OCCULTISM
TAROT
Essays on tarot divination.
How Tarot Works
Tarot does not really “tell the future,” at least not in the way people expect it to. I think people who know nothing about tarot expect the cards to say something like, “You will get a promotion in three days.” That is not how they work. If tarot does “tell the future,” then it’s not like a fortune cookie — it shows you your trajectory. I still haven’t been able to source this analogy, but I know I read somewhere that divination is like standing in a round room with doors all along the walls. Any form of divination will tell you what is behind the door directly in front of you, since that is the one you are most likely to go through. That is your current trajectory, but you can always choose any other door. The future is never set in stone. Nor is any form of divination exclusively concerned with the future. The most basic cartomancy spread is a three-card “past, present, future” spread. Usually the future is the last card in a spread, the one representing the most likely outcome. The other cards analyze potential influences on the situation, both internal and external. Tarot is more of a psychological tool than anything else. It reveals to you your own thought process — what you want, what you’re afraid of, where your inhibitions are, what paradigms you’re working under, what baggage you need to work through, and what you need to do or believe to move forward. That can be very useful.The cards do this by presenting you with symbols that your brain recognizes and sees patterns in. Each card has a basic meaning that applies differently to different situations, and it’s the job of the reader to understand how the meaning of the card applies to the current situation and relates to the other cards in the spread. (If a reader does not do this, then they are a scammer.) The nature of the question, the card is located in the spread, the cards around it, and whether it is upright or reversed all factor in. For example, the Five of Pentacles usually represents financial ruin, but it’s been coming up a lot lately for me, and I haven’t been hit with any kind of financial problems. If the card shows up repeatedly but isn’t indicating an external problem, then maybe it represents an internal problem — it could represent a mindset of scarcity, an assumption that I am always lacking. That would make a lot more sense in the context of my life, so, if I interpret the card in that context whenever it comes up, it might add more specificity to the other cards around it. Most of tarot reading is just using your intuition to recognize which cards are significant and why, and then the rest is just putting symbols in context. When read properly, tarot cards can be very nuanced. For the past year I’ve been distressed about the last season of a show I like (for personal reasons that I won’t go into) and I must have done about twenty card readings regarding it and my feelings around it, so I could get over my distress. I got The Emperor multiple times, in three different decks. When tarot gives you coincidences like that, it’s impossible to ignore. In that context, the Emperor symbolized my need to embrace a sense of personal power, so I would stop fearing disempowerment. Right before the last season of this show was released, I went to my cards one more time for reassurance and pulled The Star, which represents hope and the light at the end of the tunnel. This was a message that I had gotten many times in various forms in the months leading up, and at that point, it felt like my cards were beating me over the head with it. I had been refusing to accept that dawn was coming, because I was so consumed by my fear and despair, I didn’t dare to hope or to trust life to give me what I wanted. But… it did. The show ended well, all tied up in a happy bow, and I have gotten through most of my negative emotions. This is how cards work. Therefore, whether tarot cards are "true" is the wrong question — do cards present a factual version of what will happen in the future? No. But that’s not really what they do. What they do is inform you about your own psychological state and things going on in your life. Personally, I think that they work, because they can be scarily accurate, as in the above scenario. Maybe they just feel that way to me because my brain resonates with them, but that still means they work as intended. I think they’re useful.
"Scary" Cards
Removing "scary" cards like Death, The Devil, and The Tower is ignoring the lessons they have to offer. A lot of people see the Death card and cringe — there’s that scene in Live and Let Die where the fortune teller (with the uninspired name of “Solitaire”) draws the Death card and interprets it literally. XIII Death almost never refers to literal, physical death. Instead, it refers to change, the ending of one thing and the beginning of the next. It indicates a threshold at which something is lost so that something new may come. Making your peace with whatever the change is, is extremely important, because it’s going to come whether you like it or not. Death isn’t really someone to be afraid of, anyway. The Devil is a sign that something is holding you in bondage. This is usually an idea or a paradigm, but sometimes it’s also a toxic relationship, an addiction, or some other external thing. Whatever it is, you feel compulsively attached to it even though it is hurting you, which means that you are enslaved to it. Whatever The Devil is, it claims to be something that is helping you or protecting you, something that is necessary, but it’s not. It deceives you to make you keep feeding it. So, for example, the feeling that I can’t trust anyone — it claims to be protecting me from being hurt by people who might backstab me, but it’s really making me feel isolated and miserable. Or, maybe it’s my insecurity about my writing — “If you believe you’re good, then people will think you’re arrogant and want to see you get torn down. If you aren’t constantly critical of your work, then you must not recognize how you can improve, and you will never get better.” What it really does is prevent me from writing anything at all, and then prevent me from taking pride in it. When XV The Devil shows up, it’s usually a sign that you need to reexamine your ways of thinking and your habits to see if any of them are hurting you. Maybe you’ve accepted that something is true when it really isn’t, and this lie guides your behavior subconsciously. The Devil is often a sign that you need to do some Shadow work. There are also some alternative interpretations of The Devil that are, shall we say, a little less Christian. The Druid Craft Tarot replaces The Devil with Cernunnos, an antlered god that loomes above two lovers who have just finished having sex in the grass, instead of being chained at his feet. This interpretation represents that material desires and physical lust exist and are perfectly natural, and should be integrated in a way that is healthy so that you don’t become enslaved to them. Basically the same message, but presented from a different angle. The Tarot of the Vampyres interprets The Devil as representing the need to surrender to passion and ecstasy, to fuel our creative drives and enjoy life more, as well as iconoclastic destruction of destructive ideologies (which aligns more with the above). The traditional meaning of the card is assigned to the reversed position. As for XVI The Tower, it is the card of destruction, and it's always a bit scary when it comes up. I drew it right before Covid hit! But it's not always a uniformly bad thing. The Tower usually indicates the destruction or purging of something that isn't serving you in the long run. It comes with the promise that you can rebuild from the foundation and create something better. It's never easy or comfortable, but it's usually for the best. Without these cards, you’re missing some very significant messages. Major Arcana cards are always important, always a sign that you need to really sit up and pay attention. They’re like an exclamation point in a reading. Death whispers rather than shouts, but it’s actually even more commanding of your attention, the same way you will instantly notice if everything suddenly falls completely silent. Rejecting it from the deck entirely means that you are unable to cope with change when it scares you. Rejecting The Devil means that you’re ignoring your Shadow, because you never want to see it come up. Rejecting The Tower means that you are fighting too hard to protect something that is already gone, putting you permanently in crisis mode. It’s like sticking all three cards permanently in the reverse position.
Tips and Misconceptions
A lot of newbies approach tarot cards with at least one of these misconceptions: 1. That the Death card foretells actual death: No, it doesn’t. When XIII Death comes up in a reading, it never means that you will die. Death refers to change, the end of one thing and the beginning of another. Old things must die to make way for new ones, and though that isn’t always comfortable, the change is usually necessary and brings you on to the next phase of life. Death is usually a good omen, actually, because the new phase will be better in some way. The same goes for other “scary” cards like The Devil or The Tower — they all have something important to say. 2. That tarot comes from Ancient Egypt: This myth about tarot’s origins is actually why it became popular as a divination system in the first place, but it did not originate in Egypt and did not originally contain any esoteric symbolism. The first tarot decks were just playing cards, used to play a game called tarrochi in Renaissance Italy. The Rider-Waite deck, the best known deck created explicitly for divination, was made in England. Any other claim is false. 3. That tarot can summon spirits or cause demons to get attached to you: No. Although one can use tarot to communicate with spirits, that is not what it is designed to do, and you will not evoke any spirits by using tarot cards. (Believe me, it's not that easy.) 4. That tarot readers are “psychic,” or that reading cards is a “gift”: “Psychic” implies the use of some sort of extrasensory perception, and tarot does not require that. I think the source of this one might be general confusion about the difference between diviners and seers — the former interpret symbols, while the latter see random flashes of the future. There’s certainly overlap (one could argue that scrying requires ESP), but tarot really is exactly what it looks like. It’s interpreting symbols on cards. The only special “gift” that you need to do that is intuition, and everyone has that. Anyone can learn to read tarot cards. Also, a reader’s job is literally just to tell you what’s on the cards, not to magically guess things about your life. You as the querent are supposed to provide the reader with the details of the situation, so they know the capacity in which to interpret the cards. Tarot should not require cold reading. So, if the reader is trying to impress you by guessing things about your life to prove how “psychic” they are, that’s a red flag. 5. That tarot cards represent events: One thing I often hear from skeptics is that tarot cards are so vague that they can be applied to any kind of situation, i.e. “they feel specific, but they’re not.” Newspaper horoscopes work like this, but tarot cards do not, because tarot cards do not describe events. There is not a card that means “you’ll break up with your boyfriend,” or a card that means “you’ll get into a car accident,” or a card that means “you’ll ace that job interview.” Tarot cards represent means of analyzing or addressing situations — external and internal influences and trends. That means that any card can be applied to any situation, but the cards themselves are not vague. Each card has a very specific set of meanings that can mean multiple different things depending on the nature of the situation, the placement of the card in the spread, and the cards around it. When all of these different elements are interpreted in conjunction with each other, the reading is both specific and nuanced. 6. That tarot answers yes or no questions: I mean, it can, I guess, but that’s a waste of a good divination tool. Tarot is nuanced. It doesn’t tell you what will happen so much as reveal things about your subconscious mind and the nature of your situation in life. It shows you your trajectory. Asking for yes/no answers ignores all of the complexity of the individual cards, and the potential things you could learn from them. If you want yes/no answers, ask a pendulum. 7. That you have to be gifted a deck: I have no idea where this idea came from, but it’s kind of ridiculous. In my experience, whether or not you connect with a particular deck matters, so you want to be able to choose your own deck based on the artwork and other things about it that appeal to you. But if you still want to be gifted a deck, find one you like and put it on an Amazon wishlist. It’s what I did! 8. That you have to charge your deck in order for it to work: They’re cards. It’s not as though the symbols on the cards won’t appear there unless you do some sort of ritual to activate it. You can if you want, but why? So, in light of that, here are my tips for people just starting out with tarot cards: 1. Get a deck you connect with. This made all the difference for me. I barely used my first deck, and I only sometimes used my second one. I didn’t really understand the point of tarot at first, viewing it as too rigid of a system and preferring oracle cards. When I got my hands on the Joseph Vargo deck, I started using tarot cards all the time and fell in love with the system. Half of tarot reading is the intuitive impression you get from the art, so it really matters whether or not you like the artwork. 2. That being said, your first deck should use traditional symbolism. It doesn’t have to be the Rider-Waite deck. I don’t personally like most of Smith’s artwork, but the symbolism she used codified tarot divination as we know it, and the artwork of most decks are variations on that theme. If you’re completely new to tarot, then it is best that you become familiar with the traditional symbolism as a baseline, before you start to branching out into other kinds of designs. My favorite deck repurposes most of Joseph Vargo’s existing artwork, but it still relates the art to the base Rider-Waite symbolism and uses the traditional suits of cups, wands, swords, and pentacles. For your first deck, I would avoid minimalist or abstract decks. The Penny Dreadful deck may look cool, but it’s monochromatic and has very minimalist artwork with little traditional symbolism. If you don’t already know what the cards mean, that one would be hard to interpret. 3. Use a guidebook. My first deck came with a useless pamphlet with one-sentence descriptions for each card, which is probably one of the main reasons I never used it. Having a guidebook helped me to actually learn the system. I’m just getting to the point where I’m no longer completely dependant on the guidebook to interpret my tarot readings. Some might say that the guidebook gets in the way of things because it tells you how to interpret the cards, but for me, interpretation is also based on what specific words or phrases in the description jump out at me. Whichever deck you buy first, I recommend that it’s one that has an actual book to go with it. It’ll help you learn the traditional meanings and understand how they relate to the symbols on the cards. 4. Listen to your intuition. This is key. Once you have a basic understanding of what the individual cards mean, the rest is all intuition. You may find that a card means something different in the context of your life or your particular spread than it typically does. This is where the guidebook can throw you off, because your intuitive interpretation of the card may not match what’s in the guidebook. In that case, always go with your intuition. Once you get to know the meanings of the cards well enough, you can use only your intuition to interpret specific cards. This is where playing around with different decks can be fun, because once you have a baseline, different artwork will give you different messages.
Tarot History
Tarot comes from Renaissance Italy, with the first decks appearing in the fifteenth century. Early tarot cards were not divination tools. They were just playing cards. They were used to play an Italian Renaissance game called tarrochi, which is kind of like bridge. As far as I know, the early decks still had the familiar four suits and twenty-two trumps, but they did not contain any esoteric imagery. The Tarot de Marseilles deck is one of the oldest ones that’s still used today. It was originally designed to play tarocchi, but its imagery also inspired most of the later divinatory decks. So, why did tarot become one of the most recognizable and popular systems of cartomancy in the world? Well, during the Renaissance, European nobility were going through a bit of an occult phase, with ceremonial magic being at its peak. This one guy, a French Freemason named Antoine Court de Gébelin, claimed that tarot cards contained the occult knowledge of Ancient Egyptian wizards. According to him, the pictures on tarot cards represented secrets from the legendary Book of Thoth, the grimoire written by the Egyptian god of magic, who had given all esoteric knowledge to humanity. Court de Gébelin was obsessed with Egypt before it was cool, and the claim that anything magical comes from Egypt is a very old one; ancient people in Greece and Rome were also claiming that everything magical came from Egypt. Want to lend legitimacy to your magical skills, spells, or trinkets? Say it comes from Egypt! None of this was true. Tarot cards really were just playing cards, and that’s all. The images on them did not contain any esoteric wisdom — yet. A diviner named Jean-Baptiste Alliette, who used the pseudonym “Etteilla” (his last name backwards), took this idea that tarot was a mystical Egyptian thing and ran with it. He adapted his existing system of cartomancy to tarot cards, produced the first deck made explicitly for divination, and established the system of tarot divination as we know it. Etteilla and Court de Gébelin also laid the groundwork for tarot’s Hermetic and Kabbalistic correspondences. Fast-forward to the early twentieth century. A member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Arthur Edward Waite, produced a tarot deck that was created specifically for divination and deliberately incorporated Hermetic imagery, symbolism, and correspondences. This is the Rider-Waite deck, drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith, which is probably the most well-known and widely-used tarot deck ever made. Most other tarot decks are based on the imagery from this one. It codified tarot divination as a concept. From there, tarot just exploded in popularity, and now there are decks with every possible theme and aesthetic to choose from. So basically, tarot got popular as a divination system becuase one guy claimed it was from Egypt, when it isn’t. It’s another one of those occult things that’s based entirely on poor history, but ends up being meaningful in and of itself. Tarot may not come from Ancient Egypt, but by now, it has a lot of established lore and symbolism, making it authentically mystical and esoteric.
My Significator(s)
I only do readings for myself, and I usually don’t deliberately draw a card from the deck to represent me in a reading. But as I understand it, the significator is a court card that is chosen to represent the querent. Traditionally if we’re going off of sun signs I would be the Queen of Cups. But, in the my favorite deck, the card that most often surfaces to represent me in a reading is the King of Pentacles. The interpretation book that goes with this deck describes the King of Pentacles as an imaginative and intellectual leader who is valiant, noble, and wise. He tends to appear stern and brooding, but he has good moral sense, and will sacrifice his own emotional needs for the greater good of those he leads. He has a great deal of self-confidence and faith in his own abilities. This is not the person I am. This is the person I will be, once I gain some maturity. I don’t yet have confidence and trust in my own abilities. I’m not yet able to put my emotional needs aside for the good of others. The King of Pentacles is basically a more evolved version of the person I am now, and every time he shows up, he reminds me of where I’m headed in terms of my character development. I have very, very little earth influence in my natal chart, but for some reason, Pentacles is the most common suit to come up in my tarot readings (with swords being the least common). This is true even across decks. I see the Knight, the Three, the Eight, and the Nine of Pentacles a lot. It’s kind of surprising. But then again, in the Rider-Waite deck, the King of Pentacles is depicted covered in grapevines with carvings of bulls on his throne. And, well, my patron deity is Dionysus. So… yeah. Although not technically significators, I’ve thought a lot about which Major Arcana card I connect the most with. I’m not totally sure. I’d say there are three contenders: The Magician: Raw magical power, comprehensive occult knowledge, and the skill, confidence, and willpower to utilize both. I haven’t gotten here yet, but like with the King of Pentacles, I get the sense that this is where I am headed. My whole life is dedicated the utilizing of creative force in the form of writing — tapping into raw inspiration and then molding it into something tangible that can be projected out into the universe. I have all the power and knowledge that I need to get what I want out of life. The problem is that I have little confidence in my abilities as a writer, or as a magician for that matter. The Hanged Man: This is basically the process of Shadow work summed up in a card, and Shadow work has dominated the last decade of my life. I think that this difficult, painful introspection is the most important work that a person can do. In fact, I genuinely think that a person cannot be whole without it. This symbolic death and resurrection, confronting your personal demons so that you can emerge as an integrated and better person, is the crux of existence to me right now. This interpretation is underscored by the artwork for the card in my deck, which is of a person halfway through the transformation into a vampire — with leathery wings for arms and pointed ears, hanging upside down like a bat. Surrendering to the darkness to become more than you are now. I don’t know who I’d be today without Shadow work. But, y’know, maybe I need to stop suffering. I tend to be emotionally masochistic, and my work with Dionysus has mostly concerned him teaching me to enjoy myself and be happy for once. The Moon: This card encapsulates the power of imagination and fantasy, and also the light/dark duality that’s also relevant to Shadow work. It’s the artist’s inspiration, softer and more indirect than The Magician. It also represents powerful intuition and emotional overloads, both of which I have a lot of. And it’s got more than a hint of Dionysian madness. I spend most of my life inside of an elaborately constructed fantasy world, and although I’m not mad, I probably look it. People walk up to me to ask if I’m okay when I’m pacing under the moon. And I don’t have much of a life in the real world, either. Oh, and this card can represent anxiety, and I’m anxious about everything all the time even when I really don’t need to be. These cards don’t show up too often, but even by the standards of Major Arcana, they always make me sit up and pay attention when they appear. I’m not sure which of these has the greatest influence in my life right now, so I suppose we’ll see. These cards don’t show up too often, but even by the standards of Major Arcana, they always make me sit up and pay attention when they appear. I’m not sure which of these has the greatest influence in my life right now, so I suppose we’ll see.
Temperance
XIV Temperance is a frequently misunderstood card. It took me a while to really “get” what it means. It is actually an extremely important card, possibly the most important card of the Major Arcana, if there were such a thing. Temperance can mean “moderation,” i.e. avoid extremes or excesses in your life/this situation, but reducing it to that ignores all of the more important context surrounding it. Temperance represents balance, which is distinct from moderation. Temperance is the card of alchemy. It represents alchemical transmutation, the ascension to a higher vibration, specifically through the union of opposites. Let me see if I can interpret this image, knowing what I now know about alchemical symbolism. (I’m testing myself here.) We have an androgynous angel; usually they’re interpreted as female, but it’s not really clear whether they are male or female. This makes sense, because angels are technically genderless, but also because the androgyne is a symbol of alchemical union (i.e. male + female). The angel has one foot in the water, which represents prima materia (first matter, primordial chaos). The angel wears white, has the symbol of fire on their chest, and the symbol for the sun/gold on their circlet. They have wings, which represent spiritual ascension, and those wings are red, alluding to the rubedo stage of alchemy. The rising sun in the background supports this. The angel pours water from one cup to the other, mixing substances in precise doses to produce the ideal substance. In the deck I use the most often, Temperance appears as a dark sorceress mixing potions in a fiery cauldron. Obviously, the symbolism in this card takes a very different tone, but it amounts to the same thing — the sorceress is performing an alchemical procedure in her cauldron, and the twin dragons that support it illustrate the balance of opposites. How did I come to understand this? I didn’t really “get” Temperance until I drew it for my patron deity, Dionysus. Yes, Dionysus, the wine god. I was confused; Temperance struck me as ironic for the literal personification of alcohol. But of course, when I analyzed it, it ended up making perfect sense. Dionysus is a god of duality, and there are many dualities inherent in his character: he’s androgynous, he is both gentle and violent, both divine and human, sensual and spiritual, representing life and able to transcend death. Dionysus-as-Temperance is like a divine mixologist who combines ingredients in precise doses to create a philosopher’s water that brings the drinker to a state of divine ecstasy. Since I figured this out, I’ve begun seeing Temperance everywhere. Temperance is alchemical transmutation, divine unity, the Great Rite, the creative process. Understanding Temperance is understanding a great secret.
The Hanged Man
XII The Hanged Man is one of my favorite cards. And yes, that is partly because of Julian Devorak. But, it’s also because I’ve come to understand what it means. The Hanged Man seems a slightly disturbing card for a number of reasons, but it’s not. Not really. It represents a particular kind of self-sacrifice replete with introspection. He is hung by his ankle (almost never by his neck) and his serene expression indicates that he’s there willingly. Maybe he’s being punished for something and maybe he’s not, but either way he surrenders to the experience instead of trying to fight it. The halo around his head obviously connects him to Christ, who also willingly underwent suspended suffering as a sacrifice for others, and also indicates that he receives some kind of wisdom or enlightenment from the experience. He’s also associated with Odin, who hanged himself on Yggdrasil to discover the secrets of the runes. The Hanged Man willingly suffers in order to learn something. The Hanged Man represents roughly the midpoint of the Fool’s journey through the Major Arcana. That’s really significant, especially if you interpret the Major Arcana as a kind of Hero’s Journey in which the naive protagonist (The Fool) moves towards spiritual fulfillment (The World). Of course, a standard part of any Hero’s Journey is a symbolic death and resurrection, and this is the first stage of that. It’s not quite Death, but Death follows this card. I interpret The Hanged Man as being the tarot’s embodiment of one of my favorite concepts, and a required part of any Hero’s Journey — Shadow work. Shadow work is difficult, painful introspection that ultimately transforms you into a better version of yourself. This is the moment when the hero has to self-evaluate and confront their dark side before their spiritual death and resurrection. The deck I use most often is Joseph Vargo’s deck. The Hanged Man is one of the few cards that was actually made for the tarot deck, and not an adapted version of one of Vargo's existing paintings. It is a depiction of a man transforming into a vampire. Obviously, hanging upside down like a bat works very well for this card, but it also illustrates the concept of metamorphoses, transforming from an ordinary human into a powerful vampire. The Hanged Man is a type of spiritual transformation or metamorphoses. (The literal metamorphoses of a caterpillar to a butterfly also requires hanging upside-down.) This particular interpretation of the card really underscores the connection with Shadow work, becuase Shadow work is the process of embracing and surrendering to the darkness inside oneself instead of attempting to fight or destroy it. This type of intense, brutal self-reflection usually involves suffering, but it is necessary to understand oneself and become whole. This card is about letting your old self die so that you can evolve and realize your potential. It usually appears when you’re feeling stuck and things feel like they are hanging in suspension. It urges you to be patient and withstand whatever trials and tribulations come your way. Something good will come out of the suffering if you can bear it. It’s not a good thing to suffer all the time, though, or to be so self-sacrificing that you have a martyr complex or you never let people help you. Sometimes, you just need someone to come along and break your ouroboros of self-flagellation.
