The Cosmic Tarot

by Jean Huets

  The Individual - The resurrection of the body is a tenet of most sects of Christianity, and the image of people in physical forms rising from tombs and graves is familiar in Western art. People of many other religions and cultures have focused attention on after-death survival of the physical body, as evidenced by the development of the science of embalming and customs of making material offerings to the dead.

  One could say that all this attention to the after-death body is simply a fear of extinction. We are very much in love with our bodies, unless extreme pain or some form of renunciation changes us. But the idea of a resurrected body is compelling beyond a mere wish for survival.

  We are not souls with bodies as dangling appendages, nor are our processes all physical. Whether we believe in reincarnation and karma, or in one lifetime that is judged by a god, or in a life with no after-death existence, it is obvious that body and mind are interdependent.

  What we do with our bodies imprints on our souls (streams of consciousness) and vice versa. This is karma, or judgment. The traces left in our minds by good or evil actions condition us to gravitate toward good or evil, love or hate, compassion or self-centeredness.

  Judgement forces us to confront the consequences of our actions, physical and mental. Patterns created throughout life now solidify and are held up for evaluation. The final reckoning has come, whether one is ready for it or not.

  In a day to day sense, Judgement indicates a transformation or breakthrough. A sense of suffocating frustration gives way to fresh air and problems solved. Abilities that have been hidden come to light. One is permeated with a delightful feeling of renewal, of rebirth and rejuvenation.

  Meanings - Breakthrough. Transformation. Waking up latent powers. Atonement. Judgement. The need to repent and forgive. Rejuvenation. Rebirth. Promotion. The need to consider how one's actions affect others. Stagnation. Legal settlement. Sense of breaking free of old repressions.

  XXI The World

  A woman dances on a globe in the midst of the cosmos, surrounded by an angel, an eagle, a bull, and a lion. Roses stream around her, off into the stars. She holds a shepherd's crook in her hands.

  The World, of all the cards of the tarot, most integrates all that has gone before and all that is to come. Like the other Major Arcana, the World card is interpreted by sections— The Cosmos, The Human Community, and The Individual—all of which outline facets of our lives.

  The metaphysical shines into human life; the society in which we live affects the most private areas of our lives. Each card of the Major Arcana should be seen as an integrated whole, but the World card especially exemplifies this.

  The Cosmos - The World is the circle within the circle, and the circle around the circle. It is the womb of the Fool, the cosmos fully realized.

  The dancing movement of the human body, costumed and masked, or naked, reflects the movement of creation and destruction. The deity Shiva is portrayed as Lord of the Dance, dancing in cosmic fire. A Quaker hymn calls Jesus, too, Lord of the Dance. Medieval Europe embraced a genre of art in which victims of the plague are shown following the grim reaper in a danse macabre. The rhythm of dance is the rhythm of life and death, of the seasons, of the breath of animals, people, and deities.

  The creatures that surround the dancer are symbolic of the four elements: angel is air, eagle is water, bull is earth, and lion is fire. The European genesis of the tarot is seen also in the fact that the animals are symbolic of the four Gospel writers: Matthew, angel; John, eagle; Luke, bull; and Mark, lion. The shepherd's crook in the woman's hands also hints at an identification with Christ.

  The World shows the unity of end and beginning. The joy of the dance calls us to earthly existence, while the cosmos invites us to explore the unknown that lies beyond.

  The Human Community - Sacred dance has been all but lost to the sanctuaries of mainstream Western religions, but elsewhere it has a strong place: dance as possession by deity or demon; dance in praise, fellowship, or propitiation; dance as meditation; dance as reenactment of the drama of deities and demons; dance as healing rite.

  Dance in any context can be an act of joy: in a discotheque, at a prayer meeting, at a wedding, in a ballroom, in solitude.

  The world is filled with suffering, and the miracle of joy happens again and again. Dancing, weeping, laughing, and hugging are spontaneous discoveries of the tender love we have for each other.

  The Individual - The Cosmic Tarot, in showing a beautiful and voluptuous woman dancing in the cosmos, brings the body to a divine level while losing nothing of the sensuous appeal of the dance. Experience is blended with innocence, the two not conflicting but complementary.

  The World card indicates completion: of a work of art, of school, of a business deal, of a term of pregnancy. All has been gathered and united. The result may awe even the creator. Celebrate!

  Meanings - Synthesis of the elements. The cosmic dance. Unity. Understanding. Perfect application of what has been learned. Completion. A wedding. Perfection. Success. Fulfillment. The rewards of hard work. Forgetting the center. Fear of devotion. Inertia. Restricted views. Lack of commitment. Lack of vision.

  - The Minor Arcana -

  the minor arcana cards shift the deck from the larger themes of the Major Arcana to focus on ourselves as we exist day to day. People we have known, childhood, jobs, romances, family, friends, enemies, housing, emotional states, projects artistic and monetary, and financial situations are in the four suits of the Minor Arcana. The Minor Arcana deal with our personal lives, our ambitions, hopes, and fears, and especially direct attention to our relations with other people.

  This focus does not imply that our personal lives are too minor to be concerned with the cosmos or civilization. The Major Arcana have implications for the individual, and the Minor Arcana have implications for the world at large. Both sets of Arcana work together, and in a reading all cards, Major and Minor, form a whole, a continuum.

  The texts for the numbered Minor Arcana aim at creating a mood or ambiance; the court cards center on people. Meanings are given as a guide for different interpretations. By casting oneself into the atmosphere of the cards during a reading or study, one discovers the meanings as they apply to the situation now, and to oneself or another person for whom one might be reading.

  As in the Major Arcana, the pronoun he or she corresponds to the person or people pictured on the cards. The interpretations are inclusive of man and woman.

  The suits of the Minor Arcana of the Cosmic Tarot match the four elements: wands correspond to fire, cups to water, swords to air, and pentacles to earth. The symbolism of the elements makes the Minor Arcana as a whole more comprehensible and helps the cardreader to absorb the meanings of the cards.

  Suit of Wands: Fire

  The fire element is the realm of the spirit. As fire consumes wood and rises higher and higher, so spiritual activity expands at the expense of materialism. Fire is the ultimate purifier just as it is the ultimate destroyer. Passionate devotion can purge selfishness; fanaticism damns all dissent.

  Religion is not necessarily the only outlet for what is labeled here as spirituality. The quest for truth unstained by arrogance or self-righteousness, and the urge to be truly compassionate, are in the realm of the spiritual, whether one is a believer, an atheist or an agnostic.

  Fire gives off the creative spark, the light of inspiration. It is the birthplace of the muses. Pride is a trait of the suit of wands, as is anger.

  Suit of Cups: Water

  Water is the realm of the emotions, that fluid and very uncertain element of our psyches. Nothing is more mutable than water, except possibly our emotions. When emotions are in full flow, it seems that nothing can stand up to them. Judgement, prudence, and "well-laid plans" are swept away by floods of feeling.

  Love is the strongest and most motivating of affections. Nothing but love can lead us to cast away self-interest, and yet love—or what is perceived as love—can lead to violent obsessions and the most devious mani
pulations.

  Love fulfilled gives us wings; unrequited love fills days and nights with tears. The Franz Liszt composition "Liebestraum," Dream of Love, musically captures the beauty of love, together with its tensions and uncertainties. Many of the cards of the suit of cups show people enjoying love, dreaming of love, or suffering from love.

  Confidence, the more reliable sister of pride, is a character trait of the suit of cups, as is susceptibility and malleability.

  Suit of Swords: Air

  Air is the realm of the intellect. As in the expressions "mental acuity" and "sharp wits," swords symbolize the power of the mind in its rational mode.

  Pain, mental and physical, is a disturbing motif in the suit of swords. "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n." The words have a noble tinge, but they are spoken by Satan cast out of heaven, in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

  Mental activity does not bring only pain and delusion. The swords cards also depict situations in which explosive emotionality is tempered by reason. The intellect is the key actor in integrating emotions, body, and spirit.

  Aridness and infertility are possible problems in the suit of swords. They are balanced by the ability to make full use of one's faculties and male virility.

  Suit of Pentacles: Earth

  Earth is the realm of the physical and material. Whereas wands are concerned with our spiritual nature, cups with emotions, and swords with mental life, pentacles place us squarely in our bodies.

  The suit of pentacles, traditionally called coins, deals with all that concerns the maintenance and satisfaction of the body: food, jobs, shelter, sex, and so on. Failure and success, poverty and riches—earth offers us both sides of the coin. The settings of the other suits tend to be exotic and even surreal, but most of the pentacles cards show down-to-earth places.

  The symbolic qualities of earth, along with those of water, are most fascinating to religion and psychology. (Interestingly, in European symbolic systems, these elements are considered feminine.) Perhaps it is the lure as well as the mystery of earth and water that draw the focus of churchmen and analysts.

  Religions advise us to restrict earthy sensuality and watery emotions. Many schools of psychology tell us that we must indulge our emotional and physical urges, as if these are dangerous substances that must be siphoned off to maintain certain hygienic levels.

  As in the other elemental realms, it is balance or imbalance of physical concerns that provides the outcome. A person obsessed with gathering riches places himself or herself in danger of being without inner resources in emotional or material crises. Continuing in a detested job for the sake of personal wealth is to make oneself no different from an ox pulling a plough, dreaming of the trough of hay at sundown. On the other hand, if a hated job is endured out of love, perhaps to support children or parents or friends, then one yokes oneself to the unselfish heart, and this is the greatest task we can give ourselves.

  Stubbornness, retentiveness, and dullness are dangers in the suit of pentacles; they are offset by determination and a true concern for others' physical welfare.

  The schemes of the suits, of the elements, are only that: schemes. The psyche and body cannot be cut into neat pieces. All the parts overlap and intermingle; they are interdependent, sometimes indistinguishable. The human experience is difficult to see as a whole, and the elements/suits offer a method of examining ourselves, of seeing into our motivations, needs, relationships, and so on.

  We need not be like the child who, having taken apart a machine, does not know how to put it back together and is confronted with a pile of useless plastic and metal bits. A whole, healthy man or woman at home with others and in the world is the ideal.

  The Numbers of the Tarot

  Ace symbolizes integrity, the ego, accomplishment, and beginnings. The number one is the loneliness that impels creation. It is the head of any venture or scheme.

  Two is partners: the lovers, mother and father, yin and yang. Two can herald conflict or resolution, meetings and decisions. Two has a tinge of sterility: the deal has been made, inspiration has struck, but nothing is yet produced.

  Three signifies the fruits of partnership: father, mother, and child; artist, media, and creation; invention, means of production, and product. Joy is felt, but it may be fleeting or mutable.

  Four is foundation: family established in a home. Completion and stability are indicated, but also stasis and even stagnancy. Four evokes a feeling that one is unassailable; four can be a fort.

  Five denotes conflict. External, uncontrollable elements have intruded on the four-square house. The status quo established with four is under attack.

  Six brings us to a new plane. Six is three doubled; the family has been established, subjected to stress, and has discovered its own strength. Some wariness remains; security is tempered with awareness of the vicissitudes of life.

  Seven represents more flux, change, and inevitably tension. The balance established in six is disrupted. Struggle or exploration can begin, or one can let go and begin to deteriorate. Whether a change is for the better or worse, it takes its toll on peace of mind.

  Eight, like six, is another relatively stable place, but unlike four, eight does not foster complacency. Defensive rigidity or exhilaration at having learned from experiences can develop with eight.

  Nine means we're almost there—wherever "there" is. Nine can produce feelings of tension, of powers exerted, of expectation; or there can be premature despair at bad prospects, or the fear that there are just too many loose ends to tie up.

  Ten is completion, the end of a road. All influences have been exerted and we have only to look around to see the outcome. Ten does not mean that we should feel stuck if we don't like the situation in which we find ourselves. However, ten may be telling us to take a different approach. If the outcome is good, enjoy and move on.

  The Court Cards

  Three major factors are in play with the court cards: suit, rank, and elemental or astrological attribute.

  The suit, as in all Minor Arcana cards, gives the overall outlook on the card in terms of the elements and what realm of the human psyche we are in.

  The ranks of the cards tend to denote the age range of the individual indicated, as well as another elemental attribute. Princesses (called pages in traditional tarot decks) and princes (knights) can be seen as women and men with youthful qualities. Kings and queens represent men and women who are more mature, more settled and in control of their lives.

  Princesses tend to have earth qualities, princes fire, queens water, and kings air. One should not be bound by the gender of the figure on the card when interpreting the court cards. A prince can represent a young woman; a queen can represent a mature man.

  The signs of the zodiac, like the suits of the tarot, have elemental attributes. The four elements are distributed among the twelve signs of the zodiac, so that each element is assigned to three signs.

  Each sign also belongs to a quadruplicity: four signs are cardinal, four are fixed, and four are mutable. The elements are distributed in each quadruplicity: of the cardinal quadruplicity, for example, one sign is a fire sign, one is air, one is water and one is earth. "The quadruplicities represent the three basic qualities of all life: creation (cardinal)—preservation (fixed)—destruction (mutable)," says Alan Oken (1980).

  One can arrive at different personality types for the quadruplicities. Cardinal signs denote creative, enterprising individuals. Fixed personalities, as the word implies, tend to be concerned with conservation, consistency, and loyalty. Mutable signs have the characteristics of adaptability and resourcefulness.

  The princesses of the Cosmic Tarot represent the element of the suit as manifest in the human personality, as well as having a basic earth quality, whatever the suit or astrological sign might be. Princes represent the fixed signs of the zodiac and have a fire quality. Queens are the mutable signs and have a water quality, and kings are the cardinal signs and have an air
quality.

  The court cards rarely describe a real person completely. To find ourselves or others in the courts, the attributes of the different cards must be blended in different degrees. The sign of the zodiac by which people generally identify themselves names only the influence of the sun in the astrological chart.

  In the same way, a court card indicates the major area of influence a person may have on the issue at hand, or the way in which a certain personality is expressed in the situation.

  Suit of Wands

  Ace of Wands

  The wand of the ace blazes like a torch with energy from the starry sky. The shape of its light is contained, indicating energy channeled with purpose. Power is drawn from the cosmos down to the individual. The ace of wands signifies the element of fire.

  A work of art, a prosperous business, a life-saving medicine, or a delicious dinner all require motivation and hard-headed planning. Materials must be gathered, research done, techniques perfected. But pity the person who must know the exact outcome of every action taken. Without the risk of stumbling in the dark, the spark of creativity will never be struck.

  As the wand on the ace radiates light from an unknown source, so inspirations come from the unknown. We have ideas and plans, ideals and dreams; the ace of wands signifies the moment in which we see the way, when the form of a dream is revealed.

  Meanings - Origin. Source. Inheritance. Self-realization. Creation. Beginning. Invention. Enterprise. Birth of a child. Male fertility. An adventure. False start. Cancellation. Blind power.

  Two of Wands