A full spread.
YOU DREW TEN CARDS:
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Environment
Knight of Cups
Cups: Interacting. Emotions and relationships of all kinds. Dealing with people. Think of two people toasting each other with wine glasses.
Knight: Focusing. Single-mindedness. Determination.
Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to the higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterise this card. Divinatory Meanings: Arrival, approach — sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanour, invitation, incitement. Reversed: Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.
Following your dreams or traveling down your intuitive path could lead to fulfillment and satisfaction. A time for mental stimulation. Live your vision. Reversed: Lost in a world of dreams, cut off from reality. Motives are insincere. Be on guard against duplicity, fraud, or trickery. Someone may tell you what you want to hear just to get the better of you.
A knight riding quietly and wearing a winged helmet, symbol of imagination. He is contemplative, not warlike; he bears his cup firmly as the horse prepares to cross the stream and approach the distant peaks. Divinatory Meaning: A young man with light brown hair and hazel eyes, of high intelligence and romantic dreams. Love may come from him to the subject of the reading. He may also be the bearer of messages. May indicate advances, a proposition or an invitation. Reversed: Propositions should be carefully looked into. There may be subtlety, fraud, trickery, rivalry.
A bright, cheery youth, possibly a lover.
The way of love has reached its conclusion: it will now become a concrete force.
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Obstacles
Page of Cups
Cups: Interacting. Emotions and relationships of all kinds. Dealing with people. Think of two people toasting each other with wine glasses.
Knave: Learning. Curiosity. Becoming interested.
A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. Divinatory Meanings: Fair young man, one impelled to render service and with whom the Querent will be connected; a studious youth; news, message; application, reflection, meditation; also these things directed to business. Reversed: Taste, inclination, attachment, seduction, deception, artifice.
A new idea will break through the surface. It may be delivered by a friend. It’s a good time to apply your creativity, to try new methods, initiate new projects. Could also signal development of psychic ability. Reversed: Acting on impulse could lead to trouble. Need to mature, become more thoughtful. Must learn to accept responsibility for self and actions. Ignoring ideas that may be beneficial.
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Above
Six of Wands
Staves: Creating. Creative energy. Think of building a house with wooden planks.
Six: Keeping it going.You’ve established a pattern or rhythm which allows things to run smoothly. Things are going well and you’re in a position to be generous with others or even to give up some of your goals for others’ benefit.
A laurelled horseman bears staff adorned with laurel crown; footmen with staves are at his side. Divinatory Meanings: The card has been so designed that it can cover several significations; on the surface, it is a victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King’s courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth. Reversed: Apprehension, fear, as of a victorious enemy at the gate, treachery, disloyalty, as of gates being opened to the enemy, etc.
Once again, through hard work, intelligence, and a clear understanding of the objectives, you achieve your goals. You have the drive, ambition, and desire — and a belief in your abilities — that lead to success. But even though you’ve earned your place, you’ll have to work to keep it or someone might take it from you. Victory cannot last forever. Reversed: Victory eludes you. Not strong enough for the challenge. Letting others beat you. Keep trying, you may be successful yet. Need to develop faith in yourself and a desire to win.
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Below
The Star
The first step in a search for truth. A hint of a larger truth which has yet to be perceived in full. Reconciling opposites by dissolving their individual identities.
Loss, theft, privation, abandonment; another reading says — hope and bright prospects. Reversed: Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence.
The Star is a card of calm and peacefulness. Hope and joy. Comforts and pleasure. Things feel good. There is order in nature once again. We can rest and reflect and turn our gaze to the heavens. The Star will guide us to our destination when we are ready to begin journeying again. The Star will illuminate the path for us. It will also protect us under the night sky.
The Star is another card of personal reflection, meditation, and contemplation. It’s a reminder to turn our gaze inward and be guided by an inner light; to trust ourselves and our intuitions. We’ve come so far, learned so much, at last we are becoming enlightened.
The card also tells us to be at peace with ourselves, be true to ourselves, and bring love into our lives. The card encourages us to feel good about ourselves.
On a spiritual level, The Star is our link to the higher plane. It tells us to open our minds and let the light shine in. To grow in spirit, awareness, and knowledge and to apply all we learn in pursuit of even higher knowledge.
Reversed: Eyes closed to future possibilities. Gaze focused downward instead of up to the heavens. Feelings of insecurity and disquiet. Need to latch onto your dreams again.
An eight-pointed star signifying radiant cosmic energy and surrounded by seven smaller stars, radiates solar energy on the young girl kneeling on the land, her right foot upon the water. She pours the Waters of Life impartially from two ewers into the pool of universal consciousness and onto the earth — which represents matter. The bird is the soul resting in the tree of life.
The Maiden is eternal youth and beauty. She is Mother Nature and is identified with the Empress and the High Priestess, as well as with the woman in Key #8 who tames the lion. The card represents the Waters of Life flowing freely and perpetually renewing creation.
Divinatory Meaning: Hope, courage, inspiration. No destruction is final. Unselfish aid will be given. Good health. Spiritual love. Reversed: Stubbornness, pessimism, doubt.
A card of good fortune and hope, regeneration and recovery after a long period of adversity. Like the promise of each new dawn, another and better day is upon us. You can now find enlightenment in the future and belief once again in your dreams. Reversed: Warns against becoming blinded by the light. Take care since all that glitters is not gold.
To act in the world, to find your place.
The Star represents a stage in which an individual finds his or her rightful place to act in the world ina way that will embellish and nourish it from the spot the individual has made his or her own. It sometimes prompts us to not decide between apparently irreconcilable options but to conciliate the two. This card is traditionally seen as a sign of luck, prosperity, fertility. It symbolizes generous action. It is also associated with divine love, hope, and truth (which emerges from the well completely naked). It represents a creative realization that presumes its author has found his rightful place.
The Star’s conscious and generous relationship with Nature points the way to ecology, shamanism, and all the beliefs that take the planet as a living being into account. If The Star is spilling her jars into the past or into emptiness, we will need to ask why she is wasting her energy this way and what unresolved knot is indicated.
“In the infinite multiplicity of beings and things, I have found my place — in the world and in myself, for it is the same thing. I no longer need to keep looking, I no longer hold any image of myself; I am in my rightful place. Here and everywhere I am attached by my own choice.”
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Behind
The Lovers
Love and attraction as forces which overpower rationality and social mores. Romantic triangles and complications. Sensual motives underlying seemingly virtous actions. Choice. Choosing goodness over sensual satisfaction. A marriage or committed relationship. Creating a formal mechanism by which two energies can be combined.
Attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome. Reversed: Failure, foolish designs.
On its simplest level, The Lovers represents the act of union between the male and female spirits. Man and woman together are a potent creative force.
On another level, the card speaks to the next stage of a development — the point at which we move forward to begin building for the future with another.
A third meaning relates the male and female sides to a personality that exists within each of us — men and women alike. The male side represents the intellect, which is linked to the outer world, through conscious thought and reason, whereas the female is our connection to our unconscious self.
The card also acknowledges the emergence of sexuality within each of us — a change in our physical bodies and emotional and intellectual framework that both separates man from woman and at the same time creates the dynamic tension that draws us together. Similar tensions exist within ourselves as we try to live in both the external and unconscious worlds simultaneously.
Divinatory meaning: Choice between diverse allurements; the struggle between sacred and profane love. Attraction, beauty, harmony of the inner and outer life. The power of choice means responsibility. Reversed: Parental interference, danger of marriage breaking up, quarrels over children. The possibility of wrong choice.
This is the card of your emotional life with its ups and downs; it suggests conflicts of the flesh as opposed to those of the spirit. It also points to a good relationship or marriage and flows over into the making of positive decisions in your life. Reversed: A wrong choice will be made. Sexual infidelity may rear its ugly head, and you may be in for sexual difficulties as well.
Union, Emotional Life
“I am the sun of the Arcanum, the white sun: almost invisible but casting my light upon all the figures. I am this star: the joy of existing and the joy that the Other exists. I live in ecstasy. Everything fills me with happiness: nature, the entire universe, the existence of the Other in all its forms — the Other who is none other than me.”
“I am the awareness that shines like a bright living star in the center of your heart. I renew myself at every moment; at each instant I am being born. At your every heartbeat I am uniting you with the entire universe. It is from me that come the infinite connections joining you to all creation. Ah, the pleasure of living! Ah, the pleasure of becoming one! Ah, the pleasure of doing what I love! Messenger of the permanent impermanence, I am reborn every second. I am like a newborn archer launching arrows at everything his senses can capture.”
“I am not kindness; I am not ambition for well-being or triumph. I am unconditional love. I will teach you how to live in wonder, recognition, and joy.”
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Ahead
Six of Pentacles
Coins: Obtaining. Providing for yourself. Establishing a comfort zone. Taking risks with resources. Think of the thoughts and feelings you experience when you buy a lottery ticket.
Six: Keeping it going. You’ve established a pattern or rhythm which allows things to run smoothly. Things are going well and you’re in a position to be generous with others or even to give up some of your goals for others’ benefit.
One in the guise of a merchant weighs money in a pair of scales and distributes it to the needy and distressed. Divinatory Meanings: Presents, gifts, gratification; another account says attention, vigilance; now is the accepted time, present prosperity, etc. Reversed: Desire, cupidity, envy, jealousy, illusion.
Your hard work pays you dividends. A bonus is coming. Business pursuits prosper. You feel generous, want to share. Feeling satisfied, in harmony. Others around you appreciate what you do for them. Reversed: Not getting your fair share. Someone is holding out on you. Not satisfied with the return on your investment. Possible debts. Not sharing with others, thinking only of yourself.
A merchant weighs money in the scales and distributes it to the needy. He shares his plentiful riches with others, out of the goodness of his heart and a sense of justice. Divinatory Meaning: Philanthropy, charity, gifts. Alms dispensed with justice. Present prosperity shared with others. Reversed: Unfairness in business. Cause for envy, avarice, bad debt.
Help is coming from an outside source.
“I leave in search of everything that surpasses me and is already in me.”
The Six of Pentacles celebrates the beauty of the world and feels as one with it.
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You
The Tower
The abrupt end of an untenable situation. Freeing ourselves from the chains of appetite and desire for glory.
Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. Reversed: According to one account, the same in a lesser degree; also oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.
The Tower card is about breaking free, knocking down the walls that imprison us. It is not a subtle change, but a major transformation in our lives. It’s appropriate that it follows The Devil card. If The Devil card represents the darkness in our lives, The Tower card means we are ready to welcome some light in our lives — even if it descends upon us with the fury of a lightning bolt. The Tower card is the process of transformation itself, not the steps leading up to it. This card says change is happening. A new door has opened in your life and you are going through it.
The Tower card is also about inspiration. The way answers to tough questions that have eluded us suddenly break through our consciousness, usually when we least expect it. Sometimes after we’ve given up on finding those answers. On yet another level, The Tower card represents sudden spiritual enlightenment — knowledge that comes to us from deep within, without warning, and opens our eyes to the wonders and mysteries of the world.
Reversed: The change is over and you’d better get used to doing things a new way. You are out in the open now, so don’t try to hide. The old ways are gone forever. Better brace yourself for a bumpy ride.
Struck by lightning issuing from the sun, the crown of materialistic thought falls from the tower. The falling drops of light seen here, as well as in Key #18 and in the Aces of three suits of the Minor Arcana (Wands, Cups and Swords), are Hebrew “Yods”. They signify the descent of the life force from above into the conditions of material existence. The lightning flash represents the same power as that which is drawn from above by the Magician and which lights the Hermit’s lantern. It is Spiritual Truth, which breaks down ignorance and false reasoning.
The Tower is only one of several titles that have been given to this card. Among them are “The Lightning-Struck Tower” and “The House of God”. The card suggests the breaking down of existing forms in order to make room for new ones. In terms of consciousness, the lightning flash also symbolizes the brilliant, momentary glimpse of truth. The crown on the top of the tower symbolizes the materialistic concept of life — shown as it is thrust from power.
Divinatory Meaning: Overthrow of existing modes of life. Conflict, unforeseen catastrophe. Old notions upset; disruption that may bring enlightenment in its wake. Selfish ambition about to fall, bankruptcy. Reversed: Oppression, imprisonment. The same as above in lesser degree.
This is another unfortunate card — a clear picture for ruin and destruction. Your hopes and ambitions will be torn apart. Out of distraction comes renewal, rebirth and a new understanding of the mysteries of life. The lessons may have been hard to learn, but are always worth it in the end. Reversed: Havoc and adversity that you bring onto yourself.
Opening, the Emergence of What Was Imprisoned
The message of this card is one of great spiritual comfort. Rather than a punishment, the destruction of the tower is a solution to a problem: the deluge now finally ended, the entire planet, abundantly irrigated, has become fertile. This is a blessing more than a punishment. Humanity starts off again to conquer the world and start tilling the fields. Sixth degree like The Lover, The Tower evokes the theme of union — here if we wish to accept the homophony of the original French — the union of the soul and its God.
The Tower signifies the emergence of something that was imprisoned. This can be a residential move, a separation, a moment of great expression, the desire to leave for the country or for another country, or a secret revealed. Or even a lightning strike that causes a “catastrophe”. It refers to a dance of joyous separation; the figures are actually acrobats flying about in a theater. This can be giving birth to something that has long been gestating and takes dual shape here — the twinship of the animus and the anima, collaborating on a long-thought-out work.
The principle message of The Tower could be: stop looking for God in the sky; let’s find him on Earth.
“I am the temple: the entire world is an altar I make sacred. My life, like yours, proves at every heartbeat that the world is divine, that the flesh is a living celebration and life a never-ending construction. With me you will know the joy that is the key to the sacred. I am life itself, the transformation and the reconstruction, the flame and the energy of everything alive, of all matter and all spirit. If you wish to enter me, you must rejoice, cast into the fire the infantile whims of sorrow and fear, and ask yourself every time you awake: What shall I celebrate now? I am the cataclysmic joy of living, the permanently unforeseen and marvelous catastrophe.”
I receive the vibrating universal axis; I am no longer a tower but a channel. I am the central pillar of a cosmic dance. I am quite simply the human body in full reception of its original energy.
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Others
Five of Cups
Cups: Interacting. Emotions and relationships of all kinds. Dealing with people. Think of two people toasting each other with wine glasses.
Five: Challenging yourself. A monkey wrench. Things don’t go as expected and you’re challenged to grow. Or you may be deliberately challenging yourself.
A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups; two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding. Divinatory Meanings: It is a card of loss, but something remains over; three have been taken, but two are left; it is a card of inheritance, patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations; with some it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration. Reversed: News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects.
Unhappy endings, broken relationships. Time to pick up the pieces and start building again. See what you can learn from your losses. Turn your back on the past and look to the future. What’s gone is gone. Hold on to what you have, no matter how little it is. Reversed: Although a loss has been suffered, there’s no reason to feel hopeless about the future. Things will start looking up again. An old friend may hold the key.
A mysterious figure in a dark cloak looks at three fallen cups, while two others stand upright behind him. In the background, a bridge leads to a small castle. Divinatory Meaning: Vain regret, loss, but with something left over. Inheritance, patrimony, but not up to one’s expectations. Can mean marriage, but may carry with it bitterness and frustration. Rejection of pleasure. Reversed: Hopeful expectations, a new alliance, return of an old friend.
Love gone astray, loss, need for reassessment.
The Five represents a temptation, an aspiration, a bridge, a transition toward a new world, but one that keeps part of its activity based in the old world.
We turn our hearts toward God, yet without scorning human affections.
Here the central cup decorated by glorious flowers marks the emergence of new feelings that can even go as far as fanaticism. It is the discovery of faith, a euphoria that carries us toward a higher being or someone we view as such. It is also the first time the heart opens to a solution that may be good for humanity. The negative aspects can be blind trust in any guide, an emotional imbalance, as well as lack of faith, disappointment, and bitterness.
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Illusions
Nine of Cups
Cups: Interacting. Emotions and relationships of all kinds. Dealing with people. Think of two people toasting each other with wine glasses.
Nine: You deserve it. You receive rewards due to your own efforts.
The goodly personage is feasting to his heart’s content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him. Divinatory Meanings: Concord, contentment, physical bien-etre; also victory, success, advantage; satisfaction for the Querent or person for whom the consultation is made. Reversed: Truth, loyalty, liberty; but the readings vary and include mistakes, imperfections, etc.
There’s a place in our lives for material satisfaction, as well as spiritual happiness. Life should be enjoyed for its earthly pleasures, too. We should take steps to ensure our physical as well as mental well-being. Reversed: What at first seemed like happiness leaves you feeling empty and unfulfilled. Spending too much time enjoying the sensual pleasures at the expense of spiritual growth and development. Living life in the shadow of false values.
For the first time in the series, leaves are turning down as if wilting. It is the end of flowering, the autumn of the heart; a period of mourning is required so that a new dimension of love can appear. This is a stage of wisdom where we accept the end of an emotional cycle and let go of what has already been lived. This sacrifice presumes a profound love of humanity present in each being, a detachment, a denial, produced by conscious love. Negative aspects are all states of emotional crisis, nostalgia, unwanted solitude, fear of lack, and despair.
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To Come
Eight of Wands
Staves: Creating. Creative energy. Think of building a house with wooden planks.
Eight: The efficiency expert. Through the use of discipline and structure, you reach peak efficiency.
The card represents motion through the immovable — a flight of wands through an open country. Divinatory Meanings: Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity, swiftness, as that of an express messenger; great haste, great hope, speed towards an end which promises assured felicity; generally, that which is on the move; also the arrows of love. Reversed: Arrows of jealousy, internal dispute, stingings of conscience, quarrels.
Things are moving fast, bringing you closer to your goal. Results are coming in quickly — and you must keep things in order. Sometimes indicates a journey. Reversed: You can’t handle the pace. Things are stacking up against you. Events may overtake you. Life is passing you by while you stand still.
A flight of wands is shown passing through open country; they seem to be coming to the end of their course. Divinatory Meaning: Haste, hope, movement in affairs. The arrows of love, messages, letters, journey by air. Reversed: Arrows of jealousy, quarrels, domestic disputes.
Confidence brings success.
The perfection in this center is displayed by extreme concentration, things reduced to their essentials, represented by the two cut flowers. Creativity has become extremely focused: this is the perfection of someone who knows how to draw a circle in a single line. In sexuality, we reach sublimation, pure creative energy, orgasm. Power becomes non-violence, the ideal of the martial arts: combat without combat. Authority emanates from the individual and imposes itself without a gesture. In this state of extreme contemplation, effort no longer exists, and we are tireless. If this card should have a negative side, it would be paralysis, the stopping of all movement, an extreme perfectionism bordering on asphyxiation.