At a tarot cafe recently we were discussing the end of times (as one does – nothing like a tarot cafe to get some good discussions going). I decided to ask the tarot about this – is it going to be in 2012, as the end of the Mayan calendar seems to have indicate, or what is coming?

I drew one card, and three more fell out, so I read them all.

The Hermit. It doesn’t look like this is Armageddon. It does, however, look like we’re all going to have to do some soul-searching. This is about a withdrawal – from the rat race, from the status quo, and from the familiar. We follow our sole/soul light from the lantern, and go down into the dark, surrounded by fears of the unknown.

Most people will avoid this journey into themselves. We fill our lives with noise, with material things, houses and mortgages and cars, in order to avoid that dark place within. But – as we see from current society – the lack of substance that results is a soul-sickness which ultimately ends in some sort of a crash, a war or a plague, an enforced re-evaluation. You’d have thought that the recession, and all the other ills we’ve created, would have made us think, but no – still we carry on regardless.

The Wheel. There is a big shift coming though. We have reached the end of one cycle, and it’s time to move on to the next. Again, this is not Armageddon, it’s relatively gentle (far gentler than we deserve, I think). It is an opportunity to change our perceptions and thus improve our lives. We can rewrite the future if we change the way we see things – indeed, we must rewrite the future. We cannot go on the way we are.

What’s good (and a little surprising) about this is its apparent gentleness. This is not the Tower or Judgment. The Wheel is the cosmic cycle, the natural flow of things. Nevertheless, it is the end of an era and change will come – is coming, and our only choice is to move with it or fight it. Either way, the world will change.

Five of Cups. This is the card of grief, loss and sorrow. It’s not terminal – we will recover – but at the moment we need to stay with that grief.

Grief is not something we enjoy. Clients are often scared that you’ll tell them there are difficulties ahead. Actually, though, trying to avoid difficulties is worse than experiencing them. To live – to be alive – often means we have to feel. Again, as stated with the Hermit, most of the stuff we surround ourselves with is a means to avoid facing difficult emotions. Perhaps this is why we refuse to acknowledge the parlous state of the world.Here, though, it isn’t enough to acknowledge it – we’ve plenty of doom and gloom merchants rubbing our noses in it. But none of them actually express the pain and sadness we must all feel, at some level, about what we’ve done – and are still doing – to the earth and our fellow humans. If we can feel that – truly grieve for what we’ve accomplished – then we have a chance to move on into the future without destroying ourselves.

The Four of Cups. Is this looking further into the future, or is it again about the grief we need to feel right now about what we’ve done? The four is about satiety, passivity, draining energy (as a description of our current state of lassitude and apathy, this could not be bettered). It also points out that, although we have lost something precious (the overturned cup), we still have huge gifts being offered to us which we are ignoring. The world is still beautiful, still there, still our birthright. It’s up to us now. There are huge numbers of us who know things can’t go on, and if we banded together instead of feeling it is all too big and too awful, we could change the world.

The Four also indicates that there’s a need to clarify goals and identify what’s important to us, instead of bewailing what’s gone.

Gaia. To get a feel for the energy around us, and the protection and challenge for us now (with reference to the ‘End of Times’), I drew one of my Deva cards (http://www.devasofcreation.com). The Devas often cut to the heart of a question, and this was one of those times, as Gaia appeared (you have to look quite closely at this card to see Gaia herself – she’s in the centre at the top, her arms enfolding the world).

This is the crux of the question. At the time I read it as Gaia herself taking a hand in the story – she can choose at any time to shrug and say enough. In the last few days she’s coughed – or perhaps it was just a little burp (the volcano in Iceland) – and thousands of people are stranded away from home because the planes are grounded. She isn’t well, let’s face it – pollution, deforestation, water and oil running out because of our profligacy and greed. What happens when she really gets sick?

It’s time for us to wake up.

Tarot Meanings and the End of Times is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Meanings and the End of Times is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

If you’ve heard the term, but never understood it, you aren’t alone!

Although archetypes are fundamental to the way our minds work, they’re not that easy to explain. Carl Jung, who coined the term, didn’t make it particularly clear either. He said they are preformed patterns in the psyche, based on instinct – i.e. very basic, inherited thought-forms and ideas which have no specific content at first, but which gradually gain shape and substance as we grow. In other words, they are basic thought-forms we all, as humans, understand: like mother, father, balance, justice, the moon and sun. The archetypal aspect gives them a deeper, wider resonance – so the mother is the Great Mother: symbolically she becomes the earth mother, the Great Goddess, eternally fruitful and abundant, but also terrible and awesome in her power. The Hermit and the Hierophant are both aspects of the Old Wise Man, Jung’s Philemon, who exists in each one of us (he can also be an old wise woman). He gives wise guidance, information from the collective unconscious, and can sometimes be our inner critic.

(from Jung's Red Book)

The Sun is light, warmth, life; centre of our solar system, and symbolic of enlightenment, opening up, coming together…

As Jung says, the archetypes are ‘living psychic forces that demand to be taken seriously’, the ‘bringers of protection and salvation, and their violation has as its consequence the “perils of the soul” known to us from the psychology of the primitives’. (And not just the primitives: we ignore them or mess with them at our peril!)
The archetypes in the Tarot are real, but consisting of pure energy rather than flesh. They can affect us very powerfully. Our human interactions are often coloured by archetypal ‘projections’ – in other words, our unconscious takes something from within our selves and projects it onto another person. When we fall in love, we are usually in love with the contrasexual archetype within ourselves. The resonance this projected image has for us is potent in the extreme, which is why being in love is such an overwhelming experience. It also explains why, when we fall out of love, we realise that we never really knew the human we’ve been nuts about.
Jung identified various archetypes – the trickster, the mother, the father, and the old wise man. The Trickster – the Magician, of course. The Old Wise Man – the Hierophant. But think of Death, of Justice, the Devil, the Star, even the Tower, that shock of recognition that everything we’ve believed in has been a lie!

Jung wrote extensively about the I Ching and alchemy, but in all his work there is only one sentence about the Tarot. I find that really frustrating; he must have been swayed by its dubious reputation. Still, it is worth reading Jung – his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections, is a very accessible autobiography, and enables us to see a graphic description of how he made his discovery of the archetypal energies at work in his own life. His journal – The Red Book – has recently been published. At £120, it’s not cheap, but for anyone interested in his work it’s a must-have.

Tarot Archetypes is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Archetypes is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

As an introduction to Tarot Card Meanings, let me start with what we know about the origins of the Tarot as a means of divination.

The origins of the cards themselves are shrouded in mystery, though they were first described in 1377. It is possible that at first they were merely used as a game (Tarocchi); however, we know they were first used for divination purposes in the 16^th Century.

A Tarot deck consists of 78 cards, which are divided into the Major Arcana (or Trumps), and the Minor Arcana. The twenty-two Major Arcana are seen as archetypal or allegorical images representing the journey through life. The Minors (the remaining fifty-six cards) are similar to today’s playing cards, with four suits of 14 cards (the numbered or pip cards 1-10, and the face cards: page, knight, queen and king). Each suit represents a different aspect of humanity and are usually seen as Cups (the emotions), Pentacles or Discs (material issues), Swords (the mind), and the Wands (intuition and creativity). Each suit is usually linked to the four elements – water, earth, air and fire.

The full tarot pack is used to provide readings intended to help a person achieve a better understanding of issues that may be affecting them, such as relationships, problems to be overcome, opportunities etc. Each card has a range of meanings, which, taken together, can allow the skilled interpreter to help their client (usually referred to as the Querent or inquirer) to focus on the issues affecting them and thus find a way through problems or take advantage of opportunities.

The cards in the Major Arcana carry more weight than the Minor Arcana. Therefore, in a reading, the meaning and position of Major Arcana are interpreted very carefully as they are considered to be important unseen influences, indicating major changes in the inquirer’s life. In contrast, the Minor Arcana usually refers to day-to-day events, or people surrounding the inquirer.

A skilled Tarot reader also interprets the meaning of the cards according to the position they occupy in a spread (different ways in which the cards are laid out). However, where the inquirer is open to the tarot card meanings, as represented by the pictures and symbolism, their own intuition can provide a major boost to the power of the cards. Indeed, many practitioners of the art of Tarot believe that its greatest benefit is in the conduit it provides to the subconscious mind, thus allowing the process of “physician heal thyself”.

Tarot Card Meanings: Origins is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings: Origins is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

In our consideration of Tarot Card Meanings, the journey of the Major Arcana is the path of spiritual self-awareness, each card symbolising not only the choices we meet along the way, but also – deeper and wilder – the archetypes that underpin each stage, which can be seen as degrees of initiation. The earliest mystery religions would have had similar initiatory stages; for example, the twenty-two steps in the rites from the Egyptian Book of the Dead contain fascinating parallels.

The path to self-realisation is not easy and can be fraught with danger. At each step we have to confront, and transcend, our fears. At times we may think we are functioning on a high level of awareness, and discover later that our ego has been deceiving us. Or we may become so involved with our inner life that we lose touch with reality altogether.

The Major Arcana provides us with staging posts, which illustrate some of the possibilities and perils along the way:

0 The Fool. The path begins with the new-born babe, eyes wide in wonderment from the memory of the time before this. We understand little of what we see, but still have access to an innate wisdom.

I The Magician is the child, learning to manipulate the world and its elements. Along the way, we will lose the natural, unconscious sense of connection with the Infinite, but for a while we take that connection and its phenomenal power for granted.

II The High Priestess can be seen as the young adult, conscious of the veil between the worlds, and still able to move between the two at will. At this time we become conscious of a complementary part of ourselves, the animus or anima2; and the need to find our soul partner.

III The Empress represents the fully-functioning sexual adult, her fruitfulness and orgiastic pleasure in nature reflecting our wish for love and connection. It refers to parenthood, the wonder of our own children; and our relationship with our mothers.

IV The Emperor. We live in a patriarchal society, and part of the journey is to be in relationship to that society, with all its faults and problems. We may work within it, or rebel against it, but either way we all have first-hand knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the masculine and all its works. The Emperor reflects our place within society and our attitude to authority, as well as the relationship with our fathers.

V The Hierophant. The spiritually attuned masculine is an archetype to which we easily relate, no doubt because of the concept of a masculine god. We often wish for a wise adviser, an impartial guide who can help us in our confusion, without realising the wisdom accessible within us.

VI The Lovers. This is the time of choice, where we are asked to choose between our prospective partner and our parents – or, more generally, a choice between growth and stasis, the gateway into conscious adulthood. Every time we encounter life’s challenges we face a choice: do we engage with it – or turn away? Sometimes, turning away is the wisest course. The Lovers is therefore also about developing discernment.

VII The Chariot represents the forging of our will upon the world. It is about the ego and the persona – the masks we don in order to function successfully. We have learnt to repress what we consider to be our less socially acceptable aspects. These will appear in dark moments as depression, shame, irrational anger and fear.

VIII Justice: The first stirrings of inner wisdom are encountered in Justice, with her objective gaze and discerning mind. Through her clear vision, we see ourselves acting out unconscious drives, and our innate sense of justice now realises the implications of our decisions and actions on others. We see the profound personal implications of truth and untruth, integrity and expediency and understand how this impacts on ourselves and others. It is time to decide what to retain in our lives – and what to cut out.

IX With The Hermit we have made a fateful decision: we must turn away from the world, to the unknown depths within us. The material things of the world no longer answer our needs, and the soul’s call can no longer be denied. However, there is no route map for this journey; we can only follow the faint flicker of intuition, into the dark.

X The Wheel. At this stage we may feel a profound change in alignment caused by our decision to look inwards. Instead of resisting, or riding roughshod over our needs and dimly-sensed dreams, we now sense the flow of existence. We see ourselves drawn into the current, moving slowly in to the centre.

XI Strength. A real test of our new resolve is how we deal with our first encounter with the Shadow. This is what Freud called the id, the instinctive urges, child-like passions and desires of the unconscious . In Strength we learn to communicate, to negotiate, persuading our Id to work with us rather than against us. We choose integrity and maturity rather than instant gratification.

XII The Hanged Man. The self-awareness gained through Strength and its disciplined expression of self-love stands us in good stead when we realise that, in following the inner path, we need to reverse all previous certainties. Now all we can do is to hang in mid-air, waiting for illumination and wisdom. If we can stay with this encounter with the Infinite, we will emerge with a hard-won wisdom.

XIII Death. This is death of the old self, and a shamanic initiation into a new world. We stand on the threshold of a profound rebirth, though the way is guarded by the fearsome figure of Death of the old self. The alchemic fires flay off our masks and armour, stripping the soul to its core.

XIV Temperance: After surviving that dread dismemberment, angelic Temperance appears to show us how to survive – by gently, lovingly, tempering (mixing) the different aspects within us. If previously we jumped into action without thinking, we now learn to act after considered thought; if we over-intellectualise, we now modify that with feeling or intuition. The sensory urges can also be balanced with feeling and awareness.

XV The Devil. After our first encounter with the Shadow in Strength, we might consider ourselves capable of anything. But in The Devil we come face to face with the collective shadow, as well as our own unrecognised darkness, mirrored in the people around us. If we take the easy way out through justification and denial, we find ourselves imprisoned in the unconscious patterns of the past. To face these patterns, take back the projections and own our worst aspects, requires extreme courage and honesty.

XVI Often it takes the intervention of The Tower to help us see our lives clearly, and to break free. The divine lightning bolt blasts through our defences and preconceptions, destroying outdated ideas, searing us to the core. Nothing can remain the same after that profound light.

XVII The Star. When we are able to see again, we realise that one faint light remains: the inner light of the soul. We have walked through the darkest night and survived. The star, rising over the sea, shows us how we can be: washed clean, delicate, an integral part of creation.

XVIII The Moon. Still the tests are not over. In The Moon we encounter the beautiful, deceptive light of the collective psyche. We either withstand its seductive power – or lose ourselves in its perilous attraction.

XIX With The Sun, we at last feel the warmth, and see the brilliance of the divine light. The twin aspects of the Self – masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious, body and spirit – innocent as children, can grow to adulthood free and joyful, protected from the full force of the sun within the enchanted garden of the soul.

XX In Judgement, the Sun twins have grown to adulthood, and their union has birthed a new soul, the divine Child. Now all three figures rise out of the dark, containing earth and move upwards into the ineffable light of the Divine Source.

XXI In The World, all opposites are finally united and transformed in an alchemic marriage: unconscious, conscious, higher consciousness; future, present, past. This is the treasure of great price, the place of integration, of love, acceptance and pure, transcendent self-knowledge.

O The cycle of existence is completed by the second appearance of The Fool, as cosmic consciousness and the return to innocence.

Tarot Card Meanings – The Major Arcana is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings – The Major Arcana is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

A sudden conscious awareness of your personal path in life; new initiatives, creative ideas. The directed application of will to manifest an idea or a dream. The ability to tread a difficult path with confidence. Awareness of personal values so that ethical choices can be made. The interrelationship of many different dimensions, and how these can be made to work for rather than against you. Skill with words, self-confidence, creative action of all kinds.

Tarot Card Meanings: The Magician

Reversed: The mis-use of talents, such as persuasive skills. A tendency to ride roughshod over others. Power for its own sake. Greed. Will-power mis-directed; the flow of energy blocked. This can lead to psychic terrors, particularly fear of madness, and soul-loss.

Tarot Card Meanings: The Magician is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings: The Magician is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

People often find reversals – when the card is drawn upside down – offputting in the extreme. Indeed, many tarot readers don’t use them at all, preferring to interpret both negative and positive sides of the card at the same time. However, reversals can be very useful – particularly when the majority of cards have appeared reversed. One way of working with them is to see a reversal as an indicator that there is a blockage or lack of confidence involved: so for example, if someone has drawn the Nine of Rods (Wands) reversed, the interpretation could be that although they appear to be strong and in control, inside they are feeling defensive and not at all sure how long they wish to continue holding people at bay.

Reversals of the darker cards often display a more optimistic aspect of the card. The Nine and Ten of Swords reversed all indicate that the darkest time has already passed (useful, as they are such dark cards!), and the Five shows the fearful, cowering person at the bottom of the card beginning to take power into her hands and face her fears.

One of the most interesting of reversals is the Tower. The meaning of the card is the lightning strike of God, the cosmic illumination that shatters all existing structures – and although the card isn’t always *that* negative, it certainly can indicate disastrous events (like 9/11, for example). So how to read the Tower reversed?

Nowadays I usually see this as dismantling important aspects of your life, which can be deciding to downsize, for example. Separation, divorce, or giving in your notice after a shock could also be The Tower reversed. But one of the best examples I’ve encountered happened recently in a reading for a woman who was 7 months pregnant. She blenched a bit to get the Tower reversed and I explained what I’ve just said above: that it wasn’t necessarily negative at all, but she’d have to rethink her life and get rid of all sorts of unwanted stuff. Three days later she texted me to say her baby had been born – 2 months early, but he was fine. She wanted to know what the Tower reversed meant! I replied that although she had expected the birth, she’d thought she had plenty of time. Now, however, both she and her partner would have to make some radical changes to their lifestyle – dismantling the old structures and setting up new.

Tarot Card Meanings: More on Reversals is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings: More on Reversals is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

With the first crocuses out in the garden, it’s a little odd to find my thoughts centering on death – and the tarot Death card. The latter is often depicted as a skeleton wielding a scythe and cutting down King and commoner alike. Given that the first tarot decks appeared shortly after the Black Death raged through Europe, this view of Death is not surprising. Today, however, most tarot readers would read the card not as death, but as change and transformation.

From the point of view of an artist ‘painting the bones’ [which I paraphrased from The Llewellyn Journal 'Writing Down the Bones' of February 16th 2009 by Corrine Kenner], I take a slightly different view. For me the Death card in the Intuitive Tarot is an initiatory figure, challenging me to strip my thoughts to the bone, to discover what I am really about, and to rid myself of all the dross in my life. After the Hanged Man’s lessons, where we’ve had to reverse all our set views – everything we’ve been taught – we are ready for a more profound rethink. Thus we arrive at the Death card, Major Arcana number XIII.

When I painted this image I wanted it to be quite confrontational. So Death is fearful indeed, an imposing black figure with red eyes burning in its white skull. Behind this figure is a wall of fire – which I saw as cold, not hot. To complete the image, I softened its impact with the opened cocoon, the diamond, and butterfly to indicate rebirth. Later I discovered that in shamanic lore, the initiators are often experienced as putting the dismembered body of the initiate into fire (after which the successful trainee is re-membered, emerging as a fully-fledged shaman). This gives yet another dimension to the card, which, at least for the layman, is probably the most feared of all tarot cards.

For me, then, the image of Death, and thus Death itself, is the next step towards a greater life. For those who have moved into his realm, I salute you, and honour your advance along the path. As the crocuses open their delicate petals after what seems like a very long winter, I acknowledge Death as a necessary part of that rebirth.

Painting the Bones: an Artist’s Guide to the Death card is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Painting the Bones: an Artist’s Guide to the Death card is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Yes, I know: it’s irrelevant now, but I wonder why I began with the Magician. After all, The Fool precedes him. He’s either unnumbered, or numbered 0. But why be conventional? The Fool wouldn’t care one way or the other, in fact he’d probably be keen to be placed just about anywhere except the expected place.

The Fool is the unusual, the insane, the outsider. He brings with him chaos, even madness. If he arrives in your reading, you might be the sort of person who would grin and nod, welcoming him in and living with the layers of disorder he brings with him, but quite often his appearance brings with it a sharp intake of breath as the client immediately starts trying to identify exactly what it is they’ve done that’s particularly stupid.

But of course the card isn’t about stupidity – or only very rarely, and even then I would expect it to be reversed. It’s usually about taking risks, a leap into the unknown, or being prepared to see outside the box. The Fool is traditionally pictured jumping off a cliff while a small dog (symbol of faithfulness) tries to keep him from succeeding. So it can be about a new path, not safe but exciting, where we can test our mettle to the fullest, reaching out to the highest we can attain … or falling into the chasm below (but even then, if we survive, we’ll have learnt a huge amount). We might expect to see paradoxical, contradictory events or personality traits. And sometimes the appearance of The Fool can be a goad to take uncomfortable decisions.

Reversed, it can be a warning that pitfalls lie ahead. Or that some faulty decision needs to be rethought. It often points out a reckless, thoughtless approach that could easily result in major problems – the sort of ‘act first think later’ attitude that our western culture is so good at.

Still, I love The Fool. He started my long journey of discovery through the Tarot. You may well have heard the story before but I’ll tell it again (the Fool loves to do this – he doesn’t care if you’ve heard it 10 or 20 times before, he likes telling it!!!

I was doodling one night, idly, in front of the television (as one does) and, looking down, I discovered I’d actually drawn The Fool – but a very different being from the familiar figure I knew from decks I had seen previously. His eyes were extraordinary – a bit mad, and yet deep, deep like the ocean. I painted the drawing to see if the magic stayed; and it did (see above). I found him so compelling I decided to go on to see if I could produce an equally interesting Magician … and then I did Justice … and Strength, and eight years later, I had a full tarot deck. So, as far as I’m concerned, the Fool is the door to a wider, richer universe.

That’s the deeper aspect of this wonderful archetype: the Wise Fool. In the book of The Intuitive Tarot, he’s placed both at the beginning and at the end of the Major Arcana: Alpha and Omega. In this guise, he’s the stage past The World – one stage past the culmination of the journey. We might see him as the numinous soul, the transparent, all-knowing innocent. The Beatles sang about him in The Fool on the Hill, Stanley Kubrick depicted him at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We don’t encounter his like very often, unfortunately. When we do, we either kill them, or fete them. Usually the former.

Tarot Card Meanings – The Fool is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings – The Fool is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Whenever I see this card I see in my mind’s eye the moon rising over the Mysteries, the Delphic Oracle and the ancient temples. There’s a quote in The Bacchae which somehow brings with it the atmosphere, magic and the belief in the Otherworlds:

Will they ever come to me, ever again
The long, long dances,
On through the dark till the dim stars wane?
Shall I feel the dew on my throat and the stream of wind in my hair?

The High Priestess reminds us of a time when belief in oracles was not in doubt, when materialism, rationality and greed were not alpha and omega of existence, when the veil between the worlds was thinner than it is today.

But at the same time, the seer and her gifts are returning to our world. The High Priestess is about the deep inner knowledge we all have, and about the connection with wonder, intuition, and spiritual awareness. The High Priestess is seen as a part of the Divine Feminine, and manifests in women as a direct link to our innate spirituality, and in men as creative inspiration. In readings she would be seen as a call to listen to your intuition and usually suggests that the client needs to give more emphasis to spirituality and intuition in their lives. For a man it might indicate a powerful, yet platonic relationship but also, and perhaps even more importantly, she depicts his own inner nature, the anima.

The High Priestess usually appears in readings where the client has an inner call, often to use their psychic or healing talents, but has been ignoring or misusing it. This is understandable – many people are terrified of seeing into the future or seeing spirits – but it can cause serious energy imbalances. If you have these gifts, they need to be utilised – if not, you may well find yourself locked in denial, passive aggressive behaviour, addiction, or self-sabotage.

If the card is reversed, this may well have happened. It shows loss of spiritual connection and lack of integrity. It also suggests creative blocks, frustration, and denial of potential. The scientist so keen to make us all atheists – so fearful of inner knowledge and belief – would almost certainly get the High Priestess reversed in his cards.

If you get the High Priestess appearing in your cards, pay careful attention to your dreams, to any strange coincidences that happen, and to long-forgetten hopes. Try to allow yourself to believe – in beauty, in love, in the invisible. The visible is not all there is in the universe – it is, to paraphrase J.B.S. Haldane, ‘not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose’.

Tarot Card Meanings – The High Priestess is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings – The High Priestess is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

I remember I had problems painting this card: whereas The Fool, Magician and High Priestess came really easily, almost as if they had been waiting for me, I had about 3 versions of the Empress before this one appeared. She’s softer and less stylised than the others, and while the image says what’s necessary, it could have been a lot more powerful, as the Empress is the Great Goddess, the feminine principle of the universe. At one time – before the patriarchy took over – all the other gods answered to her – she was the exalted one, ‘into whose hands are committed the behests of the great gods’. In one hand she holds a sceptre to show her ability to rule, and curved in her other arm is an infant. People link her to Isis and Demeter, while in the East she might be seen as Durga.

Often the Empress appears in readings when the client needs to give her- or himself a bit of nurturing, or if she is pregnant or planning a child. (If pregnancy is an issue for the client, the card will probably appear reversed.) It’s about self-awareness and self-acceptance, a beautiful receptive energy which holds, receives and nurtures. We in the 21st century have little experience of the power of the feminine and its apparently effortless grace.

The Empress frankly enjoys sex, she exudes feminity in all its aspects. She is fecund, abundant, lush, unashamed, even ribald. She is bountiful, sensuous, receptive. She loves food, good things, the earth. In fact, she is the earth, and if you look at how the land explodes into life in spring, you’ll be witnessing her power. On the tarot path, she is the Mother … and to move on, we have to separate ourselves from her. There are a surprising number of people who never manage that. The woman who rings mother daily, sees her as a friend rather than a parent, constantly quotes her wise sayings, asks her advice; or the man who is still at home at 30 or 40, or – although married, still sees his mother as the epitomy of womanhood, will almost certainly be in thrall to the darker side of the Empress.

Because she is not always about love and light. Like the earth, she can destroy. Get on the wrong side of her and you’ll know all about it. This is the Empress in her Kali aspect: the typhoon, the earthquake, the tsunami. She can be the devouring mother, the dark side of femininity, the bitch goddess. So, reversed, the Empress can signify ensnaring, intrusive tyranny, lack of boundaries, dry sterility, martyrdom, or self-indulgence. Less negatively, she might also show that the client is neglecting him- or herself.

Tarot Card Meanings -The Empress is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today

Tarot Card Meanings -The Empress is a post from: Tarot Card Meanings - How They Can Help You Today