{"id":62300,"date":"2012-11-07T12:27:45","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T17:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=62300"},"modified":"2012-11-07T12:27:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T17:27:45","slug":"the-2012-us-presidential-election-tarot-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-2012-us-presidential-election-tarot-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2012 US Presidential Election predictive tarot reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As an inter- and intra-personal, relationship-based tarot reader, I don\u2019t usually go in for purely predictive tarot readings; and I have never done a tarot reading based on political events.<\/p>\n

\"Nine<\/a>
Nine of Wands, Nine of Cups, The Hierophant, Five of Cups from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is a divinatory (predictive) aspect to my readings — but I have tended to place that secondary to the here-and-now-ness<\/em> of a spread. <\/p>\n

This is in part because I am a counsellor, and as such my work focuses on the present. All too often, clients look to the future as a way of avoiding the present and tarot is an effective tool on the path of the assumption of responsibility for one\u2019s life and one\u2019s decisions. In part, though, it is because divinatory tarot asks for two things that my human self finds challenging to surrender to: the first is trust in the face of the absolute unknown; the second is opening myself to being wrong.<\/p>\n

Enough of that! Yesterday — inspired by Rachel Pollack\u2019s assertion that divinatory tarot needs to be wrested from the prevailing dominance of psychological tarot — I decided to draw cards to answer the following question:<\/p>\n

“What is happening, and what will happen, in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I drew the first three cards yesterday morning, U.K. time — about 6 am Eastern Standard Time. I realised that they were setting the scene rather than divining the future, which makes sense given I asked a two-part question; they were the first part of the question. I drew the fourth card the same evening, at about 2.30 pm EST. This was the predictive card, answering the \u201cwhat will happen?\u201d portion of the question. I emailed Amanda Painter<\/a> with my prediction about a half-hour later to put it into the public realm.<\/p>\n

To me, the response all cards gave was simple and unequivocal. I\u2019d be very interested in your responses to this and your own take on the layout; I am interested in challenges to my viewpoint. In spite of being a Brit, and also viewing this year\u2019s elections more as a choice between Scylla and Charybdis than Perseus and Medusa, I do hold an opinion that invests me somewhat in the outcome.<\/p>\n

While tarot can be rather figurative and indirect, sometimes it is boldly literal, and I see this reading as falling into the latter category. The figures, the colours, and the numbering offer up an interpretation that doesn\u2019t require esoteric analysis: it\u2019s all there to see on the surface.<\/p>\n

The first two cards are two Nines, and I saw them as sitting in parallel. The Nine of Wands speaks of a figure who has seen his fair share of action; his bandage betrays his battle wounds, and he is on the defensive. The Nine of Cups shows a figure who is well-dressed, away from the action and in a position of rest, his cups spread out behind him as if on display.<\/p>\n

In an article entitled Culminating: the Nines in tarot<\/em><\/a>, from May last year, I wrote this about each card:<\/p>\n

[The Nine of Wands] tells me that [the figure] has come through quite a battle with the wands — perhaps the one that we see him waging in the Seven. Perhaps the wands activated in the Eight — flying through the sky as they are — needed to be reined in; there was a need to harness the will — our creative principle — in order to direct it more effectively. Whatever happened, it didn\u2019t happen without effort on the part of the protagonist.<\/p>\n

Right now, there is a ceasefire, and I feel an implicit striving for resolution. … The grey surface that is home to the figure is contrasted with the background, the man unwilling to associate with his erstwhile adversaries, even though the sky is cloudless blue, the hills green and small enough to look surmountable. There seems to be no threat on the horizon.
\n…<\/p>\n

The figure [in the Nine of Cups] seems content — smug, even, if the slight creasing closed of his eyes is anything to go by — and his robes and red headdress bear testament to his wealth. \u201cLook at these,\u201d he seems to say. \u201cThey are all mine!\u201d<\/p>\n

… The cups are present in abundance, but they are treated like possessions. It is only when they are released that they come fully into their own. The configuration in the Nine then becomes the rainbow in the Ten, overarching a group of people — as opposed to an individual — who are in its embrace rather than exhibiting something that they view as \u2018theirs\u2019. For now, however, the potential sits here, waiting to mature and develop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That alone is enough to suggest the two candidates. Two Nines — two very different Nines. Now look at the colours. The predominance of blue in the Nine of Wands, and the red hat in the Nine of Cups. In the US, Democrats are represented by the colour blue, Republicans by the colour red. This is where tarot is its most literal. It feels directive — and this only becomes more pronounced in the next card, The Hierophant.<\/p>\n

The Hierophant represents the rule of law as ordained by a higher authority:<\/p>\n

[I]f we take the surface interpretation of The Hierophant, we might focus on the idea of organised religion, or adherence to doctrine of one form or another. … Whereas The High Priestess is self-appointed and answerable to no-one but spirit, The Hierophant is appointed by rule of law and is answerable not only to spirit, but to the Church as well.<\/p>\n

[T]he shadow aspect of The Hierophant is inextricably linked to our own notions of the shadow aspects of religious authority: dogma, the patriarchy, unquestioning conformity, and the corruption that can stem from these. [2012: Year of the Hierophant<\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Hierophant cannot be separated from religion, otherwise we go into the realm of The Emperor, who is purely secular — and this idea of religion in the Presidential race, and in U.S. government as a whole, is interesting enough to have its own debate. But it doesn’t answer the question, it doesn\u2019t cut to the chase like you would expect an answer to a predictive tarot reading would do, and to settle with that would be to ignore the absolutely-bloody-obvious.<\/p>\n

What strikes me more are the figures kneeling at The Hierophant\u2019s feet: one in red, the other in blue. A choice, and the waiting for a blessing. Again, we have an example of an entirely mundane reading of The Hierophant.<\/p>\n

It was at this point that I realised that I needed to draw a final card to determine the outcome for the two petitioners. The final card was the Five of Cups. I\u2019ll leave you with this simple interpretation:<\/p>\n

The Five of Cups is also known as Disappointment<\/em>. But for whom? Time to go back to the colours. While the red contents of the cups are spilled, the blue river continues to flow through the picture. It doesn\u2019t get more literal than that.<\/p>\n

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator<\/a>\u00a0using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article<\/a>\u00a0explains how to use the spread.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor As an inter- and intra-personal, relationship-based tarot reader, I don\u2019t usually go in for purely predictive tarot readings; and I have never done a tarot reading based on political events. There is a divinatory (predictive) aspect to my readings — but I have tended to place that secondary to the here-and-now-ness of a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}