Tarot To Go

Welcome back, Friends and Neighbors!  Eternius Windblade here for Tarot To Go with a very special and educational blog post inspired by today's daily horoscope card.  There's a lot of power in tarot and there's three cards in the Major Arcana that may require a little explaining, if nothing more than to clarify that they're not as bad as they may appear.

And I'm explaining this clarification because I've taught tarot for over two years (and read for almost 10) and I love this part of the class with my students.  By the way, at the end of this blog post I'll give you a little contact info if you're even more interested in learning tarot than you were at the beginning of this post.

Onward!

So in a typical, Rider-Waite-based tarot deck, there are two main parts, a Major Arcana (what I call "archetypal" cards) and a Minor Arcana (what I call "psychotypal" cards).  The Minor is the one with the four different suits, each containing pip and court cards.  The Major, what we're dealing with today, is the one with 22 benchmark cards that involve locations in a life Path, starting (or ending, depending on the reader) with 0 (The Fool) and ending with 21 (The World).

All fine, well and good so far, right?  Okay.  To quote a 1940's flick, "Buckle yoah seatbelts, boys, eet's gonna be a velly bumpy ride."

In the Major Arcana are three cards that are probably the most troublesome and fearsome cards: 13 (Death), 15 (the Devil), and 16 (the Tower).  Each involves the negative aspects of the Universe, or they appear to, but in actuality they're really not as evil as they appear.  Here's why:

13 (Death): This card may seem to indicate physical death, judging from the Reaper on horseback trampling over several people in different stages of life.  However, I'd say about 99.99999999999999999% of the time, it really isn't.  Life, like Time, is a wheel that turns.  As such what is created is destroyed, but what is destroyed is recreated or reborn.  To take Alchemy 101 mixed with Einstein, all matter is energy, neither of which can be destroyed or created but only transmuted into the other form.  So essentially, the Death card is more about spiritual transformation than personal termination, much like the story of Lazarus in the Bible's New Testament.

15 (the Devil): Probably the most-maligned card in the entire deck, for visually obvious reasons being the Devil and the upside-down pentagram.  However, there are two very important religious lessons in this part.  First, the Devil is Lucifer (Latin for "Lightbearer", he was God's right-hand until creating animosity amongst the angels.  God gave humans each a soul and free will, but not them).  He's basically God's way of testing the spiritual strength and resilience of humans (Books of Job and Genesis), and wasn't really evil because he was only doing God's will.  Second, the pentagram isn't a satanic symbol -- it's based on Wicca, which doesn't believe in the Devil and the five-pointed star is much akin to the Irish horseshoe over the doorway... each point is an element (water, earth, air, fire, and Spirit), and if the pentacle is upright then all elements were in balance, but an upside-down pentacle simply indicates an imbalance of elements.

16 (the Tower): Okay, so it looks a lot like 9/11, but it goes back several thousand years to the Tower of Babel in the Bible's Old Testament.  Long story short, the ancient city of Babel was united, one language, et cetera, and they decided to overextend their glory by building the world's tallest tower that would pierce Heaven itself.  Naturally, God wasn't having any of it, so he smashed the Tower of Babel and turned everyone to speaking different languages.  Nobody understood each other (hence the word "babble", or "speaking in a nonsensical manner"), and shortly thereafter the city of Babel was not a place you'd want to consider stopping by if you wanted to live.  So the Tower card can indicate a tear-down and realigning of personal prides and possessiveness.

I've heard a lot of stories from other readers about entertainment facilities and events that specifically demand these three cards be removed from the deck being used, to prevent scaring the crap out of customers.  But what amazes a lot of people is that not only does this seriously limit the true power of a tarot deck, but there is a LOT of Biblical precedence in these three cards.  In fact, as far as I know pretty much every card in the Rider-Waite decks involves some Biblical reference (plus there's evidence the Phoenecians, Sumerians, and Egyptians had something akin to tarot, albeit pertaining to their specific cultural references).  So when a religious leader or pundit says that tarot is evil and should be destroyed, nothing could be farther from the truth, at least if the tarot is used in the Creede: "And it Harm None, Do as Ye Wilt."

Okay, so you've gotten through your lesson for the day, so here's my deal.  I mentioned that I teach tarot and how to read the cards.  Well, if you're interested in learning cartomancy (which is card-reading's official taxonomic phrase), email me or call me at 352-470-2580 and I'll be happy to explain the curriculum, materials and costs.  It's intensive, extensive, but by the end of the course you will have a very strong understanding of the cards, the meanings, the history, and several spreads to start reading at psychic fairs or as a personal reader.  I prefer to do it in person, however I can do Skype as well.

Well, that's all for now, so enjoy the weekend and I'll see you on the flipside.  Until then, may your 8 of Cups become The Chariot.

-Eternius Windblade