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.

 

The High Priestess

Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests you, or perhaps your own feminine side; silence, tenacity; wisdom, science. Reversed: Passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit, surface knowledge.

The institution of religion, as opposed to the manifestation of it in individuals. Alternatively, a feminine spirit in opposition to patriarchal religious institutions and customs. Writing and written history.

The High Priestess symbolizes the power of unconscious forces in the world — the unseen forces that give the earth its form and purpose; the invisible thread that binds us together. Reversed: You are ignoring your own impulses.

The High Priestess sits with the crescent moon at her feet and on her head a diadem showing the full moon set in two crescent moons. On her breast is a solar cross showing the union of the positive and negative life elements. The scroll in her lap is the Tora (Divine Law); it is only slightly unrolled, for the instruction contained therein is hidden, save for a partial glimpse, from the ordinary human eye. A veil also covers half of the scroll, thus intimating that only one-half of the mystery of being can be comprehended. She sits between the pillars of the positive and negative forces. The black pillar, Boaz, represents the negative life principle; and the white one, Jakin, the positive life principle.

The High Priestess is both eternal and the subconscious mind. She is the balancing power between initiative and resistance — thus she sits between the pillars. The veil between the pillars is decorated with pomegranate (female) and palm (male) symbols, indicating that the subconscious is only potentially reproductive. Only when this veil is penetrated by conscious desire can creativity be actualized. Divinatory Meaning: Hidden influences at work, unrevealed future. Creative forces of the subconscious, the female side of the brain at work for the artist, poet, and mystic. A woman of great intuition, inner illumination. Reversed: Accepting surface knowledge, sensual enjoyment, conceit.

The woman in this card carries with her a deep intuition and special knowledge. She can be creative, with a slightly offbeat view of the world around her. She may possess a deep psychic understanding. This card suggests a female influence in your life, as well as the chance of a problem coming out of the dark and into the light. Reversed Meaning: Beware of becoming overemotional, which could lead you to become irrational and lose control of the situation.

Creative outburst, expression.

 

Two of Cups

Cups: Interacting. Emotions and relationships of all kinds. Dealing with people. Think of two people toasting each other with wine glasses.

Two: It takes two. A dialogue. Weighing and comparing different possibilities.

A youth and maiden are pledging one another, and above their cups rises the caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion’s head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in some old examples of this card. Some curious meanings are attached to it, but they do not concern us in this place.