luciazephyr | Tarot cheat sheet

Suits:
Staves/Wands (Fire): Ancestor to Clubs. will, passion, power, male. ambition, creativity, career. Something you have to do, you cannot resist it.

1: South/Summer. New energy and passion.
2: Choosing where to focus one's passion and energy.
3: Progress. Effort is rewarded and should be proud.
4: Establishment. Solid foundation.
5: Competition and power struggle. Inner doubts and fears.
6: Victory. The victor and his admirers/friends are both thrilled.
7: Under siege, on the defensive, having to stand one's ground or lose footing.
8: Fearless motion. Being able to immediately charge and make a change.
9: The staircase. The end is near, but it's tiring to continue on.
10: What was fought for is gained, along with all the burdens that go with it. There is little creative or driving energy, but goals have been accomplished.

Cups (Water): ancestor to Hearts. emotion, romance, female. emotional extremes, depression or bliss. Feelings you surrender and sink into. Psychic powers, visions, illusions.

1: West/Fall. New love or inspiration.
2: Finding someone who knows you and you them, love or friendship.
3: Overflowing love and joy, celebration.
4: Stagnation leading to dissatisfaction and boredom. Indulging as a means of escaping mundanity.
5: Obsessing over what is lost, ignoring what still remains. Spilled milk.
6: Nostalgia. One single golden moment of balance, recovered equilibrium.
7: Indecision. Card of illusions and deceptions. A hasty decision equals doom as not all choices are as good as they first seem.
8: Escape into the unknown. Leaving behind all that is familiar to forge a new path.
9: The Wish. A gift is granted.
10: Permanent joy or love. A family is gained.

Swords (Air): ancestor to Spades. sinister, violent, intellectual, clever. Brilliant thoughts as well as nightmares.

1: East/Spring. New challenges, new beginnings.
2: Knowledge of how to compromise temporarily, a small solace.
3: The solace is over, and hurt is upon you. At least the battle is over.
4: Mental and emotional stress, but stillness used to heal from it. Rest.
5: An impossible battle. Have to concede or lose even more.
6: Leaving old troubles behind and finding a solution through an ally.
7: Thievery. Something is going to be stolen. Caution is needed. Be equally sneaky.
8: Fear of moving but fear of staying. Action is needed but requires courage or things will get worse.
9: Problems with perception. Seeing one's problems as much bigger than they really are.
10: Ten Swords in a man's back. Things are as bad as they seem, everything has gone wrong, but at least it's over.

Coins/Pentacles (Earth): ancestor to Diamonds. physical, wealth, health, growth. Luck, that which is solid or real.

1: North/Winter. New luck or money.
2: The ability to juggle responsibility for some time.
3: Crafting something that earns. With little, money and admiration are gained.
4: The miser. The earnings from 3 are held tight for fear of losing them.
5: Loss of material things, a setback. A temporary hard time.
6: Unbalance is resolved by giving. Charity benefits the giver and taker.
7: Reward is on the way, but things out out of your control. Just be patient.
8: Apprentice's card. Starting over and learning, but also mistakes and hard work.
9: What was once out of reach is now feasible thanks to increased wealth or resources.
10: Pinnacle of prosperity. Material wealth that is not fleeting.

Major Arcana
0: The Fool: New beginnings. A lot of potential for both greatness and total failure.

1: The Magician: Male power of creation. Bringing something into being by pure willpower. The smooth talker, a revealer of potential. A Magician is charismatic and clever.

2: The High Priestess: Knowledge, both instinctual and arcane. Brings aid in decision making, but also stands for hidden secrets. A High Priestess is intuitive and solitary.

3: The Empress: Maternal gifts. Offers patience to let things grow and mature. Can give Earthly gifts but also withhold them in anger. An Empress is a mother hen, worrying and doting.

4: The Emperor: Aggressive power and foundation. Offers enthusiasm and energy, but is also rash and controlling. May love rule or may feel trapped by duties. An Emperor is a ruler who must or has learned responsibility.

5: The Hierophant: Wisdom. Offers pragmatic thinking and is down to earth. Creates harmony in crisis, but is also stubborn. A Hierophant is a teacher and very practical but set in their ways.

6: The Lovers: A crossroads. Something that is hard to resist and results in having to make an important decision. A sense of completion. Represents a need to follow instincts.

7: The Chariot: Conflict and eventual victory. Motion that must be controlled to achieve. Opposing wants and needs are unified. Loyalty, faith, and conviction.

8: Strength: Willpower. Control of oneself will lead to control of others. Raw inner strength. Courage to continue in adversity and eventually succeed.

9: The Hermit: Introspection. A desire for peace and solitude to analyze. The Hermit is wise and enlightened. A Hermit is impatient with people and anti-social, but wise and wandering.

10: The Wheel of Fortune: Good fortune. A sudden windfall, movement, change, evolution. Represents what is unexpected, usually good.

11: Justice: Objective balance. Presents consequences for unwise behaviors. Demands concession and sacrifice, but always fairly and for the better.

12: The Hanged Man: Suspension and meditation. Through voluntary vulnerability, things will become clear, a sudden epiphany.

13: Death: Transformation. Something is lost on the way to renewal. It is darkest before the dawn, but the dawn is coming soon.

14: Temperance: Merging opposites. Things that seem too different to be blended are found to be reconcilable. Card of alchemy and unity.

15: The Devil: Pleasure and inhibition. Can be passion and power or self-inflicted slavery. Represents both an addict or one who reaches out and achieves his goals. Noted to be the only card not about balance: the Devil urges extremity, for good or ill.

16: The Tower: Absolute truth. Brings a shock and paradigm shift. Falsehoods suddenly and violently tumble down. It's painful, but it lifts the veil to reveal how things really are.

17: The Star: A guiding light. Unexpected help and clarity of vision. Above all else, hope. Looking away from the present to the future.

18: The Moon: Madness and beauty. Dealing with sleep, so also with dreams and nightmares. Great insight is on the way. Very magical.

19: The Sun: Order and discovery. Intellect, glory, triumph. Represents a time where everything is just good.

20: Judgement: Facing one's past and accepting it. A healing card, representing resurrection. Leaving something behind and heading to something totally new.

21: The World: A completed cycle. The end is in sight and celebration is to come. 'As the Hanged Man saw infinitely inward, the [World] sees infinitely outward.'

On LJ: http://lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com/582205.html

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From:

samjohnsson

caveat lector - the meanings do change, depending on the deck, if the deck is sensitive to inversion, and depending on the reader. If you need help reading/creating a spread, holler.

From:

luciazephyr

I shoooould just be using basic symbolism (Alistair is the Hermit or the Heirophant, Tracy is the Magician despite bing non-magical, Jonquil the High Priestess, etc etc). Right now, I have several pages of notes on various Hermetic Magic stuff. Basically trying to feel out my universe and detaching it from the Dresdenverse. Having issues (fuck you Butcher for making your verse so sensible).

From:

samjohnsson

From what you've described, Tracy might be more the Fool than the Magician. She may be transitioning, but...

Anyway, if you need a "is this crazy", you know where to find me!

From:

luciazephyr

She maaaaybe be a reversed Fool? But Tracy is a power of creation and initiative for the story. And, as I understand it, the Magician is often a protagonist force, and that very much is Tracy.

You've volunteered to have me flail at you for this a story. Which will happen once I come up with a fucking name for one of my main characters. 8\

From:

samjohnsson

The Magician is more purposeful creation, a level of intent; the Fool is more setting on a path without knowing the destination. From what you've described, you can go either way with her.

Names still giving you trouble?

From:

luciazephyr

Hm, noted. Perhaps she's both, just as Alistair is equal parts Hermit and Heirophant.

Yeeeeeep. /sigh

From:

samjohnsson

Which is very common - a person's signifier rarely is fixed from year to year, or situation to situation. It's why a lot of reading start with three signifiers, or a single signifier crossed by a modifier.

From:

luciazephyr

That makes the most sense. So far, most of the characters are like that, a main arcana and then another...

Alistair: Hermit, with Heirophant (very wise, voluntarily alone, but coming out of his cave so to speak to bring knowledge and protection)
Tracy: Reverse Fool, with Magician (strong beginner, a force of creation and initiative)
UNNAMED THIRD CHARACTER: Temperance, with the Chariot (merging of natures, harmony within himself, self-control leading to his livelihood)
Jonquil: High Priestess, with the Lovers (Holder of arcane knowledge, can impart wisdom, but mush is impossible to understand and know.)
Jonquil's ghost: The Hanged Man, with the Lovers (Looking eternally inward, defining himself by who he is now in death, not who he was in life.)

... sorry, basically making more notes to myself here.

From:

samjohnsson

That many majors would make both my eyebrows go up - any of the royalty, as well as the aces and tens, are usually considered just as influential and significant. Like having the Knight or King of Swords for Alistair would not be inappropriate at all (probably the King, as he has a more established, defensive symbology).

The Fool, reversed, I've always been taught signifies someone who won't or can't to start (over) - there's some similarities to the Wheel and the Tower, in that regard.

The third character sounds kind of like a force of nature, a catalyst - (he)'s fairly in control of himself, but he can't help but knock people out of their comfortable roles just by interacting with them. Close?

From:

luciazephyr

I don't think they will ever be overt, anyway. Mostly for my reference. That said I've... never heard of the King/Knight cards. Shit. Don't suppose you have a site to point me at that covers this better? /frowny face

Someone told me the Fool reversed is the start of a journey with less naivete and foolishness. Hrm. /worried face

Yep. Ethical hedonist, has no illusions about the good and bad he causes, very amiable. Utilizes his powerful heritage, but as in tune with his humanity as possible. Prooooobably the bastard son of the Lord of the Hunt, or some such. Still figuring out my mythologies.

From:

samjohnsson

Ah. Um. All my sources are print. Let me poke some people.

Short version is, in addition to the ten count cards in each house, there's four court cards: the Page, the Knight, the Queen, the King. They represent ages of life and roles in the family. Note that the Page is usually drawn male but read ungendered, as is the Knight, sometimes. The Page is the sweet youth - the first burst of that element in a life. The Knight is the element taking direction - the teens - when it gains motion and targets, but not necessarily wisdom or restraint. The Queen is the nurturing and passive, hidden control, whereas the King is the more judgmental active control of that element's reign. The King is defensive, as opposed to the Knight's offensive. And the Queen and King are fairly strongly gendered when seen, but they're not absolute - no more so than any other card in the deck is gendered.

I would expect Chariot, or Six of Swords, honestly, if that's what you're going for. But again, the intent that the deck was drawn with matters a lot. Some decks and some readers don't even differentiate for undignified positions.

From:

luciazephyr

The esoteric selection at my local store is really hideously bad. Got a decent title I could google though?

I see. That makes sense. Not sure how differentiation of the suits would work with that, though. (For instance, Page of Staves vs Page of Swords.)

From:

samjohnsson

Page of Staves is that first burst of uncontrolled passion, that young spark of life. Page of Swords is the first thought, the first plan.

We have links! Friend of mine suggests aeclectic.net is "really good". It relies on the Ryder-Waite deck (which Wikipedia has all the card images, if piss-poor meanings), but Ryder-Waite is possibly the most common deck out there so a lot of other decks are designed with those meanings in mind. I use it sometimes. (There are a couple other decks I'll draw on.)

From:

luciazephyr

Ah, okay. So a Page of Cups would represent a first flush of strong emotion or mysticism?

You are awesome! Thank you. If this turns up in the text of the story instead of me just noodling around, I may try to find one of the earlier decks (looks like the de Marseille or Sforza predate Ryder-Waite at first glance).

From:

samjohnsson

Right, or the first burst of intuition.

Credit is due to

sage - it's her goddess group that had the link.

And they do predate - tarot-style placards, with different numbers of cards, date a long way back. Ryder-Waite's got some of the clearest symbology, though. Your choice.

From:

luciazephyr

Give her my thanks. I appreciate it. 8D

True... I won't know until down the line, TBH. I'll worry about coming up with names first.

From:

thene

The Visconti-Sforza is 15th century and is generally pegged as the oldest surviving deck; the Marseilles is more like a design theme than an individual deck and it's hard to place its exact age. The Rider-Waite-Smith is early 20th century and was based on the late Victorian Golden Dawn Society decks & theories. It should have passed into the public domain in the UK this year, but hey, the US has no public domain any more, so.

From:

thene

(of course the other thing about the RWS is that it has an illustrated minor arcana, which earlier decks tend not to. Later decks often base their minors on the RWS. It's much easier to learn from a fully illustrated deck and the RWS is a wonderful one to start with.)

books - try Rachel Pollack's 78 Degrees Of Wisdom as a start. The best tarot book I've ever read is Pollack's A Forest Of Souls but it's not a starter book.

fwiw I used to keep a tarot blog myself, and it petered out with 19 card pages still missing; it's here. It has too much criticism/variant standpoints and not enough substance imo, but hey, maybe one day I'll try doing it over.

From:

luciazephyr

Public domain? For a tarot deck? Is... is that a thing? Fuck. How is that okay? D8

Noted about RWS as a full deck. I didn't know that. So as I'm understanding, there is kind of a set format (ie: always X amount of major arcana and Y number of suits), but how the deck is conceptualized actually matters a whole lot?

Will try to find the Pollack book, definitely. And will check the blog. Thank you, Thene! ♥

From:

thene

It's a wonderful thing, and I only hope it really happened and the corporate owners never found a way to nix it - it's a few years since the RWS Copyright FAQ was last updated.

Eh. There's a set format now; the oldest decks (including the Visconti-Sforza) are a bit more varied. There are some standard variants floating around, mostly originating in the RWS (based on Golden Dawn theories) or the Thoth (based on Alastair Crowley's theories - so we basically have two different significant western esoteric movements each encoding their ideas in tarot and it then being propagated over time). Eg. older decks have a Papess but the RWS instead introduced the High Priestess, and the Thoth and some later decks that take a lead from it have Princesses instead of Pages. (There are other odd things about the Thoth, but they're more rarely emulated).

There's also a lot of decks out there that go in for special snowflakery, usually by adding extra majors. And some artists just don't want to draw 78 designs so don't fully illustrate the minor arcana - I love Yoshitaka Amano's tarot but it doesn't illustrated the 2s through 10s, just aces, court cards and majors.

One reason I love The Forest Of Souls is that it takes the line that tarot began as a game and still is; you can play however you want to play.

From:

luciazephyr

S'weird, like having a copyright on part of history. Ugh.

Thoth actually sounds interesting. May look into that. Oh, Crowley. Cannot look into esoterica for five minutes without bumping into him, to be honest.

ffffff AMANO DID ONE? brb googling

That was the most interesting thing in my readings, the Tarocchi origins. aohaeurhger want to do ALL THE RESEARCH, but then will never write anything. argh.

From:

thene

From:

luciazephyr

Thank you. Just so you know, am enjoying the hell out of your tarot card blog. Will definitely try to find that book. Sounds fascinating.

From:

thene

Aw, thanks. I was in a very too-deep-in phase with blogging when I wrote it, and stuck in the immigration system and going pretty nuts, so I'm a bit distant from it right now. I'm just glad it's still useful to someone.

From:

killerkaleidoscope

Every time I see you reference this project, I start grinning. I can't wait to see where you go with this. I wish you fair winds & good fortune on the way.

Snagging the cheat sheet, because I've always wanted to learn how to play Emperors with someone but never knew enough about Tarot.

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Tarot cheat sheet

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