Month: September 2020

At the beginning of this year, how many of us heard people say that 2020 will be a year of hindsight? And how right they were! The slow pace of our mid-pandemic, stay-home lifestyles has given us all a chance to look back and reflect on our pre-pandemic habits. We are reevaluating what it means to have dinner in a restaurant, get a drink at a bar, go to the gym, and use public transportation. Instead of watching live sports, we are watching reruns of old games. Instead of listening to live music, we revert to recordings of past shows. Movie release dates are getting postponed, and we have the time to watch old films we never got around to seeing before.

In terms of tarot, the collective card for 2020 is IV The Emperor. We arrive at this card by adding up each number in the year (2020 -> 2 + 0 + 2 + 0 = 4), and then matching up the sum with the corresponding 22 major arcana of the tarot, where I The Magician = 1, II The High Priestess = 2…XXI The World = 21, and 0 The Fool = 22. In cases where the sum is greater than 22, such as in the year 1999, we continue reducing until we have a total of 22 or less (1999 -> 1 + 9 + 9 + 9 = 28 -> 2 + 8 = 10).

We (all of us who use the Gregorian calendar) are over halfway through the year. But before we can look back at where The Emperor has shown up in 2020 so far, we need to understand what this archetype is all about. Admittingly, when I started studying tarot, The Emperor was a challenging card for me. I didn’t really see what I had in common with this intense, stern figure of control seated on a hard stone throne.

After spending more time with The Emperor, I’ve come to understand this archetype as the caring fatherly figure who will be forceful when he has to, all in the name of protecting the things he loves. He teaches us about responsibility. He watches over his creation and wants what is best for the future. He values rules, control, leadership, and structure.

The Emperor is also about defending boundaries. He regulates what goes in and out of his territory.  He is comfortable in this position of authority. Confidence comes from the success he has manifested through his hard work and dedication. He has the world at his fingertips and is well aware of his responsibility in all he does.

My favorite catchphrase for The Emperor is the iron fist in the velvet glove. His clothing in the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck says it all: he is depicted draped in a robe or gown, but peeking out from under that soft cloth is his heavy armor. A thin layer of gentleness and tenderness conceals a thick, durable core of sternness and discipline. He may not be fully dressed for a fight, but he’s ready to exchange blows when push comes to shove.

Stability is another one of The Emperor’s characteristics. Stability is about maintaining. In maintaining, we have to know what worked to get us where we are and what didn’t. We could say, therefore, that The Emperor knows all about hindsight. He did not come to his strong position of power without learning from the successes and failures of his past.

In numerology, the number four, the number of The Emperor, is a number of stability and security. It signifies firm foundations and structural support. We can find this concept all around us. It’s fun to start looking for examples. Just to name a few, a table is sturdy and has four legs. The base of the pyramid is four-sided. A house has four walls.

And…speaking of four walls, our homes sure have been getting a lot more use this year. (Hi Emperor, welcome in!) With so many sectors of the economy forced to close or change operations due to the pandemic, kitchen tables have been turned into home offices and living rooms into gyms and daycares. This year we have had to make many adjustments—like wearing masks—and it takes discipline in order for these adjustments to be successful. We have established boundaries where necessary and remained resolute in our decisions. This is The Emperor at work.

Like Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars, this Emperor also has a dark side. His negative qualities include, but are not limited to, poor leadership, tyranny, and dictatorship. There are multiple times this year we have seen gross abuse of authority all around the globe—and, on the other side, people have been stepping into their personal Emperor power in a positive way by protesting and fighting for equality in the face of systemic injustice.

The Emperor card lives on my alter all year long. He is there to remind me to reflect on the aspects of control and security in my life. He also teaches me about enforcing healthy boundaries, staying disciplined, and using my authority responsibly. I invite you to keep The Emperor out for a while and see how your relationship with him develops. When we get to the end of the year, our 20/20 vision will give us a clear look back at how The Emperor has made strides in our lives, gently albeit resolutely.

Welcome to the blog!

The Fool takes that first step and the journey begins. Whether you are at the beginning of your tarot journey or are fluent in the language of the tarot, you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t interested. So let’s talk tarot!!

Those who are just starting out probably know by now that the tarot is a deck of 78 illustrated cards. The tarot has many uses. It can be a tool for divination, for telling the future, for unveiling the secrets of the unknown. It can also be used for spell work and for self-realization. The common denominator in all of these applications is that they are explorative. When we want to learn more about something we do not understand, we can turn to the cards for guidance. And the amazing thing about them is they seem to tell you exactly what you need to hear (not what you want to hear) by capturing the human experience in 78 images. All the processes that make up life are wrapped up into one neat package.

But how does the tarot work? The real secret to the tarot is its ability to communicate with our subconscious. The subconscious does not transmit messages like our conscious minds do, that is through words. Instead it communicates through symbols, subjective images that can be interpreted in different ways depending on perspective. Tarot is not supposed to be an exact science that gives us absolutes, telling us without a doubt that something is true or false. In tarot, there is no one right or wrong answer. By nature, tarot itself is subjective. The cards paint a picture and our imaginations, which are tied to intuition, help us fill in the words to the story.

Imaginations are usually cherished when we are young, but discouraged the older we get, when we should be putting our brain power to more practical things instead of flights of fancy. As adults, imaginations have much more to offer than we give them credit for. Imaginations are fathered by our experiences and born from the depths of our souls, from our subconscious. We could even say that the tarot cards give us a safe place to explore our imagination as adults. We do not need to be ashamed of our imagination, for it unlocks a door to intuition.

In its most primitive sense, intuition is that fight-or-flight response we encounter when we are faced with danger. It is the instinct that informs us what to do. It is the inner voice that we knew we should have listened to but may not have. Like any muscle in our body, intuition can be developed with exercise and patience. When we listen to our intuition, we tap into the subconscious. When the ego, or the conscious mind tries to suppress the subconscious, tension will build until something snaps, which can end up in disaster. By acknowledging our subconscious desires, regardless of any decision to act on them or not, we are able to release some of the psychic steam before the growing pressure creates an explosion down the road. The tarot is the vent, the mechanism that gives us the power to strengthen our intuition by opening up communication between our conscious self and our subconscious self.

When it comes to the 78 individual cards, a picture is worth a thousand words and then some! There is so much to say about each of the 78 images in the deck, encyclopedias could be written on the tarot. Speaking the language of tarot requires having an understanding of what each of the cards mean. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now with the task of having to memorize 78 different meanings, don’t panic. Learning tarot is easier than you may think. At the most basic level, the pictures speak for themselves.

To make matters slightly more complicated, there are also many systems that can be superimposed on the tarot, including numerology, astrology, elemental dignities, the qabalah, and the Hebrew alphabet, just to name a few. While these aspects may help shape our understanding of tarot, they are not essential to learning tarot. We can think of them more as dialects in the tarot language rather than the heart of the language itself.

Like language, tarot is constantly evolving—and so are we. While the classic images of the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck may no longer reflect daily life in 2020, the archetypes they represent still do. The RWS deck is widely recommended for beginners. If these images do not speak to you, however, there are as many different versions of the tarot as there are stars in the sky—okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture. There are multitudes of decks to choose from. If you don’t already own one, find a deck that you are attracted to or make one yourself. Use your intuition to help you decide what feels right.

Here’s to a great learning experience with this mind-blowing, centuries-old system. Off that cliff and into the unknown we go.

Cheers!

Violet