by Marcus Katz
Vertical Column Two
The Jewels of the Wise describes this column in a cursory fashion as “various functions of the alchemical water.” In their work on alchemy, they define this water more specifically:
“Alchemical Water is the Life-Power in its aspect of substance, or the principle of embodiment.” 168
It is a symbol of the structure or matter of the universe, from which all things are born and created. It is the feminine womb and matrix of manifestation; it is form in comparison to force.
The cards illustrating this column are the High Priestess, the Chariot, the Hanged Man, and the Star.
High Priestess
The veil of Isis no man has removed, this represents the inner secrets of matter and the hidden work of the spirit prior to manifestation. In a personal sense, it is the deepest well of our inner state—things hidden to us that can only be intuited or sensed as mystery.
The Chariot
As our inner nature or the inner nature of the world comes into being, it is first presented as duality, a difference; a “this” and “that”; a “self” and “other.” It is then harnessed into creativity and from this duality all things arise, including notions of good and evil.
The Hanged Man
This card corresponds with the Hebrew letter Mem which means “water” so is the core of this sequence. It is the suspension of spirit in matter, shown more clearly in the original Golden Dawn illustration (also picked up by the Waite-Trinick Tarot) and the presence of the divine in the world. At a personal level, it is the sense of connection we feel when we live our values consistently and are truly authentic.
The Star
On a universal scale, this is the final manifestation of the metaphorical point of light hidden by the High Priestess, and the will of the divine shining forth in the universe. In ourselves it is the delicate balancing of our conflicting and multifaceted nature towards one ideal against one sense of self. The Star is one of many stars, but all shine in one universe. The Star pours forth the “alchemical water” on both water and land—the process of manifestation through duality.
If we should now receive both the Star and the High Priestess in a reading, we might be reminded of their places in this layout (or another such layout) and apply them more powerfully as a connected pair, knowing their relationship in this context. A relatively mundane reading for a workplace-related question could then be elevated into a discussion of the person’s deepest feelings, their own dualities, and their potential conflict within the workplace situation.
Vertical Column Three
This column is “devoted to growth and change, primarily in the area of the subconscious.” 169 As we have previously mentioned, the Holy Order of Mans taught very strongly the idea of the conscious and unconscious selves. In this column, we may see more in this context.
The Empress
She is indeed the subconscious realm, our natural and primitive self, and the nurturer; the place where we give birth to new ideas and ambitions. On a wider scale, she is the wild, the unknown, the unbounded place where the conscious mind has not yet come to dwell.
Strength
At the next level down, we begin to connect to the simplest part of ourselves, we start the process of embracing the animal side of our self and wrestle with its primal instinct. All change is of this nature, a constant battle of desire.
Death
The process of change brings about transformation as symbolised by this card. It is one thing being turned into another by our ongoing march within existence. In terms of the conscious and unconscious, it is the fear of death manifest by our sense of self against its dissolution into the unconscious underworld.
Moon
At a base level, the facing of our fears is illustrated here; it is demons and our own madness; the borderlands between the rational and conscious self and the irrational unconscious. The Empress manifests them in our dreams and lights our journey through the moon into the wild places of the soul.
In this column, we see the power of tarot to reflect and illuminate our very deepest existential concerns from the fear of death to the sense of self. Whether we are reading for the simplest relationship situation or a profound spiritual crisis, all the cards can go where we need them to go.
Vertical Column Four
We now begin to reach earthier concerns as we move across the journey of the Fool from right to left in this layout. The whole layout is a descent or progression from left to right and from top to bottom. So, the highest card in this context is the Magician, the ultimate Will or Word, and the lowest is Judgment, the final realization of spirit in matter and the call to its return home back through the process.
This column is said to show “different degrees of accomplishment.”
The Emperor
We begin with insight, order, control and a constitution of our ambition. The Emperor is the onlooker who has vision and from this comes all accomplishment; the ability to see what is not yet present and act to bring it into manifestation.
The Hermit
At the summit of attainment, the Hermit is open to the divine influence and allows it to pass through him without hindrance. He is one with the path in his wisdom and has accomplished the journey to reach this singular point. He illustrates the purity of action in service.
Temperance
As the illustration of the alchemical fire in which we are truly tempered, this card shows what can be accomplished by enduring the journey of trial and tribulation. It is the card of patience and long-term work, a persistent will to work on oneself. In this column, we can also see clearly the journey back up the hierarchy from the Sun (below) of awareness through the work of Temperance, the path of the Hermit, and arriving at the throne of the Emperor.
The Sun
At the base of this column of accomplishment we have the card illustrating the child-like innocence of pure awareness. It is the self-knowledge and sacrifice that begins all true accomplishment. As it is said, “therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Vertical Column Five
In this final column, it is written that it “shows a series of triplicities” which is an interesting observation on the designs of these cards: the Hierophant, Wheel of Fortune, Devil, and Judgment. We might also suggest that these cards are more about the way in which choice and free will takes place in the world, given the descent narrative of the overall layout.
The Hierophant
In the literal meaning of the word hierophantos, this card is an interface between one world and another, one who reveals sacred mysteries. In a cosmic sense, this illustrates the way in which the entire universe can be taken as an exemplar or demonstration of the divine structure. In our everyday world, the Hierophant shows the trinity that arises when we consider our options, choices, and consult others beyond ourselves. If we only have one choice, we are a slave; if we have two, we are in a dilemma. It is only when we have three options do we begin to have freedom.
The Wheel of Fortune
Here we have fate in its usual sense: the up and down of life and chance and/or fortune. However, it is also the cyclic principle in evolution, the testing of something through repetition, and the spiral process of initiation in time. Here our choices have consequences that we must allow to teach us until we attain the position of the centre of the Wheel. In a mystical sense, the Wheel is also the unity of all things, leaving only the Devil and Judgment below it.
The Devil
At almost the very base of the last column, it is perhaps no surprise to see the Devil in this place. As the symbol and illustration of ignorance, attachment, and even evil, the Devil appears here as the rawest and basic instrument of matter. It is both the first and the final temptation on
the journey between spirit and matter, and the card indicates the responsibility that free will bestows upon us.
Judgment
As we have already suggested, here is the final resting place of spirit and yet also the start of its return to its rightful estate. It is the tomb and the calling forth to the divine realm for those who can hear it and rise to its invitation. We are reminded in this card of the opening of the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, when an angel blows a trumpet on Easter Day outside the titular character’s house and delivers an invitation to a great wedding. This wedding is the journey of unification which this layout illustrates, as we rise from our sleep and return to the Garden indicated by the Lovers and the Fool who is ever present in the World.
As with any layout, we can look at other patterns such as diagonals, pairs, and in this case, the rows across the square to provoke our thinking. If we took the pairs at each end of the rows, for example, it would be the following:
Row One: The Magician and the Hierophant
Row Two: The Lovers and the Wheel
Row Three: Justice and the Devil
Row Four: The Tower and Judgment
What concepts might these pairs represent, and how would they work as four levels of the same sort of concepts? As we explore layouts, we study not only the cards but ourselves as well:
“We have not told everything about each Key, because no one can. You have to find much of it yourself, and it cannot all become clear the first time around. But this material should provide an accurate and fruitful beginning to encourage the dawning Sun of Reality.” 170
Christian Tarot and a Card a Day
We will now take a moment to consider the Christian origins of the tarot images. In our time travels, we have come to see how the tarot deck is very much a product of a Christian society and mindset, constantly being re-tuned to individual and collective cosmologies. It is what Tali calls a “blank bible” onto which any philosophy can be projected—and there are few tools, if any, that really serve this singular purpose.
In fact, the whole idea of a “card of the day” where a tarot student is encouraged to take one card for study each day, is no different from the earliest use of cards as morality teaching. In 1718, Augsburg, Germany, we find morality cards being used as a “card of the day.” Decks like these were called Geistliche Karten, “a motto for the day,” and each card contained text listing a playing card (such as the 7 of Spades) and a spiritual musing designed to promote virtuous behaviour.
Each card text began with Heut, “today” and continued with a homily to guide the reader towards moral fortitude—and provide preparation to meet your maker. As an example, card 8 (Hertz 8) contains the verse:
Today … imagine death, you have to die, death is certain and will come soon, do not know today or tomorrow or whether he waits longer. Prepare soon, take the ladder of Christ and climb up to virtue. To achieve this mercy say a Lord’s Prayer and an Ave Maria for the soul that does not regard death and doesn’t prepare enough for it. 171
It perhaps suggests a good way to use tarot through this method, where each card provides a homily to contemplate during the day. An example might be the 6 of Swords:
Today … imagine travel in all its meanings; that every movement you make is traveling from one state to another as well as through space. Consider too that all whom you meet this day are fellow travellers each on their own journey in addition to their companionship on your journey. Say this day, “I am travelling and I know not to where.”
It would be a good journal exercise to create a homily for every card and contemplate them all over a period of seventy-eight days.
When we examine this spiritual or deeper aspect of tarot, in addition to our trip to 1909 and the work of A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, we should also take a brief hop to the life of an author whose work was published anonymously and posthumously. The work remains one of the hidden gems of tarot.
The book Meditations on the Tarot was first published in English in 1984, and to those of us around at the time it was a major revelation. A dense tome on the major arcana, each card was described and developed over at least twenty-five tightly written pages, drawing on sources as diverse as Nietzsche to Buddha.
The author was later revealed to be Valentin Tomberg (1900–1973). He was Estonian-Russian and engaged with Theosophy and Anthroposophy, later converting to Roman Catholicism. His life would make a novel as he was active in the Dutch resistance, gained a PhD, and translated Russian for the BBC during the cold war. Perhaps somewhat incongruously to this vibrant patchwork of life, he died on holiday in Majorca.
We have summarised a brief selection of the concepts to which Tomberg associated each of the major arcana in his work. We will then look at how these might be used in a reading for spiritual rather than mundane affairs.
The Magician: Creativity, capability, working without lust of result, active relaxation, mindfulness, suspending disbelief, spontaneity.
The High Priestess: Knowledge, knowing, awareness, divine channel/medium, epiphany, intuition, receptivity.
The Empress: Sacred magic, belief, miraculous, regeneration, transcendence, generation, fecundity.
The Emperor: Authority, divine power, omniscient, (all seeing), emissary.
The Pope: Benediction, blessing, teacher, poverty, inner emptiness, promulgation.
The Lovers: Union, chastity, return, soul mate, reciprocation, compatibility, temptation.
The Chariot: Autocratic, controlling, manipulative, resistance, self-sufficient, self-standing, initiative, individuation, self-actualization.
Justice: Mediation (Law), cause, effect and retribution, prove/refute, evidence, rationale, appraisal.
The Hermit: Detachment, objectivity, impartiality, observer created universe, silence, space, solitude, contemplation, inactive, neutrality, knowledge, heart wisdom.
The Wheel of Fortune: Evolution, cycles, movement, spiral, repetition, commencement, retrograde, rest, fate, lessons, rotation, eternity, reincarnation, spinning, destiny.
Force: Grace, co-operation, natural, if there is no resistance there will be no obstacle, unity, reconciliation, concordance, fusion, alliances.
The Hanged Man: Suspension, gravity, opposition, faith, tolerance, limbo state, half world, liminal.
Death: Withdrawal, forgetfulness, sleep, loss, disappearance, relinquishment, withdrawal.
Temperance: Inspiration, intuition, liberation, miracle, ambiguity, duality, letting go, discipline, focus.
Devil: Counter-inspiration, generation, slavery, projection of inner demons, intoxication of the will, temptation, prosecution.
The Tower of Destruction: Construction, struggle with the body, desire, sense of self against the divine, evolution. Non-specialisation.
The Star: Growth, the magical link (between consciousness and action), woman, the flow of life.
The Moon: Retrograde movement, retreat, absurdity, diminution, magical enchantment.
The Sun: Intuition, intelligence, spontaneous wisdom of the heart, pure vision.
Judgment: Accountability, sensibility, intuitive, cognition, critique, judgmental, resurrection, restoration, awakening, rebirth, reincarnation, accountability, realization, heightened awareness, rationale, sensitivity.
The Fool: Folly, induction, initiation, aspiration, inspiration, seeking.
The World: Creative act, movement, change, show and tell, learn by example, materialization, cycles, rhythms, design.
Tomberg most importantly to our time travelling preoccupation discusses the “meaning” of the cards and the problems inherent with interpretation. His thoughts on this are worth quoting in full as he looks at the Chariot card:
Let us now return to the Arcanum, “The Chariot”, whose tradition meaning is “victory, triumph, success”:
This meaning is de
rived naturally from the bearing of the personage (the charioteer) and presents no difficulty. (J. Maxwell, Le Tarot, Paris, 1933, p. 87)
Now, there is all the same a difficulty that it presents, namely that of answering the question: Does this Card signify a warning or an ideal, or rather both at once?
I am inclined to see in all the Arcana of the Tarot simultaneously both warning and aims to be attained—at least, this is what I have learnt through forty years of study and meditation on the tarot. 172
When we see each of the major arcana as a warning and an aim, we can lay out a spread in the form of a cross with four positions.
1. Warning
2. Aim
3 + 4. Balance
35. 4-Card Cross Spread.
Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot by Moore and Smith, 2014.
So, if we laid out the Chariot as a warning, the Moon as an aim, and the Hermit and Judgment as our balancing cards, we might say:
There is a warning not to become too full of oneself and manipulate others to meet your own aims. Your aim should rather be to retreat from activity and reflect on the absurdity of your ambitions before continuing. This will require a significant amount of detachment [Hermit] combined with a proper sense of responsibility to your actions and their consequences [Judgment].
The reading of the major arcana in a higher or spiritual manner allows us to use the tool of the tarot in a deep and profound manner, as a constant guide to our inner life and outer action. If we take the symbol of the cross as a symbol of both balance and sacrifice, we can lay out our cards in this way to make of ourselves a living example of our own personal spirituality.
Christian Tarot
Whilst there is really no such thing as a Christian tarot, we have seen during our tarot time travel that the cards are compellingly based in Christian culture, both in acceptance of that culture (the Lovers in the Garden of Eden and the Devil) and its rejection as seen in the fortune-telling books. As society becomes more inclusive and even permissive, we will later see a return to the religious interpretation of the cards through theosophy and other worldviews.