Tarot Reading What lies in my future?
Reading Performed 05/10/2022 at 12:09 PM
Click or scroll down for the meaning of each position and the interpretation of its card.
Visual Layout
Card One
Ace of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest. It is a card of great force, in love as well as in hatred. The crown may carry a much higher significance than usual in fortune-telling.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Great prosperity or great misery.
Card Description
A hand extends from a cloud, grasping a sword, the point of which is encircled by a crown.
Card Two
Nine of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Mischief, deception, failed project, bad faith.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
Prompt fulfillment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards. Reversed:Vain hopes.
Card Description
A woman with a bird on her wrist stands among an abundance of grapevines in the garden of a mansion. Behind her is a wide landscape, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly, the land is her own possession, and testifies to material well-being.
Card Three
Death from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrification, sleepwalking; hope destroyed.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
Death. The method of presentation is almost invariable, and embodies a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life, and amidst ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads protruding from the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton with a great scythe is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and unescapable meaning is death, but the alternatives allocated to the symbol are change and transformation. Other heads have been swept from their place previously, but it is, in its current and patent meaning, more especially a card of the death of Kings. In the exotic sense it has been said to signify the ascent of the spirit in the divine spheres, creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and so forth.
Card Description
Death appears here as one of the apocalyptic visions rather than a grim reaper—to show change, transformation, and a passage from lower to higher. In the background lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. In the foreground, the mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the horizon shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a bishop with clasped hands awaits his end. The natural transition of man to the next stage of his being is one form of his progress. While still in this life, the exotic and almost unknown entrance into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness. It is the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor the gate.
Card Four
Knight of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Arrival, approach—sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanor, invitation, temptation.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A visit from a friend, who will bring unexpected money to the Querent.
Card Description
A graceful but not warlike figure rides quietly. He wears a winged helmet to symbolize the imagination. He is a dreamer, and the images of sensory things haunt him in his vision.
Card Five
Temperance from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood, sometimes even a priest who will marry the Querent; also separation, unfortunate combinations, competing interests.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
Temperance. The winged figure of a female--who, in opposition to all doctrine concerning the hierarchy of angels, is usually allocated to this order of ministering spirits--is pouring liquid from one pitcher to another. In his last work on the Tarot, Dr. Papus abandons the traditional form and depicts a woman wearing an Egyptian head-dress. The first thing which seems clear on the surface is that the entire symbol has no especial connexion with Temperance, and the fact that this designation has always obtained for the card offers a very obvious instance of a meaning behind meaning, which is the title in chief to consideration in respect of the Tarot as a whole.
Card Description
A winged angel, with the sign of the sun on its forehead, and on its breast the square and triangle of the septenary (symbolism of the number seven). The androgynous figure pours the essences of life from chalice to chalice. It has one foot on the earth and one on water, illustrating the nature of the essences being poured. A direct path leads to heights on the horizon, and above shines a great light, through which a crown can be vaguely seen. Here is some part of the Secret of Eternal Life, as available to man in this existence.
Card Six
The Fool from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, betrayal.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man. Court de Gebelin places it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is presupposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired. The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.
Card Description
With light step, as if earth and its obstacles had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous clothing pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him—its expanse of sky rather than the landscape below. He seems to still be walking, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge that opens on the depth holds no terror for him, as if angels were waiting to uphold him, should he leap from that height. His face is full of intelligence and expectant wonder. He has a rose in one hand and in the other an expensive cane, which hangs over his right shoulder, dangling a curiously embroidered pouch. He is a prince of the other world, traveling through this one—all in the glory of the crisp morning air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows where he came from, where he is going, and how he will return: by another path, after many days. He is the Spirit in search of experience.
Card Seven
The High Priestess from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Passion, moral or physical ardor, arrogance, surface knowledge.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The High Priestess, the Pope Joan, or Female Pontiff; early expositors have sought to term this card the Mother, or Pope's Wife, which is opposed to the symbolism. It is sometimes held to represent the Divine Law and the Gnosis, in which case the Priestess corresponds to the idea of the Shekinah. She is the Secret Tradition and the higher sense of the instituted Mysteries.
Card Description
She has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned circlet on her head with a globe at its center, and a large solar cross on her chest. The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word Torah, signifying the Greater Law, the Secret Law, and the second sense of the Word. It is partly covered by her mantle, to show that some things are implied and some spoken. She is seated between the black and white pillars—labeled B. and J.—of the mystic Temple. The veil of the Temple is behind her, embroidered with palms and pomegranates. Her clothing is flowing and gauzy, and her mantle suggests light—a shimmering radiance. She is the Secret Church, the House of God and man. She is the spiritual Bride and Mother, the daughter of the stars and the Higher Garden of Eden. She is the Queen of the borrowed light, which is the light of all. She is the Moon nourished by the milk of the Celestial Mother. In a way, she is also the Celestial Mother herself—the bright reflection of the moon. She is the Spiritual Bride of the Just Man. When the Just Man reads the Law (Torah), she gives the Divine meaning. There are some respects in which this card is the highest and holiest of the Major Arcana.
Card Eight
Eight of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Anxiety, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; surprises; fatality.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Departure of a relative.
Card Description
A woman stands bound and blindfolded, with the swords of the card around her. It is a card of temporary imprisonment rather than permanent bondage.
Card Nine
Seven of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Plan, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also arguments, a plan that may fail, annoyance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Dark girl; a good card; it promises a country life after a competence has been secured.
Card Description
A man quickly carries away five swords. Two others remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand.
Card Ten
The Sun from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
The same, in a lesser sense.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Sun. The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief rays that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient rays. It appears to shed its influence on earth not only by light and heat, but--like the moon--by drops of dew. Court de Gebelin termed these tears of gold and of pearl, just as he identified the lunar dew with the tears of Isis. Beneath the dog-star there is a wall suggesting an enclosure-as it might be, a walled garden-wherein are two children, either naked or lightly clothed, facing a water, and gambolling, or running hand in hand. Eliphas Levi says that these are sometimes replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies, and otherwise by a much better symbol-a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a scarlet standard.
Card Description
A naked child mounted on a white horse displays a red banner. The sun shining above represents consciousness in the Spirit—with direct, as opposed to reflected, light. The archetype of humanity has become a little child beneath its rays—a child in the sense of simplicity, with innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world. When the self-knowing spirit has dawned in the consciousness above the natural mind, that mind is renewed and directs the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity.
Card Eleven
Five of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Inheritance, patrimony, transmission of wealth, but not corresponding to expectations; marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally favourable; a happy marriage; also patrimony, legacies, gifts, success in enterprise.
Card Description
A dark, cloaked figure looks sideways at three cups lying on the ground. Two others stand upright behind him. A bridge in the background leads to a small keep or holding. This is a card of loss, but something remains at the end; three have been taken, but two are left.
Card Twelve
The Magician from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Physician, Magus, mental disease, disgrace, anxiety.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Magus, Magician, or juggler, the caster of the dice and mountebank, in the world of vulgar trickery. This is the colportage interpretation, and it has the same correspondence with the real symbolical meaning that the use of the Tarot in fortune-telling has with its mystic construction according to the secret science of symbolism. I should add that many independent students of the subject, following their own lights, have produced individual sequences of meaning in respect of the Trumps Major, and their lights are sometimes suggestive, but they are not the true lights. For example, Eliphas Levi says that the Magus signifies that unity which is the mother of numbers; others say that it is the Divine Unity; and one of the latest French commentators considers that in its general sense it is the will.
Card Description
A youthful figure in the robe of a magician, having the appearance of divine Apollo, with a smile of confidence and shining eyes. Above his head is the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an endless cord, forming the figure 8 in a horizontal position. About his waist is a serpent-sash, the serpent appearing to devour its own tail. This is familiar to most as a symbol of eternity, but here it indicates the eternity of attainment in the Spirit. In the Magician's right hand is a wand raised toward heaven, while the left hand is pointing to the earth. This dual sign indicates the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and passed to things below. The suggestion throughout is therefore the possession and communication of the Powers and Gifts of the Spirit. On the table in front of the Magician are the symbols of the four Tarot suits, signifying the elements of natural life, which lie like tools before the adept, and he uses them as he wills. Beneath the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley (see Song of Solomon 2:1), changed into garden flowers, depicting the culture of self-improvement. This card signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God.
Card Thirteen
Page of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Young man of fair appearance; someone obliged to render service and with whom the Querent will be connected; a studious youth; news, messages; perseverance, reflection, meditation; also these things directed to business.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Good augury; also a young man who is unfortunate in love.
Card Description
A fair, attractive, somewhat effeminate Page, of studious and intent appearance, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form.
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Card Fourteen
Ace of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
False-heartedness, changeability, instability, revolution.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Unexpected change of position.
Card Description
A hand extending from a cloud bears a cup pouring out four streams. Calm water lies beneath, and on it are waterlilies. A dove bearing in its beak a communion wafer marked with a cross descends to place the wafer in the cup. Dew falls around the cup on all sides.
Card Fifteen
Seven of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fairy favors, images of reflection, tenderness, imagination, scrying; moderate success, but nothing permanent or substantial.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Fair child; idea, design, resolve, movement.
Card Description
Cups holding strange visions are presented to a figure in the foreground, as if offering a choice.
Card Sixteen
The Heirophant from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Fellowship, good understanding, consensus, excessive kindness, weakness.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The High Priest or Hierophant, called also Spiritual Father, and more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.
Card Description
He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but not those of the Temple guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a scepter ending with the triple cross. With his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign of esotericism, distinguishing between the surface and concealed parts of doctrine. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two priestly ministers in albs (priestly robes) kneel before him. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the High Priestess is the prevailing force of the esoteric power.
Card Seventeen
Five of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Material trouble; destitution.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Conquest of fortune by reason.
Card Description
Two beggars in a snowstorm pass a lit stained-glass window.
Card Eighteen
Nine of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Signifies strength in opposition—if attacked, the person will meet that attack boldly. Possibly delay, suspension, adjournment.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally speaking, a bad card.
Card Description
A man leans upon his staff with an expectant look, as if awaiting an enemy. His build indicates that he may prove a formidable opponent. Behind are eight other staves—upright, in orderly arrangement, like a fence.
Card Nineteen
Two of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
This card has contradictory meanings: on the one hand, riches, fortune, magnificence; on the other, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification. The design gives a suggestion to resolve the contradiction; here is a lord overlooking his dominion while contemplating a globe. He resembles the sadness and mortification of Alexander, amid the grandeur of this world's wealth.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A young lady may expect trivial disappointments.
Card Description
A tall man looks from a roof with battlements, overlooking sea and shore. He holds a globe in his right hand, and a staff in his left hand rests on the battlement. Another staff is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lily appears on the left side.
Card Twenty
Knight of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Departure, absence, fleeing, emigration; a dark, friendly young man; change of residence.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A bad card; according to some readings, alienation.
Card Description
A knight rides on a journey, armed with a short wand. Although wearing armor, he is not on a warlike errand. He passes pyramids on the horizon. The rearing of the horse is a hint at the character of its rider, and suggests an expectant mood or things connected with expectation.
Card Twenty One
King of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Dark, friendly man; man from your hometown or country—generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected inheritance to arrive before long.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally favourable may signify a good marriage.
Card Description
The physical and emotional nature of this card is dark, avid, agile, and noble. The King holds a flowering wand, and wears a cap beneath his crown. He is symbolized by the lion engraved on the back of his throne.
The Meanings of these Tarot Cards
Card One
Ace of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest. It is a card of great force, in love as well as in hatred. The crown may carry a much higher significance than usual in fortune-telling.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Great prosperity or great misery.
Card Description
A hand extends from a cloud, grasping a sword, the point of which is encircled by a crown.
Card Two
Nine of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Mischief, deception, failed project, bad faith.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
Prompt fulfillment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards. Reversed:Vain hopes.
Card Description
A woman with a bird on her wrist stands among an abundance of grapevines in the garden of a mansion. Behind her is a wide landscape, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly, the land is her own possession, and testifies to material well-being.
Card Three
Death from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrification, sleepwalking; hope destroyed.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
Death. The method of presentation is almost invariable, and embodies a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life, and amidst ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads protruding from the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton with a great scythe is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and unescapable meaning is death, but the alternatives allocated to the symbol are change and transformation. Other heads have been swept from their place previously, but it is, in its current and patent meaning, more especially a card of the death of Kings. In the exotic sense it has been said to signify the ascent of the spirit in the divine spheres, creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and so forth.
Card Description
Death appears here as one of the apocalyptic visions rather than a grim reaper—to show change, transformation, and a passage from lower to higher. In the background lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. In the foreground, the mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the horizon shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a bishop with clasped hands awaits his end. The natural transition of man to the next stage of his being is one form of his progress. While still in this life, the exotic and almost unknown entrance into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness. It is the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor the gate.
Card Four
Knight of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Arrival, approach—sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanor, invitation, temptation.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A visit from a friend, who will bring unexpected money to the Querent.
Card Description
A graceful but not warlike figure rides quietly. He wears a winged helmet to symbolize the imagination. He is a dreamer, and the images of sensory things haunt him in his vision.
Card Five
Temperance from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood, sometimes even a priest who will marry the Querent; also separation, unfortunate combinations, competing interests.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
Temperance. The winged figure of a female--who, in opposition to all doctrine concerning the hierarchy of angels, is usually allocated to this order of ministering spirits--is pouring liquid from one pitcher to another. In his last work on the Tarot, Dr. Papus abandons the traditional form and depicts a woman wearing an Egyptian head-dress. The first thing which seems clear on the surface is that the entire symbol has no especial connexion with Temperance, and the fact that this designation has always obtained for the card offers a very obvious instance of a meaning behind meaning, which is the title in chief to consideration in respect of the Tarot as a whole.
Card Description
A winged angel, with the sign of the sun on its forehead, and on its breast the square and triangle of the septenary (symbolism of the number seven). The androgynous figure pours the essences of life from chalice to chalice. It has one foot on the earth and one on water, illustrating the nature of the essences being poured. A direct path leads to heights on the horizon, and above shines a great light, through which a crown can be vaguely seen. Here is some part of the Secret of Eternal Life, as available to man in this existence.
Card Six
The Fool from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, betrayal.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man. Court de Gebelin places it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is presupposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired. The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.
Card Description
With light step, as if earth and its obstacles had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous clothing pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him—its expanse of sky rather than the landscape below. He seems to still be walking, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge that opens on the depth holds no terror for him, as if angels were waiting to uphold him, should he leap from that height. His face is full of intelligence and expectant wonder. He has a rose in one hand and in the other an expensive cane, which hangs over his right shoulder, dangling a curiously embroidered pouch. He is a prince of the other world, traveling through this one—all in the glory of the crisp morning air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows where he came from, where he is going, and how he will return: by another path, after many days. He is the Spirit in search of experience.
Card Seven
The High Priestess from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Passion, moral or physical ardor, arrogance, surface knowledge.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The High Priestess, the Pope Joan, or Female Pontiff; early expositors have sought to term this card the Mother, or Pope's Wife, which is opposed to the symbolism. It is sometimes held to represent the Divine Law and the Gnosis, in which case the Priestess corresponds to the idea of the Shekinah. She is the Secret Tradition and the higher sense of the instituted Mysteries.
Card Description
She has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned circlet on her head with a globe at its center, and a large solar cross on her chest. The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word Torah, signifying the Greater Law, the Secret Law, and the second sense of the Word. It is partly covered by her mantle, to show that some things are implied and some spoken. She is seated between the black and white pillars—labeled B. and J.—of the mystic Temple. The veil of the Temple is behind her, embroidered with palms and pomegranates. Her clothing is flowing and gauzy, and her mantle suggests light—a shimmering radiance. She is the Secret Church, the House of God and man. She is the spiritual Bride and Mother, the daughter of the stars and the Higher Garden of Eden. She is the Queen of the borrowed light, which is the light of all. She is the Moon nourished by the milk of the Celestial Mother. In a way, she is also the Celestial Mother herself—the bright reflection of the moon. She is the Spiritual Bride of the Just Man. When the Just Man reads the Law (Torah), she gives the Divine meaning. There are some respects in which this card is the highest and holiest of the Major Arcana.
Card Eight
Eight of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Anxiety, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; surprises; fatality.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Departure of a relative.
Card Description
A woman stands bound and blindfolded, with the swords of the card around her. It is a card of temporary imprisonment rather than permanent bondage.
Card Nine
Seven of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Plan, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also arguments, a plan that may fail, annoyance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Dark girl; a good card; it promises a country life after a competence has been secured.
Card Description
A man quickly carries away five swords. Two others remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand.
Card Ten
The Sun from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
The same, in a lesser sense.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Sun. The luminary is distinguished in older cards by chief rays that are waved and salient alternately and by secondary salient rays. It appears to shed its influence on earth not only by light and heat, but--like the moon--by drops of dew. Court de Gebelin termed these tears of gold and of pearl, just as he identified the lunar dew with the tears of Isis. Beneath the dog-star there is a wall suggesting an enclosure-as it might be, a walled garden-wherein are two children, either naked or lightly clothed, facing a water, and gambolling, or running hand in hand. Eliphas Levi says that these are sometimes replaced by a spinner unwinding destinies, and otherwise by a much better symbol-a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a scarlet standard.
Card Description
A naked child mounted on a white horse displays a red banner. The sun shining above represents consciousness in the Spirit—with direct, as opposed to reflected, light. The archetype of humanity has become a little child beneath its rays—a child in the sense of simplicity, with innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world. When the self-knowing spirit has dawned in the consciousness above the natural mind, that mind is renewed and directs the animal nature in a state of perfect conformity.
Card Eleven
Five of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Inheritance, patrimony, transmission of wealth, but not corresponding to expectations; marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally favourable; a happy marriage; also patrimony, legacies, gifts, success in enterprise.
Card Description
A dark, cloaked figure looks sideways at three cups lying on the ground. Two others stand upright behind him. A bridge in the background leads to a small keep or holding. This is a card of loss, but something remains at the end; three have been taken, but two are left.
Card Twelve
The Magician from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Physician, Magus, mental disease, disgrace, anxiety.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Magus, Magician, or juggler, the caster of the dice and mountebank, in the world of vulgar trickery. This is the colportage interpretation, and it has the same correspondence with the real symbolical meaning that the use of the Tarot in fortune-telling has with its mystic construction according to the secret science of symbolism. I should add that many independent students of the subject, following their own lights, have produced individual sequences of meaning in respect of the Trumps Major, and their lights are sometimes suggestive, but they are not the true lights. For example, Eliphas Levi says that the Magus signifies that unity which is the mother of numbers; others say that it is the Divine Unity; and one of the latest French commentators considers that in its general sense it is the will.
Card Description
A youthful figure in the robe of a magician, having the appearance of divine Apollo, with a smile of confidence and shining eyes. Above his head is the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an endless cord, forming the figure 8 in a horizontal position. About his waist is a serpent-sash, the serpent appearing to devour its own tail. This is familiar to most as a symbol of eternity, but here it indicates the eternity of attainment in the Spirit. In the Magician's right hand is a wand raised toward heaven, while the left hand is pointing to the earth. This dual sign indicates the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and passed to things below. The suggestion throughout is therefore the possession and communication of the Powers and Gifts of the Spirit. On the table in front of the Magician are the symbols of the four Tarot suits, signifying the elements of natural life, which lie like tools before the adept, and he uses them as he wills. Beneath the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley (see Song of Solomon 2:1), changed into garden flowers, depicting the culture of self-improvement. This card signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God.
Card Thirteen
Page of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Young man of fair appearance; someone obliged to render service and with whom the Querent will be connected; a studious youth; news, messages; perseverance, reflection, meditation; also these things directed to business.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Good augury; also a young man who is unfortunate in love.
Card Description
A fair, attractive, somewhat effeminate Page, of studious and intent appearance, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form.
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Card Fourteen
Ace of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
False-heartedness, changeability, instability, revolution.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Unexpected change of position.
Card Description
A hand extending from a cloud bears a cup pouring out four streams. Calm water lies beneath, and on it are waterlilies. A dove bearing in its beak a communion wafer marked with a cross descends to place the wafer in the cup. Dew falls around the cup on all sides.
Card Fifteen
Seven of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fairy favors, images of reflection, tenderness, imagination, scrying; moderate success, but nothing permanent or substantial.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Fair child; idea, design, resolve, movement.
Card Description
Cups holding strange visions are presented to a figure in the foreground, as if offering a choice.
Card Sixteen
The Heirophant from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Fellowship, good understanding, consensus, excessive kindness, weakness.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The High Priest or Hierophant, called also Spiritual Father, and more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.
Card Description
He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but not those of the Temple guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a scepter ending with the triple cross. With his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign of esotericism, distinguishing between the surface and concealed parts of doctrine. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two priestly ministers in albs (priestly robes) kneel before him. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the High Priestess is the prevailing force of the esoteric power.
Card Seventeen
Five of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Material trouble; destitution.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Conquest of fortune by reason.
Card Description
Two beggars in a snowstorm pass a lit stained-glass window.
Card Eighteen
Nine of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Signifies strength in opposition—if attacked, the person will meet that attack boldly. Possibly delay, suspension, adjournment.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally speaking, a bad card.
Card Description
A man leans upon his staff with an expectant look, as if awaiting an enemy. His build indicates that he may prove a formidable opponent. Behind are eight other staves—upright, in orderly arrangement, like a fence.
Card Nineteen
Two of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
This card has contradictory meanings: on the one hand, riches, fortune, magnificence; on the other, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification. The design gives a suggestion to resolve the contradiction; here is a lord overlooking his dominion while contemplating a globe. He resembles the sadness and mortification of Alexander, amid the grandeur of this world's wealth.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A young lady may expect trivial disappointments.
Card Description
A tall man looks from a roof with battlements, overlooking sea and shore. He holds a globe in his right hand, and a staff in his left hand rests on the battlement. Another staff is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lily appears on the left side.
Card Twenty
Knight of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Departure, absence, fleeing, emigration; a dark, friendly young man; change of residence.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A bad card; according to some readings, alienation.
Card Description
A knight rides on a journey, armed with a short wand. Although wearing armor, he is not on a warlike errand. He passes pyramids on the horizon. The rearing of the horse is a hint at the character of its rider, and suggests an expectant mood or things connected with expectation.
Card Twenty One
King of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Dark, friendly man; man from your hometown or country—generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected inheritance to arrive before long.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally favourable may signify a good marriage.
Card Description
The physical and emotional nature of this card is dark, avid, agile, and noble. The King holds a flowering wand, and wears a cap beneath his crown. He is symbolized by the lion engraved on the back of his throne.
