By Sarah Taylor
Family cards depict your sub-personalities. They depict your personality polarities. Regardless of gender and age, you are yin Woman and yang Man, old Sage and young Child.
— James Wanless, creator of the Voyager Tarot
For the first reading in this column using the Voyager Tarot, I drew three court cards — referred to in this deck as the “Family” cards: the Child of Crystals (Knight of Swords in the RWS), or Learner; the Man of Worlds (King of Pentacles/Disks), or Achiever; and the Man of Wands (King of Wands), or Actor.
However, I drew the centre card first, then left, then right, and so it feels like the two outer cards are parallel processes to the one in the middle, which is the meeting point of both. The Man of Worlds is, in essence, what it is that you are encountering most strongly; the other two are qualifiers. You are donning the mantle of Achiever first and foremost, but this achievement is predicated on the qualities of Learner and Actor.
James Wanless writes of the Man of Worlds, “With Saturnian discipline, Jupiterian expansiveness … you achieve your goals and standards.” This feels very much tied into the astrology: Jupiter has just stationed direct in Gemini, which indicates a choice about where and how you choose to expand; and Saturn has recently moved into Scorpio (a stay of over two years), which Eric writes “is about clearing out stuck emotional energy.”
I find this last quoted statement interesting in light of the fact that Cups, representing feelings and the unconscious, are the only suit not present in the reading. When I was writing down my initial observations after drawing the cards, I noted the possibility that the value of honouring feelings is being indicated by its absence. This feels apropos when seen in conjunction with the astrology. So let’s see how it ties in with a reading where it is being hinted at in the shadows rather than its being out in the open for all to see.