Temperance applies pouring water and wine together to the blending of two into one (not to moderation or abstinence in alcohol). Two parties who are very close, who are intimate, is a main application for this pouring back and forth, and so is responding, including responding in conversation or any communication.
Queen of Cups principally is the woman or wife who understands her man when it is being a person.
Otherwise, it is likely to very broadly refer to a woman who knows, because she is studying that funky Cup so intensely as a flood is rapidly developing right where she sits.
It also appears for a woman who is figuring out her man, or figuring out something else. She can be naive or she can be wise or she can be catching on.
You feel they are out to getcha, and they get on your nerves as the coast is clear but you whirl around looking at the empty space for the approach of something that matches the threat you feel. Page of Swords comes up for adrenaline rush of any kind: thrill, fear, being high in any way from anything.
The Laws of Random Distribution are ironclad statistics that control whole industries (anything to do with prediction: risk management, insurance prices and policies, gambling, weather, etc.). There should be NO exceptions. Ten or eleven times, I forget which it is, that something happens that COULD produce a disaster, that disaster will happen ONCE, AND risk managers rely on this religiously. If a cargo door blows off in flight, that COULD down the airplane, the risk manager is likely to ground ALL the planes of that type until the situation is fixed, once a door has blown off, say, three times.
Professor found five exceptions to the Laws of Random Distribution in ’80, four of which were industrial processes. His experiment on Tarot went twenty years. He passed out new decks to each person in the very first class of his, but dismissed anyone who ever HEARD OF Tarot.
Classmates were asked to think of the history of the deck and choose seven cards. Their choices violated the Laws of Random Distribution provably. THIS is what got me interested in Tarot.
I think I figured out why we as readers observe the same cards appearing when we ask a line of questions about the same thing: The subconscious knows all. It knows where each card is as you shuffle. Once whilst inebriated, I said ‘I’m going to choose the World card from the deck on the table on the first try.” I did. So I am convinced of that.
The fact people chose the same seven against the odds IS a puzzle that, to me, indicates there’s some intrinsic meaning to at least some of the cards. (Other events also convince me of this, against my expectation.)
As you learn, the subconscious pays attention to what you think a card means. (This is why even the worst Tarot systems work for their adopters.) When you are thinking later of that same subject, the subconscious produces that same card. But the connection between the two mental levels is not perfect, so the process has its bad days. As you do Tarot more, you train the two sides of your mind to work together, and, voila, produce Tarot miracles.
So say I.
A little corner of High Priestess
The creators of what we call the Rider Waite deck never intended it to be public; it was their private thing.
Some of the Golden Dawn Society’s meanings haunt some of the cards in its deck.
High Priestess, for instance, as the 2 in Major Arcana, to them, represents the spiritual realm (plane), is active there and only receptive (not active) in the physical plane. This ‘not-active-in-the-real-world’ gives High Priestess all sorts of meanings about not responding, being private, being quiet, and occupying one place, and these meanings add up to being a Lady… especially back in those days.
EXERCISING ADRENALIN
Exciting and thrilling things: Those are the things we want to get excited and thrilled about. That’s the good list. Then there’s this other list of things that could give us pretty much the very same adrenalin rush … annoying things that we definitely don’t want to get excited and worked up about.
We would like to be calm and patient and understanding and wise about those things that make our blood boil – without toning down the ones on the good-list that get our blood moving. How to keep each kind of stimulation in its appropriate container: That is the question.
We mull over and poke around this territory today.
(This is a Rider Waite Tarot card that shows a lady in a white frock with flower belts, and an eternity sign as a halo, petting a lion and holding its mouth shut.)
A female adept has such presence the beast who comes to attack ends up purring while she holds his big ol’ mouth shut.
You can be she.
This is the confidence that gives pause to muggers, or the spiritual maturity that makes you invisible to the dark side.
Strength’s emphasis is on taming the beast, providing a solution, preventing attacks or opposition, quashing bad behavior, exerting an influence, taking control or taking charge, making a solution and nipping opposition in the bud. Strength is conquering your own downside, your private demons, whatever is getting the best of you.
The illustration is ‘the Right-hand Path’ in esoteric realms, as the Moon is ‘the Left-Hand Path.’ Here we have ‘the way,’ the straight and narrow (Christianity), the Middle Way (Buddhism), and some others I’m surely not informed of. The hand with the gold suggests the right way is rewarding. Lilies in front speak of the right and moral or pure way; rose trellis at its end suggests victory.
So Ace of Pentacles means right, perfect, the best, reward and rewarding, success, correct, to give or receive (anything), and a lot of money or a price. It is also money or asset in a bookkeeping sense.
Nine of Pentacles as ‘enough.’
Here we have the woman craving the life of self-sufficiency who is content with what she has and content to be where she is … so content with it that she is staying there in a nice routine boring existence that suits her just fine.
And that’s it. Nothing much more than this.
It’s about the dream we have of just living in peace and having enough.
‘To realize’ is the most frequent word Hanged Man calls for, along with ‘see’, relate to, intuitively, feels or senses, and imagination. The illustration depicts how you feel when you experience eureka, when you realize what you already know but never quite fully grasped. It depicts the very different view of the world you have when you have been spiritual for a while and are becoming a citizen of other dimensions