Tarot Reading What did my dream last night of dying and becoming a spirit symbolize?
Reading Performed 08/06/2022 at 9:47 AM
Click or scroll down for the meaning of each position and the interpretation of its card.
Visual Layout
This Covers You
This card gives the influence which is affecting the person or matter of inquiry generally, the atmosphere of it in which the other currents work.
Six of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Fear, as if a powerful enemy is at the gate; treachery, disloyalty, as if the gates are being opened to the enemy; also extended delay.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Fulfillment of deferred hope.
Card Description
A horseman wearing a laurel crown holds a staff adorned with another laurel crown. Footmen with more staves are at his side.
This Crosses You
It shows the nature of the obstacles in the matter. If it is a favourable card, the opposing forces will not be serious, or it may indicate that something good in itself will not be productive of good in the particular connexion.
Three of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery: those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, at sail.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A very good card; collaboration will favour enterprise.
Card Description
A calm, stately figure looks from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. His back is turned. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
This Crowns You
It represents (a) the Querent's aim or ideal in the matter; (b) the best that can be achieved under the circumstances, but that which has not yet been made actual.
Eight of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Bad news, terror, crisis, rebuke, powerful obstacles, conflict, slander; also sickness.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
For a woman, scandal spread in her respect.
Card Description
A woman stands bound and blindfolded, with the swords of the card around her. It is a card of temporary imprisonment rather than permanent bondage.
This is Beneath You
It shows the foundation or basis of the matter, that which has already passed into actuality and which the Significator has made his own.
The Emperor from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Benevolence, compassion, recognition; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Emperor, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this to shew that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a late draughtsman.
Card Description
He has a form of the Crux ansata (like an Ankh) for his scepter and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch—commanding, stately, seated on a throne. The arms of his throne have rams' heads on the front. He is execution and realization, the power of this world, clothed with the highest of its natural attributes. He is the virile power to which the Empress responds, and in this sense, he is the one who seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains a virgin.
This is Behind You
It gives the influence that is just passed, or is now passing away.
Ten of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Violence or backstabbing, as shown by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not specifically a card of violent death.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Followed by Ace and King, imprisonment; for girl or wife, treason on the part of friends.
Card Description
A figure lies on the ground, pierced by the swords of the card.
This is Before You
It shows the influence that is coming into action and will operate in the near future.
Wheel of Fortune from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Growth, abundance, surplus.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Wheel of Fortune. There is a current Manual of Cartomancy which has obtained a considerable vogue in England, and amidst a great scattermeal of curious things to no purpose has intersected a few serious subjects. In its last and largest edition it treats in one section of the Tarot; which--if I interpret the author rightly--it regards from beginning to end as the Wheel of Fortune, this expression being understood in my own sense. I have no objection to such an inclusive though conventional description; it obtains in all the worlds, and I wonder that it has not been adopted previously as the most appropriate name on the side of common fortune-telling. It is also the title of one of the Trumps Major--that indeed of our concern at the moment, as my sub-title shews. Of recent years this has suffered many fantastic presentations and one hypothetical reconstruction which is suggestive in its symbolism. The wheel has seven radii; in the eighteenth century the ascending and descending animals were really of nondescript character, one of them having a human head. At the summit was another monster with the body of an indeterminate beast, wings on shoulders and a crown on head. It carried two wands in its claws. These are replaced in the reconstruction by a Hermanubis rising with the wheel, a Sphinx couchant at the summit and a Typhon on the descending side. Here is another instance of an invention in support of a hypothesis; but if the latter be set aside the grouping is symbolically correct and can pass as such.
Card Description
The four Living Creatures of Ezekiel occupy the corners of the card. The symbols on the disc in the center stand for the perpetual motion of an ever-changing universe and for the flux of human life. The Sphinx is equilibrium within that state of change. The letters of Taro or Rota are inscribed on the wheel, interspersed with the Hebrew letters of the Divine Name—to show that Providence is implied through all existence. However, this is the Divine intention within, and the similar intention on the surface is represented by the four Living Creatures.
Your Self
Signifies the person or thing about which the question has been asked, and shows its position or attitude in the circumstances.
Five of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Litigation, disputes, trickery, contradiction.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Quarrels may be turned to advantage.
Card Description
A group of youths brandish staves, as if in sport. They play at mock warfare, and the divinatory meanings match this.
Your House
Your environment and the tendencies at work therein which have an effect on the matter €”for instance, your position in life, the influence of immediate friends, and so forth.
The Hermit from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Prudence, caution; also and especially treason, hypocrisy, mischief, corruption.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Hermit, as he is termed in common parlance, stands next on the list; he is also the Capuchin, and in more philosophical language the Sage. He is said to be in search of that Truth which is located far off in the sequence, and of justice which has preceded him on the way. But this is a card of attainment, as we shall see later, rather than a card of quest. It is said also that his lantern contains the Light of Occult Science and that his staff is a Magic Wand. These interpretations are comparable in every respect to the divinatory and fortune-telling meanings with which I shall have to deal in their turn. The diabolism of both is that they are true after their own manner, but that they miss all the high things to which the Greater Arcana should be allocated. It is as if a man who knows in his heart that all roads lead to the heights, and that God is at the great height of all, should choose the way of perdition or the way of folly as the path of his own attainment. Eliphas Levi has allocated this card to Prudence, but in so doing he has been actuated by the wish to fill a gap which would otherwise occur in the symbolism. The four cardinal virtues are necessary to an idealogical sequence like the Trumps Major, but they must not be taken only in that first sense which exists for the use and consolation of him who in these days of halfpenny journalism is called the man in the street. In their proper understanding they are the correlatives of the counsels of perfection when these have been similarly re-expressed, and they read as follows: (a) Transcendental justice, the counter-equilibrium of the scales, when they have been overweighted so that they dip heavily on the side of God. The corresponding counsel is to use loaded dice when you play for high stakes with Diabolus. The axiom is Aut Deus, aut nihil. (b) Divine Ecstacy, as a counterpoise to something called Temperance, the sign of which is, I believe, the extinction of lights in the tavern. The corresponding counsel is to drink only of new wine in the Kingdom of the Father, because God is all in all. The axiom is that man being a reasonable being must get intoxicated with God; the imputed case in point is Spinoza. (c) The state of Royal Fortitude, which is the state of a Tower of Ivory and a House of Gold, but it is God and not the man who has become Turris fortitudinis a facie inimici, and out of that House the enemy has been cast. The corresponding counsel is that a man must not spare himself even in the presence of death, but he must be certain that his sacrifice shall be-of any open course-the best that will ensure his end. The axiom is that the strength which is raised to such a degree that a man dares lose himself shall shew him how God is found, and as to such refuge--dare therefore and learn. (d) Prudence is the economy which follows the line of least resistance, that the soul may get back whence it came. It is a doctrine of divine parsimony and conservation of energy, because of the stress, the terror and the manifest impertinences of this life. The corresponding counsel is that true prudence is concerned with the one thing needful, and the axiom is: Waste not, want not. The conclusion of the whole matter is a business proposition founded on the law of exchange: You cannot help getting what you seek in respect of the things that are Divine: it is the law of supply and demand. I have mentioned these few matters at this point for two simple reasons: (a) because in proportion to the impartiality of the mind it seems sometimes more difficult to determine whether it is vice or vulgarity which lays waste the present world more piteously; (b) because in order to remedy the imperfections of the old notions it is highly needful, on occasion, to empty terms and phrases of their accepted significance, that they may receive a new and more adequate meaning.
Card Description
A star shines in the Hermit's lantern. This is a card of attainment, and to emphasize this idea the figure is seen holding up his beacon on a hill. The Hermit is not a wise man in search of truth and justice; nor is he particularly an example of experience. His beacon hints that "where I am, you also may be." (see John 14:3)
Related Posts
Your Hopes and Fears
The Chariot from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Aid, providence, war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Chariot. This is represented in some extant codices as being drawn by two sphinxes, and the device is in consonance with the symbolism, but it must not be supposed that such was its original form; the variation was invented to support a particular historical hypothesis. In the eighteenth century white horses were yoked to the car. As regards its usual name, the lesser stands for the greater; it is really the King in his triumph, typifying, however, the victory which creates kingship as its natural consequence and not the vested royalty of the fourth card. M. Court de Gebelin said that it was Osiris Triumphing, the conquering sun in spring-time having vanquished the obstacles of winter. We know now that Osiris rising from the dead is not represented by such obvious symbolism. Other animals than horses have also been used to draw the currus triumphalis, as, for example, a lion and a leopard.
Card Description
An upright and princely figure carrying a wand. On the shoulders of the victorious hero are the Urim and Thummim, symbols of divination—here shown as faces within crescent moons. He has led captivity captive (see Psalm 68:18); he represents conquest on all planes—in the mind, in science, in progress, and in certain trials of initiation. He has replied to the sphinx's riddle; therefore, two sphinxes draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.
The Final Result
The culmination which is brought about by the influences shewn by the other cards that have been turned up in the divination.
Three of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Mediocrity, in work and elsewhere; immaturity, pettiness, weakness.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Depends on neighbouring cards.
Card Description
This card shows a sculptor working in a monastery. Compare with the Eight of Pentacles: the apprentice or amateur in that card has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
The Meanings of these Tarot Cards
This Covers You
This card gives the influence which is affecting the person or matter of inquiry generally, the atmosphere of it in which the other currents work.
Six of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Fear, as if a powerful enemy is at the gate; treachery, disloyalty, as if the gates are being opened to the enemy; also extended delay.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Fulfillment of deferred hope.
Card Description
A horseman wearing a laurel crown holds a staff adorned with another laurel crown. Footmen with more staves are at his side.
This Crosses You
It shows the nature of the obstacles in the matter. If it is a favourable card, the opposing forces will not be serious, or it may indicate that something good in itself will not be productive of good in the particular connexion.
Three of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery: those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, at sail.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A very good card; collaboration will favour enterprise.
Card Description
A calm, stately figure looks from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. His back is turned. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
This Crowns You
It represents (a) the Querent's aim or ideal in the matter; (b) the best that can be achieved under the circumstances, but that which has not yet been made actual.
Eight of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Bad news, terror, crisis, rebuke, powerful obstacles, conflict, slander; also sickness.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
For a woman, scandal spread in her respect.
Card Description
A woman stands bound and blindfolded, with the swords of the card around her. It is a card of temporary imprisonment rather than permanent bondage.
This is Beneath You
It shows the foundation or basis of the matter, that which has already passed into actuality and which the Significator has made his own.
The Emperor from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Benevolence, compassion, recognition; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Emperor, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this to shew that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a late draughtsman.
Card Description
He has a form of the Crux ansata (like an Ankh) for his scepter and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch—commanding, stately, seated on a throne. The arms of his throne have rams' heads on the front. He is execution and realization, the power of this world, clothed with the highest of its natural attributes. He is the virile power to which the Empress responds, and in this sense, he is the one who seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains a virgin.
This is Behind You
It gives the influence that is just passed, or is now passing away.
Ten of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Violence or backstabbing, as shown by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not specifically a card of violent death.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Followed by Ace and King, imprisonment; for girl or wife, treason on the part of friends.
Card Description
A figure lies on the ground, pierced by the swords of the card.
This is Before You
It shows the influence that is coming into action and will operate in the near future.
Wheel of Fortune from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Growth, abundance, surplus.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)
The Wheel of Fortune. There is a current Manual of Cartomancy which has obtained a considerable vogue in England, and amidst a great scattermeal of curious things to no purpose has intersected a few serious subjects. In its last and largest edition it treats in one section of the Tarot; which--if I interpret the author rightly--it regards from beginning to end as the Wheel of Fortune, this expression being understood in my own sense. I have no objection to such an inclusive though conventional description; it obtains in all the worlds, and I wonder that it has not been adopted previously as the most appropriate name on the side of common fortune-telling. It is also the title of one of the Trumps Major--that indeed of our concern at the moment, as my sub-title shews. Of recent years this has suffered many fantastic presentations and one hypothetical reconstruction which is suggestive in its symbolism. The wheel has seven radii; in the eighteenth century the ascending and descending animals were really of nondescript character, one of them having a human head. At the summit was another monster with the body of an indeterminate beast, wings on shoulders and a crown on head. It carried two wands in its claws. These are replaced in the reconstruction by a Hermanubis rising with the wheel, a Sphinx couchant at the summit and a Typhon on the descending side. Here is another instance of an invention in support of a hypothesis; but if the latter be set aside the grouping is symbolically correct and can pass as such.
Card Description
The four Living Creatures of Ezekiel occupy the corners of the card. The symbols on the disc in the center stand for the perpetual motion of an ever-changing universe and for the flux of human life. The Sphinx is equilibrium within that state of change. The letters of Taro or Rota are inscribed on the wheel, interspersed with the Hebrew letters of the Divine Name—to show that Providence is implied through all existence. However, this is the Divine intention within, and the similar intention on the surface is represented by the four Living Creatures.
Your Self
Signifies the person or thing about which the question has been asked, and shows its position or attitude in the circumstances.
Five of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Litigation, disputes, trickery, contradiction.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Quarrels may be turned to advantage.
Card Description
A group of youths brandish staves, as if in sport. They play at mock warfare, and the divinatory meanings match this.
Your House
Your environment and the tendencies at work therein which have an effect on the matter €”for instance, your position in life, the influence of immediate friends, and so forth.
The Hermit from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Prudence, caution; also and especially treason, hypocrisy, mischief, corruption.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Hermit, as he is termed in common parlance, stands next on the list; he is also the Capuchin, and in more philosophical language the Sage. He is said to be in search of that Truth which is located far off in the sequence, and of justice which has preceded him on the way. But this is a card of attainment, as we shall see later, rather than a card of quest. It is said also that his lantern contains the Light of Occult Science and that his staff is a Magic Wand. These interpretations are comparable in every respect to the divinatory and fortune-telling meanings with which I shall have to deal in their turn. The diabolism of both is that they are true after their own manner, but that they miss all the high things to which the Greater Arcana should be allocated. It is as if a man who knows in his heart that all roads lead to the heights, and that God is at the great height of all, should choose the way of perdition or the way of folly as the path of his own attainment. Eliphas Levi has allocated this card to Prudence, but in so doing he has been actuated by the wish to fill a gap which would otherwise occur in the symbolism. The four cardinal virtues are necessary to an idealogical sequence like the Trumps Major, but they must not be taken only in that first sense which exists for the use and consolation of him who in these days of halfpenny journalism is called the man in the street. In their proper understanding they are the correlatives of the counsels of perfection when these have been similarly re-expressed, and they read as follows: (a) Transcendental justice, the counter-equilibrium of the scales, when they have been overweighted so that they dip heavily on the side of God. The corresponding counsel is to use loaded dice when you play for high stakes with Diabolus. The axiom is Aut Deus, aut nihil. (b) Divine Ecstacy, as a counterpoise to something called Temperance, the sign of which is, I believe, the extinction of lights in the tavern. The corresponding counsel is to drink only of new wine in the Kingdom of the Father, because God is all in all. The axiom is that man being a reasonable being must get intoxicated with God; the imputed case in point is Spinoza. (c) The state of Royal Fortitude, which is the state of a Tower of Ivory and a House of Gold, but it is God and not the man who has become Turris fortitudinis a facie inimici, and out of that House the enemy has been cast. The corresponding counsel is that a man must not spare himself even in the presence of death, but he must be certain that his sacrifice shall be-of any open course-the best that will ensure his end. The axiom is that the strength which is raised to such a degree that a man dares lose himself shall shew him how God is found, and as to such refuge--dare therefore and learn. (d) Prudence is the economy which follows the line of least resistance, that the soul may get back whence it came. It is a doctrine of divine parsimony and conservation of energy, because of the stress, the terror and the manifest impertinences of this life. The corresponding counsel is that true prudence is concerned with the one thing needful, and the axiom is: Waste not, want not. The conclusion of the whole matter is a business proposition founded on the law of exchange: You cannot help getting what you seek in respect of the things that are Divine: it is the law of supply and demand. I have mentioned these few matters at this point for two simple reasons: (a) because in proportion to the impartiality of the mind it seems sometimes more difficult to determine whether it is vice or vulgarity which lays waste the present world more piteously; (b) because in order to remedy the imperfections of the old notions it is highly needful, on occasion, to empty terms and phrases of their accepted significance, that they may receive a new and more adequate meaning.
Card Description
A star shines in the Hermit's lantern. This is a card of attainment, and to emphasize this idea the figure is seen holding up his beacon on a hill. The Hermit is not a wise man in search of truth and justice; nor is he particularly an example of experience. His beacon hints that "where I am, you also may be." (see John 14:3)
Related Posts
Your Hopes and Fears
The Chariot from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Aid, providence, war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Chariot. This is represented in some extant codices as being drawn by two sphinxes, and the device is in consonance with the symbolism, but it must not be supposed that such was its original form; the variation was invented to support a particular historical hypothesis. In the eighteenth century white horses were yoked to the car. As regards its usual name, the lesser stands for the greater; it is really the King in his triumph, typifying, however, the victory which creates kingship as its natural consequence and not the vested royalty of the fourth card. M. Court de Gebelin said that it was Osiris Triumphing, the conquering sun in spring-time having vanquished the obstacles of winter. We know now that Osiris rising from the dead is not represented by such obvious symbolism. Other animals than horses have also been used to draw the currus triumphalis, as, for example, a lion and a leopard.
Card Description
An upright and princely figure carrying a wand. On the shoulders of the victorious hero are the Urim and Thummim, symbols of divination—here shown as faces within crescent moons. He has led captivity captive (see Psalm 68:18); he represents conquest on all planes—in the mind, in science, in progress, and in certain trials of initiation. He has replied to the sphinx's riddle; therefore, two sphinxes draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.
The Final Result
The culmination which is brought about by the influences shewn by the other cards that have been turned up in the divination.
Three of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Reversed
Mediocrity, in work and elsewhere; immaturity, pettiness, weakness.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Depends on neighbouring cards.
Card Description
This card shows a sculptor working in a monastery. Compare with the Eight of Pentacles: the apprentice or amateur in that card has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
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