Tarot Cards – Just the Tarot

The Death Card in Tarot: Death Is Only the Beginning

The three stages of the Death Tarot Card.

The Death card is one of the most misunderstood cards in Tarot. Far from simply representing physical death—or the rather vague modern idea of “transformation”—Pamela Colman Smith’s imagery appears to present death as the first stage of a much larger journey: death, passage through the unknown, and eventual return to the light.

Few Tarot cards have undergone as dramatic a transformation as Death.

In many early Tarot decks, such as the Marseilles deck, Death is exactly what we would expect him to be: a skeletal figure wielding a scythe, mowing down human beings almost as though they were wheat. Kings, commoners, young and old all fall before him.

The symbolism isn’t particularly subtle.

Death comes for everyone.

But when Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith created the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, they radically reimagined the card.

The scythe disappeared. Death climbed onto a white horse. And, perhaps most importantly, Smith created an entire landscape behind him.

That landscape may tell us what happens after Death passes.

From the Grim Reaper to the Rider

The mounted skeleton almost certainly draws upon one of the most famous images in the Book of Revelation: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

When the fourth seal is opened, Death appears riding a pale horse.

Waite and Smith borrow that terrifying image, but significantly change its character. Their Death carries no scythe and no sword. Instead, he carries a black banner bearing a white rose.

He isn’t simply killing people.

He is moving through the landscape.

And the landscape appears to be divided into three remarkably distinct regions.

Death Card Poster – 13 X 19 – Available on etsy

The First Realm: Death in the Clear Light of Day

The foreground is brightly and naturally illuminated.

Everything is clearly visible. We see the white horse, the skeletal rider, the fallen king, the bishop, the woman and the child. There is nothing particularly mysterious about this portion of the card.

Perhaps that is appropriate.

Whatever we may believe about an afterlife, reincarnation or resurrection, death itself is observable. Living things die. We may fear it, deny it or try not to think about it, but there is nothing metaphysically mysterious about the physical event itself.

Smith even gives us several different human responses to it.

The king has fallen before Death. His crown lies uselessly on the ground. Political power and worldly status provide no protection.

The woman turns away.

The child looks directly at Death, apparently without fear.

And the bishop remains standing, hands clasped before the approaching rider.

The bishop is particularly interesting. Unlike the king, he possesses no worldly means of resisting Death. But he does possess a spiritual framework through which death can be understood.

He doesn’t defeat Death.

He is able to face him.

The figures also recall the medieval Dance of Death tradition, in which Death comes for every rank of society. King, priest, woman and child ultimately share the same fate.

But then our eyes move beyond them.

And the card changes.

The Second Realm: The Liminal World

The middle distance is dramatically different from the foreground.

The clear light disappears. The landscape becomes gray and indistinct.

And separating the two regions is water.

On that water Smith has placed one of the smallest—and potentially most important—details in the entire card:

a boat.

The image immediately recalls the ancient story of Charon, the ferryman who transports the dead across the river separating the world of the living from the realm of the dead.

Whether Smith consciously intended Charon is impossible to establish simply from the picture. But the symbolic association is extraordinarily appropriate.

The river marks a boundary.

The boat crosses it.

And on the other side lies a strange, shadowy landscape.

In other words, Death itself may not be the mystery depicted by the card.

The mystery begins after Death.

Is the Moon Hidden Inside the Death Card?

At the far edge of this gray landscape stand two towers.

Anyone familiar with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck has seen them before.

They strongly resemble the two towers in The Moon.

In The Moon, a path leads between two towers and disappears into a strange nocturnal landscape. It is the territory of uncertainty, dreams, fears, illusions, instincts and the unconscious—the world in which the ordinary clarity of daylight has disappeared.

Smith appears to evoke remarkably similar visual territory in Death.

That gives us a fascinating possibility.

The middle portion of the Death card may function almost like a miniature version of The Moon: the liminal realm between one state of existence and another.

We have left the known world.

We haven’t reached the next one.

We are between states.

That is the essence of liminality:

I am no longer what I was, but I have not yet become what I will be.

The Third Realm: And Then the Sun Rises

Beyond the gray landscape and between the two towers, something entirely different appears.

The rising sun.

This is not a minor decorative feature. Waite himself called attention to it and associated it with immortality.

And visually, its placement is extraordinary.

If the towers recall The Moon, the brilliant sun appearing between them naturally anticipates The Sun.

The progression therefore becomes:

Death → the shadowy realm → the rising Sun.

Or, expressed through the Major Arcana:

Death → Moon → Sun.

And what follows The Sun in the Major Arcana?

Judgment.

That is where the dead rise from their graves.

Suddenly, an extraordinary symbolic sequence becomes visible:

Death XIII → Moon XVIII → Sun XIX → Judgment XX

Death.

Passage through the unknown.

Return of the light.

Resurrection.

We cannot know whether Pamela Colman Smith consciously sat down and constructed that sequence. But we don’t need to know. The visual relationships are present in the cards themselves.

Death and Judgment

This also helps us understand why the Death card cannot be considered in isolation from Judgment.

The connection already exists within Christianity.

The Book of Revelation gives us Death riding his horse—and later gives us the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment.

The early Tarot’s scythe also contains an interesting implication. Death isn’t merely slaughtering people.

He is harvesting them.

And harvesting belongs to a cycle.

The crop grows. It is cut down. The field lies barren. Eventually new life appears.

Christian theology calls the eventual return of the dead resurrection, not reincarnation. They are very different doctrines.

Symbolically, however, both contain the same fundamental pattern:

Life → Death → Intermediate State → New Life

The Tarot journey appears to contain precisely that pattern.

Tarot and the Art of Alignment – Available as a downloadable PDF book on etsy

The White Rose: Life Carried by Death

And this brings us back to Death’s strange banner.

Against the black background appears a white, five-petaled rose.

Waite explicitly tells us what it signifies. He calls it the “Mystic Rose” and says that it represents life.

Think about the paradox.

Death is carrying the symbol of Life.

The regenerative principle isn’t waiting somewhere beyond Death.

Death himself carries it.

There is also a beautiful visual echo elsewhere in the deck. The Fool carries a white rose as he begins his journey.

The Fool sets out carrying the rose.

Death carries the rose.

Bodies and identities disappear, but symbolically something essential continues.

The white rose may therefore give us the central message of the entire card:

The form dies. Life does not.

Death Is Only the First Third of the Picture

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Smith’s Death card becomes apparent only after we stop staring at the skeleton.

Death occupies the foreground.

But the card continues far beyond him.

There is a river.

There is a crossing.

There is a mysterious intermediate landscape.

There is a gateway marked by two towers.

And beyond that gateway, the sun is rising.

Smith and Waite took an older image whose basic message was Death destroys everyone and expanded it into something much more complex.

Death became not simply an ending but the entrance to a process.

That is why describing XIII merely as the card of “transformation” doesn’t quite do it justice.

Transformation sounds almost painless.

Death is more radical.

Something has reached the end of its existing form. That form cannot accompany us farther. We must relinquish it before whatever comes next can emerge.

The card doesn’t promise that we will understand the passage while we’re traveling through it.

In fact, Smith seems to suggest exactly the opposite.

Between Death and the rising Sun lies the gray territory of uncertainty.

But the Sun is already rising.

What Death Means in a Tarot Reading

In a reading, Death usually indicates a genuine ending and an irreversible transition. Something has completed its natural life and cannot continue in its present form. This might be a relationship, job, belief, identity, habit, period of life or way of seeing ourselves.

The card’s advice is not simply “change.”

It is release.

Death says that we may temporarily enter a liminal period in which the old life is gone but the new one isn’t yet visible. That uncertainty is part of the process, not evidence that something has gone wrong.

The most important symbol may therefore be the smallest one on the horizon:

Beyond the ending, the Sun is already beginning to rise.

The Hanged Man Tarot Card: Finding Peace When You Can’t Move Forward

Explore The Hanged Man Tarot card as a symbol of suspension, powerlessness, reversed perspective and radical acceptance—and discover what it means when you cannot force life forward.

At first glance, The Hanged Man seems like a rather unpleasant Tarot card.

A man is hanging upside down by one foot. His hands are behind his back. He isn’t going anywhere, and there doesn’t appear to be anything he can do about it.

And yet there is something peculiar about him.

He doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the situation.

In the familiar Rider-Waite-Smith version, Arthur Edward Waite goes considerably further and gives the man a halo, transforming the image into something approaching spiritual illumination. But the essential image is much older than Waite’s deck. Earlier Tarot de Marseille versions already show the same strange figure hanging upside down with an unexpectedly composed expression.

So perhaps we don’t need the halo to understand him.

Instead, let’s look at what is actually happening to this man.

The Hanged Man Poster – 13 X 19 – Available on Etsy

What’s in the Card?

1. Suspension: Life Has Come to a Stop

The most obvious thing about The Hanged Man is that he is suspended.

He isn’t walking somewhere. He isn’t working on something. He isn’t fighting an enemy or pursuing a goal.

He’s literally going nowhere.

That’s very different from many of the other figures in the Major Arcana. The Charioteer is moving forward. The Hermit has deliberately withdrawn from the world. The Magician is actively manipulating the objects on his table.

The Hanged Man can do none of those things.

His normal activities have been interrupted.

We all encounter periods like this. A plan stalls. A relationship enters limbo. An illness interrupts our routines. We’re waiting for somebody else’s decision. Something we depended upon disappears. We simply don’t know what comes next.

Our natural response is usually:

“How do I get things moving again?”

But The Hanged Man raises a different possibility.

Perhaps, for the moment, we aren’t supposed to be moving.

Sometimes suspension is not an empty space between important events. The suspension itself is the experience.

2. Powerlessness: He Cannot Change His Circumstances

This brings us to the more uncomfortable aspect of the card.

The Hanged Man isn’t merely resting.

He’s powerless.

One foot is tied to the structure above him. His hands are behind his back. Whatever brought him into this situation, he cannot simply decide that he’s had enough, stand up and walk away.

That makes The Hanged Man a remarkably useful card for situations involving things outside our control.

We tend to associate personal power with the ability to change circumstances. If something is wrong, we fix it. If a door is closed, we find another door. If something isn’t working, we try harder.

Usually that’s excellent advice.

But sometimes there genuinely isn’t anything we can do.

And continuing to struggle against an unchangeable situation doesn’t necessarily give us more power. Sometimes it merely exhausts us.

The Hanged Man confronts us with one of life’s most difficult truths:

There are circumstances we cannot control.

The question then becomes not “How do I control this?” but:

“How am I going to live while this is true?”

Tarot and the Art of Alignment – Available on Amazon

3. Reversed Perspective: The World Looks Completely Different

Now something interesting happens.

Because the Hanged Man cannot go anywhere, his perspective changes instead.

Quite literally, his world has turned upside down.

The trees, the earth, the sky, other people—everything familiar is suddenly being seen from an unfamiliar angle.

Nothing necessarily changed in the outside world.

His position within it changed.

This may be the great gift hidden inside the card.

When our usual methods stop working, we may begin questioning assumptions we never previously thought to question.

What if success isn’t what I thought it was?

What if this relationship isn’t what I believed it was?

What if the thing I’ve been desperately pursuing isn’t actually what I need?

What if the situation I’ve been calling a disaster looks entirely different when viewed from another angle?

The Hanged Man doesn’t necessarily give us the answers.

He interrupts our habitual way of looking for them.

Sometimes we don’t acquire a new perspective because we’re wise enough to seek one.

Sometimes life turns us upside down until we have no choice.

4. Serenity: Acceptance Without Defeat

And finally we come to the strangest feature of the entire card.

The Hanged Man looks serene.

That’s remarkable.

If his face showed terror, the card would be about victimization.

If he were struggling against his restraints, it would be about imprisonment.

If he looked defeated, it would be about despair.

But he doesn’t.

Somehow, this man who cannot move, cannot escape and cannot control his circumstances has found peace within them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he likes what has happened.

Acceptance isn’t approval.

Nor does acceptance mean that he will remain suspended forever.

It simply means that he has stopped fighting the reality of the present moment.

There is an enormous psychological difference between:

“This must not be happening.”

and:

“This is happening. What now?”

The first keeps us locked in combat with reality itself.

The second gives us somewhere to stand—even when, like The Hanged Man, we aren’t technically standing at all.

The Four Lessons of The Hanged Man

Taken together, the picture gives us four stages:

Suspension: My normal life has stopped.

Powerlessness: I cannot presently change this situation.

Reversed Perspective: Since I cannot change the situation, perhaps I can see it differently.

Serenity: I can stop fighting what I cannot presently change.

That’s considerably richer than simply defining The Hanged Man as “waiting” or “sacrifice.”

Sometimes the card may indeed indicate a sacrifice. Sometimes it may simply tell us to wait.

But at its deepest level, The Hanged Man seems to address one of the most difficult human experiences:

What do we do when there is nothing we can do?

His answer is extraordinary.

We stop.

We surrender the struggle—not necessarily forever, but for now.

We allow ourselves to see the situation from an entirely different perspective.

And perhaps we discover that peace does not always have to wait until the problem has been solved.

When The Hanged Man Appears in a Reading

When The Hanged Man appears, it may be useful to ask:

* Where has my life become suspended?

* What am I trying to control that I genuinely cannot control right now?

* What might this situation look like if I turned my assumptions upside down?

* What would acceptance look like if I stopped confusing acceptance with defeat?

The Hanged Man does not promise that someone is about to cut the rope.

He offers something stranger and perhaps more valuable:

the possibility of finding peace while we’re still hanging there.

Is Justice Really the Karma Card?

The Justice Card and an exploration of karma.

What if the Justice card isn’t really about getting what you deserve?

That familiar interpretation—“Justice means you’ll get what’s coming to you”—turns the card into a kind of cosmic courtroom. Somewhere in the universe, an invisible judge is apparently keeping score.

But there may be a much more interesting—and useful—way to understand Justice.

Karma Isn’t Cosmic Punishment

In popular Western culture, karma often gets reduced to cosmic revenge: do something bad and sooner or later the universe will smack you for it.

But karma is fundamentally about action and consequence. Actions create causes. Causes produce effects. Those effects create new circumstances from which further actions arise.

Seen this way, Justice becomes a remarkably good image of karma.

Justice poster – 13 X 19 – Available on Etsy

The Scales and the Sword

Look at the two objects Justice holds.

The scales represent cause and effect. Everything we think, choose and do enters the balance. Nothing happens entirely in isolation. Actions have consequences.

The sword represents those consequences becoming manifest. Eventually the abstract chain of causes produces an actual result.

The seed becomes the harvest.

And then notice Justice herself.

She isn’t angry. She isn’t pleased. She isn’t getting even.

She is impersonal.

Gravity doesn’t punish you for stepping off a roof. Fire doesn’t become angry because you put your hand into it. Cause and effect simply operate according to their nature.

That gives us a powerful metaphysical definition of the card:

Justice represents the law by which causes become consequences.

What Might Justice Mean in a Reading?

Suppose someone has spent years in a job they hate because they’re afraid to take a risk. Eventually they find themselves exhausted, resentful and wondering how their life became so small.

Justice doesn’t necessarily say, “You deserve this.”

Instead, it might say: Look at the chain of causes that brought you here.

Fear led to staying. Staying led to stagnation. Stagnation led to unhappiness.

That’s not punishment. It’s cause and effect.

And here’s the important part: the chain isn’t finished.

A different choice today creates a different cause—and potentially a different future.

Or imagine someone repeatedly entering relationships in which they ignore early warning signs. Justice appearing in a reading doesn’t have to mean that the universe has sentenced them to another disastrous relationship. It may be asking them to recognize the pattern itself.

What choice keeps setting the same sequence in motion?

Change that choice, and you begin changing what follows from it.

Justice Looks in Two Directions

This makes Justice both retrospective and prospective.

The scales look backward: What have I already set in motion?

The sword looks forward: What will follow from it?

And that gives the card considerably more agency than the old idea that Justice simply means “you’re going to get what you deserve.”

Justice isn’t necessarily announcing an unavoidable cosmic sentence.

It may be saying:

Look clearly at the causal chain. If you want a different consequence, this is where you change the cause.

And perhaps that is where Justice becomes not merely a card of karma, but a card of personal power.

The Wheel of Fortune: Why Does Luck Seem So Unfair?

The Wheel of Fortune and dealing with the archetype of luck.

Was the Good Luck Fairy taking a bathroom break on the day you were born?

When your ship came in, were you at the airport?

Did your four-leaf clover turn out to be poison ivy?

If you’re one of the many people who feel like you came into this world under a cloud of bad luck, then The Wheel of Fortune may have an important lesson to teach.

The Archetype of Luck

The Wheel of Fortune is the Tarot’s great symbol of luck.

Every culture throughout history has recognized the existence of fortune, fate, chance, or providence—even if no one has ever managed to define exactly what luck is.

What we do know is that it seems wildly uneven.

Some people appear to be born under a lucky star. Opportunities seem to fall into their laps. They meet the right people at the right time. Doors mysteriously open.

Others spend their lives feeling like every door they approach has a “Closed” sign hanging on it.

Most of us live somewhere in between.

Luck is a remarkable force when you stop and think about it.

A successful investor can lose everything in a market crash through no fault of their own. Someone who has struggled financially for decades buys a lottery ticket on a whim and wakes up wealthy.

When Lady Luck smiles on us, everything seems to flow.

When she decides to leave, it can feel like nothing goes right.

The Wheel of Fortune represents that mysterious current moving beneath the surface of our lives.

The Old Interpretation

The older Tarot decks presented a fairly blunt message.

In the Tarot de Marseille, the wheel looks almost like a giant hamster wheel. Strange creatures ride its rim. One is climbing upward while another is tumbling down. At the top sits a stern ruler holding a sword, reminding us that fortune constantly changes.

The message is simple:

Up.

Down.

Up again.

Good luck.

Bad luck.

No one stays at the top forever, and no one remains at the bottom forever.

Waite’s New Interpretation

Wheel of Fortune Poster by Dan Adair – Available on Etsy

Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith transformed the image into something much more mysterious.

The crude wheel became a beautiful circular symbol filled with esoteric imagery. Around its rim are symbols drawn from alchemy, Hebrew mysticism, and ancient tradition. The dark figure that once ruled the wheel has been pushed to the bottom.

Now the highest point belongs to the Sphinx.

That change is significant.

The Sphinx represents wisdom, mystery, and understanding. Rather than brute force ruling our fate, wisdom now sits above the turning of fortune.

And then there are those wonderfully puzzling creatures in the four corners.

They’re the fixed signs of the zodiac—Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius.

For some reason…

…they’re all reading books.

It’s one of those delightful details that makes the Waite-Smith deck so fascinating.

So What Does It Mean?

The Victorian occultists didn’t deny the existence of luck.

Quite the opposite.

They believed that cycles of fortune were simply one of the natural laws of life.

Just as the tides rise and fall…

Just as the moon waxes and wanes…

Just as the seasons endlessly change…

Human beings move through cycles of prosperity and hardship.

The wheel turns.

It always has.

It always will.

The real question isn’t whether we can stop the wheel.

We can’t.

The question is whether we have to ride every revolution with it.

The four fixed signs may be offering an answer.

Unlike the creatures clinging to the wheel itself, they remain calm, steady, and detached. They aren’t fighting the motion below them. They’re quietly studying. Learning. Watching.

In other words, they’ve found a place that doesn’t move.

That’s the deeper lesson of the card.

We may not be able to control the cycles of fortune, but we can learn not to be controlled by them.

When life enters one of those stretches where everything seems to go wrong, we can remember:

This, too, shall pass.

Oddly enough, the more fiercely we struggle against a season of bad luck, the more we become entangled in it.

Acceptance isn’t surrender.

It’s stability.

The Wheel of Fortune reminds us that while the wheel keeps turning, we don’t always have to spin with it.

Perhaps that’s the greatest stroke of luck of all.

Tarot and the Art of Alignment – Available on Etsy as a Downloadable PDF

The Hermit and the Light No One Was Meant to See

Exploring the nature of solitude as exemplified in The Hermit card.

Why do we let our lights shine?

There’s an old country and western song that proclaims, “You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.”

But suppose you don’t want to be a beacon? Should your light still shine?

The Hermit is one of the most interesting paradoxes of the Tarot.

We see an old man standing alone on a mountain peak, holding a lantern high above his head so that its light shines into the darkness.

Only…

There’s nobody there.

The number of people who are actually seeing his light appears to be exactly zero.

That tiny detail invites us to question one of the most common interpretations of the card.

Most Tarot books tell us that The Hermit has withdrawn from society, gained wisdom through solitude, and is now returning to share that wisdom with humanity.

It’s a beautiful story.

The problem is that the card itself never tells us that story.

There is no path leading back to civilization. There is no village waiting below. There are no followers gathering around him. The image simply shows a solitary man standing quietly on a mountain, holding up a lamp.

Perhaps another wanderer on a distant peak catches sight of it. Maybe a passing Yeti looked over and wondered, “I wonder what that old dude is up to?”

Perhaps no one sees it.

The picture doesn’t seem very concerned with the audience.

*The Hermit – 13 X 19 inch poster by Dan Adair –* Available on Etsy

The Hero’s Journey

The traditional interpretation may come from one of humanity’s oldest myths.

The hero enters the wilderness, gains wisdom, and returns transformed.

Jesus withdraws into the desert.

The Buddha leaves the palace before awakening beneath the Bodhi tree.

The knights search for the Holy Grail.

Frodo returns to the Shire.

We’re so accustomed to this pattern that we naturally assume The Hermit must be following it as well.

Surely no one would choose to live alone forever.

Surely solitude is only a temporary stage before returning to the world.

But is that really what we’re looking at?

The Nature of the Hermit

In an earlier post, I suggested that there are many expressions of the Hermit archetype.

Some people withdraw because life has wounded them. They need silence to heal. Eventually, they return.

Others retreat for a season to study, write, pray, or rediscover themselves.

But the true Hermit is something different.

Solitude isn’t a strategy.

It isn’t therapy.

It isn’t preparation for the next chapter.

It is simply his nature.

He isn’t hiding from humanity.

He isn’t waiting for humanity.

He’s exactly where he belongs.

If he retreats only so that he can eventually come back and teach everyone else, then he isn’t really a Hermit at all. He’s simply taking a very long vacation.

The Hermit in the Tarot doesn’t appear to be preparing for a return.

He simply stands on his mountain with his lamp.

The Lamp

So why hold the lantern aloft?

If it isn’t meant to illuminate the world, what is it illuminating?

Perhaps the answer is beautifully simple.

The Hermit is illuminating himself.

That is the real purpose of his solitude.

Away from the endless noise of civilization, he can finally hear his own thoughts.

He can meditate.

He can write.

He can ask the deepest questions without someone else’s voice rushing in to answer them.

He is discovering who he really is.

John Muir captured that spirit perfectly when he wrote:

“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking about God than in church thinking about the mountains.”

The Hermit’s mountain is not an escape from life.

It is the place where life finally becomes quiet enough to hear.

The Gift of the Hermit

Ironically, people who truly become themselves often end up helping others without ever intending to.

Someone may see the light from that distant mountain and find hope.

Someone may read the Hermit’s journal centuries later.

Someone may simply be inspired by knowing that another human being lived authentically.

But that isn’t why the Hermit holds the lamp.

Helping others is a beautiful consequence.

It is not the purpose.

The purpose is to live honestly.

To know yourself.

To become the person you were created to be, even if no one is watching.

Perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of The Hermit.

Not every light is meant to attract a crowd.

Some lights exist simply because they are true.

Available on Etsy as a downloadable PDF book

The Strength Card and Fearlessness

Exploring quiet fidelity to our values as the greatest form of strength.

Are you living fearlessly in the midst of chaos?

In the past, I’ve written about how the Strength card beautifully illustrates the Hindu principle of Ahimsa—the practice of harmlessness. (See The Strength Card, Ahimsa, and Your Magical Anti Shit-Head Cloak.)

In its simplest form, Ahimsa teaches that when our own hearts are truly peaceful, we cease moving through the world as agents of violence. The remarkable claim of the tradition is that this inner harmlessness also becomes a kind of protection. Peace itself becomes a shield.

Today, though, I’d like to explore another aspect of the Strength card.

Fearlessness.

Look carefully at Pamela Colman Smith’s illustration. The woman doesn’t overpower the lion. She doesn’t wrestle it into submission. She approaches it with gentleness, compassion…and with a complete absence of panic.

The great lion becomes, almost unbelievably, a house cat waiting to have its ears scratched. She’s fearless and so the lion is fearless.

Strength Tarot Poster by Dan Adair – available on Etsy

What Is Fear?

Fear is not a character flaw.

It’s part of being human.

Deep within the brain are networks whose job is to constantly scan our surroundings for danger. When they detect a threat, our limbic system responds instantly. Our heart rate rises. Adrenaline and cortisol flood our bloodstream. Muscles tighten. Attention narrows.

Fight.

Flight.

Survive.

It’s a marvelous system. Our ancestors lived because of it.

Thank you, nervous system – good job!

The problem isn’t fear itself.

The problem is when we never leave that state.

Modern life has a remarkable ability to keep the alarm bells ringing. Financial worries. Health concerns. Relationships. Politics. Endless news feeds. Before long we’re swimming in stress hormones that were designed for emergencies, not for everyday living.

Eventually the body grows exhausted.

And so does the spirit.

The Western Idea of Fearlessness

Our culture loves fearless heroes.

Movies are filled with square-jawed action stars who stare down impossible odds without breaking a sweat. They defeat violence by becoming even better at violence.

It’s entertaining.

But it’s also a fantasy.

That kind of fearlessness isn’t based on peace.

It’s based on becoming more dangerous than whatever threatens us.

The mystic quietly disappears and the sociopath takes center stage.

The message becomes: “You don’t have to be afraid if everyone else is afraid of you.”

That’s a strange definition of courage.

Nothing has actually become peaceful.

We’ve simply dumped more adrenaline into the system and called it victory.

A Peaceful Heart

Whenever we declare war on fear, something curious happens.

We activate the limbic system that we’re trying to quiet. When we use phrases like, “battling our fear,” we immediately wake up our fear center. Battle? Did someone say battle?

Why do we battle something?

Because we’re afraid of it.

So we create a strange paradox.

We try to conquer fear…with fear.

The Strength card offers another path.

It doesn’t ask us to destroy fear.

It asks us to stop feeding it.

That doesn’t mean we ignore danger. It doesn’t mean we stop listening when our instincts warn us that something is genuinely wrong. We don’t need to take up nude skydiving just to prove we’re fearless.

We notice fear.

We thank it for trying to protect us.

And then we continue walking with a peaceful heart.

The lion is still a lion.

But we are no longer terrified by its roar.

Quiet Fidelity

When I think about genuine fearlessness, I don’t think about action heroes.

I think about the husband who spends years caring for his wife through cancer, quietly getting the wheelchair ready every morning.

I think about the single mother working two jobs so her children have food on the table and shoes on their feet.

I think about the husband or wife who continues showing kindness and faithfulness long after romance has faded into ordinary life.

Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Perhaps.

But I think he overlooked something.

Most people live lives of quiet fidelity.

They get up every morning.

They show up.

Even when hope seems unreasonable, they continue hoping.

Even when depression whispers that nothing matters, they keep looking for beauty.

Even when illness or grief comes to visit, they continue choosing life.

That, to me, is what the Strength card is really about.

For most of us, fearlessness doesn’t mean living without fear. Perhaps the rare saint—or the rare sociopath—can make that claim.

The rest of us simply learn not to let fear become the author of our lives.

We acknowledge it.

We thank it.

We refuse to let it drive.

And little by little, we discover that the lion was never conquered.

Only our relationship to it changed.

As Joseph Campbell so beautifully observed:

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Perhaps the greatest treasure isn’t on the other side of fear.

Perhaps it is the peaceful heart we discover while walking through it.

The Chariot and the Battle Before the Battle

The paradoxes of the Chariot card and learning self control.

The Chariot may be the strangest card in the Tarot.

It is supposed to represent victory, yet no battle has begun.

It represents movement, yet nothing is moving.

It depicts a chariot, yet there are no horses—only two sphinxes.

There are no reins.

There is no whip.

There is no enemy.

Nothing appears to be happening at all.

Was It Intentional?

And that may be exactly what Pamela Colman Smith, the illustrator of the Waite Tarot Deck, wanted us to notice.

For generations, The Chariot has been interpreted as a card of willpower, determination, and conquering obstacles. Yet when we actually look at the picture, those obstacles are nowhere to be found. There is no battlefield, no rough road, no charging army. The charioteer isn’t straining. He isn’t shouting commands. He simply stands, perfectly still.

It’s almost as though the card is asking us to question our assumptions.

Perhaps the real battle isn’t out there.

Perhaps it’s in here.

The black and white sphinxes seem to embody opposing forces: reason and emotion, courage and fear, planning and intuition, the conscious and unconscious mind. Left to themselves, they would almost certainly pull in different directions. Yet the charioteer doesn’t force them into submission.

In fact, he has no reins.

That omission is astonishing.

If this card were really about domination, the reins would be the most important object in the entire picture. Pamela could easily have painted magnificent golden harnesses stretching from the driver’s hands.

Instead, she paints…nothing.

The message seems surprisingly modern.

You don’t move forward by pulling harder.

You move forward by becoming aligned.

The Chariot Poster – 13 X 19 Inch Print – Available on Etsy

The Chariot and Wu Wei

There’s an old idea in Taoism called wu wei, often translated as “effortless action.” It doesn’t mean laziness or passivity. It means acting without inner conflict. The master doesn’t appear powerful because he exerts more force than everyone else. He appears powerful because nothing inside him is working against itself.

The same principle appears in the martial arts. Beginners rely on muscular effort. Masters move with astonishing economy because every part of the body is working together.

The Chariot seems to celebrate that same kind of mastery.

Not force.

Alignment.

The Years that Lead to a Moment

Think about the biggest moments of your own life.

Writing the book.

Leaving the job.

Starting the business.

Falling in love.

The visible action often takes only a single day.

The invisible preparation may take years.

Long before the wheels begin to turn, something inside us has to come into harmony. One part of us can no longer be saying, “Go,” while another whispers, “Stay safe.”

Most of us believe we’re stuck because life is difficult.

Sometimes that’s true.

But just as often, we’re stuck because different parts of ourselves are pulling toward different destinations.

“I want to follow my dream.”

“I don’t want anyone to criticize me.”

“I want intimacy.”

“I’m terrified of being vulnerable.”

That’s a motionless chariot.

Not because there isn’t a road.

Because the driver hasn’t yet become whole.

Seen this way, The Chariot isn’t asking, “How strong is your will?”

It’s asking a far more interesting question:

How divided is your mind?

When those inner divisions begin to dissolve, movement becomes almost effortless. The struggle isn’t eliminated because the world suddenly becomes easy. It’s eliminated because we’ve stopped fighting ourselves.

Perhaps that’s why Pamela painted a motionless chariot.

She wasn’t showing us the moment of victory.

She was showing us the battle before the battle.

The quiet, invisible work of bringing ourselves into alignment.

Because once that work is complete, the journey has already begun.

Available on Etsy as a PDF Downloadable Book

The Lovers and Falling in Love with Love

The archetypal power of love in the human heart.

When most people look at The Lovers card, their attention goes immediately to the man and woman.

But perhaps they’re not the real subject of the card.

Perhaps the real story is the angel.

Are You in Love with Your Lover… or in Love with Love?

It’s a curious question.

When we fall in love, what is it that actually transforms us? Is it another human being? Or is it the mysterious experience that awakens within us?

We’ve all known that feeling.

You meet someone. Conversation becomes effortless. Ordinary days suddenly seem enchanted. Music sounds richer. Food tastes better. Even standing in line at the grocery store doesn’t seem quite so terrible.

The world hasn’t changed.

You have.

Love has reorganized your perception.

And what’s fascinating is that this transformation often begins long before we really know the other person.

The Lovers Tarot Poster by Dan Adair – 13 X 19 – Available on Etsy

The Golden Aura

Relationships don’t always last.

Some become lifelong partnerships. Others end in disappointment, heartbreak, or betrayal.

Yet even after the relationship is over—even after anger has replaced affection—we often remember those first weeks or months with remarkable clarity.

We remember the golden feeling.

The sense that life itself had become brighter.

Which raises an interesting possibility.

Perhaps what we miss isn’t only the person.

Perhaps we miss the state of consciousness that love awakened within us.

The Angel in the Card

This is why I find the angel in this illustration so compelling.

The two human figures occupy the foreground, but towering above them is a radiant angel, pouring light over the entire scene.

The humans may tell the personal story.

The angel tells the archetypal one.

In Jungian psychology, an archetype is a universal pattern that lives within the human psyche. Love is certainly one of those patterns. Whenever it awakens, it changes the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

Suddenly, things that once seemed important lose their urgency.

Small gestures—a smile, a touch, a glance across a room—become deeply meaningful.

Love rearranges our priorities almost overnight.

The Human as the Vehicle

Ram Dass once spoke about grief in a way that has stayed with me.

He suggested that when someone we love dies, leaves us, or simply disappears from our lives, it feels as though our heart has been torn out.

Why?

Because we mistake the person for the love.

His suggestion was that the beloved is the vehicle through which we experience that profound state of love. When the vehicle disappears, it feels as though love itself has vanished.

Whether or not you agree with his spiritual conclusions, the psychological insight is worth considering.

Perhaps another person doesn’t create love inside us.

Perhaps they awaken something that was already there.

Which Comes First?

It’s impossible to know.

Does falling in love activate the archetype of love?

Or does the archetype become active first, allowing us to fall in love with someone we might otherwise never have noticed?

Most of us have looked back at an old relationship and wondered:

“What in the world did I ever see in that person?”

Perhaps the answer isn’t that we were blind.

Perhaps, for a brief time, we were seeing through the eyes of love itself.

Bringing the Angel Home

The Lovers card offers a beautiful challenge.

Instead of waiting for another person to bring love into our lives, what if we learned to cultivate that quality ourselves?

Not necessarily romantic love.

Simply love.

Loving your home.

Loving your work.

Loving the people you meet.

Being a little slower to judge and a little quicker to help.

Offering compassion to strangers—and to yourself.

Whether you see love as divine energy, a psychological archetype, or simply one of humanity’s greatest capacities, the effect is remarkably similar.

Life becomes brighter.

And perhaps that is the true lesson of The Lovers.

The couple may come and go.

But when love itself finds a permanent home in your heart, no one can take it away.

The Hierophant and Choosing Your Teachers

Who were your greatest teachers?

Who has earned the right to teach you?

That may sound like a strange question, but it’s really the heart of The Hierophant.

Human beings inherit an astonishing amount of knowledge from those who came before us. Language. Music. Art. Meditation. Psychology. Even Tarot itself. Every generation stands on the shoulders of countless teachers.

If each generation had to reinvent the wheel, civilization wouldn’t have gotten very far.

That’s the gift of The Hierophant.

At its heart, The Hierophant represents wisdom that has been tested, preserved, and passed from one generation to the next. He is the archetype of the teacher.

The Hierophant Poster – 13 X 19 – Available on Etsy

Who Changed Your Life?

Think for a moment about the people who genuinely changed the direction of your life.

Maybe it was Ram Dass.

Carl Jung.

Joseph Campbell.

Alan Watts.

A beloved grandmother.

An art teacher.

A therapist.

A meditation instructor.

None of these people simply possessed information. They embodied something. They had walked a path, learned from it, and then offered what they had discovered to others.

That act of passing wisdom forward is the true essence of The Hierophant.

The Shadow Hierophant

Every archetype has its shadow.

The shadow of The Hierophant is the false teacher.

History is full of them.

Some seek money, power, admiration, or control while wearing the robes of spirituality. Others may be sincere but become trapped inside rigid beliefs, insisting that their truth is the only truth and everyone else is wrong.

The ancient Sufi saying captures it perfectly:

“A donkey laden with holy books is still a donkey.”

Knowledge alone doesn’t make someone wise.

Available as a downloadable PDF book on Etsy

Choosing Your Teachers

We live in an age overflowing with gurus.

Scroll through YouTube for a few minutes and you’ll find hundreds of people promising enlightenment, wealth, healing, awakening, or secret knowledge.

So how do we choose?

A genuine teacher doesn’t ask you to surrender your mind.

They don’t demand blind obedience.

They don’t make themselves the destination.

Instead, they point beyond themselves.

They encourage you to test what they teach against your own experience.

The healthiest teachers aren’t interested in creating followers.

They’re interested in creating independent human beings.

The best Hierophants quietly say:

“I’ve walked this road before.”

“Let me save you a few unnecessary mistakes.”

“Test everything I tell you.”

“And someday, I hope you’ll surpass me.”

That’s Ram Dass.

That’s Joseph Campbell.

That’s Mr. Rogers.

That’s the Zen master who smiles when the student finally understands.

Becoming the Hierophant

Eventually, life invites each of us into the role of teacher.

Not because we’ve collected enough books or memorized enough quotations.

But because we’ve suffered.

We’ve loved.

We’ve failed.

We’ve learned.

We’ve become just a little wiser than we were before.

The real question isn’t whether people listen to us.

It’s whether we’ve earned the right to speak.

The Buddhists have long emphasized the practice of Right Speech. Among its many teachings is a warning against pretending to possess spiritual wisdom we haven’t actually attained.

That is the Shadow Hierophant.

Claiming authority before we’ve earned it.

Perhaps that’s why this old saying has endured for centuries:

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates:

Is it true?

Is it necessary?

Is it kind?

The Hierophant reminds us that wisdom is more than knowledge.

It is knowledge tempered by humility.

And perhaps the greatest teachers are those who quietly invite us to become teachers ourselves—not by repeating their words, but by discovering our own.

The Emperor and Ruling a Kingdom of Socks and Dishes

The role of The Emperor’s energy in our daily lives.

How are you ruling over your kingdom right now?

No, I don’t mean your imaginary kingdom where you’re a titan of industry or maybe a pirate.

I don’t mean the video game kingdom where you’re the greatest slayer of orcs of all time.

I mean your kingdom.

The one with socks on the floor.

Laundry that’s piling up.

Bills that still need to be paid.

Dishes waiting in the sink.

You know…

The kingdom you actually have control over.

The Emperor and The Empress

The Empress and the Emperor are the only true matched pair in the Major Arcana. In a previous post, I suggested that the Empress represents our ability to receive abundance. The Emperor represents our ability to organize it.

The Empress is how we receive the world.

The Emperor is how the world receives us.

The Empress is the generative principle.

The Emperor Poster – 13 X 19 Inches – Available on Etsy

The Emperor is the organizing principle.

Both of these energies live within every one of us. They aren’t male and female so much as complementary ways of being. Like the Emperor and the Empress themselves, they’re opposite ends of the same spectrum.

The Empress is relaxed, open, and completely at ease.

The Emperor is covered in armor from head to toe.

The Empress is soft and receptive.

The Emperor is firm and projective.

The Emperor is Our Place in the World

Sooner or later, every one of us has to leave the safety of the family nest and make our way in the world. We have to earn a living, work with other people, find a place to live, pay the bills, keep the house in order, and somehow hold it all together.

Yes…it’s that dreaded stage of life we call . . . adulting.

The Empress is the part of us that nurtures our identity as it grows.

The Emperor is the part that carries that identity into the world and quietly says:

“This is who I am. I have a right to be here.”

If The Empress is the Universal Garden, The Emperor is the guy who built the garden beds, carried in the sacks of manure to fertilize it and remembers to water it all every morning.

So How Do We Claim the Emperor’s Energy?

By developing self-control without becoming controlling.

By cultivating quiet confidence instead of arrogance.

By becoming competent at what we do.

By keeping our promises to ourselves.

The Emperor doesn’t ask us to dominate other people. He asks us to govern ourselves.

Not as a tyrant.

As a wise ruler.

Not with harsh self-criticism.

With gentle but strong guidance.

Despite his throne, his crown, and his armor, the Emperor’s work isn’t really about kingdoms at all.

It’s about picking up those socks.

Paying the bills.

Keeping your word.

Creating healthy boundaries.

Standing up for yourself without trampling someone else.

Every small act of self-government strengthens the Emperor within us.

And perhaps that’s the real lesson of this card.

Before we can rule a kingdom, we have to learn to rule ourselves.