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0.
The Fool.
A young man, richly dressed, steps unafraid to the edge of a
precipice; a dog romps at his heels. In one hand he carries a wand
(the will) to which is attached a wallet (stored memories, the
riches of the Universal Subconscious), and in the other a white
rose (freedom from mere animality). His gaze is towards the sky,
not the abyss below. He is not a Fool in the modern sense, but a
holy innocent; the Spirit of Aether, as Crowley calls him. In fact
he has more in common with the mediaeval court Fool, often the
only man whose wisdom and wit the King could trust, because it was
completely untrammeled by convention or respect for rank. He
enters this world in search of experience, but is not of it, a Yod
about to plunge into the abyss of manifestation. That is why he is
numbered 0: he is everywhere but nowhere, universal, but bound to
no hierarchy. A Fool, but no fool, he is the free-ranging spirit
of humanity.
1.
The Magician.
(also
called the Magus or the Juggler). A young man holding up a wand in
his right hand, and pointing to the earth with his left. On a
table before him are the four elemental symbols, and above his
head is the sign of eternity or infinity 00 (also known as the
sign of the Holy Spirit). He is the Magus, the Adept, the human
being integrated on all planes, the will liberated through
understanding. His gesture refers to the basic occult principle
‘That which is above is as that which is below, but after
another manner’
2.
The High Priestess.
(also called the Female Pope, Pope Joan, the Temple Virgin, Occult
Science). A young woman seated between the pillars Boaz and Jakin
and in front of the veil of the Temple. On her lap, half-hidden,
is the scroll of the Tora, the Secret Law. She is crowned with the
disc and horns of Isis, and the crescent moon is at her feet. She
both offers occult wisdom, and guards it. She is at the same time
virgin and mother. Waite says she is ‘the spiritual Bride of the
just man, and when he reads the Law she gives the divine
meaning,’ and adds ‘there are some respects in which this card
is the highest and holiest of the Greater Arcana’.
3.
The Empress.
(also
called the Celestial Mother). A seated woman, crowned and bearing
a sceptre. While the High Priestess is virginal and secret, the
Empress is fecund and of this world. She is action, fertility, the
Earth Mother; in some packs she is shown as pregnant. In a sense
she is the equilibrium of Cards 1 and 2.
4.
The Emperor.
A
throned ruler, also with crown and scepter. In many ways, the
virile counterpart of the Empress. He, too, is of this world;
executive power and intellectual wisdom. In one sense, says Waite,
it is he who ‘seeks
to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains Virgo
intacta’; intellect alone will never enter the secret
Temple.
5.
The Hierophant.
(also
called the Pope). A seated priestly figure with a triple crown. He
is ‘the ruling power of external religion’, in contrast to the
High Priestess who symbolizes the inner secrets. This does not
mean he merely represents an empty outward show (though he can
degenerate into it), but that he stands, at his best, for the
public expression of those truths which have their root in the
hidden occult wisdom common to all such forms.
6.
The Lovers.
A
young man and woman turning toward each other, with the sun
shining down on them. In the Waite pack they are a naked Adam and
Eve, innocence before contamination, with an angelic figure
blessing them from above. In other packs, this is a Cupid figure
with bow and arrow. A card of human love, with many implications:
discriminating choice, equilibrium of male and female principles.
Also, as Eden Gray puts it in The Tarot Revealed, ‘the
self-conscious intellect represented by the man does not establish
direct contact with super-consciousness (the Angel), except
through Eve (the subconscious)’—which is, in psychological
terms, the secret of Wicca.
7.
The Chariot.
A
figure in armour riding a chariot drawn by two sphinxes, one black
and one white, which he controls by a wand or sword. (In some
packs the sphinxes are horses.) This, too, is a card of
equilibrium, and of triumph: the charioteer progresses confidently
by controlling, with his will and knowledge, the twin forces of
power and love, of Boaz and Jakin. He has learned the secret of
polarity, of the positive resultant of contrasting forces.
8.
Strength.
(also
called Force, Fortitude, of the Enchantress).5 A woman
closing (or in some packs opening) the jaws of a lion. Above her
head is the same eternity symbol 00 which is above the Magician
(in some packs this symbol is formed by the curves of their hats).
Her strength is not brute force, nor courage in the ordinary
sense, but the power of spiritual development, of holy innocence.
She is sometimes described as the feminine counterpart of St.
George with his Dragon.
9.
The Hermit.
A
cloaked and bearded man, carrying a lantern and a staff. He is
often interpreted as a seeker after wisdom, but is perhaps better
seen as one who has already attained it,
whose lamp
is not to guide his own feet, but to show the way to those who
follow him.
10.
The Wheel of Fortune.
A
wheel bearing on its rim the letters T—A—R—O (which can also
be read as R—O—T—A, wheel) and the Tetragrammaton.6 Circling
with it are the jackal-headed Egyptian god Hermes-Anubis
(representing the upward evolution of consciousness) and the
serpent Typhon (representing cosmic energy manifesting as form).
Above the wheel is a sphinx— equilibrium again, stability within
movement. In the corners of the card are the four creatures of
Ezekiel—man or angel, eagle, lion and bull, all of them winged.
They are unchanging reality in the midst of which the universe,
and human life, are in constant flux. It is this flux within
constancy, rather than any crude idea of ‘luck’, which the
card stands for, in spite of widely differing symbols from pack to
pack.
11.
Justice.
The
traditional figure of Justice, with sword and scales (but in this
case not blindfolded) sits throned and crowned between two
pillars. The symbolism is straightforward, and once more involves
the recurring theme of equilibrium
12.
The Hanged Man.
A
youth hanging upside down, by one ankle tied to a T-cross of
living wood. His other leg is bent to form a cross with the first,
and his hands are behind his back. Round his head is a golden
nimbus. ‘It is a card of profound significance, says Waite,
‘but all the significance is veiled.’ Sacrifice is an
oversimplified interpretation. The concept of the Dying and
Resurrected God is here--and in human sense, transformation and
awakening: ‘a reversal of the mind rather than of the body’,
as Eden Gray suggests.
13.
Death.
(also
called the Skeleton Reaper). In the Waite pack, a skeleton in
armour rides a white horse and carries a banner with a white rose
signifying life. On the horizon beyond him is the gateway of
immortality. Most other packs show a skeleton with a scythe, but
the Death card does not necessarily stand for physical
death—rather, for the death of the old self followed by rebirth,
renewal. Most occult fraternities’ initiation rituals include a
symbolic death and rebirth (as does the Wiccan second degree with
its story of the Descent of the Goddess and her conquest of Death)
so card 13 may also be said to symbolize Initiation.
14.
Temperance.
(also
called the Angel of Time, and—by Crowley—Art). A winged angel,
neither male or female, bestrides earth and water, and pours
liquid from one chalice to another. In one sense, the essence of
life is moving from past into future; in another, male and female
principles are uniting. ‘Temperance here has nothing to do with
teetotalism, but means tempering, combining, harmonizing; yet
another aspect of Equilibrium.
15.
The Devil.
A
horned devil with bat’s wings squats on an altar, to which are
chained a male and a female figure. In the Waite pack these two
recall
the Lovers of Card 6, ‘as if Adam and Eve after the Fall’. The
man and woman are not degenerate, however. Their faces are
intelligent and their chains are loose. The card does not imply
damnation, but rather the inevitable stage after knowledge has
banished innocence, and before it has been liberated by
understanding. Matter is the master at present, but is destined to
become the servant.
16.
The Tower.
(also
called the Lightning-Struck Tower and the House of God). A tower
being struck by lightning and bursting into flames; two human
figures are falling from its summit. In a way this parallels the
last card. While that concerned the trap of materialism, this
concerns the trap of intellectual pride and dogmatism. The flash
of spiritual insight is demolishing the structure of false
reasoning. In the Waite card, the sky is raining drops of light in
the form of Hebrew ‘Yods’, symbolizing the cosmic life-force
fertilizing material existence. The lightning destroys so that the
Yod may rebuild
17.
The Star.
A
naked girl, youth and beauty personified, kneels on the land with
her right foot in the water. She has a ewer in each hand, and is
pouring the Waters of Life impartially onto land and sea. A huge
eight-pointed star, surrounded by seven smaller stars, shines down
upon her. She is the Great Mother, eternally young, eternally
renewing creation, giving life to both mind and to matter. In
turn, she herself is a manifestation of the ultimate, limitless
source of cosmic energy represented by the Star.
18.
The Moon.
A
dog and a wolf are baying at the waxing Moon, which has a
woman’s profile. Beyond them, a path winds between two towers to
a hilly horizon. In the foreground is a pool from which a creature
like a lobster is crawling onto dry land. A card of levels of
consciousness: man’s half-evolved nature is drawn towards
(though it fears) the reflected light of the imagination which can
lead it forward into the astral plane. Behind is the depth of the
unconscious, from which nameless things emerge. The
light, although of the imagination, is not illusory, for the Moon,
too, is sending down the Yods of the life-force.
19.
The Sun.
A
naked child, riding a white horse and carrying a red banner,
emerges from a walled garden. The Sun, many-rayed and with a
man’s face, shines benevolently down on him. (Other packs show
two children, on foot.) This time the light is not reflected, but
direct: the full light of understanding which completes the
evolutionary cycle by restoring innocence, but now fulfilled and
balanced by wisdom. The garden—the whole of Nature—turns
toward man for its final development, and fully self-conscious man
leads it forward into the new phase.
20.
Judgment.
(also
called the Last Judgment, the Angel, and—by Crowley—the Aeon).
The archangel Gabriel blows his trumpet from the heavens, and men,
women, and children emerge from their open coffins, arms upraised.
Not the Last Judgment in the traditional sense, but the call of
the Supernal, heard and answered within, and bringing
transformation.
21.
The World.
(also
called the Universe). A dancer, naked except for a drape across
her loins, holds a wand in each hand. She is framed by an oval
wreath of kaves. In the corners of the card are the same four
creatures of Ezekiel which appear in Card 10. The World is a card
of completion, of attainment, ‘the restored world when the law
of manifestation shall have been carried to the highest degree of
natural perfection,’ says Waite, adding that it can also refer
to the beginning of the cycle when ‘all was declared to be good,
when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God
shouted for joy’. Eden Gray again puts it in psychological
terms: ‘The dancer represents the final attainment of man, the
merging of the self-consciousness with the subconscious and
blending of these two with the super consciousness.’ This
tallies with the tradition that the dancer’s drape (which
appears in all packs) hides the fact that she is really
hermaphroditic—the final equilibrium of male and female
principles; not sexless like a milk-and-water Victorian angel, but
containing both forces.
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