about exploring and crossing the boundaries set by cultural fears. Even the
Catholics employ their Devil’s Advocate. Finally, of course, we need to take a look at the
Devil’s playful side, his devilishness, his mischievousness, his eagerness to show us the
silliness of our limited ways. The old goat Capricornus is the root of the word caprice,
whimsy, even if that dates back to when he was just a kid. To sport with the Devil is
educational play. Evil is something else. Evil is dragging your son to the altar to kill him
to prove your faith, and then convincing your people that that was a good thing. Did you
know that the name Isaac meant laughter?
Key Words:
acknowledging limits, acting locally, advocatus diaboli, allure, attachments, bedevilment,
beguilement, blind impulse, blinders, boundaries, caprice, captivation, chthonic deity,
concentration, courage to look and see, density, devil’s advocate, disenchantment and
disillusionment as positive outcomes, distortion, distraction, diversion, entanglement,
enthrallment, enticement, facade, false needs, fascination, fashion, glamor, glamoring,
hard facts, fixation, ignorance, illusion, immediacy, inability to see error, incomplete
information, inhibition, insight into shadows, instinct, liberation, limitation, limited
horizons, limited options, limited reality, limiting beliefs, local activity also needs global
outlook, losing sight of long views, materialism, materiality, mischief, monkey traps,
myopia, narrowed options, nature, near horizons, nearsightedness, need bigger picture,
opacity, ornament, panic, phobia, preoccupation, projection, psychodrama, realism,
reflection, restriction to fashion, scapegoating, seduction, self-deception, self-limitation,
shortcomings, speciousness, sure footedness, surface value, throwing the chains off,
transgression’s usefulness.

abdication, addiction, adversarialism, amathia, anthropocentrism, bait, bewitchment,
bogeyman, bondage, captivity, chains, compulsion, deception, demonization of the other,
defeatism, denial, delusion, determinism, egocentrism, ensnarement, entrapment, evil,
exceptionalism, false evidence appearing real, fascination, fatalism, fate, fear, fetters,
glamor spells, graven images and false idols, futility, guilt, gullibility, helplessness,
hypocrisy, ideé fixe, ignorance, indulgence, instant gratification, intimidation, intolerance,
lures, Mammon, misplaced loyalties, myopia, narrow mindedness, obsession, obstinacy,
overreaction, paranoia, perversion, pettiness, possessiveness, projection, propaganda,
repression, seduction, self-imposed bondage, servitude, shackles, shallowness, sham,
shame, shortsightedness, slavery, superficiality, suppression, temptation, traps, tyranny,
victim mentality, voluntary bondage, willful ignorance.
Components:
The Devil is assigned to the tenth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Ayin, in its turn assigned to Capricorn and the 10th House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Cardinal/Angular and Earth in Astrology, as well
as Li (Cardinal) below Gen (Earth) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Capricorn, Tevet; Cardinal/Angular Earth, Tenth House, Patron: Saturn. The
winter solstice, the worst of the darkness. Local activity, concentrated environment, an
acceptance of scale, clarification of local interface, intensification of contrast, givens, due
regard, heedfulness. Sure-footedness, knowing where one stands, watching your step,
nearsight and the exaltation permitted by surety. Profession, authority figures, mastery,
realization. Realism, tough judgment of strength and weakness. Attainment, distinction,
challenge, defiance, climbing. Relation to extant powers, due appraisal, thoroughness.
Getting and keeping position. Self-appraisal, self-justification, the following or setting of
standards. Tough-mindedness.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Ayin, the tenth of the twelve zodiac attributions, traditionally
assigned to Capricorn. The eye symbolism is apt and usable. Perception is limited to the
visible surface of things, appearances, projection, and reflections that reverse a picture.
Some of the eye's limitations carry no blame, as with the inability to see past the visible
light spectrum.
Yijing: Gua 22, Bi, Adornment, Grace, Bagua Li (Cardinal, Angular) below, Gen (Earth)
above. “At the foot of the mountain is flame. Adornment. The young noble clarifies
numerous policies, but does not presume to execute justice.” The limitations to our vision
need to be acknowledged so that the real importance of things can be kept in perspective.
“Satisfaction. A little worthwhile to have somewhere to go.” Proximity has big effects on
apparent size or importance. We can dazzle ourselves completely with the superficial and
trivial. There is a place for the trappings of culture, elegance, and beauty, but for more
important and long-term decisions, we need something deeper and more authentic than
fashion and adornment. The cultural artifact is not always substance enough.
The Tower
#16, The Lightning Struck Tower, La Torre, La Sagitta, La Maison de Dieu,
The House of God, Le Feu Du Ciel, Fire from the Sky, The Lightning,
The Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty
Consequences, Deconstruction, Purge, Liberation of Energy
Image: The Tower, a grand minaret or a consummate lighthouse, is shown in about

half of its original glory, halfway to heaven or finished. But already it draws some heavy
heavenly fire, as a bolt of forked lightning shatters the structure in several places, sending
stone rubble, architects and priests, the crown of creation, tumbling towards the ground.
The lightning bears no ill will, has no message of vengeance or retribution. This is power
behaving as power behaves: it follows its own way, from positive charge to ground. The
humans so anxious to rise above forget that heaven begins below, right at their feet. But
their doctrine permits no divergence, no heresy, only narrow-minded one-pointedness,
monumental ego, and towering ambition. This is beyond a polite wake-up call. They are
not building to witness heaven, they want to show heaven how bright and mighty they
are. The tower and forked lightning contrast paradigms of convergent (pyramidal) and
divergent (dendritic) paths into power, power that has a single high point for a purpose
and power that has propagation. The bush outlives the pyramid by branching out and
going to seed. Hierarchical structure is a more temporary model than elaboration or
diversification. The longer perspective might even celebrate the now much-improved
skyline view and the recent production of much useful, recylable rubble. And now there’s
an old foundation for archeologists to draw conclusions from.
This is not the Tower of Babel, although this has been a common suggestion. Nowhere
in the early literature was this tower struck by lightning, and certainly not in Gen. 11:4-9.
Midrashic interpretation does suggest that the top third was burned, but no lightning is
mentioned. In other versions it was simply abandoned. Yet Lightning or Fire from
Heaven (Le Feu Du Ciel) was an early name for this Trump, along with The House of
God (La Maison de Dieu). Despite this, however, the confusion of tongues and dispersion
of peoples is consistent with the core meaning of this card, and so is a deep concern with
the pride of man exceeding the limits allowed by the powers that be. Nature has forces
that dwarf ours in scope and power, even the tiny forces like erosion and genetic
mutation, since these have geological time in which to do their work, while we do not.
When our pride, arrogance, and shortsightedness urge us beyond our limits, it is not
divine wrath, retribution, or retaliation that we need to watch out for. The simple
consequences of human stupidity are apocalypse and havoc enough, backed by natural
forces obeying the rules we ignore. We might wonder if any specific tower was on the
first card designer’s mind. It could have been a wish for the fall of papal Rome. We might
also wonder if someone hadn’t noticed that the tallest buildings got struck the most often
by lightning, and that those were the houses of the Lord with their proud, erect steeples.
But it’s physics plus ignorance, not divine wrath.
This Trump was already well along in its existence when it picked up the astrological
planet Mars for a correlation and patron. Here, we also add a similar correspondence with
Bagua 4, Zhen, Thunder. This altered the meaning some, internalizing or ‘subjectivizing’
the card, making it easier to identify with the lightning instead of the tower or its
overthrown inhabitants. But we can still find ourselves on the wrong end of this process.
What we might want to do to avoid this is find enough humility to integrate some
physical science into our plans to express our towering magnificence and glorious
erections, and use sturdier stuff than self-congratulation for foundation stones. Among the
ideas we can draw from physics is that power seeks a grounding, and that power is more
easily drawn than produced, and more easily conducted than contained. We can note that
the jagged edge of the lightning actually tracks its shortest route, since this goes where
resistance is least. Power likes gradients and differentials, so we can be more careful
where we build up our charges. Where passing through resistance, things are going to
heat up. And all of our efforts at combating gravity are only grants of potential energy to
the forces of collapse. To make the most of our linking with Mars, we want to be thinking
more in terms of our empowerment than our personal power, and maybe reread Sunzi’s
Bingfa, and even take a course in jujitsu or aikido.
Playing the warrior here suggests there is something in opposition, something to purge
or overcome, something to deconstruct or dismantle, clear away or open up, or help to
fall, or ground. Maybe we open up some possibilities, or clear away some errors, or indict
some malefactors. Righting a wrong or an error is not a disaster, except to the wrong or
erroneous. We will be more effective here if we side with powers greater than those we
oppose, and belong to the larger forces of liberation and evolution. This might remind us
of JFK’s words, “Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution
inevitable.” Our defensive walls are also prisons, rigid structures are brittle and build up
forces, restrictions create sin, prohibition organizes crime, and resistance makes heat.
Mars at his best will move like a fluid. Changes will be as abrupt as the thing which is
changed is off course, and unpleasant in proportion to the distance of a thing from where
it needs or ought to be. And in the end, we will want to move with the time, as the
Spanish say: “El tiempo y yo, contra cualquiera de los dos: Time and I, against any two.”
Much of our delusion these days will use the word sustainable incorrectly. Nature and
natural law will define what this means, although it might take ten-thousand years, and
this will be the last word, and will deconstruct what doesn’t belong. The best defense and
security is good health and good practice, in accord with ius naturale or natural law.
The Lightning Struck Tower is an education for us. It can be a sudden revelation or an
exposé, even an apocalypse. As the great Anonymous wrote, “A mistake that humbles
you is preferable to an achievement that makes you arrogant.” This will usually involve
some unlearning on somebody’s part. One might rediscover glasnost and perestroika. Or
a paradigm might collapse and cause a sea change in science. From one side this might be
called a calamity, from another, a big relief. It’s probably best to go with relief when we
want to take the long view and learn how to build better structures. Anything unexpected
here is due to imperfect expectations.
Key Words:
accumulated stress, adrenaline, asking for it, assailability, baptism by fire, bolt from the
blue, breakdown as exothermic, breaking free, breakthrough, catharsis, challenge, change
of belief structure, channeling, clearance, clearing of a channel, collapse, conducting,
consequences overdue, corrective force, crisis, critical mass, deconstruction, demolition,
destruction, disrupting routines, drawing down power, elimination, emergency, end of
illusion, energy of potential, eradication, eureka moment, exasperation, excitement,
exhilaration, exigency, exposé, exposure, grounding, hierarchical structure, indictment,
indignation, instability, inviting the flash, jolt, learning process, least resistance, leveling,
liberation of energy, lightning rods, market correction, metabolic heat, natural forces
reasserting themselves, negative selection, nullification, overambitious design, paradigm
shift, pent up energy, pique, potential energy, premises fail, punctuated change, purgation,
purification, radical shift, radical surgery, radical transformation, reactions, realignment,
reality check, rearranging, repercussions, revelation, shakeup, shattering insight, shock,
shock value, snapping, starting over, startle, structural failure, surprise, unsustainability,
unsustainable infrastructure, untenable constraints, upset, voltage as potential.

arrogance, assailability, bankruptcy, bedlam, blowout, breakdown, brittle belief, cascade
failure, chastisement, collapse, crash, critical defect, debacle, defensiveness, dispersion,
engineering failure, evacuation, false permanence or security, havoc, hubris, imperfect
expectation, lack of resiliency, negative charges, ossification, overthrow, presumption,
pride comes before a fall, pride of man, reactions to restriction, resistance, rigidity, rude
awakening, ruin, rupture, security becomes a prison, seeking peace by preparing for war,
separateness, structures built on faulty premises and weak foundations, unsustainability,
upheaval, violence, wreckage.
Components:
The Tower is a straightforward symbol. Portmanteaus may be made with its associations
to Mars, Geburah, and now Zhen, and second-tier astrological associations to Aries and
Scorpio and the 1st and 8th Houses.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Mars, Madim; Thermodynamics, drive, manipulation, and dominance. The
muscular system, kinetics, metabolic heat. The warrior within, the force of character,
courage, assertiveness, competition and challenge, control, gamesmanship. The battery or
arsenal of survival techniques, learned and innate stratagems, ego as a backfire of the
need for viability. The worth of survival. Finding energetic alternatives to wrath or anger,
as the martial doesn’t need wrath or even enmity. Power as force effected with sense,
dynamic imbalance, assertion, stamina, perseverance, effort, self-motivation. Pep and
enthusiasm.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Phe. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Phe with various other
Planets, with little agreement. Phe as Mouth might be connected to a voice of command,
and also the motivating force of appetite. And who is to say that a good warrior isn’t
allowed to bite?
Yijing: Bagua 4, Zhen, Thunder, Arousal. Zhen, as Thunder, symbolizes stimuli by which
we are called to action. This can be thunder from within, such as the primary needs or
drives for movement and exercise, to express energy, to relieve tension, or to manipulate
the immediate environment. Or the thunder can come from without, as an impact, or a
surprise, a shock to the system, a jump start, an awakening of the fight-or-flight or startle
responses and the resultant flood of adrenaline. How this force strikes one is a function of
learning and maturity, as well as of our readiness to seize and make use of this fresh, raw
energy. Thunder, by tradition, slept underground in winter, awoke in springtime. This is
the second half of the third dimension, energy, and its vectors. Awakening, shaking up,
impulse, discharge, exhilaration, quickening, storminess.
The Star
#17, Le Stella, L'Etoile,
The Daughter of the Firmament, the Dweller between the Waters,
Idealism, Inspiration, Implementation, Intelligibility
Image: A young woman kneels in starlight in the nude at a stream bank, with her right
foot in the water, left knee on the land, not unlike the bank seen in the Temperance card.
Overhead are eight eight-pointed stars, one of them much larger than the others. The
woman holds a small urn in each hand. With the right she returns water to the stream,
propagating concentric circles, with the left she pours water on the land and watches it
return as a tributary, perhaps a tribute. The background is lush, as stream beds are wont to
be, and on a low tree branch an ibis stand watch. This could be a cleansing ritual or an
offering, or it could depict a moment of epiphany, as when the process of irrigation was
discovered by a humble water bearer, who was or soon became a divinity. It could speak
to the discovery or creation of new ideas in general. It could also be thought to contrast
yet two more paradigms of power, propagation (ripples in the stream) and convergence
(watershed). Other than these attempts at explanation, it’s a challenge to see this woman
as doing anything useful here. But irrigation is a good model for what understanding and
science can do. The card could celebrate this discovery. The Star can also symbolize the
thing we look up to, or look to for guidance and inspiration, the ideals that guide us.
Mythological attributions for the water bearer vary widely, from Electra, the missing
sister of the seven Pleiades, to Ganymede, to Hapi, the androgynous deity of the annual
Nile flood, vital to crop irrigation, to Hebe, who became the young male cupbearer to the
Greek gods. We may find it sufficient here to allow this young woman her humanity,
perhaps seeing her as performing a rite combining a ritual cleansing and an offering. It is
unclear whether the stars represent real stars. This is not the star of the Magi. While much
mention is made of both the Pleiades (in Taurus) and Sirius (in Canis Major), these two
aren’t close enough to be called an ogdoad. The Egyptians, however, set their flood
calendar by the rising of Sirius with the Sun. This at least suggests that we have learned
something about the timing of celestial or sidereal events with the seasonal happenings
on Earth, connections between the above and below. This refers to real scientific
discovery and the original clockworks, and not merely astrology. This may also suggest
the word con-sider-ation, being with the stars, as opposed to dis-aster, going against
them. The eight-pointed star is reminiscent of the seasons and their midpoints, and the
compass, orientation in time and space, and the regularity of our cosmos. Moving with
the stars, giving things their due season, is only interpreted as favor or grace, but
ultimately it’s about intelligibility and intelligence that perceives it. The Ibis in the RWS
deck is sacred to Hermes and Thoth. We know not what the nudity might mean here,
unless this acknowledges a virtue in truthfulness, or having nothing to hide, and this
being perfectly fine, and art on the higher planes.
Higher and lower planes of existence are contrasted here, and a degree of connection
or attempted connection between them is suggested. We aren’t going to assert here that
there is a higher or astral plane of ideas, or mysteries of some higher divine thought, but
there are certainly higher or more intellectual levels of abstraction that we use to
understand our cosmic context and what this means to us down below. We also perform
rituals to put our minds into these higher spaces, rituals of cleansing and purification, of
baptism and consecration. We try to recombine thought with feeling, as we do with hope,
giving focus and a point to feeling, and content or some charge to thought. We seek to
bridge the gulf between high and low, the disconnect that we make between the planes of
our existence, between the ideal and the real, between wishing and wanting. But we have
yet to learn the unwisdom of severing the pure white lotus from its roots way down in the
muck. This connection is what needs to be restored. The spirit of the lotus didn’t descend
from the stars, it emerged from the muck, which is made from the dust of exploded stars.
The Star presents us with with challenges accompanying farsightedness. This point of
light may give us guidance or direction, but it also sheds little light on the path before us.
There is information here that may be useful in the long-term, but it’s not accompanied
by specific, practical advice. There is also little warmth or energy. This of course is a
common critique of idealism. The mindset may even ignore the nearby completely, and
do its thinking in meaningless sound bites, formulae, and platitudes with no practical
application. The distant view is also more general, and more easily met with consensus.
The stars and the sky look very much the same from the other ends of the earth. Without
parallax, there is less relativity between points of view. As such, the Star can refer to
ideas that bring large numbers of people into agreement. There are also larger scales
involved, literally light years, and longer time horizons, when the great clockworks is
pondered. Expanding our horizons extends our possibilities, as the scientific view has
done. This contributes to grander thinking, which is still a good context for looking at our
local and short term endeavors. As the slogan goes, think globally, act locally; or as
someone added, think galactically, act terrestrially. Yet farsightedness remains a vision
problem if we cannot make the adjustment to the local and practical.
Clarity of vision is the first of three aspects of the usefulness of this card. While some
have mentioned insight and introspection, this is more like outsight and extrospection.
There is an objectivity here that handles the perceptions, turning them this way and that
until they make the most sense. While this process may be unconscious and spontaneous,
it isn’t innocent. The lenses that we use do things to the light. We will have our signs of
cosmos and promise of order, even if we have to turn the truth inside out. The second part
is turning this vision into a goal, the use of the Star for guidance, and sometimes for our
skyhook, or deus ex machina. Ad astra per aspera. Assuming that all of our problems
will have a techno-fix is one example of this. We turn the distant light into a hope or a
plan, a better example, a new lease on life, a ruling thought, or a rallying point around
which to pull ourselves together. Sometimes we pick the wrong star, or follow for all the
wrong reasons, and bright prospects lead to dim futures. Sometimes we learn to do better,
and still the stars do not applaud. At least we sometimes make an effort to set our sights
above ourselves, on higher standards and purposes, and seek higher wisdom in earnest.
The third part is to draw down this higher wisdom into the physical plane. The irrigation
pictured in the card is a model of what understanding and science can do, the place of
insight or genius, and its ability to change the world. But the big vision is of the distant
and not the nearby, where its applications are. Like the dim starlight above, cognitive
resources are not themselves energy, and starlight is lacking in knowhow. What we learn
must be applied, with our lowly biological forces, before we can call it real. Our biology
must adopt it and put it to work or into play. Regardless of how we might think of
ourselves, no matter how our philosophers and poets might praise us, human is as human
does. A higher vision might lift many of us up, but it won’t do much to elevate the
hypocrites and the parasites. The wisdom that we get from above must be lived and
practiced, or else it means nothing.
Key Words:
ablution, abstraction, affirmations, appointments, aspiration, bright idea, charged thought,
clarification, clarity, cleansing, connecting the dots, consecration, contemplation,
contrast, cosmos, creative visualization, deep time, definition, discovery, distant goal,
distinctness, dreaming, elegant idea, envisioning, eureka moment, exemplars, extended
possibilities, faith, farsightedness, focal point, focus, frames of reference, futurity,
generalization, goal, guidance, high-lights, higher aim, higher meaning, higher-order
thinking, hope, horizons, icons, idealism, ideal as skyhook, ideas, ideation, ideology,
illumination, imagination, implementation, indication, inspiration, instrumentality,
intelligibility, intent, knowledge of resources, long-term goal or process, longer view,
lucidity, luminosity, metasolution, mindset, natural law, navigation, objective, optimism,
orders of magnitude, organization, orientation, overview, perceived order, point of
emphasis, point of reference, possibility, prediction, promise, prophesy, prospect,
purification, purpose, rallying point, ray of hope, redemption, reference, renewal,
resolution, resolve, resourcefulness, revelation, techne, transcending vision, utility, vision
in common, vision of the future, visionary.

crisis of faith, deceived hope, devaluing smaller successes, disappointment, disconnect,
haughtiness, high-mindedness, illusionment, impatience, impracticality, inapplicability,
lost purpose, mindset ignores the near, mirage, misguidedness, overgeneralization,
narrow views, pessimism, reifying analogy or idea, resignation, wishful thinking.
Components:
The Star is assigned to the eleventh of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Tzaddi, in its turn assigned to Aquarius and the 11th House. By way of this, we can make
a portmanteau study of the components Fixed/Succedent and Air in Astrology. In the
Yijing, Fixed Air is one of the Four Xiang, Shao Yang, which may be represented by the
Wu Xing of Metal.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Aquarius, Shevat; Fixed/Succedent Air, Eleventh House; Patron: Saturn. The
crystalline winter sky, resolution, stark thought, thought as a vessel, instrumentality, the
fixed idea as tool or means, science, navigation, references, mindset, resolution, resolve,
vision, visualizing the goal, entertainment of thought, hopes and fears, social and natural
order and organization, structures, objectives. Future tense of lifestyle, social coalition
and organization around shared objectives, goals and expectations, cause celebré, rallying
point, platform.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Tzaddi, the eleventh of the twelve Zodiac attributions, attrib-
uted to Aquarius. Tzaddi as a Fish Hook is an implement, a sort of a skyhook, drawing
fish upward.
Yijing: Xiang 2, Young or Shao Yin. The Four Xiang or Emblems have been assigned in
this system to the four Kerubic or most elemental signs of the zodiac, the fixed signs of
each element. Xiang 2, Young Yin, is problematic as Metal because it comes from a
forced fit of the Chinese Scale of 5 or Wu Xing, to the Scale of 4 Greek Elements. Still,
metal works as air in Tarot, especially by way of its association with Swords. Metal is
said to concern conformation, direction, application, abstraction, cognition. It’s incisive,
idealizing, appraising, defining, dividing, reflective, analytical and investigative. This is
inconsistent with Astrology’s notion that Aquarius is a masculine sign. In correlating
systems, there are nearly always a few minor inconsistencies like this.
The Moon
#18, La Lune, La Lune, Twilight,
The Ruler of Flux and Reflux: the Child of the Sons of the Mighty
Ebb Tides, Low Light Conditions, Primitive Mind, Instinct
Image: This trump depicts a dreamscape, dimly lit by a waning crescent moon, just
hours before dawn. Most cards show an astronomically impossible moon: horns should
point up and to the right, away from where the sun will rise. The dreamer approaches the
eastern shore of an estuary or slough, at ebb tide or low flow. A crayfish crawls onto the
land towards the dim light. There seems barely enough water for the crayfish to live in,
but hints of the fish of Pisces still further down ripple what little water remains. From the
bank, a path winds upward into the distance, through a forbidding landscape, passing first
between a wolf or jackal and a domestic canine, tame and wild both howling at the moon,
then between two ziggurat towers, with battlements, forbidding in their lack of light from
within. Ahead on the path, almost between the towers, is a female figure, robed, and
carrying a longbow. This path seems the only way out, and the moon seems hungry for
souls who make it this far. The feeling is chthonic and spooky. But note that this is still a
Trump, or a mode of triumph. It speaks to our unfathomably long and nearly blind
evolutionary struggle towards the light, from unconsciousness into sentience, and to the
amazing subliminal brain that we’ve grown in the process. The sense is, in Tennyson’s
words, “As if some lesser god had made the world, but had not force to shape it as he
would.” Life has to find its own way out of here, like a soul ascending through the
unconscious. Evolution will find its own way to emerge into the light, through irritability,
then sentience, then consciousness, and then perhaps spirit. Our exalted status notwith-
standing, life remains subject to ebb tides and low-light conditions, and sometimes when
it runs low on sunlight, it needs to fall back on more primitive modes of cognition, long
adapted to murkier conditions, but much less clear about what we can know.
There are light and dark sides to the symbolism of the Moon, just as there are to the
planetoid sphere. Developers of the Tarot have persistently gravitated towards the High
Priestess to represent the White-Goddess or Diana’s side of the meaning, and so, half
counter-intuitively, left the Moon card to represent the dark side and eventually the sign
of Pisces. This in its turn provides the most obvious clue to look to the natural Houses of
the Signs for sympathies with their Trump assignments. In this case we have the Twelfth
house, the darkest of them all, with its self-undoing, secrets, delusions, undercurrents, and
hidden enemies. Spooky. This house is physically where the waning crescent moon is
before sunrise, as depicted on the card. While the alphabet symbolism from the Kabbalah
isn’t always very relevant, the association here to Qoph, as the back of the head, is useful,
as it suggests the older, more primitive and instinctive portions of our brains, the fish,
lizard, and early mammalian cortices that we still carry with us, with their basic cognitive
functions and fuzzier logic, together with the fight-or-flight feelings. And as dim as these
functions are, they at least kept single every one of our ancestors alive long enough to
successfully breed the next generation, and did so through several mass extinction events.
And even today, most of our decisions are made in the lower brain and unconsciously, by
feelings and emotional reactions, many of which are our fears and insecurities. The
unconscious is far more than a burial, compost, or septic pit for things discarded or
forgotten. More goes on in darkness than in light. It’s this ancient mind that’s waking up
in this card, at least as well as it can. But we will probably be reminded that we are still
not all that evolved. Instinctual intelligence is hasty and approximate at best, almost
reflexive, and largely projection and guesswork. It jumps to conclusions. This is the mind
that strings our flashes of dream parts together into coherent dreams. It’s the mind thrilled
by Lovecraft and Poe. It’s also the mind that divines, and does mysteriously well at times.
When we lose or remove the oversight of our higher cognitive functions, this is what we
fall back on. We are back in the tide pools of our deep past, and here we must again face
all those ghosts from our earlier days, the creatures from the id, and the demons from our
scariest dreams, without the aid of reason, logic, and language. This happens in madness,
or lunacy, of course, and depression, but it also happens during our ebb tides, and in
periods of exhaustion. As Nietzsche wrote, “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas
we conquered long ago.”
Low flow, low tide, and low-light conditions characterize this card. It’s our inconstant
moon. This may show us ourselves in a much diminished state, groping our way through
shadows and phantasms, wading through the muck, in used or half light, perhaps having
lost our orientation, direction, or purpose. The primordial depths of the psyche come to
the surface, but that’s all that seems to be rising up here, because the surface is falling.
The feelings that kept us buoyant may have sunk into a depression, leaving just broody
moods. Reason and words aren’t helping. We just question and exaggerate everything,
and need to be reminded that it’s no time for big decisions. The Yijing counterpart is Gua
47, Exhaustion or Oppression. The waters are drained out of us. We have little left to
defend ourselves with. We’re beset by the world around us. The texts of the lines have a
lot of fun with this, trying to tease us back into lightening up, advising us to lose the
speeches and the complaints, to shut up, to mistrust what we see and hear, and just rest, or
wait for rising waters to return. We could also have some fun in the tide pools. We could
stomp in some of those puddles. This is, after all, where we came from, so long ago, or
not so long ago. We are not descended spirits or angels. We began in these pools. We can
still dream ourselves around, and learn to direct our dreams as long as we are having
them. We could take a little journey through that crack between the worlds. Yes, we are in
a suggestible state, but suggestion can work both ways. There are still good times to be
had at low tide. At least pain and suffering might be optional, and a little rest could be
welcome.
Today we think we’ve outgrown the dark ages, the passing age of Pisces. But if we
had, we might appreciate mystery more. The deep remains the final frontier, the benthos
of the ocean as well as the benthos of the mind. On the whole, humans are still quite
superstitious. We get into these depths and panic instead of explore. We still fear our
ancient selves and call them beasts. We still fear the unclean things that hide in the
womb, and act out our mental illnesses on young girls and women. We are haunted by
our own origins. We will persecute midwife and medicine man, instead of giving them
chickens and goats in trade for their gifts. Our repression leads to sepsis. We have yet to
master the crises of faith, the sloughs of despond, the dark nights of the soul, the
weltschmerz, the existential nausea. To think that we are not angels come down from on
high is cause for great nihilism and despair. The succubus and incubus still make the
blood run cold. But because of these fears, the dark side of the Moon must be faced and
explored. Because of this, we must make friends with our witches. It’s our cowardice that
gives us reason for despair.
Key Words:
affective substrata, apophenia, apparitions, approximations, chaos, cracks between the
worlds, crisis of fate [sic], dark ages, deep cycles, deep past, deep time, dim suspicion,
diminished states, dimness, divination, drawing or tugging forces, dreaming, earliest
emergence, early evolution, ebb tide, eeriness, exaggeration, fight or flight, fishing the
unconscious, fluctuation, foreboding, fuzzy logic, groping forth, heightened emotions,
hidden forces, imagination, inarticulation, instincts, insufficient light, integrating the
shadow, lack of clarity, levatus de profundo, limbic brain, liminal or threshold awareness,
low bat rays, low flow, low light, lower consciousness, lucid dreaming, maya, moodiness,
murk, mystery, native heuristics, nebulousness, netherworlds, obscurity, occult forces,
older brains, organic knowledge, paredolia, perplexity, phantasms, pre-rational cognition,
preconsciousness, premonitions, primal nature, primitive mind, primordial depths,
projection, psychoanalysis, runaway imagination, sleepwalking, spookiness, strangeness,
subconsciousness, subliminals, substrates, suggestibility, suggestion, the misunderstood
unconscious, tidal forces, tide pools, tugging or pull of the moon, twilight, uncertainties,
uncharted psyche, unclear guidance, unconsciousness, undercurrents, vagueness, wilds,
wilderness, wildness.

bewilderment, bewitchment, bias, bitterness, confusion, cowardice, deception, dejection,
delirium, delusion, depression, despair, disorientation, distortion, downward spirals,
dredging, error, exhaustion, existential nausea, false friends, fearfulness, futility, gloom,
hallucination, hauntings, hungry ghosts, hysteria, illusion, inconstancy, inherited modes
of self-deception, insanity, irrationality, lunacy and lunatics, misunderstanding, mood

loops and swings, morass, nihilism, obscuration, old injury or insult, pessimism, phobia,
repression, runaway affect, runaway imagination, scandal, self-deception, superstition,
vicious circles, weltschmerz.
Components:
The Moon is assigned to the twelfth of the twelve simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
Qoph, in its turn assigned to Pisces and the 12th House. By way of this, we can make a
portmanteau study of the components Mutable/Cadent and Water in Astrology, as well as
Kan (Mutable) below Dui (Water) in the Yijing.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Pisces, Adar; Mutable/Cadent Water, Twelfth House, Patron: Jupiter. The
uncertainty principle, experience for its own sake, capable of any form. The vastness of
the world made even less determinate by the powers of feeling, empathy, belief, credulity,
reflection, reverie. Impressions. Life in spite of inertia and entropy, the unknown, what is
overwhelming. Ripe destiny and self-undoing, karma. Recourse to the subliminal, the
mysterious, the undercurrents. Anonymity, uncertainty, inadequacy, the battered self.
Survival of the liquid, feeling one's way, the path with heart. The chaos of compost and
mulch, existence as nutrient-rich.
Qabalah: The Simple Letter Qoph, the twelfth of the twelve zodiac attributions, tradit-
ionally assigned to Pisces. Qoph as the Back of the Head may be associated with the
older, lower, or more primal parts of the brain.
Yijing: Gua 47, Kun, Exhaustion, Oppression. Bagua Kan (Mutable, Cadent) below, Dui
(Water) above. “A lake without water. Exhaustion. The young noble invokes a higher
purpose to carry out intentions.” When we are drained or beset by circumstances, we
need to reach even deeper down and higher up for resources. “Exhaustion. ‘Fulfillment,’
‘Persistence,’ for the mature human being, a promise, not a mistake. But having the
words is not the conviction.” Words are not helping. Exhaustion means that a recharge is
needed, not explanations. Indulging in such states is not helpful. We need to take charge
like a battery does. The first step is to plug up the leaks, quit moping about, lighten up,
maybe laugh at ourselves, and rest, recharging our bat rays.
The Sun
#19, Il Sole, Le Soleil, The Lord of the Fire of the World
Existence, Emergence, Diversification, Moment
Image: Two children, a boy and a girl, both in their early stages of puberty, play and
dance naked, holding hands and facing each other, with a mid-morning sun shining on
them in approval. If old Sol had a face he might be winking. One can assume that their
parents would not be winking, if they knew. But these children know who and what they
are, to themselves and to each other: familiars, innocent, and shameless. They play in an
old temenos, a magic circle or sacred place, in front of the ruined wall of a church, now
overcome by flora, heliotropes, overcome like the graves beside the ruined church. The
sunflowers face the Sun, not the reader, but what they are is clear enough. The solar fire
is irrepressible, and those who doubt it, beyond hope. We are born good, and the first
things we want are affection and play. These children are righteous and guiltless, life as
life was born to be. They are safe in the circle, too: paradise still means a walled garden.
This is more than just the Apollonian side of life. It’s light as life has learned to use it, as
a celebration of energy and sentience that requires a degree of self-organized energy and
negative entropy. The idea that negentropy is local and requires a bounded system can be
the symbolism of the circle and the wall. This card is also Iliaco, the genius of the energy
of Light, one of the three vital cosmic powers, along with Chronico and Cosmico, the
geniuses of Time and the World, who were all portrayed in the old Mantegna tarot. As
Harold Morowitz wrote, in Energy Flow in Biology, “The flow of energy through a
system acts to organize that system.” This is how the Light learns.
This is perhaps the simplest card in the deck, and certainly the happiest. Waite took
Eliphas Levi’s suggestion and turned away from the image of two children playing,
which had been canon since the Marseille tarot, replacing them with a single child astride
a white horse, sporting a red scarf. This was a mistake, and it’s not even worth a short
discussion. The card should depict two naked children, who should perhaps be far enough
into puberty to make you start to question either the appropriateness of the depiction or
that of your own cultural attitudes. Just for your edification, these kids have already been
playing doctor for years now, and are still innocent. They are simply better informed than
most cultures would want them to be. As with the Star, having nothing to hide is a virtue.
Transparency and sunshine laws are two ways that we have adopted this in our saner
cultural structures. We have other names for the virtue of shedding light on things, like
candor, frankness, sincerity, honesty, disclosure, discovery, xediantropia, parrhesia,
openness, and glasnost. Sunshine or sunlight is also the greatest antiseptic, a purifying as
well as an organizing force. In both of these senses, and in both mental and physical
realms, it will mean better health. The light will clean, dispel, purge, flush out, burn off,
purify, revitalize, regenerate, and reorganize what is failing for want of robustness,
resilience, and energy. The sun gods are always the healers, at least the healers who don’t
need to study techniques, for whom health is the natural state.
We are all taught that energy is conserved in its many transformations from one form
into another, and this card depicts the excitement of these transformations. Where these
happen, we have the possibilities of self-organization, like negative entropy and life, for
example, or energy that is learning. It is not the case that sunshine is the sole source of
energy for all of life on Earth: there are other tellurian and chemical forces, and nuclear
energy deep in the core. But sunshine powers most of our plant and animal life. Sunshine
gets locked up in sugars by plants, and sugars are used to make structures, cellulose, and
alcohols used to make lignin. When any of these catch fire, the light and heat that come
out is the same old sunlight that first went in, now getting free again. One of the ways to
catch fire is our metabolism, and one of the manifestations of this is the energy used in
the nerves, that lights up our minds as the process called consciousness. This is sunlight
become aware. It may then become aware of itself or remain in flow, spontaneous and
unselfconscious. The sense that we have of ourselves is none other than sunshine itself, in
the process of moving on, still journeying into the night. This is not what was meant in
Isaiah 40:6 by “All flesh is grass,” but we can still use this for that. But it is what was
meant in the Zhouyi by “attending the cow is good fortune,” as this is the chapter of Li
and the Sun. The cow will become our awareness as the log becomes our fire. Light is
food and food is light.
We gather the light and store it in our fuel and potential. We depend on our sources and
causes for what we are to become. We charge matter up with the light. We slow the light
down so it stays put until we need it. This is the core of material and materialism. It’s not
a thing to be flown from, or a thing for angels to escape, but more of a thing to be cared
for. We don’t love and respect our matter enough. This moment that they say is all that
really is, is only our minds catching fire, lighting matter back up. We and our moments
are fountainheads of light. We don’t seem to celebrate this as well or as often as the flame
that dances around on the log, released at last from its colder and lowlier states. This
point of release is all that we really have or are, as the rest is still asleep and unaware, just
another part of the material world at large. Life is as good as it gets when we’re setting
lots of light free. We call this by many names: zest, brio, elan, exuberance, enthusiasm,
play, living it up, vivacity, vitality, vibrancy, fun in the sun, high spirits, enlightenment,
and lightheartedness. Even post-pubescent old folks can have this.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this moment is that this is the only time that
we can choose where the light will go next. Radiation, by definition, is moving outward,
emerging, evolving, diverging, opening up to the options, rising up and outward. To stand
out is what ‘exist’ means. Light, having learned, learns to keep learning. It does this by
choosing a direction and having an experience, and then experiencing the consequences
of choosing that direction. It’s quite a system. By this it gets ever more lucid and clear,
brighter and better informed. Some of humanity’s gravest errors come from interfering or
intervening with this process while thinking that we already know best. This is the whole
point of liberty or freedom, this moving point of choice that we have. We learn by doing,
and learn much less by being told what and what not to do. Herbert Spencer wrote, “The
ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
We need the authority to act, the sovereignty, dignity, autonomy, license, and freedom to
act, and then we need, every bit as much, both the courage to face the consequences and
an inability to deny or look away from those consequences. Human is as human does, so
we only get better by learning how to do better. This is a card of Liberty.
Key Words:
adventure, affirmation, antisepsis, arising, assurance, attention, awakening, awareness,
basking, bounded systems, brightening, brio, burning, carpe diem, charging, clarification,
cleansing, consciousness, dawn, dawning, daylight, disclosure, discovery, disinfection,
diversification, divulgence, elan vital, emanation, emergence, energy gradients, energy
learning, enlightenment, eudaemonia, evolution, existence, expansion, experiment,
explosion of options, exposure, expression, exuberance, flame on, frankness, freedom,
fresh outlook, fun in the sun, glasnost, glory days, growth, harmonious relationship,
healing, health, heliotropes, illumination, innocence, intelligence, joie de vivre, joy,
liberation, liberty, life, light of day, lightheartedness, lighting up, living it up, lucidity,
luminosity, matter as fuel, metabolism, moment, negative entropy, negentropy, opening
up, openness, outwardness, parrhesia, play, primordial light, purging, recharging, raising
consciousness, regeneration, reinvigoration, renewal, restoration, revelation within, rising
to grace, self- fulfilling optimism, self-organization, shamelessness, shed light, shining
example, sincerity, source, sunny disposition, sunshine laws, systems theory, the moment
now, things looking up, tolerance, transparency, vigor, vitality, vividness, warmth,
wellness, wholeness, youth, zest.

blinders, blindness, counterproductive constraints, coverup, delusion, disrespect, facade,
false enthusiasm, fear of clouds, fear of night, fog, hyperactivity, ignorance, light on
ugliness, loneliness, mania, narcissism, over-maturity, overstimulation, performance
anxiety, projection, religious moralizing, repression, secrecy, sepsis, shadows, shame,
suppression, vanity.
Components:
The Sun is the most straightforward symbol in the deck, and is almost not even a symbol.
Portmanteaus may be made with its associations to Sol, Tipareth, and the Bagua Li, and
second-tier astrological associations to Leo and the 5th House. All suggest a world of
energy in motion, transforming, moving around, coming alive, waking up, spreading out,
evolving, diversifying.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Sol, Hammah; Sentience, the inner light, the sense of being alive, the spark
within or elan vital, vital force or essence, spirit like horses have. Attention, awareness,
sentience, self-consciousness as a flame, the release of energy trapped by photosynthesis,
with better organization than a typical flame, light that’s learning. Individuality, character.
The personality’s fuel or favorite mode of expression. Deep self as an energy system,
with basic drives for wholeness, health and identity. The conscious will or willingness,
affirmation. Self-direction, liberty, personal authority.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Resh. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Resh with various
other Planets, with little agreement. Resh as Head is a useful symbol here as the central
locus of cerebroception or consciousness, the location where our metabolic fires burn
brightest.
Yijing: Bagua 5, Li, Fire, Arising or the Clinging. Li, as flame and sunlight, might be
thought of as symbolic of the energy which powers, organizes, lights and informs living
beings, except that this is not symbol but reality: fire is spirit’s face. Energy which now is
awareness, or a campfire, was yesterday trapped in a plant’s complex sugars, the day
before, light, on the way to photosynthesis. Tomorrow this may be invested again, in
creation, memory, knowledge, or friendship. Li encompasses both perspectives: on one’s
sources or resources, and on one’s present transformation, on both on the fuel and on the
flame’s application in the greater beyond, on convergence and diversification. This is the
fourth dimension, a being’s transformative track or trail through time: then, now & when.
Shining, articulating, individuating, renewing, transforming, metabolizing. Intelligence,
clarity, vision. Burning, combustion. Identity, spark, departure. Health, healing, hearth.
Judgment
#20, The Angel, Il Giudizio (or L' Angelo), Le Jugement (Lo Angelo or Gabriel),
The Last Judgment, The Aeon, the Spirit of the Primal Fire
Choice, Resolve, Calling, Awakening
Image: This trump is traditionally depicted as the Last Judgment, featuring the angel
Gabriel sounding the seven notes on his trumpet from above, as a varying number of the
reanimated dead arise joyfully from their newly-opened coffins to meet their maker and
respective eternities of reward or punishment. While most of the trumps evolved with the
times, in proportion to how much they needed to change, this one has somehow resisted
the pressure. Yet the meaning, as usually depicted, is the most childish and delusional of
fantasies, and this has always been the card most in need of an upgrade. This is especially
ironic, since the core meaning of this card is a moving on from a past that hasn’t been
working, and setting out on a newer and superior path. This plea for a change in design is
not a novel proposal here. Crowley took the lead on this with his Aeon card, and the idea
behind it has much to recommend it. His Thoth deck shows a new Aeon or zeitgeist
taking the place of or overthrowing an older era of humanity. Unfortunately, his solution
was bound fast to his less-than-universal, personal mythology. At least he had a very
amusing take on the eschatology of it: that the world had already been destroyed by fire,
back in the otherwise bucolic 1903, so now it was time to quit fretting and just get on
with creating the new era, using better judgment this time. Robin Wood drew an even
better idea by depicting this card as a female phoenix, re-arising from her own embers.
This image is also consistent with the Hebrew Mother Letter Shin, representing the
element of fire. A new being arises from the flames or ashes of one who went before. If a
revised image were to capture both this phoenix and reawakening humans, these humans
might be emerging from prison or sepulcher-like structures to greet this phoenix figure
painted in the clouds across a dawn sky. Life begins again today. This is a rebirth and not
a reincarnation, a distinction that even most Buddhists fail to understand. It does concern
what survives an older version of us.
The broader idea of Judgment can remain in place here, particularly if it simply means
making better choices, based on better information, especially if these are hard choices
that alter our direction in life. The fundamental idea of apocalypse, ἀποκάλυψις, can also
stay in place: this simply means the dis-closure or dis-covery of something hidden.
Associations between these and the end times, or eschatology, are separate, and much of
this can be dismissed here, unless specifically speaking of a discontinuous transformation
in our development or evolution, the ending of a way of life, the replacement of a central
paradigm, starting a new chapter, a major plot twist, or a rebirth that abandons old ways.
Here we might find Nietzsche’s idea the ‘man is something to be surpassed.’ Resurrection
simply means to rise again, and so also applies to the phoenix image. Even the
symbolism of a wake-up call being sounded still fits, although it need not be a clarion
call, fanfare, or reveille. And the calling can be our own inner voice, conscience, or
higher purpose, the drumming that we hear, which can be a heartbeat. If we want to be
real about salvation, however, we can abandon the whole Western idea of this as a quick
and easy fix, already purchased by a human sacrifice and drinking magic blood. It makes
a lot more sense to shift towards Buddha’s opinion that salvation means a lifetime, or
more, of heedfulness and diligence. The old question remains about what ends in death
and what might go on. Here we are probably safest, if not most comforted, by
reexamining what we are in terms of processes and the propagation of the consequences
that arise from our judgments and decisions, the real meaning of karma.
Not all of our crossroads or choice points will lead to large-scale transformations, but
the whole of our pasts converge in every moment, and the big ones, in hindsight, didn’t
always look like much. The best we can do is live and learn, and play the probabilities
we’ve learned, being heedful, paying attention, and using our best judgment. We can also
aprender en cabeza ajena, or learn in another’s head, or pick some wisdom up from third
parties and cultures. This may require ignoring some vapid platitudes about not being
judgmental or how we are already perfect. We have to make decisions and choices, weigh
things and discern, discriminate and evaluate, or else live among the sleepwalkers and
simply move with an indeterminate crowd. Judgment is assertiveness, which can also
work against us when asserting inferior judgment. If the way our lives are going suggests
a new direction, a radical change or departure, or moving on from past behavior, we
might seek out paths that go in different directions. Sometimes the path we ought to be on
crosses ours at right angles, in which case we are often knocked sideways by life and kept
off our balance. This might be the case for most of us. We move at cross-purposes to the
paths of our real power. We live our lives out of balance. The association made here
between this card and astrology’s Uranus, with its surprising and radical transformations,
discontinuities and broken causal chains, refers to this common need to get back on track,
and then to our common failure to do so. Sometimes, too, we are better attuned to the
powers at play in our lives, and we get to see a shining path that shows us which way to
turn to live to our best advantage. This is the best of blessings when it shows us the best
and the worst at once. Such a moment is called samvega in Pali. It makes choices easier.
Just desserts, the consequences of good and bad judgment, reaping the sown, or
coming into one’s due, don’t need to be the judgment of another, or of society as a whole.
We can hold ourselves accountable, pay our own debts, make reparations and amends,
forgive, redeem, and even save ourselves, with some difficulty, of course. We need not be
ethical cowards in this, whether passing this off to some savior or waiting for the next
lifetime. These failures, too, go onto our permanent records, even though few ever look
into these. To repent is to really change, after truly sensing what harm we have done,
what pain we may have caused, and atonement is repairing the world, tikkun, and paying
our rent for the privilege of living here in this world. Forgiveness is what we must do for
ourselves, since we can’t turn ourselves around with the whole past as baggage.
In the end we come down to two decent choices. We have a chance to emerge into a
better life for ourselves, to blow ballast and surface into the light and fresh air, to be twice
born, having passed through our fires and trials, to shed our cocoons, transformed, and
ready for some of those higher dimensions, to create and fulfill our personal purposes in
life, to actualize ourselves. Or we can take a still higher and sometimes more dangerous
path and serve a higher purpose, something beyond our own selves, lives, and lifetimes,
sometimes so transpersonal, so far beyond ourselves, that we cease to matter at all. This
of course requires better judgment than most folks can manage, as many will mistake this
for following flags into war, and other senseless acts. Good judgment here is more akin to
satyagraha, holding true to some higher order of being, obedient first to higher laws and
our own conscience. Our highest and best higher purpose is still the Great Work, the
transformation of mankind, because, once again, man is something to be surpassed. For
all that we owe the world, we still have a valid potential above and beyond earth and
nature, and possibly even in space. This assumes, of course, that the consequences of our
various judgments will ever allow us to transition into such states before we destroy
ourselves with bad judgment.
Key Words:
accountability, alternate futures, apocalypse, apotheosis, atonement, awakening, blowing
ballast, break from past, calling, change in essential nature, change of state, choice point,
closure, conscience, conversion experience, creative problem solving, critical mass,
crossroads, definite steps, discernment, disclosure, discontinuity, discontinuous change,
discovery, epiphany, far-reaching decisions, final assessment, final decision, final exam,
getting on track, graduation, growing up, higher perspective and purpose, history as art,
large-scale transformation, liberation, life beyond death, metalevel jump, metamorphosis,
momentous decisions, moving on, new era, new chapter, new identity, new lease on life,
on-switch, outside the box, paradigm shift, plot twist, quantum leap, radical change or
departure, radical moves, reawakening, rebirth, recognition, reckoning, reconfiguration,

redefinition, redemption, renovatio, rescue, resolution, resolve, resurrection, revision,
revolution, rite of passage, samvega, self-determination, self-directed behavior, shining
path, starting over, strong emergence, sudden enlightenment, summons, surviving death,
tikkun, tipping point, transcendence, transition to new order, verdict, vocation, wakeup
call, waking the dead, willpower, won’t power, wrapping up.

bad judgment, bias, corrupted life, doomed to repeat history, ethical cowardice, failure,
going sideways, hard choices, hard consequences, intolerance, judgmentalness, karmic
reckoning, koyaanisqatsi, lack of judgment, life out of balance, off track, out of step, out
of synch, postponement, procrastination, regret, remorse, retribution, self-love as merely
unconditional narcissism, stagnation, unwillingness.
Components:
Judgment is a fairly pure conception. In the system used here, the planet Uranus has been
stripped from the Fool and reassigned here. The Fool gets no assignment, as explained on
that page. Uranus might be thought to have some lingering meanings in common with the
sign of Aquarius and the Eleventh House, which are given more direct assignments to the
Star card.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Uranus. Self as a path through cosmos, the intelligible universe, only a place
where powers meet for a time, a knot, network or nexus. The fulcrum of radical change,
choice-point sensitivity, destiny, large scale transformation from an action in the right
place and time. Suddenness or discontinuity in life as a function of the distance of self
from its path of power, or its lack of attunement. The magick current, the energy of one’s
real gifts. Metalevels, creativity, dynamic reorganization of the world view, remodeling
deep structure, liberty, hazard. The transit opposition is the 42-year midlife crisis. Uranus
is relocated here from its incorrect Golden Dawn assignment to the Fool. Case (Oracle
62) suggests ‘undercurrents of force not easily determinable, or appearance of unexpected
elements’ and yet he still did not catch the Uranus connection.
Qabalah: The Mother Letter Shin, for the element Fire as the part of a triad, with Air and
Water. Shin is symbolized both by fire and by a tooth. A tooth has bite. Fire, which
transforms, is more useful than tooth, although a flame also has some bite.
Yijing: Bagua 7, Qian, Creating. Qian, as Heaven or Sky, is the symbol of higher order(s)
in nature. This is the heaven which the astronomer inquires into, and not that of Western
religions, and yet it is both sacred and divine, worthy of wonder, reverence, and gratitude,
but not a god, and not needing worship. Uranus was the original sky god in the west.
Although it’s a grand design, it’s still self-organizing, lacking a designer. It’s orderly and
moves with direction, but it lacks both purpose and plan. It’s intelligible, but without
presupposing an intelligence. It protects the righteous when upright people choose to live
within the order of things, in harmony with the natural law. Both accident and luck do
exist here, but longevity tends to favor the true. This is the first dimension, length and
direction. Resolution combining both vision and drive, resolve, design, perseverance,
intention, direction, purpose, higher purpose.
The World
#21, Il Mondo, Le Monde, the Universe,
The Great One of the Night of Time, The End of the World
Worldliness, Emergence, Homecoming, Wholeness
Image: A goddess, who is nude except for a loosely-draped, strategically-placed veil,

is shown in mid-dance, weightless, holding a wand in each hand. Behind her is the full
Earth, and behind that, the oval form of an elliptical galaxy, like our own Milky Way, all
against a background of the Night of Time. Her veil is not worn out of shyness: it’s part
of the dance, ‘the only dance there is,’ Lila, a divine playfulness. She is Gaia, the wife of
Uranus, or Anima Mundi, the World Soul, Shekinah, the Presence, Malkah the Queen,
and Kallah the Bride. This card represents an emphatic denial of dualism, or a recovery
from duality through a reunification with reality at large, at really large. In particular, this
card denies the idiotic assertions that things worldly, material, and fleshly are profane,
unspiritual, or unholy. As with the Wheel, the corners of the card are occupied by the
Kerubs of the four elements, showing a full circle of seasons, each in its full glory. The
oval of the galaxy, formerly a laurel wreath, carries the golden 1.618 ratio, and it also
suggests both the cosmic egg and a vesica piscis. Some commentators wish to call the
figure androgynous or hermaphroditic, but despite the overall theme of unity of this card,
there is just too much to suggest the goddess Gaia, as a grand, emergent being, created
out of the synergetic interaction of the material world and the living biosphere. A woman
has all the DNA needed to make a being.
There exists some pressure and valid rationale for renaming this card ‘the Universe,’ to
acknowledge the more extended horizons that modern culture has found. This push is in
part to accommodate newer associations with Saturn, who needs to be remembered as the
outermost planet for most of astronomy’s very long history, and therefore symbolic of the
outer limits of existence, and human finitude. But there are too many purely local aspects
to this card’s meaning to develop such a grandiose concept, beyond reminding us that the
larger universe is out there. For now, this card needs to imply that we have a home here,
when we are ready to more fully inhabit it. A core idea here is that we need to come to
terms with this world, as our reality, to accept and to live within our limits cheerfully, to
respect that we already have a great generational ship for exploring the stars, to drop the
delusional nonsense about being angels descended from elsewhere to walk around in
puppets of meat. As cited before in the context of the number Ten, this is Alan Watts’
wisdom, ‘You did not come into this world, you came out of it, like a wave comes out of
the ocean. You are not a stranger here.’ Here we affirm our life incarnate, and that we end
here where we began. Or, in the words of T.S. Eliot, ‘We shall not cease from exploring,
and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for
the first time.’ This is literally a card for the worldly. However, the world is really big,
much bigger than dreamt of in our philosophy, and we only sense a few narrow bands of
her much broader spectra. It requires states of mind far more expansive than those we are
used to in order to fully appreciate the world we have here. We spend most of our lives
with this world at our feet, but seldom really arrive. We take the world for granted, but its
ordinariness is just a thin layer of dust that’s hiding the magic of it all. The dullness is in
us. The ordinariness just rubs off, and the sacred shines through.
The most mundane interpretations of this card simply suggest that we have completed
a task or journey, that something is now attained, that a matter has reached its conclusion,
or that a process has culminated. At the least, things are now in their final stages and we
make ready to wrap these things up. The prognosis is usually good, ignoring the world’s
frequent disobedience to our will, and that our outcomes are sometimes those we deserve
instead of the ones we wanted. There is also frequent mention of an ultimate fulfillment,
finality, or perfection. This may come from people who live in some world other than this
one. Sometimes we just need to find ways to think of things as complete. Sometimes we
just have to accept the things we cannot change. The Saturnian element can be useful
here to recommend a cheerful realism, acceptance of the limits, the givens and facts, as
the most sensible place to begin from, regardless of how high our ambitions may be. We
take a comprehensive view, see the things we would rather not see, because care and
respect will set us on solid ground. We might, to no ill effect, immerse and involve
ourselves in material matters, participate in creation, roll up our sleeves, work hard, sweat
and get soiled. We might also learn to acknowledge the damage we do, and that we are
not immune to the world’s reactions as consequences of our own.
Such a materialistic and worldly view will still admit a number of respectable, human
states of mind which might be termed mystical, and yet these particular states remain
available to scientists, and philosophers armed with critical thinking skills and Occam’s
razor. While often claimed by religions, they belong to human evolution, and may even
be better off in the care of neuroscientists. Pantheism describes one such understanding,
although to call all the world ‘God’ serves only the purpose of making our friends less
uneasy about our souls. Panentheism is just that transcendent god trying to weasel his
way back in. Emergence might be the most useful idea, the idea that the world can give
birth to unexpected things, qualia, like the color blue, or consciousness, and maybe even
spirit, things that might still become real, even if not original parts of the world. Einstein
famously noted, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no
longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Some of us make awe into awful, perhaps wanting a much smaller and more manageable
world. But to manage all that we can see, we can also just limit our worlds, lock
ourselves up in cabinets, and only claim what little we own.
We want to remember that cosmic consciousness is not the end of the search: it’s only
one door to go through, the sooner the better. It’s not the same thing as having arrived.
Getting to the ordinary is vital as well, and seeing it as sacred is a bigger step than you’d
think. One version of this particular journey was penned by Qingyuan Weixin, “First
there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” In Zen lore, the Ten
Oxherding Pictures depict the ten steps to enlightenment, which culminate ‘back in the
world, with gift-giving hands.’ The goal is not ascension into white light, it’s coming
home. Of course we should also be thinking in terms of kalpas and light years, and regard
these as special as well. The real world must also be a world without you in it, or with an
insignificant or long-forgotten you, or a place where you must ask if you still really exist
at all. This is unavailable to those who are too big and full of themselves. Humility of
scale gives us better horizons, beyond those of our playpens and nations. Reverence
requires neither a church nor a deity, and it helps us to remember to care and respect.
Albert Schweitzer’s ‘reverence for life’ is a great start, but we should also save some
reverence for waterfalls, thunderstorms, and clean air too. Gratitude is a fine state as well,
and reminds us to give a little something back, to be more than parasites on this world of
wonders. We can be OK with finitude and mortality: it’s really all we born to deserve. As
Vonnegut reminds us, we were mud that got to sit up and take a look around. Lucky mud.
Key Words:
acceptance, adventure, affirmation of this life incarnate, aham brahmasmi, appropriate
wonder, as full as it gets, arrival, attainment, big picture, belonging here, bounty beyond
any acquisition, broadened or expanded horizons, closing the circle, coming full circle,
conclusion, completion, comprehension, consummation, creation, culmination, ecstasy as
‘out of stasis,’ elegant solutions, emergence, eternity, exploration, extension, finality,
finding a home here, finitude and system constraints, fully expanded horizons, Genius of
the World (Cosmico), globalization, gratitude, great mandala, greater scheme of things,
having it all, higher consciousness, homecoming, horizons, immanence, immersion,
infinity, integration, involvement, liberation from self, limitations, micro and macrocosm,
materialism, microcosm in macrocosm, moksha, multi-dimensionally, mundane affairs,
nature, not man apart, Pan, pantheism, reabsorption, realism, reality, realization, realms,
re-homing, reintegration, rejoining the universe, resolution, reunification, sacredness of
the ordinary, samadhi, satisfaction, scale, suchness, sum of manifest things, synthesis,
system comprehension, systems thinking, tat tvam asi, tiānxià, thinking globally, totality,
ultimate imperfection, unitive experience, universality, vastness, wholeness, world egg,
worldliness, worldly concerns, wrapping up, yugen.

cascade failures, delay, distraction, entropy, fear, fugue, greediness, heaviness, hostile
environment, ingratitude, insatiability, jadedness, metastasis, misuse, narrow horizons,
negligence, nihilism, parasitism, pessimism, poverty, quitting midway, self-limitation,
stagnation, stasis, terminal ego, thoughtlessness, waste, weight of the world, world-
weariness.
Components:
The World is a straightforward symbol. Portmanteaus may be made with its associations
to Saturn, Tau, Kether, Daath, and now Yang, but no second-tier astrological associations,
except perhaps for the Earth itself. There is a mysterious connection here between Kether
and Malkuth as groom and bride, who are reunited through Tikkun Ha'Olam, repairing
the world.
Correspondences:
Astrology: Saturn, Shabbetai; Self as the difference or remainder, the universe minus the
not-self, defined in terms of the other, in terms of what it is not. Living at the boundary,
touch and abrasion, pain as a sign of resistance. Learned limits of self-assertion, the skin
and psychological integument, the edge of vulnerability, of self as most narrowly defined.
Restraint, discipline, trials. Realistic and even cheerful acceptance of limitations. Saturn
in the higher forms as a working interface between self and other. Concentration on the
immediate moment. Authenticity, realism, knowing one’s limits. The quality of validity
to which one reduces experience. The realm of the search for meaning.
Qabalah: The Double Letter Tau. The Jewish Kabbalists associate Tau with various other
Planets, with little agreement. Tau, as a mark or T cross, is a signature or a seal, a mark
made by a witness.
Yijing: Hsiao 1, Yang, the Active, Banners in the Sun. This association was a challenge.
Yang’s original meanings concern light, sunlight or energy, and even before there was
Yin-Yang theory, it contrasted with Yin, the shade. And here we have the material world,
usually thought of as darkness. But even the heaviest matter is just slow, frozen light.
And if we could journey to the darkest part of space, our eyes would be filled with the
starlight passing through. There is really no escaping the light. This is energy, nature,
activity, and life, nearly always in motion in some way or other. Even heavy, old lead is
loaded with zippy little electrons.
Tarot Supplement
(35 page PDF Download)
Yijing is the focus here, but the material is also relevant to Tarot
Excerpted Introduction from

Yijing Hexagram Names and Core Meanings
Yìjīng guàmíng hé zhōngyì
© Bradford Hatcher, 2011
and
Relevant Excerpts from
The Book of Changes: Word by Word
© Bradford Hatcher, 2009
Volume 1, pp. 444-449, “Introduction to Scales”
Volume 2, pp. 4-7, “Correlative Thought”
Volume 2, pp. 8-11, “Gua Ming, The Hexagram Names”
Volume 2, pp. 22-23, “Ban Xiang, the Half-Images”
The complete books are all available here as free PDF downloads
Home Page
https://www.hermetica.info
Tarot Bibliography
Annotated Tarot section starts halfway down the page
Tarot Study Links
Many other subjects are here too
The Symbols of Western Astrology - A Primer
A 28-page introduction to the major symbols used in Tarot
Tarot Counseling - A Pinterest Page
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12/11/2020 Tarot as a Counseling Language

Artist Credit: Excalibur, by Erulian (Karel Hamm)

Tarot as a Counseling Language:

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Chariot Wands Cups Swords Pentacles Queen

Prediction and Divination

An Open Source Project

speciation events, where it becomes harder to share information between branches. We

4) A fourth source for core meanings is Correspondence, an expression of correlative

Symbols and Archetypes

The Cutting Room Floor

Apophenia and Pareidolia

Number Symbolism versus Numerology

The Fool’s Journey

Over-Elaboration, Tautologies, and Mistaking Maps for Terrain

been dedicated to snipe hunts in the world of Xiangshu, or Image-and-Number, usually

Religion & Metaphysics

Vocabulary, Definition and Connotation

The Celtic Cross Spread

The Magick Seven Spread

Historical Notes and Timeline

105 CE, Han Dynasty China, Cai Lun invents paper.

906-989, Five Dynasties, Chen Tuan produces the Wujitu.

1017-1073, Northern Song Dynasty, Zhou Dunyi produces the Taijitu.

1419, Cristoforo Buondelmonti wrote of Egyptian hieroglyphica, sparking the European

1453 Constantinople is invaded by Turks, trapping Eastern Orthodox delegates in Italy,

1460, Leonardo of Pistola, an Italian monk is exposed to the Corpus Hermeticum in

1490, the first versions of the Marseilles stream of Tarot decks.

1636-1689, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, wrote Kabbalah Denudata.

1767-1825, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet spearheaded a revival of Hebrew language studies,

1804-1886, Jean Alexandre Vaillant, in 1857, contributed convincingly to the erroneous

1861-1899, Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, in Le Serpent de la Genese (2 vols, 1891 &

1888, Golden Dawn founded.

self-similarity, or asserting an instance of the Hermetic maxim ‘as above, so below’

the benefits of an obsessive-compulsive disorder that finds both embarrassment and

Component Ideas in the Minor Arcana

Tarot: Wands Cups Swords Pentacles

Jung Intuiting Feeling Thinking Sensing

Wands and Fire

Key Words, Concepts and Phrases:

Cups and Water

Key Words, Concepts and Phrases:

resentment, responsiveness, rewards or their absence, romance, satisfaction or its

Swords and Air

Key Words, Concepts and Phrases:

distancing, reflection, choice, versatility and options.

Pentacles and Earth

Key Words, Concepts and Phrases:

creation, density, dependability, diligence, domesticity, economy, effects, embodiment,

The Court, or Four Dignitaries

The Kings, or Crowley’s Knights

maturation, maturity, noblesse oblige, over-assurance, overconfidence, paternity and

The Princes, or Waite’s Knights

The Princesses, or Waite’s Pages

The Ten Numbers