The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, April 17, 2011

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Something is drawing to a conclusion; something new and unexpected is coming. This change is mediated by the energy of The Emperor: with wisdom, gravitas, and an unmistakable air of authority.

“Phew! What a reading.” That was my first thought when drawing these three cards for today’s Weekend Tarot exploration. Whenever I draw a large number of major arcana cards, I always need a moment to take it all in and ‘percolate’ what’s coming through. They carry a fair whack of power, and demand some time and some sifting to get to their essence.

What we have here is a ‘tarot sandwich’ (and please excuse the rather coarse metaphor, which really doesn’t do the reading justice) with two highly complementary cards on the outside, and a practical, beneficial centre that links them. Let’s look at the outer two cards first…

Both The World and the Wheel of Fortune share some striking visual similarities. Both are set in the sky, the images seeming to float in space, clouds at each corner. Both deal with a circular centre. Both have the figures of a man, an eagle, a bull, and a lion, representing the fixed signs of Aquarius, Scorpio, Taurus and Leo.

However, the cards are also contrasted. Where The World is about completion, the end of a ‘cycle of individuation’, where the protagonist has played a complex and central role in their experience, the Wheel of Fortune is about change through chance, and on a more narrowly focused scale, where there is little control over what happens (although there is control, as we will see later, over how we are in the face of change). The website Aeclectic puts it well when it says that The World “is not, like Death, the end of something, but rather a change in frequency.” But this frequency has been hard-earned.

The change in frequency represented by the Wheel of Fortune is one that seems to happen out of the blue; cause and effect are not obvious. Nor is the Wheel’s change divinable… Or, more to the point, it is a change that I, as a tarot reader, am reluctant to divine: there is a reason that the books that all four figures hold are blank. Perhaps some things ask that we leave them as a mystery. Having said that, the change heralded by the Wheel of Fortune is almost always experienced as a positive one.

Nevertheless, change in and of itself can feel like an upheaval no matter the outcome. We humans are so often creatures of habit — even the habits that do us little good. We stick to the known because we like to feel safe, and when we do that we deny the possibility of magical transformation in our lives. The Wheel of Fortune effects that transformation whether we like it or not. Sometimes that effect is small, sometimes it is life-changing. It is always felt, however. Given that we are creatures of habit, when the Wheel of Fortune turns it can feel wholly disconcerting. When we are not in our centres, we turn our power over to outside forces that can throw us completely off balance. Then it really does become a game of chance: do we get the Sphinx, or do we get the snake? (I see the jackal as being visually different, holding the Wheel on its back as it does.)

So, we have a completion, and we have an unexpected shift on the cards. What mediates this? The Emperor. It is by cloaking ourselves in the archetype of The Emperor that we are able to move to the centre of the Wheel, where there is less movement, and where magic truly can happen and be benefited from. Take a look at The Emperor card. He is sober. He shields himself with armour knowing, as he does, when it is prudent to protect himself — and which he can remove at any time, I take pains to emphasise: he is not trapped by it. He embodies the idea of kingly authority over his domain. He has strong support at his back. He knows when to act, and when to stay still; he has discernment.

This is significant stuff that we are dealing with here, given that all three cards are major arcana. It is, to all intents and purposes, a wake-up call to what we are capable of. But we are being prompted to see that we can draw on the assistance of The Emperor — leader of the worldly domain. All of his qualities have the ability to keep us to our centre when change comes calling. It is from this position that we are more likely to be able to welcome it, and to embrace it.