WTF Is Tarot

by Bakara Wintner

  This card has been long associated with madness, fear, darkness and deception, but I don’t buy it. What we find in The Moon is ourselves, The Tower’s purifying flames made sure of that. The negative associations The Moon has come to embody speak to a deficient and malnourished relationship with wildness.

  A common depiction of this card shows two animals—dogs or wolves—howling at the moon. Because animals are without ego or preconceptions, this is an act of pure instinct. What would it take for us to do the same, to set aside our egos completely and fully give in to our wildness? It’s understandable that this could inspire fear in many, but there is a reason The Moon is one of the last cards. The cards before it ensured that we have refined our instincts, pared away false needs and integrated the lower self whose impulses would cause harm. To fear The Moon would be to succumb to illusion, to jump at our own shadow. If The Devil elucidates the darkness of the lower self, then The Moon reflects the glimmering mysteries still locked within the higher self.

  The physicality of wildness has been a longtime source of shame. Women are conditioned to shave or wax their body hair, hide signs of aging and use makeup to mask imperfection. The taboo and shame around wild sex prevent many from being honest about their sexual preferences. Children are punished for acting wild. The Moon is a place of great depth and takes a long time for us to come to terms with, but it’s always been a room in our house. Before we know the true function of The Moon, it is easy to use it as a storage space wherein we throw everything we don’t want, everything we don’t know how to deal with, everything we’re embarrassed about or fear we cannot show the world. By the time we consciously enter The Moon, we find it full of these unpacked boxes of shame and secrets. Here we must heed my dude Nietzsche’s warning to “be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”

  The things we discover in The Moon are not extraneous—what lives in this place are crucial tools for healership. We may feel a kneejerk reaction to place distance between us and our Moon qualities, but to do so deprives us of resources that make it possible to help others. We must remember that everything after The Tower serves to connect us to greater purpose, of harnessing both our light and dark to do the most good we possibly can in the world. When we free ourselves from shame and claim our nature we give other people permission to do the same by the sheer fact of our wild existence. Not everyone may identify as intuitive, but everyone can sense inauthenticity. I believe that to be a healer you don’t have to be living a perfect life, you don’t need to have your shit together, you don’t need to be in a flawless relationship or drink a green juice every morning, but you do need to be doing your work right alongside the people you are helping. In short, the most crucial requirement for being a healer is to be at peace with The Moon. When we unpack these boxes and share these secrets, we learn to love the powerful medicine she offers us. Like the moon itself, seeing the light in this part of ourselves is dependent upon external reflection.

  While the idea of structure is a conventionally masculine notion, in The Moon we see its feminine expressions. The tides and behavior of animals are linked to its phases. There is a structure in the wild that exists beyond rationality. The perfection of the spider’s web or bee’s hive, the flight patterns of birds, the nesting behaviors of sea turtles—there is a knowledge ingrained in the very DNA of living things. What wisdom would we find if we moved beyond what we’ve been taught and leaned into the information encoded in our bones?

  Anecdote

  One summer night in Brooklyn, I found myself in Prospect Park with a group of friends. We were doing a ritual and finishing it by finding a tree to bury the materials we worked with. But wait, it gets weirder.

  We found ourselves at the edge of a large clearing of grass, and though it was well after midnight, the sky was bright orange, with the full moon beaming silver behind misty clouds. At the same time, people kicked off their shoes and ran toward the middle of the field. Normally, this is where I go home. Being barefoot in a public New York area sounds like my personal hell. But I saw my friends running, dancing, howling, doing cartwheels, rolling around, and the primal energy of it was contagious. I started slow. I worried about looking stupid. When I accepted no one was looking, the release built, and I let my body move the way it wanted to, let noise escape my throat without censoring it. Sometimes I met another body and we moved together before fluidly parting. We stayed like that for a long time, ending in a pile on the grass together. Existing spontaneously, completely unregulated, if even for a short time, unlocked an ecstacy that I censor at every turn. It was trance-like. I felt high off that night for days. Even now, I return to that memory and hear it whisper back to me, calling me home again.

  In a Reading

  The wild feminine. Connecting to wilderness and nature. Complete release. Embracing the higher shadow self. Being ruled by impulse. Madness as medicine. Our subconscious and unconscious minds. The lizard brain. The ways in which we are like animals. Lack of ego regulation. Stop worrying about what you look like to other people. Lack of clarity, things that are unseen. The things that we bury. Needing to dig to find the truth. Dreams and dreamscapes.

  19—THE SUN

  I have sometimes thought that the reason the trees are so quiet in the summer is that they are in a sort of ecstasy; it is in winter, when the biologists tell us they sleep, that they are most awake, because the sun is gone and they are addicts without their drug, sleeping restlessly and often waking, walking the dark corridors of forests searching for the sun.

  —Gene Wolf, Peace

  pleasure / community / illumination / joy / innocence / energy / bursting / jovial / abrasive / freedom / aliveness / radiate / paternal / vitality / presence / youth / vibrant / relief / radiance / goodness / celebratory / confidence

  Card Meaning

  The Sun is a welcome sight in any reading, and some much needed ease after the tarot’s most difficult stretch. His warmth offers us relief and clarity. The feeling of The Sun surpasses contentment and brings us to giddiness. We are reconnected with a sense of play. We are different for what we have been through, but The Sun’s youthful energy enlivens us after a dense and demanding journey.

  While The Sun is a light card, it is not a trivial one. The Fool is joyous and playful because it is his nature—he knows nothing else. But we arrive at The Sun after an extended period of darkness, with a renewed appreciation for life and a hard-earned understanding of this card’s value. We are fully awake to the precious, healing nature of this oasis.

  The Sun is benevolent but also impersonal. It indiscriminately nourishes everything and everyone it touches.

  However, it can also scorch, sicken and make arid if overused. Because it is unyielding in its energetic output, each person must negotiate his or her relationship to this archetype. Representing the highest potential of masculine expression, The Sun uplifts the ego, empowers the individual and fulfills the paternal needs of its recipient. Shadow, confusion and obscurity cannot exist in the blazing light of The Sun. And yet so many of the cards preceding it aided in the extraction, purification and integration of the shadow self.

  Completing the last and most boundless power couple of the Major Arcana, the relationship between The Moon and The Sun is the oldest and most iconic love story of all time. The Sun drenches everything within its reach in light, which we sometimes need. However, the relief this light brings with it is contextualized by the shadows of The Moon. They work together in light and dark, lifting up the best of our feminine and masculine energies alike, and do not compete with each other or feel insecure about their roles. Their generosity and reciprocity with each other is so effortless, so natural, that it not only sustains them but also—quite literally—makes the world go round.

  In addition to being inextricably connected to The Moon’s complementary energy, The Sun also shares a relationship with The Devil—with the latter trapping a piece of the former’s light and distorting its manifestations. Though t
hey use it very differently, the energetic source is the same. Where The Devil is insatiable in his consumption, The Sun is incessant in his output. To live by The Sun is to live a natural life—he wakes up at sunrise (without an alarm because his circadian rhythm is so on point), makes a green smoothie and goes on a three mile run before work, whereas The Devil’s up all night partying under artificial light and then sleeps half the day. But it could be said that the desire is the same—play, joy, pleasure. While we may find these things in The Devil temporarily, The Sun is the only true sustainable source of light, the embodiment of what The Devil looks for in places he will never find it. There is tragedy in this, but it is precisely because we passed through The Devil that we can be fully present for and appreciative of The Sun.

  Anecdote

  The few months before Everyday Magic opened consisted of twelve- to fifteen-hour work days, seven days a week. My partner in crime Madison and I sat at my dining room table every morning and often didn’t get up until well after dark. Well, she got up, because she had to go home. I worked into the early hours of the morning, and when I finally made it to sleep I woke up repeatedly, mind buzzing with orders, paperwork and deliveries.

  In the final couple days before the opening, Madison and I found ourselves tracking down missing packages at a FedEx warehouse that was impossibly huge and eerily empty. It looked like a place where people get murdered and their bodies are never found. We were delirious, overworked, underslept and poor. When we finally located our packages, hours later, we were driving back and pulled up at a red light alongside a taxi. It was an especially bright shade of yellow and sported bold black checkers. I turned to Madison and said, “Hey, look at that enthusiastic taxi,” and for some reason it was the funniest thing either of us ever heard. We laughed for twenty minutes straight. Tears streaming down our face, muscles hurting, stomachache kind of laughter. Every time we thought we were done, we were swept up in another wave of hysteria. It was medicine. It sliced easily through the seriousness and intensity of our current situation and let us just be kids for a moment.

  In a Reading

  Joy. Being playful and silly as an adult. Relief after a lot of intensity. Appreciation of the moments of lightness. Carefree timelessness. Vacation. The truth coming out. Long awaited clarity. Moving or travelling to a warmer climate. Feeling energized/rejuvenated. Good vibes. Physical vitality. Doing fun shit. Experiencing expansion.

  20—JUDGMENT

  Forgiveness doesn’t just sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up the hill. You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself. Every last one of us has the capacity to do that, you included.

  —Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

  integration / awakening / calling / rebirth / forgiveness / renewal / triumph / consciousness / purpose / ascension / healership / breakthrough / humbling / compassion / beacon / passage / levity / resurrection / reconciliation

  Card Meaning

  In The Star we got a glimpse of our purpose in the world; in Judgment, we live in that purpose. We are armed with a sense of self earned through experience and informed by our spiritual endeavors. We can track our evolution and are aware in Judgment that we are living in the payoff of the work we’ve done. We’re confident but humble, driven but unrushed, grounded but also divinely guided. In Judgment we are reborn into the truest, best version of ourselves. We have our light and our dark, our masculinity and femininity, our spirituality and sexuality at our full disposal along with a vision of how to harness it all for our highest good.

  An androgynous energy like The Lovers, Death and The Wheel of Fortune, Judgment is the ultimate healing of duality. It is true there is no other, within us or outside of us. There is no warring between the higher and lower self or tension between the ego and the heart. There is a place for all of it. The ego is satisfied, the needs of the lower self are met and the higher self is at work in the world. We’ve not only reconciled all that we are, but we find it glorious. We can see the light that shines through the cracks of our humanity and can do the same for others as a result. We are the person we worked to become. We are awake to our life’s work and are using our leadership to heal, uplift and better the world around us.

  Judgment represents our last task before we rest in The World, and it’s a big one. It speaks to a forgiveness that is so radical in nature and vast in scope that it allows us to see ourselves in absolutely anyone. You can show mercy to people who Justice deems unworthy. You can disarm hatred. You can look at people who commit heinous acts and still see the humanity behind their crimes. This doesn’t mean they’re your bestie, or your boyfriend, but they could be a client. False grace will not work here. Real, genuine, search-the-depths-of-your-soul-to-see-if-you’re-capable-of-this forgiveness is the best and only option. I’ve read for clients who have done things that make my skin crawl, but it is not my place to judge them. The cards will take them to task if needed. If I shamed them or refused the reading because their behavior does not align with my morality, I miss a chance to help them. Rejection and punishment are not lasting catalysts for change. Judgment exists to bring other people into higher consciousness, a feat only unconditional love can accomplish.

  People are naturally drawn to those who embody Judgment because, ironically, they don’t feel judged in their presence. The word judgment can be an off-putting one and is rife with negative connotations, but human judgment has no role in this card. On the proverbial judgment day we rise, atone and ascend. Pseudo-creepy zombie-esque connotations aside, this card is defined by self-forgiveness and acceptance. We are putting the past and its hold on us to rest. We can use it as a tool to help others, can transmute it into wisdom and inform our decisions, but it does not own us, doesn’t pull our strings from the shadows or dictate our impulses. This does not happen by shutting the door or trying to forget, but by meeting our stories and these old versions of ourselves with love and compassion.

  This energy obliterates illusions of lack and scarcity and imparts the understanding that the more we give away, the more we gain. The power we claim is unique to us, and it is intuitive to be generous with others in this place. Buddha said it best, “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.” We do not need to protect what is ours. Even if someone stole the safe, they do not have the code. Judgment is not susceptible to the pitfalls of power like we sometimes see in The Emperor or The Hierophant. We have found the outlet in the universe that fits our plug. We are incorruptibly fueled by our creator.

  First and foremost, Judgment is a calling. What does it mean to be called, and how does it feel? What would motivate someone to resist a calling, or delay following it? A tarot reading digs through layers of fear and sediment into someone’s core. When you are looking into their spiritual heart, you will find their personal Judgment. I’ve read for people who I don’t like, whose personalities annoy me and whose politics I disagree with, but goddamn it is impossible not to fall in love with a person when you see this part of them. There is fear that following their calling will disrupt their life (which might be true), or that they aren’t capable of it (not true) or are unwilling to accept it because they feel unworthy of their bigness (never true). It is the responsibility of those who have awoken to Judgment to reflect it back to others. You may not be a professional tarot reader, and that’s chill. Maybe you work in tech or at a restaurant or at a bank or in marketing. But don’t get it twisted. We are all healers, and Judgment injects healership into all that we do. Be willing to believe it. Be open to the possibility that you are bigger, more magical, more powerful than you dare imagine, that you are here to do something that is necessary and consequential and that only you can do. To say no to it not only robs your life of depth and meaning, it deprives others of the opportunity to benefit from you being your glorious, dazzling, badass best self.
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  Anecdote

  For months, I waited and waited to give a reading that would be completely wrong. Every time I sat down with a client I thought, “This has gotta be the one.” I was convinced, despite the strong connection I felt with the cards, that I was a fraud—I was just meeting people and using my powers of manipulation and persuasion to make them believe I was telling them something useful. I was holding on to the last shreds of my skepticism, still wrestling with the idea that a deck of cards could accurately speak someone’s truth back to them. As soon as I sat down with a client, the fear left me, but the ten minutes before each reading was all-consuming anxiety. The first time I didn’t experience this, my client was the most unlike-me person I’d seen at that point. He was a Puerto Rican man in his mid-sixties, a former New York City police officer, a grandfather and a widower.

  There was absolutely no way I could even begin to fathom this man’s experience. I couldn’t fake it even if I tried, so I didn’t try. I sat down with him and the cards left us both in tears. I got out of the way and let the tarot do its thing and it offered wisdom to both of us. I no longer doubt myself as a reader. I can be wrong—in fact, I’m wrong all the time. But the cards just aren’t. And maybe that is completely fucking crazy, but if seeing is believing, I’ve seen hundreds of clients over the course of years, seen the tarot be so on point time after time, I do not have a single iota of doubt left in me that shit actually works. I can read for people who are nothing like me because they are not coming to me for my advice or experience; they are coming because they trust my ability to channel divine information for them honestly, clearly and with integrity. And I trust myself to do that, too.